1
20
3
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b53b4b242b4112e24ef785eae6adc0af.pdf
c4cf6af8022478fdc3e7e86cfa725548
PDF Text
Text
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2012-2013
Date
Speaker
Title
August 24 2012
Ms. Pamela Kraus
Dean
St. John’s College
Annapolis
A Start on Reading
August 31
Mr. Samuel Kutler
Tutor and Dean Emeritus
St. John’s College
Annapolis
Beginnings
September 7
Mr. Adam Schulman
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
On Homer’s Iliad
September 14
Mr. William Braithwaite
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
What is Free Speech for the
Sake of?
September 21
Parker Quartet
Concert
September 28
Mr. Peter Kalkavage
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
The Musical Universe and
Mozart’s Magic Flute
October 5
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 12
Lecture cancelled
October 19
Mr. Steven Crockett
Visiting Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
Paradoxes of Elections
October 26
Dr. Daniel Selcer
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA
Thought, Image, and the
Printed Page in Early
Modern Europe
November 2
Mr. David Stephenson
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
Melodies and Faces: A
Meno Meditation
November 9
All College Seminar
�November 16
New York Polyphony
Concert
Two Sides of Love
November 23
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
November 30
Mr. Greg Recco
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
The Conference in the
Meadow: The Choice of
Life in Plato’s Myth of Er
December 7
King William Players
Performance
December 14 January 6
Winter Vacation
No Lectures
January 11
(Steiner Lecture)
Professor James Wood
Harvard
The New Atheism and the
Modern Novel
January 18
Mr. Michael Grenke
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
What Will Heaven Be
Like?
January 25
Mr. Frederic Chiu
Concert
The Piano: Invention and
Transformation
February 1
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 8
Mr. Dylan Casey
Tutor
St. John’s college
Annapolis
Surprises and Sweet Spots:
On Discovery and
Recognition
February 15
Mr. Daniel Harrell
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
Does Music Move?
February 22
Mr. Jacques Duvoisin
Tutor
St. John’s College
Santa Fe
I s the Soul a City?
A Question about
Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics
March 1 – 17
Spring Vacation
No lectures
March 22
Mr. James Lennox
Aristotle’s Method in On
Respiration: The Origins of
Functional Anatomy
�March 29
Mr. Mark Sinnett
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
What Does the
Mathematical Physicist
Know?
April 3
Ralph Peters
The Price of Historical
Illiteracy: wishful thinking
and the death of strategy
April 5
Mr. Jeffrey Smith
Tutor
St. John’s College
Annapolis
Sympathy’s Dimensions:
Reflections on the Moral
Philosophy of David Hume
April 12
Mr. Phil Lecuyer
Tutor
St. John’s College
Santa Fe
Intellectual Sin
April 19
Mr. Elliott Zuckerman
Tutor Emeritus
St. John’s College
Annapolis
Why I still scan verse or
How to sleep in a
procrustean bed
April 26
King William Players
Performance
May 3
Reality Weekend
No Lecture
May 10
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
(LCDR Erik S. Kristensen
Lecture Series)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule 2012-2013
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-2013
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2012-2013 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2012-2013
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kraus, Pamela, 1945-
Kutler, Samuel S.
Schulman, Adam
Braithwaite, William
Parker Quartet
Kalkavage, Peter
Crockett, Steven
Selcer, Daniel
Stephenson, David
New York Polyphony (Musical group)
Recco, Gregory
Wood, James
Grenke, Michael W.
Chiu, Frederic
Casey, Dylan
Harrell, Daniel
Duvoisin, Jacques
Lennox, James
Sinnett, Mark, 1963-
Peters, Ralph
Smith, Jeffrey
LeCuyer, Phillip
Zuckerman, Elliott
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
September 7, 2012. Schulman, Adam. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/53" title="The anger of Achilles, and its source">The anger of Achilles, and its source</a> (audio)
September 7, 2012. Schulman, Adam. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/54" title="The anger of Achilles, and its source">The anger of Achilles, and its source</a> (typescript)
September 28, 2012. Kalkavage, Peter. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/36" title="The musical universe and Mozart's Magic Flute">The musical universe and Mozart's Magic Flute</a> (audio)
September 28, 2012. Kalkavage, Peter. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/37" title="The musical universe and Mozart's Magic Flute">The musical universe and Mozart's Magic Flute</a> (typescript)
November 2, 2012. Stephenson, David. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/57" title="Melodies and faces">Melodies and faces</a> (audio)
November 2, 2012. Stephenson, David. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/58" title="Melodies and faces">Melodies and faces</a> (typescript)
November 30, 2012. Recco, Greg. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/49" title="The soul's choice of life">The soul's choice of life</a> (audio)
November 30, 2012. Recco, Greg. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/51" title="The soul's choice of life">The soul's choice of life</a> (typescript)
January 18, 2013. Grenke, Michael. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/28" title="What will heaven be like?">What will heaven be like?</a> (audio)
January 18, 2013. Grenke, Michael. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/29" title="What will heaven be like?">What will heaven be like?</a> (typescript)
February 8, 2013. Casey, Dylan. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/22" title="Surprises and sweet spots">Surprises and sweet spots</a> (audio)
February 15, 2013. Harrell, Daniel. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/33" title="Does music move?">Does music move?</a> (audio)
February 15, 2013. Harrell, Daniel. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/34" title="Does music move?">Does music move?</a> (typescript)
March 22, 2013. Lennox, James. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/41" title="Aristotle on respiration">Aristotle on respiration</a> (audio)
April 12, 2013. LeCuyer, Phillip. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/39" title="Intellectual sin">Intellectual sin</a> (audio)
April 12, 2013. LeCuyer, Phillip. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/40" title="Intellectual sin">Intellectual sin</a> (typescript)
April 19, 2013. Zuckerman, Elliott. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/332" title="Why I still scan verse">Why I still scan verse</a> (audio)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/eb111ed6134eabaaa040bc45f67a09a8.pdf
35704956a3e3eeb8b2a3c10f579a7103
PDF Text
Text
The St. John’s Review
Volume 55.2 (Spring 2014)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Deziree Arnaiz
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800.
©2014 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing
The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at
www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml.
��Contents
Essays & Lectures
The Mutuality of Imagining and Thinking: On Dennis Sepper’s
Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images ..................1
Eva Brann
Similarity and Equality in Euclid and Apollonius ............................17
Michael N. Fried
The Soul’s Choice of Life.................................................................41
Greg Recco
Artistic Expression in Animals .........................................................61
Linda Wiener
Poems
Troy...................................................................................................82
Hannah Eagleson
Three Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire...................................................................84
Peter Kalkavage
The Second Sense .............................................................................88
Elliott Zuckerman
Review
To Save the Ideas
Book Review of Daniel Sherman’s Soul, World, and Idea:
An Interpretation of Plato’s Republic and Phaedo ...................89
Eva Brann
��The Mutuality of
Imagining and Thinking:
On Dennis Sepper’s
Understanding Imagination:
The Reason of Images1
Eva Brann
When Professor Rosemann invited me to this colloquium—small
in scale, but to my mind great in significance—I told him that I
conceived my talk on Dennis Sepper’s newly published Understanding Imagination as a sort of book review, which earned me a
wonderful possession, a copy of this magnum opus, as he called
it, rightly.
There cannot be even the hint of a wink in this appellation. It is
indeed a magnum opus, magnificent, powerful, and copious. I want
to address this last feature first, since it colors the reading of the
book.
This work takes its time. Since, to describe its thesis in a first
approximation, there is no activity homo sapiens sapiens engages
in as such that is not imaginative, Sepper ventures into all sorts of
intellectual territory and calls on a variety of theories and concepts.
The point is that instead of dropping names allusively and naming
notions abbreviatedly he takes his time in explaining what he uses,
and he does it so that a reader can follow. He needs the idea of a
field. Do we all know off-hand what a field, formally speaking, is?
1. New York: Springer, 2013. This review-lecture was written for a colloquium held on October 30, 2013 in honor of the book by the Department
of Philosophy at the University of Dallas, Irving, Texas, where Professor
Sepper teaches. Eva Brann, tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis, was invited to be the main speaker because Professor Sepper has had close relations to St. John’s, and because her book The World of the Imagination
(Savage, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1991), is cited in Understanding
Imagination as a sort of predecessor in the attempt to treat the imagination
somewhat comprehensively and with due regard to the reflective tradition.
�2
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Well, now we know. Is everyone interested in the imagination familiar with Saussurian linguistic theory? Well, a lucid exposition
is given. Does that sane remainder among us who is convinced that
opining without some grounding in the tradition of thought is like
Chanticleer standing on top of a middenheap crowing, know exactly why, and how, to study texts of the past? Well, though I come
from a school that deliberately resorts to that tradition as a treasury
of texts, yet on reading Dennis Sepper’s first introductory chapter
I felt better armed in what looks at the moment like a rear-guard
action in its defense. Let me quickly inject here that I think this is
a sufficiently winnable battle, that the last shall soon enough be
first, and that books like this one will belong to the special forces
of this fight. One element in its effectiveness is precisely that its
generalities are highly and acutely specified. What I mean by that
I’ll say before long, and I’ll even express some misgivings. But
they are the queries and doubts of a reader who has been made to
think hard.
So let me begin my review of the content of Understanding
Imagination by saying that the plenitude of notions introduced is
lucidly organized. This book knows exactly where it’s going. The
title announces the comprehensive topic of the book. (Topic, topos,
topology, topography, I should say, are not casual but carefully expounded terms of the work.) This overarching topic is the imagination and its two aspects: the activity of imagining, and its
product, images. First, the imagination is to be understood, that is,
subjected to thinking. And anyone who has ever developed an interest in this topic will know that this endeavor opens a can of
worms—particularly the problematic idea that one mental function
can be applied to another, and the implied pseudo-traditional notion that the imagination is in fact a separable faculty. (I’ll explain
“pseudo-traditional” in a moment.) The subtitle, then, implies that
this understanding will yield the “reason of images.” Now believe
it or not, the book itself contains an explication, applicable to this
phrase, of genitives, objective and subjective. Thus “the reason of
images” means both “what is the reason we have images, how and
for what purpose they come about” (objective) and “the rationality
belonging to images themselves, how images and logoi (reasons
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
3
and ratios) are identical” (subjective). The main title has a similar
double meaning. The book will make good on both parts of the
promise, to elucidate both the activity and the product of images—
and, of course, these expositions will raise questions.
The organization of so large a number of mental motions must,
as I said, be lucid, and it is. I’ll first set it out summarily, then permit myself to pick out the particular aspects that got to me, and finally formulate some of the aforesaid queries. That’s as much as
to say that this is a personal take on the book, but that way of proceeding needs no excuse in respect to this work. For the author
himself has some keen observations bearing on the strenuous selfdenial of the impersonal approach, with which I have my own experience: Academic treatments of the inner life, driven by some
misguided notion of objectivity (I don’t want to say, individual inadequacy) quite often read as if the scholar had mislaid his soul
and excised his personal experience while writing on, say, the passions, the will, or the imagination. In these matters, our author
might agree, taking it personally gains something even more valuable than objectivity—call it verity.
I must say at this point what “taking it personally” shouldn’t
mean. Dennis gives the most generous praise and acknowledgment
to my own book, The World of the Imagination, which he clearly
regards as a worthy predecessor to be worthily superseded. There’s
no cause for grief in that. What better chance for an afterlife than
to find a delimited place in the next, more global treatment? At the
end, I’ll indicate briefly how the picture-making view of the imagination preferred in my book both accommodates itself and is recalcitrant to Dennis’s topology.
Chapter 1 begins by giving shape to the questions that matter
about the imagination: How do we come by the idea? Why is it
important? And it promises answers. It then goes on to a critique
of what Sepper calls “the occluded-occulted tradition” of sapient
imagining. He mounts a fair attack on what one might call the
canned version of the tradition, the “pseudo-tradition,” which is
divorced from the subtleties of the actual texts and thus set up to
miss the meaning. Here he produces a pointed answer to two questions: One, what killed the tradition? Answer: survey-type, textless
�4
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
textbook accounts. And two, what have the original texts to give
us? Answer: fresh, unstereotyped approaches to truth.
Chapter 2 offers a five-line definition of the imagination, which
is deliberately comprehensive and incidentally shows that good
books are written back to front. My students tend to think, wrongly,
I believe, that philosophy is about and ends in definitions. Yet it is
a part of the intelligent plan of this book that it begins by focusing
the mind on the topic by means of this definition. It is a risky and
arresting strategy: risky because, unlike the Socratic initiation of a
search by means of a definition that is at once popular and self-refuting, Sepper’s definition is at once demanding and conclusive;
arresting because you can tell that it is new-old, not one of the
going formulas, yet rooted in the intellectual tradition.
His ultimate aim is, as I said, comprehensiveness, initiated by
actually practicing imagining, by attending to the act. There are
guided exercises asking you to determine such aspects as how
much of imaginative remembering is reproduction, how much
detail is present, etc. There is a first engagement with various approaches, such as psychologism, which regards knowledge as
“what people in fact think” rather than “what objects actually
are,” and works on the supposition that we have similar, naturally
given, minds which have before them mental objects, and also
posits that both the mind’s thinking and its objects are accessible
to introspection. One can see that “having images”—pictures
held in or before the mind—goes well with this school of thought.
It is, however, afflicted with many quandaries. Its opponent, antipsychologism, argues that it is not from mental, thus subjective,
objects that knowledge comes but from objective public objects,
from logic, mathematics, the world. Internal objects are denied
in favor of overt behavior; mental images, at least the claim that
there are well-formed, stable mental pictures, are obvious targets
of anti-psychologism. It, too, has its difficulties.
Sepper gives notice that he will sail between these Clashing
Rocks: A mental image must be somehow based both in its situation and its forming activity—must be both public and private.
To escape falsifying fixations, we must reradicalize imagination,
recover its roots, its ontology. Sepper proposes a guiding idea
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
that will avoid getting caught in the conventional commonplaces:
a “topology” of the imagination.
Chapter 3 could be said to set out the methodology of the book,
but that would be falsifying Sepper’s enterprise, which is premethodological. I might describe it as putting to work, for all it’s
worth, a well-found metaphor. Topos, the Greek word for “place,”
has many spaces—physical territories supporting settled locales;
reversely, mathematical fields constituted from the relations among
its elements, its sites; topological space in which expansible shapes
undergo transformations without tearing; and the index in which
rhetorical “common-places,” in Greek, topoi, can be looked up.
These are all versions of a “conceptual topology.” This rich notion
is the notable discovery, or I should say, rediscovery of the book.
Sepper finds that certain philosophers’ writings about imagination,
when directly approached, in fact employed a conceptual topology
all along.
Here is a very preliminary description of the topological approach, as exercised by people who have some preparation:
They have not acquired just a greater quantity of discrete
ideas and their associations. They have cultivated new
fields of imagination as such, as whole fields; they have
learned to mark out special positions in the field; they
have come to isolate (or section out) subfields and sometimes they learn how to relate the various fields to one
another in a new entity or a new field (94).
This much is already evident about a topological understanding
of the imagination: It will see imagining as holistic, fluid, multilevelled—and all that to the second degree. I mean that the above
is not only a description of the imagination but also of the understanding of imagination. For if the imagination is a “topography,”
a placing-in-fields activity, so much the more must its understanding
be a “topology,” an account of a topography. And conversely, if the
approach is adequate in its metaphoricity—for “place” as primarily
used and defined by Aristotle, is a phenomenon of extension—then
so must the imagination be a power of metaphorical placing. But
this is not Sepper’s explicit vocabulary; it is perhaps more an expression of my misgivings, which I’ll articulate at the end.
�6
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Chapters 4 through 7 then do what is obviously next: give a
reradicalized reading of the deepest philosophical texts bearing on
the subject—Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant.
Chapter 8, on post-Kantian treatments, displays what happens
sooner or later to anyone who tries to trace the tradition of a topic
chronologically. Eventually things fall apart into multifariousness;
one is obliged to choose a few authors out of a multitude. Sepper
concentrates on those, namely Wittgenstein (in his Tractatus) and
Saussure, who exemplify an important consequence of his own
heuristic, his topological device: that logos, far from being the antithesis of an image, is an image.
To explain the assertion that the overlapping of language with
imaging is implied in the topological approach, I must return to
Chapter 3 to introduce Sepper’s notion of “biplanarity.” It refers
to a sort of double sight by which one imaginative plane is simultaneously present with another, and the imaginer sees one in terms
of the other. It is first mentioned as a sort of dissociation, such as
happens when one distances oneself from the sense-filled experience of the world in order to see it as reason-resistant appearance,
opposed to intelligible being, if one is Socratically inclined. Or reversely, if one tends to Husserlian phenomenology, then it is real
existence that is “bracketed,” so that one may see the world as an
analyzable phenomenon. Later this relation between the planes is
called a projection. “Seeing-as” has in fact become a topos.
So logos or reason and image or picture can live simultaneously
on two planes while being, moreover, somehow projectible—that
is, in some aspect isomorphic. I have some misgivings about this
rather broad application of the notion of projection that I will offer
later on.
Now before going to those central chapters that revive the tradition and reradicalize the problem, let me just complete the sketch
of the book’s organization.
Chapter 9, the last chapter, presents the initial definition, now
endowed with enough mental material to shed the term definition
and to become a delimitation—a kinder, gentler, more inclusivesounding term. Like any thoughtful philosopher (there is, after all,
the other kind), Sepper does not in fact highly value definitions,
because they are too bare, and he says that they never deliver an
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
unpackable essence. Nonetheless his now much amplified delimitation does invite an analytic reading. I will sketch out what this
reading yields, since that is the crux of the book, yet I know full
well that I’m reversing Sepper’s deliberate expansion. But what
else to do? Let me call it whetting your appetites.
So: the imagination is an activity; one might say that the imagination is nothing but imagining. This identification does an end
run around the “mental modularity” debate, which is concerned
with the problem hinted at before: whether the mind has a multiplicity of distinct faculties or is a global activity. The imagination
is neither a separate faculty nor an undiscriminable activity. This
imagining is a third something, quite positive, quite specific. It acts
evocatively, calls something forth, and that in a dual way: “abstractional” and “concretional.” Its evocative work produces on the one
hand something drawn away from, abstracted from, detached from
the original. But on the other hand, the emergent imaginative phenomenon has—this is my term now, (Sepper avoids it)—quasi-sensory characteristics, reminiscent of the embodied original insofar
as that it is a concretion, a thickening, of features. The definition
then goes on to specify this activity of imagining. First, it envisions
imaginative fields of concern with a basically potential nature, in
which the fixities of the sensory world become fluid. Second, it
exploits this potentiality to allow the projection of field upon field,
that is, of biplanarity. I have, of course, truncated this concluding
exposition and so robbed it of its subtlety.
The chapter then gathers in the topics that give the potential features form, actualize them, as it were, and so shape the field into a
topography, an expression of the field’s potentials. Recall that these
topoi or topics are figurative places, mental foci.
Here are some examples: Imagining begins with “the emergence
of appearance as appearance,” a formulation that implies “not as
appearance of a stably real thing,” and which is, by reason of this
divorce from reality, both initially placeable in the imaginative
field and essentially evanescent. Fixing this appearance, giving it
firmer shape is a further work of the imagination.
A second topic is the image as inchoate, labile, and contextual.
Contextuality in particular is a recurrent and crucial topic, since in
its shiftiness it partly explains the mobile character of images, but
�8
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
even more because context is placing, and placement is the necessary correlative of place. Further on, a topic zeroes in on imagining
as abstracting from perception. One might say “abstraction from
perception” is the preliminary activity that yields appearances as
appearances, since perception is the sensing of things as things.
But one can regard this abstraction from perception also in an opposite way: When the imagination strips the thing of its perceptual
accidents it produces a rationalized image, one having the lucidity
of reason—reason in image-shape. I think of diagrams and blueprints in connection with this.
Nine such topoi are mentioned, features both of and in the field
that have now become topics, subject-areas for future study and
theorizing, and with these “areas” the book concludes. One stems
from Sepper’s unapologetic acknowledgment that he has “cognitivized” the imagination and omitted the human depths of affectivity. He regards the future incorporation of these factors as
plausible and predicts a complex inquiry.
Another concern is the anthropological positioning of the imagination: How does the imagination fit into our humanity? Sepper
suggests that Heidegger’s Being and Time might be translated into
a more conventional philosophical anthropology, in which terms
like attunement (Stimmung) might be put to use. Here I am driven
to an aside: I would applaud this outcome, because if such a normalized derivation had been plausibly accomplished, that would
imply what some of us suspect—that Heidegger’s original existential analytic is, after all, an ordinary ontic anthropology ratcheted
up by fiat into an extraordinary ontology.
Ontology is indeed another concern. Sepper’s envisions ontological explanations that are imaginative in the sense of being fieldto-field projections, one field being the explanatory, the other the
explained field. A bonus is that this duality avoids destructive reductionism, since in the imaginative mode the field elucidated is
not collapsed into the explaining field. Simultaneity of levels is
maintained, and the object explained survives in its plane, unreduced to its explanatory elements in the underlying parallel plane.
Finally an ethics of imagination is adumbrated. Sepper speaks
of an ethos of imagination as the “inhabitable place of imagina-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
9
tion”—how we live in its fields. Such a way of life will develop
an ethics that requires this way of life to be good. His book has
shown that thinking and imagining are inseparable. The obsession
with formal and procedural rationality and the relegation of imagination to the arts is disastrous in children’s education and, by implication, to adult practice:
The only adequate way of developing rationality is to develop our ability to imagine comprehensively; we must
start with ourselves, or we will inevitably fail our children and the future world (524).
In leaping from the first three chapters to the last, I have hollowed out the nourishing marrow of Understanding Imagination,
the “reradicalized” readings of imagination’s great philosophical
texts. I would keep you here past lunch, dinner, and nightcap, if I
attempted to fill the gap. Those interpretations are based on close
and acute textual analyses, and they take their time.
Instead I will try to say, briefly, in gist, what in each of the four
philosophers to which Sepper gives a chapter is particularly germane to the delineation of the imagination just outlined. In this
sketchy review I shall have to omit entirely the history-of-ideas
glue that holds these philosophers steady in the context of a—putatively—coherent development.
It is, incidentally, not clear to me what the actual order of discovery was: Did Sepper formulate his understanding of the imagination first and then discover previously occulted corroboration
in the textual tradition, or was it the other way around, or both simultaneously? Maybe he will tell us later.
I’m not sure whether this attempt to pinpoint the intention of an
extended exposition, to find the crux of a highly textured lay-out,
amounts to a subversion or a highlighting of Sepper’s work. Anyhow, I mean it for the latter and will try not to miss the point, but
if Dennis says I did, I will gladly yield to correction. So, then:
Chapter 4: Plato. The chapter intends a major correction of standard interpretations that downplay images in the dialogues. In fact,
“for Plato reality is mimetic,” meaning that the levels of being are
seen as a cascade of images along which the viewer rises and descends in inquiry. Moreover the image-beings produced by what I
�10
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
might call “ontological imaging” are analogically connected, that
is, by proportions constituted of logoi, ratios—as in the Divided
Line of the Republic. So they can be said to be logos-involved
(though I’m not sure that ratio-logos so readily translates into reason-logos). I also want to add that Plato calls the lowest human
thought capacity eikasia, “image-recognition,” but then puts it to
work throughout the realm of knowing, for the ascent of knowing
is through recognizing images as images.
Chapter 5: Aristotle. Next, the imagination is retrieved from a
truncated conventional account of Aristotle’s On the Soul which
suppresses two aspects—that imagination seems to be a sort of motion and that it is one aspect of intellection. The imagination’s motion is that of abstracting from the matter of the sensory object and
locating the resulting appearance in the thinking, noetic part of the
soul. There, as “intellectualized imagination” (Sepper’s term), it
functions freely over a field of shifting conformations and contexts,
over a topography. Here I want to add that Aristotle calls even the
Divine Intellect a topos eidōn, a “place of forms,” and the very fact
that this description is figurative (since the Intellect is beyond all
place) may strengthen Sepper’s claim: thoughts and images are
“concreted” in the highest reaches.
Chapter 6: Descartes. Now the topological view of the imagination is refounded in modernity, though again conventional imagination-suppressing selectivity has obscured this fact. Descartes is
a persistent practitioner of the imagination, particularly in the
mathematization of physical nature. Imagination, however, is identified as an activity of the intellect, which is capable of “remotion,”
of stepping back from its imagined figures to rethink them as
purely intellectual existences. Thus intellect exceeds imagination
so as to become, from beyond it, the source of its directed mobility,
that is, the source of its biplanarity and field-topography.
Chapter 7: Kant. Sepper precedes his exposition with an account
of the post-Cartesian occultation of the imagination by rationalism
and its revival within a new science of sensibility, aesthetics. To
these developments Kant responds with a radical epistemology—
an account, called “transcendental,” as yielding knowledge going
beyond the only conscious material knowledge possible, an account
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
11
that traces experience to its root. This root is dual, a passively receptive sensibility “looked at” by intuition, and an actively constructive conceptuality “functioning” by understanding. The
sensibility is again dual, consisting of transcendental, that is, hypersensory space and time. Spatiality and temporality are thus with
us from the first, a priori. Into these notional receptacles flows—
from somewhere—a sensory manifold, an unstructured matter. The
imagination is a synthesizing power, a power of “placing together”
disparate elements, both at the very origin and on several higher
knowledge-producing levels of the soul. Thus imagination is, for
the first time in philosophy, productive before it is reproductive. It
is now knowledge-shaping rather than knowledge-aiding, as it was
for Aristotle, for whom it presented to thought the sensible world
without its matter. The first work of Kant’s transcendental imagination is that of informing the sense-manifold spatially and temporally, so that all sensation of the world comes to our
consciousness “in” space and “in” time, extendedly and sequentially. Mathematics, then, is a product of another imaginative synthesis, which directs thinking to invoke, to inscribe, in space
particular geometric figures, and also calls on time to develop them
progressively. Of the several syntheses, the highest and deepest,
most original, hence most mysterious, work of the imagination is
done by a procedure that is called a schematism. It “puts together,”
or rather infuses, the functions of the understanding, which is a rational power, with the space and time, the pure intuitions of the
sensibility, which is a receptive mode. On the face of it, their disparateness would seem to preclude this miracle of involvement.
But the imagination provides the ground of their union. One example: “Substance,” as a mere rational notion, is an empty concept.
When time-informed it becomes the more concrete category of that
which persists in time, a locus of underlying stability.
There are further syntheses, those that produce the ascending
ways consciousness deals with the representations before it: first,
an “apprehension,” a mere awareness of a representation as an
item; then, a “reproduction” of the representation as a memoryimage; finally, a “recognition” that by coming under concepts the
representation is now stably settled in consciousness and fully ac-
�12
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
quired by self-consciousness.
So the Kantian imagination is an activity responsible for the togetherness of analytically disparate factors. It works at the roots of
consciousness, to give it its basic constitution, and then over multiple and layered fields of knowing, by projections from the level
of mere awareness to full self-consciousness. Sepper says that
Kant, as the most consequential representative of the eclipsed tradition, “brought the . . . intelligible dynamism of imagining to a
high point that was not exceeded even by the romantics”—which
is saying a lot, and rightly.
To summarize my summary: Plato introduces an ontological
imagination, whose places are held together in a bond of logoi, ratios. Aristotle adds a psychological activity working at the crux of
human knowing, between thing and soul. Descartes conceives an
intellect that contains and directs the imagination; hence the dynamism of images—their mobility, responsiveness to context, and
biplanarity—is not intrinsic to images but is the inspiriting work
of the intellect. And Kant discovers a synthetic power merging sensibility and understanding, the two aspects of cognitive consciousness; this power originates at its unknowable root of the human
subject and works at all its levels.
These four philosophers anticipate in various degrees of prominence the two chief elements of Sepper’s analysis: the close linkage of reason with imagination and the shifting field-topography
notion of mobile imagining. And they corroborate his respect for
the tradition as a source of illumination.
Now, to do my job as reviewer, I should subjoin some misgivings—and I do mean misgivings and queries, not criticisms and
condemnations.
First, then, I’ll articulate a sort of global unease about explanatory delineations like Sepper’s efforts that make the—surely
heroic—attempt to capture the mobile multifariousness and closeup complexity of embodied beings, and particularly, of their mental
life. In one of his many helpful footnotes he explains the mental
motions of “abstracting” and “prescinding” (drawing off and cutting away), both of which are a kind of simplifying fixative; the
imagination itself, as a cooperating power of understanding works
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
13
with these devices. If the project is to understand understanding
imagination through a descriptive analysis that preserves the flexible richness of a participating power, a certain swampy doubletalk is the penalty. So for example, a key word, topos, carries,
as I pointed out, the dual meaning of a given subject of inquiry
fitted into a topology and of a placing function of the imagination
producing a topography. And the imagination itself appears—indeed early Descartes is the predecessor here—in two forms. On
the one hand, it is a general power of figurative reconception—
whence its relation to human “creativity.” This human power is,
of course, nothing like the divine creation of the Bible that makes
a world out of chaos; it is rather a new perspective on an old situation or its reconfiguration. This general imagination is a Protean
power. On the other hand, there is also the narrower power of producing and manipulating images; it is a rather specialized capability. I wonder if prescinding, cutting away, containing, would
not be an authorial virtue here. But then again, if something, the
imagination par excellence, is by nature duplicitous, perhaps its
account must display intentional ambiguities and homonymous
doublings—never mind Occam’s Razor and its injunction not to
multiply explanatory entities.
The second item is only a specification of the first. Certain notions don’t seem to lend themselves to clarity—for example, contextualization and fusion. A context, as Sepper fully appreciates, is
logically definable by what is sometimes called an infinite judgment, as the indefinitely large negativity surrounding a place. So
“contextualization” means putting a small island in a large ocean
and calling that a placement. This misgiving, incidentally, reaches
to all those unhelpful politico-socio-economico-psychological explanations: You can’t zero in on an apprehended “this” by means
of too-big-to-know “that.” Something analogous goes for fusion,
the togetherness of word and thought or thing and image. It doesn’t,
incidentally, matter whether the cognitive union is to be of thought
with a material object or with its matter-stripped image; their mutuality is, by the very reason of being a fact, a mystery, and it might
be most incisive to call it that.
Third, this mutuality or reciprocity of intellect and imagination
�14
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
seems to me the mystery of mysteries, one attested to by the very
variety of grappling devices proposed for their union, precisely because of their structural dissimilarity. All of Sepper’s four philosophers, however they may assimilate the intellect to its object—as,
for example, when Aristotle analogizes sensing and intellection—
at the end of their ruminations admit, either explicitly or implicitly,
the existence of a non-sensing, imageless power of intellect. This
shows, I think, that in those high reaches the intellect itself is an
imageless power. How does a power which at its purest is placeless
come to govern placements?
These considerations make me wonder about the biplanar, fieldto-field-projecting imagination. It is, to begin with, a very congenial notion to me, this double-sight (for which Dennis kindly gives
me credit), in which an image over- or underlies worldly events,
lending them a resonance from other world-venues. Such are the
Homeric similes of the Iliad that alleviate the excruciating concentration of the battlefield by overlaying it with a bonding analogy
to the rest of the world, from the heavens to the household.
But that template notion presupposes some articulated similarity,
some isomorphism, and I have not quite understood on what basis
Sepper’s fields are actually projectible onto one another, how they
are homologous. For example, he says that there is something perverse in the claim that geometry is left behind in analytic, that is
algebraic, geometry. And yet there is a powerful notion, set out recently in Burt Hopkins’s extended commentary on Jacob Klein’s
work on the origin of algebra,2 that just this is the case. Symbolic
mathematics casts loose from image-mathematics and thereby
founds the very modernity Sepper is trying to reform, the world of
abstract reckoning that has suppressed concrete imagining and has
no structural relation to it and is simply not homologous with it.
Another example is word-painting, the power of language to
arouse mental images. No one knows just how words intend toward
and reach the world, nor, therefore, how they instigate its images.
So, it seems to me, the field of thinking and its articulation in words,
2. Burt Hopkins, The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2011). Jacob Klein was the third Dean of the New Program at St. John’s.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
15
this field of logos, is not, at least not obviously, in the field-to-field
relation to the imagination that the notion of a reasoning image requires—and yet I know that language often delineates pictures and
passion usually infuses words.
That brings me to a fourth and final query. Sepper quite intentionally barely touches the relation of imagining to phantasy, to
painting, and to the passions. Might it not be that in relation to
these the understanding of imagination requires different rubrics
and emphases from those in Understanding Imagination? I’ll post
brief surmises.
Cognitively useful imaging is fed from the outside face, so to
speak, of consciousness by the sensed world. Phantasy, by which
I mean fiction, presents what-is-not, and so offers a re-presentation
of no worldly original. No receptive taker-in of a fiction thinks of
it as a re-arranged reality, a reality-collage. Should one not consider
that there might be a conduit from the inside, for which the term
“unconscious” is just an evasive makeshift? Although I am here in
the company of soberly sane thinkers, I am nevertheless suggesting
that one might seriously consider what the practitioners of poetry
meant by the Muses, who live on Olympus and not in neuronal networks. The question here is, Whence comes imagining in its most
life-enhancing aspect?
When the visual arts are drawn into the inquiry, painting is apt
to come front and center, because, if a painting is (as we pre-postmoderns tend to think) an externalization of a mental image (of
course modified in its passage from quasi- to real space), then the
embodied product might in turn throw light on that immaterial
image. It might be that we are drawn to flat-medium imagery because it reminds us of our soul’s imagining—in its plane dimension
(that is, lacking volume), in its immobility (or virtual mobility),
and in what I’ll call its momentousness (its excerpting from the
banal spatial and temporal context a moment of intensified significance). The question here is, Whence issues the imagination’s
most poignant work? Even to ask that question is, to be sure, a surreptitious bit of special pleading on my part, since the answers I’ve
just suggested are the ones given in my book.
�16
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
And finally, when the imagination is properly related to the passions, from the devastating storms of erotic desire to the delicate
atmospheres of esthetic feeling, might the imagination not appear
in yet another capacity than that of abstracting from the round reality outside, or of receiving influxes from a ghostly source beyond?
I mean the capacity to transmogrify the blind shapelessness of our
most intimate psychic condition, our affectivity, into formed feeling—a phrase that surely describes some of our internal imagery.
The question here would be whether the image as an effluvium of
feeling is the same as or different from the cognitive, the art-producing, the Muse-inspired image. Thus the question of questions:
Is the imagination—be it activity, capacity, power, faculty—one or
many? Almost two and a half millennia, and we are still in medias
res. Well, I seem to have talked myself into acknowledging that
Dennis’s multiplication of entities may mirror the way things are.
Thus Understanding Imagination is a wonderfully anticipatory
waystation. So here, in conclusion, are my wishes for the book:
First, that it gain influence enough to encourage a new round of
broadly conceived image-inquiries aided by fresh, close attention
to the great predecessors and perhaps some new, ingeniously devised, imagination-informed image-research. And then, that its call
be heeded for a reform which I’ll put in my own words: There is
in our world a strong strain of relentless reductionism and blind
rationalism whose inevitable complements are mechanical creativity-mongering and thoughtless image-proliferation. One antidote,
perhaps only topically applicable—but then positive good usually
is local—would be a revivified attention to the reason of images.
�17
Similarity and Equality in
Euclid and Apollonius
Michael N. Fried
By Way of Introduction
My subject today is the meaning of similarity and equality in Euclid and Apollonius—and, by implication, in Greek mathematics
generally during its climax in Hellenistic times. But before I actually begin, I want to say just a few words about history of mathematics and St. John’s College, and I would like to do so by telling
a little story. I told this story the last time I spoke at St. John’s,1
but I would like to tell it again, for I still think about it and am
still unsettled by it.
Not long after I finished my doctorate, I was invited to Delphi
for a meeting of historians of ancient mathematics—a small intimate group, only slightly larger than a St. John’s seminar. During
one of the morning coffee breaks, Alexander Jones, the classicist
and historian of Greek mathematics, casually asked how I felt having made the transition from a St. John’s way of thinking to a historian’s. Like a good seminar question, I was stunned by this, and
I was not sure how to answer. This was mainly because I could not
decide whether there really was a difference between a St. John’s
way of thinking and the way of thinking of a historian of ideas,
that is, whether it really was true I had made any kind of transition
at all.
With a kind of dullness until that moment, I had no trouble, on
the one hand, claiming that in the work I was doing as a historian of
Greek mathematics I was continuing what I had learned at St. John’s,
and, on the other hand, feeling frustration, sometimes bordering on
Michael N. Fried is Professor of Science and Technology Education at
Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. This lecture
was delivered on July 31, 2013 at St. John’s College in Santa Fe.
1. At the conference Classical Mathematics and Its Transformation, held
at the Annapolis campus in 2004.
�18
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
resentment, at having to explain yet again how, despite its centering
on texts mostly written long ago, the St. John’s approach was not
historical. Jones’s question made me face the possibility that there
might be a real contradiction here. Of course the reason it still preoccupies me is not because I am overly concerned about my identity
as a Johnny, but because it raises the question of history altogether.
Let me say just a word about this.
When Alexander Jones contrasted the study of history with the St.
John’s program he had in mind, I believe, a view of history, particularly the history of ideas, in which the thought of thinkers in the past
is assumed to be conditioned by times and contexts; understanding
Euclid or Apollonius must, in that view, always be mediated. The contrast with St. John’s may have been based on a mere caricature of the
College where students deal with “eternal ideas” able to be grasped in
an unmediated way. But there is another non-historical view of Euclid
and Apollonius that involves assuming such authors can be read with
no mediation beyond a good Greek lexicon, one that is related to that
caricature version of St. John’s, while not, I hasten to add, the St.
John’s way. It is that in which one comes to mathematics of the past
through modern mathematical concepts and methods, as if the mathematicians of the past were merely writing about the same ideas in a
different language—as John Edensor Littlewood famously said, like
“fellows of another college.”2 Modern mathematical ideas, for those
who approach ancient texts in this way, do not mediate a reading of
the past, but only clarify what those older mathematicians were actually saying. Modern mathematical insight, on that view, becomes the
key to historical insight. A historian like Jones could well see that same
modern insight as obscuring what the mathematicians of the past understood.
For Jones, what the older mathematicians were actually saying is
what they did say in the body of texts they left behind. In order to recover the original meaning of those texts, if we can, one must read
them attentively and with the thought that they were meant to be read.
This unmediated reading of texts, I think, is not far from what one
tries to do at St. John’s. The difficulty here is that having read the texts
2. Quoted in G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 81.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
19
one must nevertheless interpret them—and what it means to interpret
can be interpreted in many ways! Here there can be deep divisions in
outlook.
It may be that Alexander Jones, as a historian of mathematics, is a
historicist, that is, that he truly believes mathematics to be entirely a
product of historical forces so that Greek mathematics, say, belongs
immovably to its own time. In that case he would certainly see a divide
between the way he relates to the past and the way one does at St.
John’s. But whether he really is a historicist I do not know; I never
asked him. Whatever the case, in approaching the history of mathematics, he must, as I must as well, begin at least with a working assumption that the mathematics of the past is different from that of the
present.
The subject of this lecture is not the idea of history, to use the title
of R. G. Collingwood’s famous book,3 and so I shall have to risk your
being left with the impression that this working assumption is only a
kind of maxim. However, I do want to stress that it is in fact fundamental to the way a historian must come to the past. For example, in
the chapter on historical experience in Michael Oakeshott’s Experience and Its Modes, the author distinguishes different kinds of past,
of which one is the historical past, or, we might say, the historians’
past:
The differentia [emphasis in the original] of the historical past
lies in its very disparity from what is contemporary. The historian does not set out to discover a past where the same beliefs, the same actions, the same intentions obtain as those
which occupy his own world. His business is to elucidate a
past independent of the present, and he is never (as an historian) tempted to subsume past events under general rules. He
is concerned with a particular past. It is true, of course, that
the historian postulates a general similarity between the historical past and the present, because he assumes the possibility
of understanding what belongs to the historical past. But his
particular business lies, not with this bare and general similarity, but with the detailed dissimilarity of past and present.
3. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1946), which collects together the author’s works on his philosophy
of history.
�20
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
He is concerned with the past as past, and with each moment
of the past in so far as it is unlike any other moment.4
As a position regarding the way one should come to the past rather
than a position about how the past really is, this is not very different
from a good rule for listening or reading well, as we try to do at St.
John’s: you will listen better to what authors are trying to say if you
do not assume you already know what they are saying—if you assume, rather, that they are saying something different from anything
you have ever heard before.
That said, we are creatures of the present; we cannot pretend the
present does not affect us in any way. For this reason, it is at least useful, if not essential, to be cognizant of the present even while we are
trying to find a very different past. So, while my purpose today is to
try to clarify the notions of similarity and equality in Euclid and Apollonius, I want to begin with a certain aspect of how we moderns tend
to think about similarity and equality: I hope it will help to bring out
the tremendous difference and even strangeness in the ways these notions were understood in classical times.
Similarity and Equality in a Modern Context
Let me begin with a problem someone gave to me sometime before
my flight from Israel to Santa Fe (it is a long flight so it is always
good to have a mathematics problem to work on in transit). The
solution I will present is a modern one.
Let A and B be given points and let C lie on a given
circle. Let P be the centroid of triangle ABC. Find
the locus of point P.
Let E be the midpoint of AB. Then if EC is any line from E to a
point C on the circle, EP:EC=1:3, since P is the centroid of triangle
ACB. Hence, we may think of E as a center of similitude—a point
from which the plane is dilated or contracted uniformly, that is,
that the distance between points is enlarged or diminished by a
fixed ratio (3:1 in this case). The locus PP′P″ is then the image of
4. Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1933), 106.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
21
circle CC′C″ via a contraction relative to E. Therefore, the locus
PP′P″ is a circle having a radius 1/3 that of the given circle CC′C″.
By the same argument, we can see that if C moved on any other
shape, say, an ellipse or a square, the locus of P would also be an
ellipse or a square 1/3 the dimensions of the original ellipse or
square.
�22
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In fact, it can be a completely arbitrary shape.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
23
In every case, the locus required is a shape similar to the original
shape and 1/3 its dimensions.
For our purposes, there are two things we should observe. The
first is the form of the problem, the mere question of locus. What
does it mean to “Find the locus of P”? The idea of locus, or in
Greek, topos, is not an easy one. It would require a lecture of its
own. Yet, it is related, I think, to my main subject, similarity and
equality. I shall say a word about this later.
The second thing to observe, putting the difficulties of locus
aside, is my own way of answering the question, namely, “The
locus required is a shape similar to the original shape” What allows me to speak so generally? Why is it that I need to know nothing about the original shape, none of its special properties? What
allows me, a post-nineteenth century person, to speak of the similarity of a shape I know nothing about?
The answer to this is that in solving the problem I only referred
to a relation between EC, wherever C happens to be, and EP. More
precisely, I took P as an image of C when the entire plane was
contracted by a factor of 1/3 with respect to the point E. That ABC
happened to be a triangle and that P was the centroid of ABC was
really incidental. More importantly, in the original problem, the
fact that the point C moved along a circle was incidental. I did
not, even once, refer to a property of circles!
The modern turn here is precisely to ignore any particular shape
and give all of one’s attention to the space in which it is found.
The contraction by 1/3 is of the space itself, the entire plane:
everything in it will be contracted, shrunk, by a factor of 1/3, so
whatever the shape, it will be the same, only smaller (and in another instance of course it could also be larger)—it is as if we
make a change of scale. This kind of transformation of the plane
is called a “dilation,” and, in general, we can speak about similarity in terms of a dilation combined with other transformations
of the plane that preserve distances between points, translations,
reflections, rotations (these are known as “isometries”).5 This centering on the space is crucial in almost every aspect of modern
5. In fact, it turns out to be enough to speak about reflections: translations
and rotations can be defined in terms of combinations of reflections.
�24
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
mathematics.6 And it is what links similarity and equality, or congruence. For since a dilation is determined by the factor of contraction or enlargement, one can speak of a unit dilation where the
factor is 1. Congruence—and we shall have to confront the problem of congruence versus equality later—is only a special case of
similarity, so that if two figures are congruent they are automatically similar as well.
I want drive home the point that modern geometry is colored by
its emphasis on space by quoting a nineteenth century geometer
who is thought of as a classical geometer, that is, one whose work
is not governed by algebraic ideas—and, indeed, he is considered
one of the greatest geometers of nineteenth century. This is Jakob
Steiner. One of the ideas Steiner developed (though he may not
have invented it) was called the “center of similitude.” In the problem above, this is the point E, the point with respect to which we
dilate the plane. Steiner speaks of this in more than one work; here
is how he describes it in “Geometrical Constructions with a Ruler
Given a Fixed Circle with its Center”:
If in a plane through any point E we draw rays (lines) in
all directions EA1, EB1, EC1, . . . and by means of these
rays, so connect with one another all points of the plane
that to every point A1 on such a ray as EA1 corresponds another point A2 on the same ray; and indeed, under the condition that the distance of every two corresponding points
from the point E, and EA1 and EA2, have throughout one
and the same given ratio, as n1:n2, then such a system of
correspondence is thereby brought about that the plane is
6. I think Jacob Klein put his finger on the same tendency when he wrote,
“Descartes’s concept of extensio identifies the extendedness of extension
with extension itself. Our present-day concept of space can be traced directly back to this. Present-day Mathematics and Physics designate as
‘Euclidean Space’ the domain of symbolic exhibition by means of linesegments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system, a rational
system, as we say nowadays. ‘Euclidean Space’ is by no means the domain of the figures and structures studied by Euclid and the rest of Greek
mathematics. It is rather only the symbolic illustration of the general
character of the extendedness of those structures.” Jacob Klein, “The
World of Physics and the ‘Natural’ World,” The St. John’s Review 28.1
(1981): 29.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
25
traversed twice. Or, we can also imagine that two planes,
which may be called α and α′, lie one upon the other, while
every point may be considered as belonging as well in one
as in the other plane.7
Although Steiner will use the center of similitude specifically for
circles, lines, and angles, his way of presenting it in terms of a
transformation of the entire plane—or, as we would say, a mapping
of one plane onto another—shows the generality of his conception.
So, to reiterate the main point above, similarity can be a general
notion for us since in our modern mathematics similarity refers to
such an operation on the entire plane in which geometric figures
live. And because we focus on the entire plane rather than the objects themselves, the particularity of the objects deemed similar becomes unimportant, as we have seen. It is in this way that the
conception of similarity in Euclid and Apollonius (and, I would
add, Archimedes as well) is profoundly different from that in modern, post-nineteenth-century mathematics.8
7. Jakob Steiner, “Geometrical Constructions with a Ruler Given a Fixed Circle with its Center,” trans. M. E. Stark, ed. R. C. Archibald, Scripta Mathematica 4 (1948): 222. Steiner’s diagram is slightly different from the one
included above, for there are a few more points he wants to emphasize beyond
the mere definition.
8. For this reason, comments such as this from Jeremy Gray seem to me completely wrongheaded: “The Greek geometrical proofs worked because of assumptions made about the underlying space, which are reflected in the ideas
of congruence, similarity, and parallelism.” (Jeremy Gray, Ideas of Space
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979], 29.)
�26
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Similarity in Euclid and Apollonius
In some ways, the radical departure of the modern conception of similarity from the classical Greek conception has everything do with
how mathematicians like Euclid and Apollonius treated the plane itself. The plane, epipedon, in Greek geometry has, one might say, two
expressions, 1) as an object, and 2) as a place. As an object, it can be
considered in relation to other objects, for example, it may be inclined
to another plane, or a line may be inclined to it. It may cut another
figure, a parallelepiped as in Euclid, Elements XI.25 (“If a parallelepipedal solid be cut by a plane which is parallel to the opposite
planes, then, as the base is to the base so will the solid be to the solid”),
or as in Apollonius, Conics I.11-14 where the conic sections are produced by cutting a cone by a plane. Sometimes a plane is nearly identified with part of itself, as in the face of a solid figure (see for
example, Elements XI, Definitions 9 and 10), in which case it becomes an object in a sense not much different from the way a triangle
is an object.
As a place, it is not something manipulated: it is there, and there
are things in it—they can be manipulated, but it cannot.9 Thus in Elements I, Definition 8, “A plane angle is the inclination to one another
of two lines in a plane (en epipedōi) which meet one another and do
not lie in a straight line.” Again in Book XI, Proposition 1, “A part of
a straight line cannot be in the plane of reference (en tōi hupokeimenōi
epipedōi) and a part in a plane more elevated,” the plane is an immovable place. This phrase “the plane of reference,” or “the plane
placed under,” as a place on which things may be situated, also appears in Apollonius’s Conics I.5210 where Apollonius constructs a
parabola in a plane. Even though the plane is not the exclusive field
of action here, as it is in Book I of the Elements, and may have a relation to other objects or be constructed, it is, nevertheless, unmanipulated in these contexts, a that-with-respect-to-which other things may
be manipulated. It is also the place in which the similarity of figures
9. This idea is important in connection to Book IV of the Conics. See Michael
Fried, Apollonius of Perga’s Conics, Book IV: Translation, Introduction, and
Diagrams (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2002).
10. See, for example, Apollonii Pergaei quae Graece exstant cum commentariis antiquis, ed. I. L. Heiberg, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1891), 160, line 15.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
27
is explored. Of course the plane is a place in which the similarity of
figures is explored for the moderns as well; however, they do so by
treating the plane as a place that is able to be manipulated, as if the
place were an object. As such, it can also be compared to other planes,
as we saw in the example from Jakob Steiner.11
To return to the main point, however, the upshot of the ancient
view is that the similarity of figures must be a comparison of the figures themselves within a plane. One’s attention, therefore, must be
sharply focused on the figures and their properties. The foundation
of similarity rests in the look of geometrical figures. I use the word
“look” intentionally; it is a fair translation of the Greek word eidos,
which besides its well-known Platonic context has a mathematical
meaning of “shape,” or “form” in the sense of “shape.” For example,
in Euclid’s Data, Definition 3, we find the following explanation:
“Rectilineal figures are said to be given in form (tōi eidei), if the angles are given one by one and the ratios of the sides to one another
are given.”12 This definition is notable not only because of its resemblance to the definition of similarity in the Elements (see below), but
also because it makes clear that “similar” is related to something the
figures themselves possess,13 namely, their own look or form: for
one figure to be similar (homoios) to another means that they are in
possession of the same shape, the same form, the same look.
The shape of a person may be different from the person, but the
shape of a triangle is impossible to separate from what it is to be
a triangle. In geometry, the shape of something depends on what
that something is. There are, for this reason, as many criteria for
similar figures as there are different kinds of shapes: this is why
for the Greek mathematician there is no single governing rule for
11. See pp. 24-25 above.
12. Translation from Christian Marinus Taisbak, Euclid’s Data: The Importance of Being Given (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003), 115.
Taisbak’s book contains a deep discussion of the idea of “givenness in form”
and of Euclid’s Data generally.
13. In this connection, Taisbak points out, “The Elements compare triangles.
The Data deals with individuals [emphasis in the original], and with the
‘knowledge’ we may have of such individual triangles, within the language
of Givens.” (Taisbak, Euclid’s Data, 126-127.)
�28
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
determining similarity. In the Elements, for example, we have the
following different criteria for similarity:
Elements III, Def. 11, Similar circular segments: “Similar
segments of circles are those which contain equal angles
or in which there are angles equal to one another.”
Elements VI, Def. 1, Similar rectilineal figures: “Similar
rectilineal figures are such that they have each of their angles equal and sides about the equal angles proportional.”
Elements IX, Def. 9, Similar solid figures: “Similar solid
figures are those contained by similar plane areas
(epipedōn) equal in number.”
Elements IX, Def. 24, Similar cones and cylinders: “Similar cones and cylinders are those of which the axes and
diameters of the bases are proportional.”
Add to these other definitions from Apollonius and Archimedes:
Apollonius, Conics VI, Def. 2, Similar conic sections: “[S]imilar [conic sections] are such that, when ordinates are drawn
in them to fall on the axes, the ratios of the ordinates to the
lengths they cut off from the axes from the vertex of the section are equal to one another, while the ratios to each other of
the portions which the ordinates cut off from the axes are
equal ratios.”14
Archimedes, Conoids and Spheroids, Introduction, Similar obtuse-angled conoids (i.e. hyperbolas of revolution): “Obtuse-angled conoids are called similar when
the cones containing the conoids are similar.”
Each of these definitions demands prior knowledge of the object
to which the word “similar” is being applied; for example, one
must know that the angles contained in a segment of a circle are
all equal so that one can speak of the angle of the segment. The
necessity of such prerequisite knowledge precludes a general definition of similarity: “similar” always awaits the particular geometrical entities which are to be similar—even ratio and
14. All translations of Books V-VII are from G. J. Toomer, Apollonius Conics
Books V to VII: The Arabic Translation of the Lost Greek Original in the Version of the Banu Musa, 2 vols., (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
29
proportion is not fundamental, as the case of similar circular segments shows. And since “similar” for triangles is one thing and
“similar” for conic sections something else, one could not ask
whether some shape is similar to some other shape without first
assuming that they are of the same type—a polygon, for example,
or, again, a conic section.15
Thus, while Apollonius can ask whether or not a parabola is similar to a hyperbola or even an ellipse in Conics VI.14, the question
remains strictly within the context of the similarity of conic sections for which there is a general definition. And when we look at
that general definition, we see how deeply it is rooted in the foundations of conic sections developed in Book I of the Conics. Let
us restate it:
Similar [conic sections] are such that, when ordinates are
drawn in them to fall on the axes, the ratios of the ordinates to the lengths they cut off from the axes from the
vertex of the section are equal to one another, while the
ratios to each other of the portions which the ordinates
cut off from the axes are equal ratios.
15. I am referring of course to “similarity” in its strict mathematical sense, as
opposed to the use of “similar,” in a non-mathematical context, even within
a mathematical work. For example, in the preface to his Phenomena, Euclid
writes that “if a cone or cylinder be cut by a plane not parallel to the base, the
resulting section is a section of an acute-angled cone which is similar to a
shield (homoia thureōi).” (Euclidis Phaenomena et Scripta Musica, ed. Heinrich Menge and I. L. Heiberg [Leipzig: Teubner, 1916], 6.)
�30
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
So, suppose ACD and PMN are two conic sections. Let AB and
PQ be their respective axes, and let CEC′, DFD′, MRM′, NSN′
be drawn ordinatewise.
Then ACD and PMN are similar if CC′:EA::MM′:RP and
DD′:FA::NN′:SP whenever AE:PR::AF:PS.
In order to follow this definition one must understand what
an axis is and what lines drawn ordinatewise means—and, naturally, one must understand that every conic section has an axis,
or, more generally, a diameter with respect to which lines may
be drawn ordinatewise.16 Unlike the little problem with which
I began the discussion, a proposition about similarity in Apollonius’s Conics must concern conic sections and their particular properties: Conics VI, the book which treats similarity (and
equality) is, after all, a book about conic sections!
As an easy example of how Apollonius uses the definition
and how not only its formulation but also its use depends on the
properties of conic sections, consider Conics VI.11, which
proves that every parabola is similar to every other parabola.
Here is a paraphrase of the proof.
Suppose AB and GD are two parabolas, AK, GO are their
axes, and AP, GR are their respective latera recta.
16. There are other definitions, notably one implied by Archimedes for
the ellipse and hyperbola. If PQ and pq are the axes of, say, the two ellipses and AR is an arbitrary ordinate in the one while bs is an arbitrary
ordinate in the other, Archimedes says that the two ellipses will be similar if it is true that:
sq.AR:rectPR,RQ = sq.bs:rect.ps,sq
Note that nothing is said about where R and s are on the respective axes.
The condition is equivalent to Conics, VI.12, for this ratio is always that
of the latus rectum to the transverse diameter, by Conics, I. 21. I might
add that although Toomer calls this a definition, Archimedes does not:
he simply states the fact that the conics will be similar if this is so—and
that at the end of a proposition! (See Conoids and Spheroids, Proposition
14 ad fin., in T. L. Heath, The Works of Archimedes [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897], 125.) In any case, like Apollonius’s definition of similarity, this condition of Archimedes is also tied closely to
conic sections as opposed to any other kind of shape.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
31
Let AK:AP::GO:GR, and suppose Z and Q are arbitrary points on
AK.
Choose M and C so that they cut GO into segments having the same
ratios as the corresponding segments defined by Z and Q.
In parabola AB, draw EZI, HQS, BKT ordinatewise, that is perpendicular to AK since AK is an axis. Similarly, in GD, draw LMU, NCF,
DOX ordinatewise.
Now, by Conics I.11, BK and DO are mean proportionals between
AP and AK and GR and GO, respectively (i.e., AP:BK::BK:AK and
GR:DO::DO:GO)
Therefore, BK:AK::DO:GO, so that BT:AK::DX:GO [since
BT=2BK and DX=2DO].
Since AP:AK::GR:GO, AK:AQ::GO:GC, therefore, AP:AQ::GR:GC.
Thus, repeating the argument used to prove BT:AK::DX:GO above,
we can show also HS:AQ::NF:GC and, again, EI:AZ::LU:GM.
And so Apollonius concludes:
Therefore, the ratio of each of the lines BT, HS, EI,
which are perpendiculars to the axis [AK], to the
amounts which they cut off from the axis, namely, to
AK, AQ AZ is equal, respectively, to the ratio of the
lines DX, NF, LU, which are perpendiculars to the axis
[GO], to the amounts which they cut off from the axis,
namely OG, CG, MG.
And the ratios of the segments cut off from one of
the axes to the segments cut off from the other are
equal.
So section AB is similar to section GD.
�32
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Again, what I wish to stress about this proof is not the details of
the argument, but the mere fact of its appealing at every step to the
specific properties of the parabola demonstrated in Conics I.
Perhaps the most striking reflection of how the similarity of
conic sections completely depends on the definition of conic sections, their geometric identity as the section of a cone, is the fact
that book ends with a set of eight constructions involving the cone
and locating conic sections within the cone, for example, “Given
a cone and given a parabola, find a cone containing the parabola
that is similar to the given cone” (Conics VI.31). Significantly,
Book VI is the only book in the Conics, besides Book I, in which
the cone appears explicitly.
We need now to move on to the question of equality. For, remember, Conics VI is not just about similarity, but also about
equality.
Equality in Euclid and Apollonius
As we noted above, with the modern view of similarity in which
similarity relates to a transformation of the space in which objects
are found, congruence becomes a completely derivative notion. And
here I should say that moderns speak about congruence and not
equality—and I think there is much to say about that—but more
often than not the use of one or the other is a matter of convention.
For example, when Hilbert comes to the axioms of congruence in
his Foundations of Geometry he more than once uses the expression
“kongruent oder gleich,” that is, “congruent or equal.” That it can
be a matter of convention is an important aspect of the modern perspective. Greek mathematicians do have a special designation,
“equal and similar” (isos te kai homoios); nevertheless, they do not
have a separate term for the relation of “congruence.” We shall have
to confront this combination “equal and similar” later, but for now
suffice it to say that there are only two basic terms “equal” and “similar.” The difficulty of their relationship cannot be swept away.
Thomas Heath’s treatment of this, for example, is quite unsatisfying.
When Euclid uses the word “equal,” isos, in a manner corresponding
to our notion of congruence, Heath just takes that to be the sense of
the word, and when Euclid then uses it in a manner corresponding
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
33
to our notion of equal areas (Elements I.35), Heath says this is
“equality in a new sense.”17 Nevertheless, Euclid does use the same
word, isos. One cannot escape that.
For Euclid at least, equality is a very general notion, and it is certainly one of principal themes of Book I of the Elements, if not the
principal theme. As such, it is an idea that undergoes development
in the book; one might say the book develops a kind of theory of
equality. Let us consider briefly the overall direction of that development.
The theory of equality is contained in the five Common Notions
(koinai ennoiai) at the start of Book I of the Elements.18 These Common Notions are the following:
1. Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another.
2. And if equal things be adjoined (prostethēi) to the
same thing, the wholes are equal.
3. And if equals be removed from the same thing, the remainders are equal.
4. And things fitting (epharmozonta) on one another are
equal to one another.
5. And the whole is greater than the part.19
Of these, the fourth provides the basic criterion, the basic test for
equality: if one figure can be fitted exactly on top of another, then
the figures are equal (isos). It makes its first appearance in proposition I.4, which states that two triangles will be equal if they have
17. T. L. Heath, The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, Vol. 1 (New
York: Dover, 1956), 327.
18. Heiberg mentions other common notions appearing in some manuscripts; for example, “If unequals be adjoined to unequals, the whole is
unequal” and “Doubles of the same thing are equal to one another,” as
well as, “Two lines do not contain a space.” Except for the last about two
lines not containing a space—which, as Proclus himself seems to suggest,
is odd fish among the others—all of these common notions, therefore,
concern equality—and even that last common notion may be connected
to the nature of coinciding.
19. My translation.
�34
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
equal sides surrounding an equal angle. The entire demonstration,
problematic though it may be, plays on Common Notion 4: equal
lines are fitted on equal lines; the equal angle is fitted on the equal
angle; this forces the one triangle to fit on the other, so that the two
are equal.
In fact, that equal lines can be fitted on equal lines and equal angles on equal angles is not truly an application of Common Notion
4, but its converse; however, with simple undivided objects like
lines and angles, being equal and fitting on one another are treated
as identical relations.20 And in this connection we must return to
Book VI of the Conics for a moment. For Apollonius takes the criterion for equality provided by Common Notion 4 as the very definition of equality of conic sections:
Conic sections which are called equal are those which
can be fitted, one on another, so that the one does not exceed the other. Those which are said to be unequal are
those for which that is not so.
In the Elements, however, Euclid shows that the converse of
Common Notion 4 cannot be assumed in all generality. It is here
that the other Common Notions clarify why the criterion of “fitting on one another” is sufficient but not necessary for equality:
in Elements I.35, Euclid shows that things can be equal without
having the same shape, that is, without being able to fit on one on
the other.
Proposition I.35 states that “Parallelograms on the same base
and in the same parallels are equal to one another.” Thus the
proposition tells us that parallelograms such as ABCD and EBCF,
which are clearly not the same shape, may, nevertheless be equal.
It is instructive to look at Euclid’s proof of the proposition (in
paraphrase):
Since ABCD is a parallelogram, AD is equal to BC.
For the same reason, EF is equal to BC. Whence also
AD is equal EZ (by Common Notion 1); and DE is
common; therefore, the whole AE is equal to the whole
20. See Michael N. Fried and Sabetai Unguru, Apollonius of Perga’s
Conica: Text, Context, Subtext (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 228.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
35
DF (by Common Notion 2).21 But also AB is equal to
DC. So the two lines EA, AB are equal to the two lines
DF, DC, each to each. Also the angle contained by FDC
is equal to the angle contained by EAB, the exterior to
the interior. Therefore, the base EB is equal to the base
FC and the triangle EAB is equal to the triangle FDC
(by I.4 and, derivatively therefore, Common Notion 4];
let the common part DGE have been removed; therefore, the remaining trapezoid ABGD is equal to the remaining trapezoid EGCF (by Common Notion 3); let
the common triangle BGC have been adjoined; the
whole parallelogram ABCD is therefore equal to the
whole parallelogram EBCF (by Common Notion 2).
The parallelograms being on the same base and in the
same parallels are, therefore, equal to one another.
What we see in this proposition is no “new conception of equality,”
as Heath says; on the contrary, what we see is that the Common Notions—which comprise, as I said, the theory of equality—begin from
the basic notion of “fitting on one another” to show how equality applies also to shapes that do not fit on one another. It is an elaboration
of equality, a spelling out of the theory, not a new kind of equality. Even
Elements I.47, the “Pythagorean Theorem,” can be seen in this light,
since it shows not only how one figure can equal another of a different
shape, but also how one figure can equal two others of the same shape.
21. It is typical that Common Notions 2 and 3 are used when a single thing
is removed from two equals. This assumes that anything that can be equal
to something is always at least equal to itself. It is curious—and perhaps significant—that this fundamental fact is missing from the Common Notions.
�36
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
And, I would argue, Book II continues this inquiry with its attention to
how one or several rectangles may equal other rectangles.
This elaboration of the idea of equality demonstrates how things
can be equal even though they have far from the same shape. Conversely, things can be of the same shape and yet not be equal. Aristotle points this out, tellingly enough, in the section on motion
and alteration in the Categories (15a, 30-33): “there are things that
increase and are not thereby altered as well. For example, if a gnomon is added, a square is increased in its size but does not undergo
alteration (ēuxētai men, alloioteron de ouden gegenētai).
Thus, in both directions, equality of figures is not identical with
sameness of shape. Equality cannot be subsumed under similarity
and similarity under equality. Yet, equality has to do with shape in
some way. It is rooted in shape inasmuch as superimposition is its
basic test; and it can be used to probe shape, for example, in showing that a line through the center of an ellipse divides an ellipse
into two equal halves (Conics VI.4 and 5). But, again, because
equality does not necessarily mean sameness of shape, shape itself
cannot be its main object. That main object of equality is similarity.
Thus it is a kind of counterpoint between similarity and equality,
rather than a logical dependence one way or another, that characterizes how these ideas appear in Apollonius and Euclid.
Equal and similar
The logical disconnection between equal and similar is particularly
clear in the Conics, where propositions for similarity are kept separate from those on equality: one proposition will show when two
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
37
sections are equal and a different proposition later in the book will
show when they are similar. Now we must return to the idea of
“equal and similar” (isos te kai homoios) in Apollonius and Euclid,
for here the two notions do come together. But it is a peculiar coming-together—not a logical joining, but only slightly more than a
mere conjunction. This has the effect of forming a new term while
leaving the independence of the original terms. There is “equal,”
there is “similar,” and there is “equal and similar.”
As a unit of meaning, Charles Mugler, in his dictionary of Greek
mathematical terminology, notes a non-mathematical use of isos te
kai homoios: he cites Thucydides’s account of the battle between
Corinth and Corcyra over the fate of Epidamnus, in which Corinth
at one point advertised Epidamnus as a colony where citizens would
be “in perfect equality” (epi tēi isēi kai homoiai).22 The two words
isos and homoios come together almost as mutual intensifiers. Greek
mathematics does not use intensifiers—“really round,” “really
straight,” “really parallel,” “really similar” don’t appear! Yet “equal
and similar” does seem to have the sense of “equal in every way.”
And this puts objects into a new class. Thus, in the Elements, “equal
and similar” solid figures makes its appearance in Book XI, Definition 10 as an independent definition after the definition of similar
solid figures quoted above: “Equal and similar solid figures are those
contained by similar plane areas equal in number and in magnitude.”
Euclid might have defined equal and similar solid figures as similar
solid figures whose faces are not only similar but equal as well—
that is, he might have subordinated “equal and similar solids” to
“similar solids,” and, therefore, also have eliminated any need for a
separate definition. Obviously there is a relationship between “similar solids” and “equal and similar solids,” but in Euclidean discourse
it is a relationship between inhabitants of distinct categories.
This understanding of “equal and similar” can also be seen in
Book VI of Apollonius’s Conics. Proposition VI.16, for example,
tells us that “Opposite sections are similar and equal.” The proof
runs as follows: in Conics I.14, Apollonius proved that the latera
recta of the opposite sections are equal; therefore, the figures of the
22. Charles Mugler, Dictionaire historique de la terminologie géométrique
des Grecs (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958).
�38
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
two opposite sections (the rectangle whose sides are the latus rectum
and the transverse axis) are equal and also similar; therefore, by VI.2,
the hyperbolas are equal (this is unmentioned in the text), and, by
VI.12, they are similar. The proof is simple, but there is a subtlety.
In proposition VI.2, Apollonius proved that “If the figures that are
constructed on the transverse axes of hyperbolas or ellipses are equal
and similar, then the sections [themselves] will be equal.” From this,
as I said, it follows that the opposite sections are equal, which, by
Appolonius’s definition (in contrast to Euclid’s Common Notion 4),
means they may be fitted one on the other. It would seem then an
immediate inference that they are also similar, that they have the
same shape. But Apollonius says this only after VI.12, which shows
that if the figures of hyperbolas (or ellipses) are similar then the hyperbolas (or ellipses) are similar, and what is more, he cites only
VI.12 as his justification.
Therefore, for Apollonius, to be equal—even when this means
“able to be fit one on another,”—and to be similar are different relations: the assertion that the opposite sections are “equal and similar”
demands proving that the distinction can be made. For us moderns,
who see a logical connection between “equal” and similar,” saying
“similar and equal” is understandable but redundant—like saying
“rectangular and square.”
Conclusion
Let us then go over the ground again and see where we have arrived.
The modern notion of a transformation of a plane ignores the particularity of a given object and acts only on the space within which it is
placed. Such transformations can be chosen in many ways, but, for
similarity, one can be chosen so that all distances between points in
the original space can be dilated or contracted by a fixed ratio; the
ratio, treated as a number, can be greater than 1, less than 1, or equal
to 1. In this way, similarity and equality can be taken as concepts that
are not fundamentally different, equality being the case when the fixed
ratio happens to be 1.
This way of approaching the subject of similarity and equality is
foreign to the mathematics of Euclid and Apollonius because of its
roots in specific geometric figures and their specific properties. Similarity in Greek geometry begins and ends in the sameness of shape.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED
39
Equality begins with the sameness of shape, with superimposition, but
its special character, as seen explicitly in Euclid, is its ability to depart
from the sameness of shape. In this way, similarity and equality are
independent, so that recognizing a similarity, a sameness of shape, is
a different process from recognizing an identity, even though the
processes are tantalizingly close—should I say similar? Still, the two
processes can meet, and when they do, they create a third notion,
“equal and similar.” But, as I argued above, they create a third notion
precisely because they are not joined in logical way—they are simply
brought together.
But this presents us with a difficulty. If similarity and equality are
indeed independent notions, what then is Book VI of the Conics really
about? It cannot be exclusively about shape, as I have thought in the
past, because that, as I have argued, is the province of similarity, not
of equality. So when Apollonius describes Book VI as a book about
similarity and equality in the letter introducing the entire Conics, does
he mean to say that it is simply about two unrelated or vaguely related
topics? Perhaps.
But I think there is more to it than that, chiefly for two reasons. The
first is, as we have noted above, the reappearance of the cone in Book
VI, drawing us back to conic sections as whole, definable objects. The
second is the form of the definition of equality, which is, I believe,
more problematic than similarity, as I have implied throughout this
lecture. The difference between this definition and Euclid’s Common
Notion 4 is found in its second phrase, “Those [conic sections] which
are said to be unequal are those for which that is not so”—making superimposition the exclusive test of equality for conic sections. Thus,
when Apollonius wants to show that sections, or segments of sections,
are equal, he assumes typically that there is some point that does not
coincide with a point on the section presumed equal, and then demonstrates that contradiction follows. What I would like to bring out is
that equality has something to do with every point on the conic section.
In this way, what links similarity23 and equality is their way of looking
at a conic section, or a segment of a conic section, all at once.
23. In the Protagoras (331e), Plato has Protagoras make the remark, concerning justice and holiness, that we should not call things dissimilar just
because there is one point of dissimilarity between them. Socrates replies,
“I was surprised at this.”
�40
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
This is the connection, I believe, in which the problem of similarity and equality is related to the idea of locus, which I mentioned
in regard to the little problem with which I started. It too concerns
not an arbitrary place, but a definite identifiable place, all of whose
points have a certain property. It too, in other words, concerns in
some way the whole of conic sections, but in a less direct way.
There is no time, of course, to go into this in detail here, but I do
want to make clear that as we approach an understanding of similarity and equality, it is likely we shall also approach an understanding of other fundamental notions in Greek mathematics.
This, I might add as a final word, was the not the view of older
historians of mathematics, such as H. G. Zeuthen (1839-1920).
Zeuthen had no doubt that the modern point of view was Apollonius’s point of view, and on that basis wrote his expansive and deep
work on the ancient theory of conic sections (Zeuthen, 1886), which
set the tone of Apollonius scholarship for almost a century.24 He
could brush Conics VI aside, saying that it was “of no great significance” in the attempt to understand the Greek theory of conic sections.25 I hope that the discussion here makes that statement moot,
to the say the least.
24. H. G. Zeuthen, Die Lehre von den Kegelschnitten im Altertum (Kopenhagen: Höst und Sohn, 1886).
25. Zeuthen, 384.
�41
The Soul’s Choice of Life
Greg Recco
Most dreams are forgotten, perhaps even before the night has
passed. Others obtrude into daytime thought, even as their meaning
remains obscure. They haunt us, and seem to promise a rare and
precious revelation. Their coming insistently to mind implies a
faint undertone of reproach, like hearing your name repeated on
waking, before you are quite sure who you are. Such dreams seem
to call from afar, and from where we stand, they can only seem
alien. But we also suspect that we are the ones who are out of place,
and that the dream is calling us back from our wandering. In this
recollection of the unfamiliar, we sense dimly that we are tied to
what is familiar by only a specious kinship, and that our true home
lies elsewhere.
This sort of strange appeal that calls us back from estrangement
can occur not only in dreams or visions, but also in deliberately
produced works of art such as poems, paintings, and stories. In refusing to make any ordinary sort of sense, they contradict our
everyday understanding and invite us to speak along with them in
something like a foreign tongue. The dialogues of Plato, in particular, contain many examples of images or tales of this sort, beguiling works of imagination that linger in memory on the far horizon
of intelligibility. For those of us who read and talk together about
Plato with some frequency, such tales or images have become part
of the vocabulary of our thought—perhaps even a large part, just
as loan-words can come to outnumber a language’s own stock of
true-born names. Before moving on to our main theme, it will be
worthwhile to reflect briefly on a familiar example—the image of
the cave in the Republic—so that we can begin to meditate on how
such images work and what they accomplish.
Socrates asks his interlocutor Glaucon to imagine a cave in
which people are chained in such a way as to be able to see only
what is directly before them, the cave wall on which shadows are
Greg Recco is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This
lecture was delivered in Annapolis on 12 November 2012.
�42
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
projected by a fire above and behind them. Glaucon exclaims that
these are “strange prisoners” (515a).1 “Like us,” Socrates replies.
But then something odd happens. At the very moment when we
might expect Socrates to offer the key by which to decipher these
unfamiliar letters, he instead continues to speak in the language
of the image. The prisoners are “like us,” he continues, “for do
you suppose such men would have seen anything of themselves
or one another other than the shadows cast by the fire on the wall
facing them?” Now, this is not so strange a move as to pose an
impossible task of interpretation, especially to someone who has
thought about the image for some time. We might start with the
idea that our ordinary efforts to know are wrongly oriented and
thus largely unsuccessful, and from there move on to the idea that
this concerns not only our attempts to know the world but even
our self-knowledge and knowledge of others. That sounds about
right. But we should try to imagine what Socrates’s reply would
sound like to someone who had never heard the rest, to someone
who has not had the time to think about it, to someone who does
not know where Socrates is going. To this person, Socrates’s response must seem pretty nearly the opposite of the explanation
that Glaucon’s remark implicitly requested. After hearing it, Glaucon would probably still say that the prisoners are strange, perhaps
as a sort of polite way of saying that the man telling him about
the prisoners is strange—and it would be hard to disagree.
But whether or not Glaucon meant his remark as a reproach, and
however strange Socrates’s speech is, its strangeness does not stem
from some madness of his, some disordered state of his powers of
thought or imagination. What is truly strange here is not the image
to which he gives voice, but the situation it is intended to portray,
namely, the fact that creatures destined for knowledge should
spend their lives so unaware of, and so unwittingly cooperative
with, the powerful impediments to knowing that characterize their
situation. The proper way to hear Socrates’s response to Glaucon’s
remark about the prisoners’ strangeness is thus affirmatively—not
“the prisoners are not strange; they are like us,” but, “they are like
1. Translations throughout are lightly adapted from Allan Bloom’s The
Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
43
us, strange.” And his explanation is an explanation not of the prisoners’ likeness to us but of their strangeness; again, “do you suppose such men”—those described in the image—“would have seen
anything of themselves or of each other than the shadows?” Given
what Socrates is trying to accomplish, deflecting the question of
likeness and going farther into the image may be the only way to
make it work. The image presents important features of our epistemic situation that are normally difficult to discern, but that we
can come to perceive if we take up an initially unfamiliar and awkward perspective, make it our own, and then turn this view back
on what had previously gone unquestioned. In order to know, we
must learn to speak strangely.
With a few small, though significant, differences, this kind of
change in understanding is what is aimed at by the final pages of
the Republic, the so-called Myth of Er (614b-621b). It, too, is a
fantastical story that represents in figurative form an important but
overlooked dimension of our actual situation. Its fantastical character is not a product of wild genius, but arises from Plato’s rigorous attention to both the nature of human freedom and the
difficulty of discerning it from within our ordinary perspective.
In the case of the cave image our learned familiarity with it
makes it relatively easy to put a name to what it is about; unlike
Glaucon, we have read the Republic. And we get some more help
from the fact that Socrates tells us outright what the image is meant
to be an image of. “Make an image,” he says, “of our nature in its
education and want of education” (514a). The Myth of Er, by contrast, is not presented as an image of anything at all. It is ostensibly
the report of a man who returned from the dead to tell of what
awaits souls after life. Socrates presents it as the completion of the
dialogue’s investigation of justice, inasmuch as it gives an account
of the good and bad that come from being just or unjust, not in this
life, but after death.
In this connection, the story is a fitting end for the dialogue, in
that it recapitulates a theme first sounded very near the beginning.
Cephalus reports that as a young man he scoffed at the stories of
punishment in the afterlife, but old age has found him and his agemates more fearful of what is to come. They are looking back over
�44
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
lives that contain perhaps no small measure of wrongdoing.
Cephalus is thankful for his wealth, above all for the ability it gives
him to conduct the costly private rituals of expiation that his fear
has made seem prudent. Socrates’s return to this theme at the end
of the dialogue, then, seems to endorse Cephalus’s anxious piety,
at least in confirming that there is something to fear for those who
have done wrong. But the story contains much more than is necessary for this purpose and, indeed, much that does not directly or
obviously further it. Also, it is just very strange. Even with some
degree of paraphrase, it will take a short while to recount it. So
here it is.
Upon his death, the soul of Er traveled along with other souls of
the dead and came to a place where there were two openings in the
earth and two in the sky, above and across from them. Between the
pairs of openings sat judges, who directed the just to continue to
the right and upward through the opening in the sky, and the unjust
to go to the left and downward into the earth. Er himself they instructed to remain, observe, and report what he saw on his return
to the world of the living. What he saw first was this: as some souls
were going into the two openings indicated by the judges, other
souls were coming out of the others, some up from earth, others
down from the heavens. All those who had returned went off with
delight to a nearby meadow, where they made camp and engaged
in conversation. Those who had known each other in life greeted
each other and asked what it was like in the other place. So they
all told their stories, some lamenting and crying as they recalled
all they had seen and undergone in the thousand-year journey beneath the earth, the others telling of the beauty of the sights and
experiences above. In general, those who came from below the
earth said they had received a tenfold punishment for each of their
acts of injustice, once each hundred years, on the grounds that a
human life was about a hundred years long. For acts of impiety towards the gods, the penalty was yet worse. Of one particularly terrible tyrant named Ardiaeus it was related that when his thousand
years had passed and it was his turn to go up, he and other perpetrators of unholy deeds were rejected by the opening. Men standing
nearby seized them, then bound them, flayed them, and dragged
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
45
them along the rough ground in the sight of the others, finally casting them into the pit of Tartarus, from which none return. Fear of
being rejected by the opening and subjected to this torment was
thus the last of the punishments for souls who had lived an unjust
life. The rewards for justice were said to be the counterparts of
these.
On the eighth day, the souls who had returned were made to
leave the meadow and continue their journey. In four days’ time,
they came to a place from which they could see a sort of pillar of
light stretched from above through all of heaven and earth, like a
rainbow. This light was said to bind the earth and the heavens and
be connected to a complex, interlocking arrangement of whorls
forming a sort of spindle, which belongs to the goddess Ananke or
Necessity. Her daughters, the Fates Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis,
put their hands to the turning of these otherworldly whorls and
were associated with the three dimensions of time: Atropos, she
who cannot be turned, with the future, Clotho, the weaver, with the
present, and Lachesis, the dispenser of lots, with the past.
The souls were then brought before Lachesis. Her spokesman
gathered up the lots and patterns of lives that lay in her lap, and
then delivered the goddess’s message to the souls arrayed before
him. He said: “This is the speech of Ananke’s maiden daughter,
Lachesis: ‘Ephemeral souls, this is the beginning of another deathbringing cycle for the mortal race. A spirit shall not be allotted to
you, but you shall choose a spirit. Let the holder of the first lot
make the first choice of a life to which it shall be bound by Ananke.
Virtue is without a master; as each honors her, it shall have more
or less of her. The blame belongs to the chooser; the god is blameless.’”
Then the lots were distributed to the souls and the patterns of
lives were laid out on the ground before them, lives of all sorts—
lives of animals and tyrants, lives of the famous and the obscure—
and these lives far outnumbered the souls present.
The spokesman continued: “Even for the one who comes forward last, if he chooses intelligently and lives earnestly, a life to
be happy with has been laid out, and not a bad one. Let the first
not be careless in his choice, nor the last disheartened.”
�46
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Since the soul’s choice of life is my theme, let me quote without
paraphrase the section that follows, which deals most directly with
that choice.
“And the first to choose came forward and immediately chose
the greatest tyranny, and, because of folly and gluttony, chose without having considered everything adequately; and it escaped his
notice that eating his own children and other evils were fated to be
a part of that life. When he considered it at his leisure, he beat his
breast and lamented the choice, not abiding by the spokesman’s
forewarning. For he didn’t blame himself for the evils but chance,
demons, and anything rather than himself. He was one of those
who had come from heaven, having lived under an orderly constitution in his former life, partaking of virtue by habit, without philosophy. And, it may be said, not the least number of those who
were caught in such circumstances came from heaven, because
they were unpracticed in labors. But most of those who came from
the earth, because they themselves had labored and had seen the
labors of others, weren’t in a rush to make their choices. For just
this reason, and because of the chance of the lot, there was an exchange of evils and goods for most of the souls.”
“He said that this was a sight surely worth seeing: how each of
the several souls chose a life. For it was pitiable, laughable, and
wonderful to see. For the most part the choice was made according
to the habit of their former life. He said he saw a soul that once belonged to Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, out of hatred for
womankind; because he died at their hands, he refused to be generated in and born of a woman. He saw Thamyras’s soul choosing
the life of a nightingale. And he also saw a swan changing to the
choice of a human life; other musical animals did the same thing.
The soul that got the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was
the soul of Telamonian Ajax, which shunned becoming a human
being, for it remembered the judgment of arms. And after it was
the soul of Agamemnon; it, too, hated humankind as a result of its
sufferings and therefore changed to the life of an eagle. Atalanta’s
soul had drawn one of the middle lots; it saw the great honors of
an athletic man and couldn’t pass them by but took them. After this
he saw that of Epieius, son of Panopeus, going into the nature of
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
47
an artisan woman. And far out among the last he saw the soul of
the buffoon Thersites, clothing itself as an ape. And by chance the
soul of Odysseus had drawn the last lot of all and went to choose;
from memory of its former labors, it had recovered from love of
honor; it went around for a long time looking for the life of a private man who minds his own business; and with effort it found one
lying somewhere, neglected by the others. It said when it saw this
life that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first
lot, and was delighted to choose it. And from the other beasts, similarly some went into human lives and into one another—the unjust
changing into savage ones, the just into tame ones, and there were
all kinds of mixtures.”
So far the report of Er. Socrates interrupts his recounting it just
once, to emphasize the supreme importance of this choice of a life
and to point out that we really ought to devote all our energies to
acquiring the art of making this choice well. His way of talking
about what would make for a good choice is very interesting, and
I will return to it near the end of this lecture. But for now, let us reflect on the many ways in which the story gives the attentive reader
pause and does not simply supplement the dialogue’s account of
what justice is and what effect it has on souls. The story, it must
be said, does not do just what it was said to do.
In the first place, it is worth reflecting on how extravagant the
whole section on the souls’ choice of life is. The account was introduced and admitted on the pretext that it would supplement the
dialogue’s account of the power that justice has in the soul without
the assistance of reputation or other external benefits. Like other
such familiar tales, it accomplishes this by adding to whatever uncertain external benefits justice and injustice might win in life and
among humans, a certain and unerring exactitude in punishment
and reward from the gods in a sort of life after life. So, one might
reasonably inquire how this purpose is advanced at all by the elaborate account of the spindle of Necessity or the whole idea of souls
choosing their next life, not to mention the many examples of particular choices made by souls famous and unknown. At most, one
might argue that the fact that the lives for which the souls are being
rewarded or punished were of their own choosing underscores
�48
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
souls’ responsibility for their own justice or injustice, and thus
shows that the rewards and punishments are deserved. Even according to this explanation, however, the wealth of detail concerning particular souls’ choices, as well as the cosmic backdrop, would
be only so much ornament.
But of all the reasons for taking the Myth of Er as a figure for
something other than what it is said to be, the most compelling is
the fact that the rewards and punishments pointedly do not have
the character we might expect they ought to have: they are ineffectual or at least unfathomably obscure in their mechanism.
That the rewards for a just life are ineffectual we learn from the
example of the soul that draws the first lot and chooses its next life
first. It had come from heaven, and apparently a thousand years’
worth of beautiful sights and enjoyment was not enough to persuade it of anything but its own fitness to be the biggest tyrant of
all. Although it was happy enough to reach immediately for this
life, it was also particularly resistant to taking responsibility for its
own choice when it became clear that the life contained many evils.
This kind of remorse over bad choices, Socrates’s summary indicates, was not uncommon among those who came down from the
heavens.
What of the others? Those who had toiled and suffered below
the earth and had seen the toils and suffering of others were said
to choose more carefully, and thus on the whole, we are told, there
was an exchange of goods and evils for most souls. This might lead
one to the conclusion that while the rewards do not promote the
choice of justice, the punishments do.
But several things undercut the confidence we might have in the
efficacy of posthumous punishments: in particular, the fate of the
incurable or unholy, the complete forgetfulness of the living, and
above all the impossibility of adequately representing injustice to
the unjust perspective. As for the first, there are those like Ardiaeus,
for whose crimes, it seems, no finite punishment could be adequate, on the grounds that his soul was incurable, and possibly also
because of the enormity of his crimes, which transcend the horizon
of justice altogether, being not only unjust but also unholy.
A second problem with the notion that the punishments of the
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
49
afterlife are effective in curbing injustice lies in the fact that souls
are made to drink from the river of Carelessness on the plain of
Forgetfulness before continuing into the life they have chosen, and,
as a result, forget everything. Those who have chosen a just life,
being the majority of those who completed the underground passage, will go through it and then join those who make the heavenly
passage. Now having forgotten their former labors, they are likely
to choose hastily and with misplaced confidence in their ability to
discern what is a good life. Interestingly, this “exchange of goods
and evils” for most souls was already inscribed, so to speak, in the
topography of the place of judgment: the opening that leads out of
heaven is located above and opposite the one that leads into the
earth, as the one that leads out of the earth lies below and opposite
the opening that leads back into heaven. Forgetfulness and carelessness seem to guarantee that there will be a revolution not only
of whorls, but also of souls. But forgetfulness and carelessness are
not magical effects brought about by the eponymous plain and
river. If punishment is the engine driving the motion of souls upwards and towards justice, then the beautiful sights and enjoyment
found in the heavenly passage do no less to drive them down, towards injustice. This is precisely not the image of a world-order
that uses rewards and punishments to produce justice with mechanical accuracy and inevitability, but the image of a world-order that
strongly inclines souls towards an eternal and predictable alternation of good and bad. Why should this be the purpose of the cosmos?
A third problem with the account is that it is difficult to see what
the souls must be in order for their passage to be able to teach them
anything. This difficulty is thrown into relief by a significant omission. Of the souls returning from beneath the earth, Socrates says:
“They were punished for each injustice once every hundred years;
taking this as the length of a human life, they could in this way pay
off the penalty for the injustice ten times over. Thus, for example,
if some men were causes of the death of many, either by betraying
cities or armies and had reduced men to slavery, or were involved
in any other wrongdoing”—and here I interrupt to note that just
where one might hope to learn precisely how such acts are an-
�50
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
swered in that other place, Socrates concludes simply, “they received for each of these things tenfold sufferings.” In other words,
Socrates provides us with no specific information. Plato handles
the issue of narration very deftly here, for he has Socrates preface
this section with a warning about its incompleteness; Socrates says,
“Now, to go through the many things would take a long time, Glaucon. But the chief thing is this,” and then proceeds with the summary I just read. But if the purpose of resorting to summary was
to avoid trouble, then it is difficult to understand Socrates’s choice
of examples.
In the first place, the list of specific forms of injustice by itself
leads one to expect a similarly specific list of punishments. Also,
the fact that each “cycle” of punishments is calibrated to the length
of an average human life supports the expectation that punishments
will somehow correspond to, mirror, or just repeat in inverted form
the particular wrongs one has done. But the examples of injustice
Socrates in fact offers do not fulfill any of these expectations, for
the important reason that the victims of these injustices are in each
case many in number. If a man betrays an entire city, how can his
single life (or a single afterlife) stand any chance of comprising
the myriad injustices done to his fellow citizens? If he sold dozens
into slavery, how could his life encompass suffering the same fate
dozens of times? Even if somehow it could, it would also have to
contain dozens of instances of the state of freedom that slavery destroys. And each of these would have to be in some way pristine,
so that the evil that is enslavement could have its full effect on the
soul being punished in this way—for enslaving one person twice
is not the same as enslaving two different people. In general, then,
it is unclear how a single life can have the evil it does to many represented to it effectively.
One solution to this conundrum, of course, is to take one sort of
evil to stand for all others, to serve as a kind of medium of exchange. Maybe pain could serve as such a punitive currency, repaying specific evils with generic badness. The extravagant
punishment of the soul of Ardiaeus, however, serves both as an example of this sort of thinking and as a sign of its insufficiency. The
punishment is not only of infinite duration; it is also unimaginably
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
51
intense, and the one being punished in this way does not in any
way signal to us what his experience is. Now, it is possible, of
course, that we hear nothing from the soul of Ardiaeus because
there is no need. If his soul is incurable, perhaps his punishment is
not for him but an example to others, and in order for him to serve
as an example, all that matters is that they take his experience as
an example, whatever he himself may think of it. Consistent with
this interpretation is the presence of the guards who point out to
the others why these souls are being singled out for such treatment;
that is, it seems at least in part to be a show put on for their benefit.
Also consistent with this view is the claim that what improves the
judgment of those who make the underground passage is not just
that they have labored and suffered themselves, but also that they
have seen the labors and sufferings of others. Nonetheless, the absence of the directly suffering soul’s perspective on the single particular punishment reported to us underscores the problem,
outlined by omission in the preceding passage, of how a soul’s evil
can be represented to it—and this remains a problem.
If the soul’s thousand-year journey below the earth is to teach it
anything—as the improvement in its choice of life suggests it
does—then the soul must somehow have the evils it engaged in as
though they were something good presented to it as what they in
fact are. But in order to recognize one’s own wrongdoing for what
it is, the perpetrator must have a different perspective than was
available to him during the act, and this kind of thoroughgoing
change in perspective is, as we have learned, terribly difficult. In
the cave image, it is represented as a turning around that can simultaneously be a passage from what is darker to what is brighter
(that is, an actual improvement) and a passage from what is perceived clearly and comfortably to what is perceived only dimly
and painfully (that is, an apparent worsening). Something else is
needed: a trustworthy and trusted guide who can articulate what is
happening to the soul being forcibly turned around in this way. In
the end, pain by itself is too diffuse, too immediate, and too uncontextualized to bear the articulated meaning that would be necessary in order to effect this change, a fact that is perhaps hinted at
by the punishment’s tenfold repetition. Even the torture of the souls
�52
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
of the unholy, which might seem to stand on its own as an object
lesson in the wages of wrongdoing, is supplemented in the story
by agents standing by to explain it, which suggests that it cannot
bear its meaning within itself on its own.
In the case of both punishments and rewards, then, the report of
Er sets up certain expectations or requirements that it then pointedly does not or cannot fulfill. The rewards for a just life, we feel,
ought to reinforce the choice of justice, but instead they are presented as strongly correlated with the careless haste and entitled
self-importance that lead to a bad choice of life. As for the punishments, while they are said to have the effect they ought to, still,
the mechanism by which they are meant to accomplish this is
markedly obscure, and inquiring more closely into it only makes
the confusion more intense, particularly by directing attention to
the source of the problem: the soul and its perception of, or perspective on, the good. If the myth’s self-presentation is at odds with
its content, particularly in its central conceit, we have to turn elsewhere to discover its real import. One thing that is clear, as we
have just seen, is that the story concerns the soul. Just what is the
soul in this story?
One phrase in the description of souls’ choice of lives incidentally brings to the fore one of the key features of the myth’s portrayal of the soul. Er saw “a soul that used to belong to Orpheus”
choosing the life of a swan. The striking phrase “used to belong”
underlines something that must be assumed in order for the story
to work at all, and it does so compactly and forcefully. For the myth
to work, a soul, whatever else it may be, cannot be identical with
any named person. The name “Orpheus” must indicate the temporary composite of an otherwise anonymous soul with the singer’s
life whose story we know from myth. Any name, then, must miss
the soul and indicate only such a composite, even my name or
yours. The possessive in the phrase “my soul” becomes particularly
obscure. If I were to utter the words “my soul,” who would I be
saying the soul belongs to, and what would I be taking myself to
be that is distinct from my soul? Who or what is speaking when
the words “my soul” are uttered? Whatever we might previously
have thought it was, the story is now telling us that a soul is not
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
53
identical with a life or a person, since it precedes and outlives both.
One possible source for this strange conception of the soul is the
discussion of its immortality earlier in Book 10 (608d-612a).
There, the question arises how the soul can be both immortal and
capable of being at odds with itself. Self-opposition (of the sort examined in Book 4) is associated with being composite, and this, in
turn, is associated with change and decay. A soul composed of
parts, it seems, could only be mortal. Instead of investigating this
dilemma, Socrates merely suggests that the view of soul that we
have—and that he and his interlocutors have had throughout the
whole of the dialogue—is like the view one would have of how a
man looks if one were to see only the statue of him that had lain at
the bottom of the sea for many years and become disfigured and
covered with shells, seaweed, rocks and so forth, as in the case of
the statue of Glaucus. The image more or less directly asserts that
our embeddedness in body, change, and manyness has made our
souls unrecognizable. This is an unpromising starting point, but
Socrates remains confident and ventures the guess that the soul’s
true nature is to be found by our looking to its philosophia, its love
of wisdom. This recalls another account of the division of the soul
that emerges from the yet earlier discussion of the terrible evils of
tragic poetry in Book 10. This account divides the soul’s philosophical, calculating, law-abiding part, which suffers misfortune
in silence and tranquility, from another part, which indulges in loud
lamentation. The latter is itself indulged by writers of tragedies,
who trick even the decent man into weeping immoderately at the
misfortunes of another on the grounds that this is at least not selfpitying, and is only a kind of play (606a-b). The gist seems to be
that the first part of the soul would do its work better without the
second. Both accounts, then, solve the problem of manyness by
making one part stand for the whole. Whatever the merits or faults
of such a solution, we should consider that if the true identity of
the soul should turn out to be only its rational part understood in
this way, then the whole drama of existence—the stories of our
lives as we commonly understand them—would be wholly irrelevant, composed entirely of a sort of encrustation of alien matter
that only serves to obscure the soul from view. By themselves, on
�54
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
this view, souls might essentially have nothing to do with lives.
While these two prior discussions of soul seem relevant to the
myth and are consonant with some aspects of its sharp distinctions
between soul and person and between soul and life, they are at odds
with others. Souls in the myth are not heartless calculating machines, but beings capable of feeling and expressing emotion.
When the souls complete their respective journeys, they go off
“with delight” to the meadow where they confer. When those who
came from the underground passage recount what they have seen
and undergone there, they cry and lament in recalling it. When
these souls are nearing the exit and see some like the soul of Ardiaeus being rejected, they experience a great fear, which they note
is only one among many they have suffered. In sum, then, the souls
in the story respond emotively and expressively to their situation,
even during this time when they are presumed to exist in separation
from body and life.
In addition to transitory affections such as a moment of fear,
souls in the myth also have longer-standing dispositions or traits
of character. The soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, bitterly recalls the
judgment that granted the arms of the departed hero Achilles to
Odysseus instead of to him, and so flees humanity. The souls of
Orpheus and Agamemnon, in turn, make their choices of animal
lives out of long-standing hatred, of women in the first case and
of humanity in general in the second. In each case, these quasi-permanent states were crystallized, so to speak, by the trauma of their
previous lives (the very ones we associate with their names, as if
their souls had become those single lives). Their hatreds and resentment are very much not the passions of a moment, as they appear to have persisted unchanged and utterly undiminished
throughout their millennial journeys. A final, most significant example of a state or characteristic of soul allowed by the myth is
that of the soul of Odysseus, which “from memory of its former
labors, . . . had recovered from love of honor.” Somehow, the soul
as portrayed in the myth is capable of being affected by its life,
and affected in such a way as to be able to learn, not just greedily
carry forward the savor of bitter memory. In either case, however,
what we see is that however distinct souls may be from lives, their
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
55
lives affect them. In light of this, perhaps it is time finally to turn
directly to what the story must take a life to be.
This is in one way the most straightforward and familiar element
of the story; everyone knows what a life is, what it is composed
of, why it is important, what makes it good or bad, and so forth. In
another way, however, the central conceit of the myth of Er requires a life to be something that is almost impossible to understand. Recall that the life contains elements like wealth or poverty,
good or bad birth, strength, beauty, political office or rule, and indeed everything that could characterize a life, or almost everything.
For, as was explained, since the soul that lives the life must be
changed by it, the life considered by itself does not contain an “ordering” or “arrangement” of soul (taxis). If our question is what
we ought to remove in thought from our usual conception of what
a life is in order to arrive at an idea of the lives whose paradigms
lie in the lap of Lachesis, the answer is both simple and perplexing:
we must remove everything that soul is. As it has done in many
places, the dialogue is once again causing a problem by treating a
distinction as a separation. When Socrates manages to bring the
conversation to a halt of this sort, he often turns to an image or example that retroactively modifies one of the discussion’s starting
points. We could try the same, and instead of trying to proceed with
delimitation or definition in the face of aporia, we might turn to an
example of what the myth takes to be a life, which it obligingly
provides.
None of the lives is very extensively described, but the first example of a life that is chosen is among the fullest. The nameless
soul that drew the first lot—which “participated in virtue out of
habit, without philosophy” after living in “an ordered regime”—
picked the life containing the biggest tyranny straightaway, “but it
escaped its notice that eating his children and other evils accompanied this.” It escaped his notice. How strange. How can we understand this? Should we agree with the old song that “the large print
giveth and the small print taketh away”?2 Do the events or elements
of a life presented to choice differ in their prominence, such that
some would count as the large print, and some as the small? And
2. Tom Waits, “Step Right Up” (Small Change, Asylum Records, 1976).
�56
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
what would determine which appear more or less prominent? Just
what is written or figured on the paradigms of lives in the lap of
Lachesis? In the example just considered, the great tyranny looks
good at first, but when the soul “considered the life at its leisure,”
it discovered its evils, and was unhappy with its lot.
In a way, this latter portrait of a life is familiar and cogent: a life
containing an apparent good may of necessity also contain actual
evils that counterbalance or even outweigh the apparent good. But
in another way, this is an unsatisfactory way of talking about a life.
It tries to mark the badness of the life that contains one sort of fact
sometimes thought to be good (being a tyrant) by pointing out that
it also contains another sort of fact, which is generally acknowledged to be bad (eating one’s children). The whole question of
what makes a life good or bad has been reduced to the piecemeal
evaluation of particulars, and the summation of such judgments,
as in what is sometimes called a rubric.
But we really ought to doubt this soul’s assessment of its chosen
life, since we have already been told that it makes the choice affected by folly and gluttony. It could be so misguided as to be mistaken about which of the life’s elements is good and which bad. In
fact, we have already been told in Book 9 that the worst possible
eventuality for a soul that is tyrannically inclined is for it to become
an actual tyrant. Conversely, it may be that something as horrible
as eating his children is an appropriate accompaniment to the
“large print” of his being a tyrant.
But just inverting the assessment this foolish soul made of each
of these facts does not really solve the deeper problem, of which
the problem of the relative prominence of a life’s parts—its large
and its small print—is just a symptom. The component elements
of a life in the myth are subject to two seemingly contradictory demands: they must be “without an arrangement of soul,” and thus
be somehow meaningless, and they must be capable of “leading”
the soul to being just or unjust, and thus somehow have a meaning.
As for the former term of the contradiction, given that there are
good and bad among rich and poor alike, wealth, to pick one example, looks like the sort of thing that the Stoic Epictetus would
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
57
call indifferent, something that is of no importance when compared
with the greater question of whether we are living well, and does
not by itself answer the question. As for the latter, however, the
soul that has learned the art of choosing lives well, Socrates says,
will call lives good or bad depending on whether they “lead to
virtue or vice.” But now we have to ask: how can events be said to
“lead” to virtue or vice at all unless they have within them the germ
of a sense, an incipient significance that is preserved in what it
gives rise to?
As in other similar cases, the commentary on the myth is quite
relevant and helpful, if somewhat oblique. Socrates portrays in
some detail the person who has acquired the art of choosing lives
well. He says: “He will take into account all the things we have
just mentioned and how in combination and separately they affect
the virtue of a life. Thus he may know the effects, bad and good,
of beauty mixed with poverty or wealth and accompanied by this
or that habit of soul; and the effects of any particular mixture with
one another of good and bad birth, private station and ruling office,
strength and weakness, facility and difficulty in learning, and all
such things that are connected with a soul by nature or are acquired.
From all this he will be able to draw a conclusion and choose—
while looking off toward the nature of the soul—between the worse
and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward becoming more unjust, and better the one that leads it to becoming
more just” (618c-e).
One of the most striking things in this passage, I think, is the intensity of its emphasis on combination. The possessor of the art of
choosing lives is said to consider the elements of lives both “separately and in combination” but all the examples are of complex
configurations. Here, then, is one way in which something can both
have a meaning and not have it in itself: it can have its meaning in
being combined with something else. Note that the myth helps us
here. The composition of elements that makes up each life is not
something chosen; the lives have already been assembled by the
time the souls have to choose them. Rather, souls are to call lives
good or bad on the basis of no element in them, but on the basis of
what living such a life will work in the soul that lives it. That is,
�58
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
what was being chosen (whether or not this escaped the choosers’
notice) was not an indifferently composed aggregate of particular
life-events or features, but something whose value lies on another
level.
Another striking feature of the passage is how thoroughly confusing it makes the separation of life and soul that lies at the basis
of the myth. In the first place, the possessor of the art is said to
know about the effects of mixtures that include elements such as
“this or that habit of soul.” This seems directly opposed to the
claim that lives are without an “ordering” or “arrangement” of soul.
Including this feature does not in itself introduce an inconsistency;
rather, it states the problem well: the soul that sets out to have
wealth or any other good thing will be changed by its pursuit, so
that there is no guarantee it will still want or be able to enjoy what
it was pursuing by the time it gets it. The one who possesses the
art would have to be able to predict what changes the living of a
life would work in the soul. In short, what makes elements of a life
part of a life that can be called good or bad is their connection with
the soul that has to live that life—the suffering, rejoicing, experiencing, remembering, expressing, and thinking being. These powers are what lend to those events or conditions whatever sense they
have. Here we see another way in which a life has a meaning, but
not in itself; it has a meaning in and for a soul.
To state the matter most generally, elements of a life are capable
of having a meaning that is not in them because that’s just what it
is to be an element of a life: to be a “Here” that is also, with all the
weight Plotinus gives the word, a “There.” The seeming paradox
is just the reality of our situation, and one that Plato has been carefully directing our attention to throughout the dialogue. We spend
as much time as we do in this dialogue on the proper organization
of an educational program not merely for the stated reason—that
we need guardians who will be both harsh with the city’s enemies
and gentle with its citizens. Rather, as the central books show and
the final myth signifies, the deeper issue is that what is most immediately apparent is always somehow a distraction from the intelligible reality of what is. But the sensible is not merely
something other than the intelligible: it is the region wherein the
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO
59
intelligible shows itself; it is where we live. The small things matter. The ball I learn to catch may be little more than arbitrary mineral, vegetable, and animal products refashioned to the measure of
a human hand, but the act of catching that this ball makes possible
is an emblem and anticipation of all sorts of future forms of mastery. The little bumps and tussles of playground life are like so
many prophetic utterances spoken to us in childhood that foretell
adult life’s disappointments—its alliances and betrayals, its kindness and its savagery—and they foretell them with both the accuracy and the obscurity that are characteristic of an oracle. Our lives
consist not in isolated events, but in pattern and paradigm, eidē on
the move.
This strange mode of being of the elements of our lives is a feature of the world of the myth of Er that also happens to be a feature
of our world; it is the literally true thing at the center of a mass of
figurative falsehoods, and around which the whole turns. It is the
true thing that seems strange to us who have become strangers to
it. The elements of lives can appear big or small, cruel twists of
fate, or irrelevant impediments to powers we find we do not need
to get by. We who live them do not experience ourselves as having
chosen them. But reflecting on the image of our souls choosing
our lives can awaken us from the dream-state in which we treat the
meanings of our lives as beings, as ta onta, as things that always
are, with no tincture of ambiguity or self-opposition, no dependence on perspective or interpretation, no horizon of possible transformation. On the contrary, we should recognize our lives in their
truth: they are the materials—somehow both indifferent and essential—out of which souls weave the tissue of meaning they first put
on and then inhabit; they are elements that stand to our souls and
hearts as those other elements—earth, air, fire, and water—stand
to the multifariously capable bodies of living beings of all kinds,
their material support and flesh. When the elements of our bodies
or lives fail us, we break, but when they cooperate, we succeed in
being something they would not be on their own, something other
and beyond.
The myth tells us that we need to learn how to cooperate with
these elements and their ways, so that we may make a good pas-
�60
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
sage in this life and the next, and perhaps in the next after that. But
what would make for a good passage? What should we hope for?
A well-deserved reward? Or a suffering that makes the soul better?
The beautiful sights and pleasant experiences that the myth sets up
as a reward for a good life carry with them the same ambiguity as
the goods of this life: many souls are not improved by them, but
turn out worse. To answer the question, we might think of the soul
that once belonged to Odysseus. Of this restless and clever soul,
we were not told whether it had come down from heaven or up
from the earth, only that memory of its former labors had cured it.
Those labors could have been carried out on earth as part of the
life we associate with Odysseus’s name—where he struggled to
regain his home after long years in foreign lands, losing all his
comrades—or they could have been performed as payment in that
place beneath the earth, some days’ journey from the spindle of
Necessity where lives are woven. Perhaps our hope and prayer
should be the same as his could have been: may we all perform
such labors, and remember them, and be cured of what ails us.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES
61
Artistic Expression in Animals
Linda Wiener
I have three main goals in this lecture. The first, and most important, is to inspire you to be more open to and aware of the animals
all around you. The second is to give some history of a fascinating
debate on animal color and behavior that began in the early twentieth century in the United States; this will illustrate how difficult
it is to elicit any sort of Truth from the phenomena of nature. The
third is to persuade you that, at least some of the time, animals engage in artistic expression for its own sake.
Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species
in 1859,1 by far the most popular way of interpreting the appearance and behavior of organisms has been through the theory of natural selection. According to this theory, if a mutation appears in an
animal and that mutation helps the animal survive and reproduce
better than similar animals in their environment, the mutation and
the animals that carry it will be preserved while others will eventually decline and die out. But ever since this theory was published
there has been dissent. The most well known dissents are from religious objectors, however there have always been some scientists,
naturalists, philosophers, and others who work intimately with
plants and animals who accept the theory of evolution through natural selection, but believe that it is not sufficient to account for all
the phenomena of nature. I am one of this latter group.
In this lecture, I will use the lens of artistic expression in animals
as a way of exploring this question. I begin with an example from
bird song. I was at a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,
Linda Wiener is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This paper is adapted from a lecture delivered at the College’s Annapolis
campus on September 6, 2013. The original lecture involved images and
some video clips. This version makes do with some photographs, as well
as links to images on the web. Be sure to open the links and look at the
images while reading!
1. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, first edition (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2001.
�62
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
given by the Santa Fe Community Orchestra at the Santa Fe Opera
House in May, 2008. The opera house is covered on top, but open
around the sides. At the very beginning of the third movement, a
flock of house finches flew in and perched above the orchestra.
One male joined in singing with the music in such a way that it
seemed a part of the piece. He sang for most of the third movement
and at the very end of that movement, when the orchestra plays
four notes, the bird came in afterward, using the contact chirps of
the species, and mimicked those last four notes.
This is an example of a bird singing in his capacity as a musician. He shows that he knows something about music and can employ it appropriately outside its use for attracting mates and
protecting territories. This propensity of a least some birds to sing
outside the mating and nesting seasons was noted by Thoreau and
more recently by David Rothenberg in his book Why Birds Sing.2
David is a philosopher and jazz clarinetist. He plays his clarinet
with birds in aviaries and in the wild, sometimes with remarkable
results. As with the bird at the opera house, some birds respond
musically to his musical prompting. I particularly like a duet he
participated in with a laughing thrush; it can be heard online.3
Rothenberg concludes that birds sing because they enjoy it.
Other animals have been reported to respond to human music. I
read that crickets will approach when they hear music and start
singing. My own experiments with two species of crickets were
inconclusive; they chirped so much it was hard to tell when they
were responding to music and when they were chirping in their
natural rhythms. I have been told stories of raccoons coming on
stage during a concert. There is also record of a bear doing the
same thing (Fig. 1).
Moving on from music, probably the most famous artistic animals are the bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea. For instance,
the satin bowerbird builds an oval shaped bower out of sticks and
decorates it with mostly blue objects. This includes flowers, berries,
and even human-made items like plastic drinking straws. Other
species have differently shaped bowers and use different color
2. David Rothenberg, Why Birds Sing (New York: Basic Books, 2005).
3. http://www.whybirdssing.com
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
63
Fig. 1: Bear at concert4
schemes. The vogelkop bowerbird builds a conical bower and decorates mostly with red and orange objects.5 The females come
around to check out the male bowers, the males dance for them, and
then the female selects a male to mate with. She then goes off to
build a nest and raises the young on her own.
This is a classic example of what Darwin called “sexual selection” in his book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.6
In Darwin’s account, the females have aesthetic standards and
whichever male best meets those standards is the one she chooses
as a mate.
Darwin thought sexual selection less rigorous than ordinary natural selection because it was not a life and death matter. Recently,
Darwin's view of sexual selection has been revised. Now, the
building, decorating, and dancing activities of the male are seen
as direct reflections of the actual genetic quality of the males. The
females are selecting the males not according to an aesthetic standard, but according to which are the most genetically fit. This
brings sexual selection theory more in line with the classic theory
of natural selection.
4. From Carl Marty, Northenaire’s Ginger and Her Woodland Orphans
(Park Falls, Wisconsin: MacGregor Litho, 1953).
5. http://www.duskyswondersite.com/animals/bower-birds
6. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New
York: Penguin, 2004).
�64
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
A group of birds called the catbirds, in the same family as the
bower birds, helps raise a few questions about this modern understanding. In the catbirds, the males and females cooperate to build
the nest and rear the young; on average catbirds rear more offspring than the bowerbirds. An alternative explanation for bowerbird behavior is that the bower birds have “chosen” in some way
to forgo their maximum reproductive potential in order to devote
energy to the creation and appreciation of art.
Closer to home, there are other collecting and decorating animals. The pack rat of the Southwestern states is one. They are
beloved by archaeologists because they collect all sorts of things
from their surroundings and store them in their nests. An ancient
pack rat nest can tell scientists a lot about the sorts of things that
were around at the time. Pack rats are also famous for being destructive when they choose to nest in your home or vehicle. Whenever I hear friends complain about a pack rat nest, I beg them for
photographs.
Pack rats have different preferences when constructing their
nests. Sometimes, it is just a bunch of sticks and a few fabulous
items they have collected. My friends Betsy and Jamie had a nest
in their vehicle with a central white fluffy nest structure, then an
attractive bed of greens with dried red chiles piled in the center
(Fig. 2a). My friends Robert and Susan had a pack rat nest in their
vehicle with a central grey fluffy nest structure surrounded by a
variety of sticks, stems, and cholla cactus pads (Fig. 2b).
Fig. 2a
Photo by Jaimie Haskell
Fig. 2b
Photo by Robert Schlaer
�65
ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
Another friend, Pam, tells this story about a pack rat nest she
found in her truck. She was so mad when she saw the nest, she
threw everything on the ground; when she came back some time
later, it was all back in the truck. Not only that, it was back in just
the way it had been before, with each major element, stems, sticks,
and other items in exactly the same spot. This shows us that the
nest isn’t just a bunch of stuff thrown around. The pack rat arranges
her space to her own taste. Just as when someone messes up one
of your rooms, you put it back to its original arrangement, so too
does the pack rat.
Let’s look at some domestic animals. I had three ferrets over a
period of about nine years. They were all avid collectors. They had
stashes of the stuff they collected; there was a main stash usually
under and couch or in a cabinet, and smaller satellite stashes in
various locations. I noticed that they went through periods of collecting. My ferret Fennel collected soft things like beanie babies
and stuffed animals for a while and then switched to hard things
like pill bottles and vials. They also had a sense of value. If they
found something unusual, it would be hidden way in the back underneath other items in the stash, whereas a common object like a
pencil would just be thrown in anywhere.
My colleague Llyd Wells in Santa Fe has a ferret named Tomato
who makes stashes.
Tomato keeps a stash of mostly soft items in the closet in the
bedroom (Fig. 3a) and another stash of mostly harder rubber items
under the sink in the bathroom (Fig. 3b). Llyd will switch an item
Fig. 3a
Tomato’s bedroom stash
Fig. 3b
Tomato’s bathroom stash
�66
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
out of one stash into the other and Tomato is quick to “correct”
this. Tomato has organized her stashes and knows how they are
supposed to be.
If it seems like I am talking about ferret collecting in much the
same way I might talk about human collecting, it is because I am.
This brings up the bad word anthropomorphism. I am accused of
projecting my own desires, intentions, and activities onto the ferrets. However, if I see an animal acting in much the same way I
would in a similar situation, why shouldn't I, at least as a first step,
assume that it is acting with similar desires and motivations? After
all, the ferret, the pack rat, and me are all children of nature. We
have all evolved on this earth; why should we be assumed to be so
alien to one another?
Here is one more example from our domestic animals. Robby
is a dog who belongs to friends Jonathan and Barbara. He has a
basket of stuffed animals and when his people are away he makes
careful arrangements of them on the living room floor. A typical
one has four evenly spaced animals in a straight line, with one off
center (Fig. 4a). A slightly more complex arrangement has two of
the same animals, in different colors, together. There are two animals, evenly spaced on either side of these two and then down from
the ends, another animal on each side with different, but still even,
spacing (Fig. 4b).
Fig. 4a
Robby’s animals, simple
Fig. 4b
Robby’s animals, complex
Also typical of Robby’s work: the stuffed frog is in every arrange-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
67
ment. This is definitely not the work of an animal just throwing
things around because he is mad that his people are away.
A few years ago on YouTube there was a doberman who made
similar stuffed animal arrangements, though he went in more for
circular patterns. Let me take a moment to recommend YouTube
as a valuable source of information about animal behavior. Now
that most people have small video cameras or cell phones with
them all the time, an amazing variety of animal behavior has been
recorded and put online. Behaviors that I would have been called
crazy for reporting ten years ago are now accessible to everyone.
And everyone can judge for themself.
These collecting and decorating behaviors show us a range of
possibilities in nature. They are essential to the reproductive biology of the bower birds and certainly serve a utilitarian function for
them. For pack rats and ferrets these activities are typical of the
species, but do not serve any essential functions that we know of.
Robby the dog’s activities are not at all typical of the species, but
such behavior pops up now and then among dogs. I have read of
other cases in which one or a few animals engage in these kinds of
activities, though, again, they are not typical of the species. There
were a group of pigs7 who made arrangements out of shingles and
dirt and even a wolverine who made arrangements of sticks in a
chain link fence, left them up for a few days, and then made a new
arrangement.8
I suggest that the musical, collecting, and decorating activities I
have been chronicling are not always specifically evolved to serve
mating rituals or other survival needs, but may be part of a much
broader expressiveness in the natural world that can be turned to
utilitarian functions, but need not be.
When we look at invertebrates, it is a little harder to judge what
they intend, because they are not so closely related to us. Let’s look
at a few examples that might count as art for art’s sake. The decorator urchin collects various materials from the ocean floor and
7. Noel Perrin, Second Person Rural (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980).
8. Douglas Chadwick, The Wolverine Way (Ventura, California: Patagonia
Books; 2010).
9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjaminbull/2844381114
�68
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
puts them on top of its spines. I have read that this is for camouflage, but the photos that I have seen do not support this; they are
all highly visible.9
Harvester ants are common in the Southwestern United States.
Their nests are covered with small stones and are famous as collecting sites for various materials that people want. Some are covered
in crystals and sparkle in the sun. People know they are the place to
go to find turquoise and beads. Paleontologists find small fossils
from rodents on their nests, and scientists studying radioactive minerals go to their nests to find trinitite, the mineral formed from the
first atomic bomb test at the Trinity site in New Mexico.10
Garden spiders, also called writing spiders, build orb webs and
decorate them with zig zag patterns that are different for each
species.11 Henri Fabre, the great French entomologist, called these
their “signature.” I had, until recently, not read any plausible accounts of their function. It turns out, however, that the silk in the
“signature” is different from the web silk. It reflects ultraviolet
light and may function to attract insects into the web.
This is still untested, but does seem plausible. Even so, a further
question is why the web is decorated in just this way. Why do such
decorations seem more than is needed to fulfill the functions they
serve? This is one of the main questions that David Rothenberg,
the man who wrote Why Birds Sing, pursues in a more recent book
called Survival of the Beautiful.12
Usually when we think about animals and art, we are not thinking
about the arrangement of a pack rat’s nest or the beads on a harvester ant’s nest. We are thinking, rather, that animals are beautiful.
Humans have long appropriated bird feathers and animal skins for
our own adornment. I am an entomologist, and so I look at insects
a lot. Consider this beetle (Fig. 5)—the highly ornamented form of
the legs, the shape and texture of the thorax, the colors and patterns
on the wing covers. It is a fantastic animal and only has to be put
on a background and photographed to be easily seen as art. This is
10. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mouser-nerdbot/5334689193
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Argiope_aurantia_web.jpg
12. David Rothenberg, Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
69
Fig. 5
“Coleoptera” by Jo Whaley
one of the ideas behind a book, The Theater of Insects,13 that I collaborated on with photographer Jo Whaley.
Other insect colors are understood as serving important protective functions. The great purple hairstreak, a butterfly I see in New
Mexico, has prominent white polka dots set in a black background
on its head and thorax, a bright orange abdomen, and iridescent
scales on its wings.14 The top of the wings are a beautiful irridescent purple. The bold black, white, and orange colors are referred
to as warning coloration. Insects that are poisonous such as the
black and orange monarch butterfly, or dangerous like the yellowand-black-striped wasps and bees, have these kinds of color patterns. The theory is that predators such as birds learn to avoid these
patterns and so the animals are protected. Also, insects that are neither poisonous nor dangerous may evolve these patterns to fool
predators into refusing to eat them.
The peacock spiders, a group of jumping spiders, have wonderful bright color patterns, and special flag-like structures on their
second pair of legs.15 They do elaborate courtship dances for the
females. This again seems like a classic example of sexual selection in that the colors, patterns, ornaments, and dancing serve an
13. Jo Whaley, Deborah Klochko, and Linda Wiener, The Theater of Insects (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008).
14. http://www.jeffpippen.com/butterflies/greatpurplehairstreak.htm
15. http://amazinglist.net/2013/02/the-peacock-spider-maratus-volans
�70
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
essential function in attaining a mate.
Consider, however, the radiolarians. They are one-celled animals
that live in the ocean. They are an old lineage, existing for over
600 million years. They have an amazing variety of forms, ornaments, and textures that serve no known functions.16 It seems that
as soon as there were animals, even just single-celled ones, there
was already a tendency toward elaboration. Again, I suggest that
such elaboration may be part of a basic expressive function of nature. Such appearances are not necessarily evolved to serve particular survival or reproductive functions.
Hold that thought. Now I am going to turn to the debate I mentioned earlier. Abbott Thayer was a well known portrait painter in
New England at the turn of the twentieth century. He was famous
for portraits of women with angel’s wings. He was also famous for
his theory of animal coloration. With his son Gerald, he published
a book in 1909 called Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom.17 I came across this book quite by accident about eight years
ago and was enthralled by it. Contrary to the theory of his day, and
also contrary to the theory of our day, the Thayers thought that all
animal colors were concealing.
The frontispiece of the book, a painting, shows a male peacock
with his colorful tail concealed in the colorful leaves on the forest
floor and his beautiful blue neck concealed against the sky (Fig. 6).
This vantage would be from the point of view of a ground predator
such as a fox.
More plausible, perhaps, is his photographic plate of a grouse
showing it concealed in its forest environment (Fig. 7).
Almost everyone would agree that grouse are well concealed in
the forests in which they live. But, Thayer goes further. He tells us
that if you want to know what a forest looks like, you should not go
around looking at forests because they will confuse you with their
idiosyncracies. You should look at animals such as the grouse who
must be concealed wherever they are in the forest. Thayer writes:
16. http://incrediblebeings.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/radiolarians-10species-2.jpg
17. Gerald Thayer and Abbott Thayer, Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (New York: MacMillan, 1909).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
71
Fig. 6
Thayer plate of a grouse
concealed in the forest
Fig. 7
Thayer plate of a grouse
concealed in the woods
They are, in the best sense of the word, triumphs of art;
and in a sense they are absolute, as human art can never
be . . . There he will find it in epitome, painted and perfected by nature herself. Color and pattern, line and shading, all are true beyond the power of man to imitate, or
even fully to discern.18
It was this insight that led Thayer to become the father of military camouflage. He went around trying to get the U. S. military
18. Thayer, 240.
�72
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
to adopt the idea. He failed, though the French military took him
up on it. Now, of course, military camouflage is well established
everywhere.
Under the influence of this book, I was failing to see animals
everywhere. Driving in the high plains along Route 285 in New
Mexico in the early spring, I would think of Thayer’s claim that
antelope are marked so as to be concealed on the patchy background of snow and bare soil.19 I would be thinking that there were
hundreds of antelope out there, but that I could not see any of them.
The problem with this construal is that in fact you can see them,
especially if you are looking for them.
One person who read Thayer’s book and was incensed by it was
Theodore Roosevelt. In fact, he was so incensed that he published
a 120-page rebuttal in the Bulletin of the American Museum of
Natural History.20 Roosevelt writes: “It is impossible to go over
page by page the really countless erroneous statements, wild
guesses, and absurd interpretations of fact which the book contains.” He cuts the Thayers some slack because of their artistic temperaments, but finds their lack of knowledge inexcusable. As you
may know, Roosevelt was famous as a big game hunter and could
easily take the point of view of a predator. He was also an excellent
naturalist and knew the names and habits of all the small birds and
mammals that lived around him. Going back to the frontispiece,
Roosevelt points out that if the peacock is indeed concealed in the
forest environment, then the peahen—which is very differently colored—must be conspicuous in that environment.
Here is a summary of some of his main objections: First, Roosevelt says that it is our eyes, and not the colors of the animals,
that determine whether we will see them. He tells us that his native
guides in Africa could often see animals he failed to pick out. Further, cover is more important in concealing animals than their colors, motion is also more important than colors, and besides, most
predators hunt by scent and do not use their eyes until they are very
19. http://kenarcherphotos.com/p953706307/h1BF0CD15#h1bf0cd15
20. Theodore Roosevelt, "Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds
and Mammals,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 30
(1911):119-239.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
73
close—and by then they already know the animal is there. All these
objections have merit. In fact, Roosevelt almost, not quite, but almost, claims that all animals are conspicuously colored, the opposite of the Thayers’ claim.
Before going on I want to relate an incident that happened while
I was still very much under the influence of Thayer’s book. I was
watching mallard ducks on a pond at sunset with my daughter. The
speckled brown females were difficult to see wherever they were—
on the bank, in a tree, or in the water. The males, which Thayer
claims are concealingly colored in the pond environment, were
very easy to see.21 We were watching a particular male swim across
the pond, and at one point it suddenly and completely disappeared.
That is, its white back matched the sparkly white water of the pond
at sunset, its brown breast matched the reflection of a tree trunk in
the water, and its green head matched the reflection of foliage in
the water. It was so startling that I actually jumped. Then, a halfsecond or a second later, it swam out of that position and again
could be easily seen.
So, Thayer is only a little bit right when he claims that male mallards are concealed in their pond environment. For the most part
they are not. However, a kind of secret was revealed through this
experience. They seem somehow born of their environment. It was
as if someone had taken a piece out of a jigsaw puzzle of a pond
at sunset and turned it into a male mallard duck.
One more important participant in this debate on animal coloration was John Burroughs, a naturalist and writer from New York
state. He published an essay in 1908 entitled “Gay Plumes and
Dull.”22 In it he takes up the topic of concealing coloration. He has
his own set of objections to the theory. He points out that if concealing coloration were so important to animal survival, you would
expect all animals in a given environment to be the same color, yet
we see that they are not. Also, we would expect concealingly colored animals such as grouse to be more abundant than brightly col21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mclap/4366013629
22. John Burroughs, “Gay Plumes and Dull,” in Leaf and Tendril (New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908).
�74
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
ored animals such as male cardinals and pheasants, and we would
expect the females of these last two species to be more abundant
than the males. Yet, this is not what we see. From experience I can
say that this is also the case with insects. Species with concealing
colors are not more numerous as a rule than brightly colored ones.
Burroughs writes:
Whatever truth there may be in this theory of protective
coloration, one has only to look about him to discover
that it is a matter which Nature does not have very much
at heart. She plays fast and loose with it on every hand.
Now she seems to set great store by it, the next moment
she discards it entirely.23
Burroughs accounts for the colors of the antelope and other animals like this:
Things in nature blend and harmonize. One thing
matches with another. . . . Arctic life will blend more or
less with Arctic snows, tree animals will show greater
variety in tint and form, plains animals will be dull of
hue like the plains . . . through the law of natural assimilation, like begetting like, variety breeding variety.24
He reaches for a “law of natural assimilation” to explain this,
and also reaches for another natural law to explain differences in
coloration between males and females of the same species:
His gay plumes are the badge of his masculinity . . . the
riot and overflow of the male sexual principle.25
Females being generally more dull in hue partake in a more passive female principle of nature. Burroughs still feels that the appearances have not been fully accounted for. He goes further,
speculating that:
It is like the caprice of fashion . . . exaggerated plumes,
fantastic colors, and monstrous beaks of many birds in
both hemispheres have as little apparent utility, and seem
23. Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril, 61.
24. Ibid., 80.
25. Ibid., 95.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
75
to be quite as much the result of caprice, as are any of
the extreme fashions in dress among human beings.26
Even in the animal world, there is fashion. One man who takes
up this theme, decades later, is Roger Caillois, a French philosopher who published a book in 1964 entitled The Mask of Medusa.27
Caillois was especially interested in the phenomenon of mimicry
in the insect world. The dead leaf butterfly is a good exarnple.28
The undersides of the wings are a perfect mimic of a dead leaf,
complete with leaf veins, fungal spots, and a broken stem. If this
butterfly was immobile in leaves on a forest floor, you would never
see it. However, it is not uncommon to see these insects outside of
the environment where they would be concealed, as if they are,
perhaps, showing off.
Another spectacular mimetic caterpillar is Hemeroplanes triptolemus, found in Central America.29 It looks like a regular caterpillar when it is feeding on a branch, however in the last stage
before it pupates, if disturbed, it turns upside down and comes at
you looking for all the world like a tree viper, though the “eyes”
are not real and cannot see. The theory is that birds or other predators think they are in the presence of an animal that is dangerous to
them and are frightened away, instead of eating the caterpillar. It is
thought that any caterpillar that deviates from the perfect mimetic
form will be spotted and eaten by predators until, eventually, the
most perfect mimics are “created” by this selective predation.
Many butterflies and moths are known as snake mimics. The
spicebush swallowtail, native to the United States, is one such
caterpillar.30 To me, this caterpillar looks more like a friendly
stuffed toy snake than a dangerous enemy. We need to wonder why
it is that the first mimic is so perfect if this second one is an effective deterrent of predation. Adults may also be identified as snake
26. Ibid., 90.
27. Roger Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, tr. George Ordish (New York:
C. N. Potter, 1964).
28. http://beastlyvirtues.blogspot.com/2013/03/fuxianhuia-who.html
29. http://madasamarinebiologist.com/post/16015203836/snake-mimiccatepillar
30. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/459859811920520201/
�76
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
mimics. Philip Howse, of Southampton University in England
claims that the wing of the atlas moth is a cobra mimic.30 Look at
a whole atlas moth.31 Again, we are led to wonder why, if birds are
such astute and perceptive predators, they don’t know that cobras
are five feet long and live in the rice paddies, not five inches long
and hanging in the air.
Caillois notes this “aimless delirium of perfection in nature,”
and proposes that mimicry is an autonomous force in the world of
biology that does not require utilitarian explanations. He goes further and also invokes, like Burroughs, a principle of fashion, connecting it with the phenomenon of mimicry:
But in the case of man, fashion is also a phenomenon of
mimicry, of an obscure contagion of fascination with a
model which is imitated for no real reason.32
The plant hoppers are a group of sap-sucking insects that live
on trees and shrubs. They have an astounding variety of forms.33
They may resemble wasps as one of the photos on the foregoing
site sort of does. You can see the black and white stripes, the narrow “wasp waist,” and a variety of pointed projections that may
deter a predator. Notice that the real body is underneath the wings.
The whole “wasp” is a projection of the prothoracic segment. It is
as if the plant hopper is wearing a mask or a costume. If we look
at other plant hoppers, we will be impressed that many do not seem
to be mimics at all. Their colors, shapes, and ornaments seem more
like the work of a playful, creative imagination.
So far, I have been referring to art as something like “the beautiful.” Now we are seeing, in the natural world, a different category
of art, that of mask and costume, a category that has a wide variety
of functions in the human world. Caillois was especially interested
in an insect called the lantern bug (Fig. 8). They are related to the
30. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8082739/Butterflies-andmoths-mimic-snakes-and-foxes-to-fool-predators-claims-researcher.html
31. http://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-atlas-moth-chroniclesepisode-1.html
32. Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, 41.
33. http://femtasia.blogspot.com/2010/11/membracidae.html
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
77
Fig. 8
Lantern Bug34
tree hoppers and also live by sucking sap from trees. It is a Swiss
army knife of a bug; the forewings mimic dead leaves, when they
are lifted up there are two prominent eye spots. These are generally
interpreted as looking like vertebrate eyes so that a potential predator, thinking it is in the presence of a larger predator that could be
a danger to it, will be frightened away. Best of all, it has a large alligator mask above its real head. You can see the eyes, the nostrils,
and the row of teeth. Again, we must question. Don’t the predators
know that alligators are 6 feet long and live in the river, rather than
an inch or so long and in a tree?
Caillois compares the lantern bug to a human shaman. The dead
leaf forewings are its cloak of invisibility which can be suddenly
thrown off to reveal the conscious being who had been hidden. He
writes:
Where there was nothing, there is suddenly horror. The
insect knows how to frighten; what is more it gives rise
34. James Duncan, Introduction to Entomology, Vol. 1 [Vol. 30 of The
Naturalist’s Library, ed. Sir William Jardine] (Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars,
1840), Plate 22.
�78
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
to a particular kind of fear, an imaginary terror not corresponding to any real danger . . . working through the
strange and fantastic.35
One further example of this phenomenon is the oleander hawkmoth caterpillar, Daphnis nerii.36 This caterpillar, when viewed
from a certain angle, exhibits creepy glowing eyes that do not look
like those of any animal, but evoke horror. They have the same kind
of effect as eyes painted on a shield or the bow of a ship. This suggests that birds, monkeys and other predators may be susceptible
to a kind of existential dread brought on by these false, staring eyes.
The wide range of such costume- and mask-effects in insects
mirrors the many uses of masks in human communities. There
are masks to disguise, to camoflauge, to frighten, to take on the
look and energies of another kind of creature—there are even
masks just for play. If we go with Caillois’s thought, we can see
that humans are not isolated from the rest of the natural world by
our art, our mythology, our psychology. We belong to the world
and can see aspects of these human features represented in the
behavior, or printed on the actual anatomy, of other animals.
I have been arguing that there is more going on in the world of
biology than natural selection for the purposes of survival and reproduction. Especially today, when most thinking about evolution
is connected with thinking about genes, we confine ourselves to a
narrow range of interpretation of biological phenomena. As a result,
we are continually underestimating the capacities of animals, and
this underestimation takes place before there are any data. We are
always tempted to read the capacities of animals off of their genes
or anatomy and from the theory of natural selection. No matter how
many times this is shown to be wrong-headed, these strategies are
constantly invoked. Truly, it is not possible to know what an animal
is capable of without actually observing its behavior for a long time
under a variety of circumstances.
It is assumed that bees have such tiny brains that they cannot do
symbolic reasoning, but showing that they do somehow does not
35. Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, 104.
36. http://www.flickr.com/photos/77995220@N00/9398097107
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
79
challenge the general principle. When we limit beforehand what
we believe is possible, we often cannot see what is right in front
of our eyes, or we fail to reflect about it at all because we have already sorted out the observed appearance or behavior into one of
our preset categories. One thing is warning coloration, another is
sexual selection, another is protective coloration—and we’re done.
Not only do we fail to see, we lose a language that is adequate to
the actual phenomena. We lose a sense of Nature with a capital
“N,” a nature rife with potentiality and surprises, Nature as a principle of motion and change. Only the poets still use this sort of language with a good conscience.
I’ve been using the lens of artistic expression in animals as a
way to explore this issue.
Here at the end, in the coda, I would like to switch to a different
sort of example to illustrate this point. A few years ago there
showed up on YouTube some footage of an elk, named Shooter, at
the Pocatello Zoo in Idaho, saving a marmot from drowning in a
water tank.37 There were two witnesses, a veterinarian and an educator. The whole event took about 15 minutes. The elk was pawing at the water and with his big unwieldy antlers, trying to get his
head in the tank. Finally he lifted out the marmot, put it on the
ground, and gently nudged it with his foot. In a little while the marmot shook itself and ran into its hole. It is wonderful footage.
The odd thing to me was the narrative of the witnesses. Even as
we are watching, they are explaining that elk don’t do this. They
are all about survival. They speculate that it is only because
Shooter lives in a zoo and has his needs met that he can develop
more elaborate behavior. The scientist in me immediately asks how
we know that elk don’t do this. Do we have dozens of examples of
marmots squeaking in distress as they drown in mountain lakes
while elk graze unconcernedly on the shore? We don’t really know
as we only have one example of an elk confronted with this situation. Underlying the narrative is the view that elk behavior is
generic and aimed only toward survival. I suggest that the elk and
37. http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=8211416
�80
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
the marmot, who after all live in the exact same place, know each
other. This may be an act of individual friendship, not calling for
any explanation at all in terms of natural selection.
I hope I have stimulated you to look more carefully and think
more widely when you observe animals. The world of animal appearance and behavior is wide and wonderful. The next step is for
you to go outside and start looking around for yourself.
��82
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Troy
Hannah Eagleson
Eris
You cannot even bite into it,
Feel color burst in your mouth,
Taste nectar on your tongue.
Hard gold spinning down the table,
Stopping talk,
Clanging pitchers,
Breaking glasses.
Spilling wine
On immortal gowns.
Setting at war
Beauty, wisdom, power
Unleashing the bronze spear and gleaming chariot,
The arrows’ iron,
Drawing jagged lines.
Eve had at least the momentary taste,
Flavor widening her eyes,
Fruit in her mouth
In exchange for Eden lost.
Troy fell for an apple no one tasted.
�POEMS | EAGLESON
Judgment
Did Priam ever wonder,
Why Paris? Like a filigree circlet,
Looking fine enough, delicately wrought,
But not much use in battle.
Why not Hector, steady and strong,
Brave and to be trusted?
Why not honey-tongued Odysseus on the other side,
Or fierce Agamemnon himself?
Why should Paris be unlucky enough
To stumble near the gods’ celebration,
Fool enough to think he could judge
Among beauty, wisdom, power?
And who would choose beauty?
What good is that,
To managing a kingdom?
Does it build the walls or feed the hungry?
Does it grow the wheat or press the grapes?
Does it strengthen the gates or make the wells run deeper?
Who would have thought that epics begin
Not with the bright spear or bronze helmet,
Not even with the twist of golden hair,
But with the slight prince
Strayed to the wrong table,
Making a fool’s choice?
83
�84
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Three Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Peter Kalkavage
The Swan (to Victor Hugo)
I
Andromache, I think of you! That little stream,
Poor and gloomy mirror where once there shone so bright
The tremendous majesty of your widow’s grief,
That lying Simoïs that grew great through your tears,1
Impregnated at once my fertile memory,
As I made my way across the new Carrousel. 2
Old Paris is no more (the form of one’s hometown
Is quicker to change, alas! than a mortal’s heart);
I see but in my mind that whole camp of makeshift huts,
Those piles of capitals, rough-hewn, and column-shafts,
The grass, the massive blocks turned green by standing pools,
And shining in the panes the scattered bric-a-brac.
There a menagerie at one time was spread out;
There I saw, one morning, under skies cold and clear,
At the hour when Work wakes, when street cleaners push
A menacing storm into the silent air,
A swan that had recently escaped from his cage,
And, scraping the dry pavement with his webby feet,
Was dragging his white plumage on the rugged ground.
Near a waterless ditch, the beast, opening his beak,
1. In the Aeneid (III, 302), Andromache, now a refugee in Epirus, weeps
for Hector near a “false” Simoïs, a river near Troy.
2. The Place du Carrousel, an area near the Louvre, underwent continual
renovation in the 1850s.
�POEMS | KALKAVAGE
85
Was nervously bathing his wings in the dust,
And said, heart full of his beautiful native lake:
“Water, when will you rain? Lightning, when will you roar?”
I see this ill-starred wretch, a strange and fatal myth,
Toward the heavens sometimes, like Man in Ovid’s poem,3
Toward the heavens ironic and cruelly blue,
On his convulsive neck straining his thirsty head,
As though he were addressing reproaches to God!
II
Paris changes! But nothing in my melancholy
Has budged! New palaces and scaffoldings and blocks,
Old quarters, all turns to allegory for me,
And my precious memories are heavier than rocks.
In front of that Louvre too an image weighs me down:4
I think of my great swan, with his gestures insane,
Like people in exile, ludicrous and sublime,
And gnawed by relentless desire! And then of you,
Andromache, fallen from a great husband’s arms,
Vile beast of the field, under Pyrrhus’s proud hand,
Near a bodiless grave, bent over in a swoon;
Hector’s widow, alas! and Helenus’s wife!5
I think of the negress, all consumptive and thin,
Trudging in the mud, and searching with haggard eye
For the now-absent palms of proud Africa’s land
In the distance behind the immense wall of fog;
3. Metamorphoses I, 84-85: “All other animals look downward; Man,/
Alone, erect, can raise his face toward Heaven.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses,
trans. Rolfe Humphries [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960], 5.)
4. That Louvre, i.e., the Louvre before the reconstruction in 1852 that
eliminated the old streets separating the Louvre from the Palace of the
Tuileries.
5. After the fall of Troy, Andromache and Helenus (Priam’s son) became
the slaves of Achilles’s son, Pyrrhus, who eventually let them marry
(Aeneid III, 321-336).
�86
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Of whoever has lost what will never return—
Ever, ever! Of those who sate themselves with tears
And are suckled by Grief as by a good she-wolf!
Of skin-and-bone orphans withering like flowers!
And so, in the forest that inexiles my mind
An old Memory sounds with full blast of the horn!
I think of the sailors forgotten on an isle,
Of captives, the vanquished! . . . and many others still!
Fogs and Rains
O ends of autumn, winters, springtimes steeped in mud,
Sleepy-headed seasons! I love you and I praise you
For enveloping thus both my heart and my brain
With a vaporous shroud and a vague sort of tomb.
On that vast open plain where the cold storm-wind plays,
Where the weathercock rasps through the long drawn-out nights,
My soul, even better than in spring’s tepid time,
Will proceed to spread wide its great raven-black wings.
Nothing is more sweet to the funereal heart,
And on which for so long winter’s chill has come down,
O seasons drenched in pallor, you queens of our clime,
Than the unchanging look of your deathly-white gloom,
—Lest it be, on a night without moon, two by two,
To put sorrow to sleep on a perilous bed.
�POEMS | KALKAVAGE
87
The Vampire
You who, like a thrust of the knife,
Entered inside my plaintive heart;
You who, as mighty as a herd
Of demons, came, adorned and mad,
To make your bed and your domain
Of my humiliated mind;
—Obscene one, to whom I am bound
Like the galley slave to his chain,
Like the hard gambler to his game,
Like the wretched sot to his bottle,
Like the carrion to its vermin,
—Accursèd, accursèd be you!
I pleaded with the rapid blade
To win my freedom back by force,
And told the poison, schooled in guile,
To come and aid my coward’s will.
Alas! the poison and the blade
Both held me in disdain and said:
“You’re not worthy to be relieved
From your accursèd servitude,
Fool! —if from that empire of hers
Our efforts would deliver you,
Your kisses would resuscitate
The cadaver of your vampire!”
�POEMS | ZUCKERMAN
The Second Sense
Elliott Zuckerman
Listen: In wind and water,
the second sense
records a message for the sixth
Before our birth
only a patch of reason moved the pulse
Before the germ
of anything like melody,
maternal heartbeat set the meter’s pace
In harmony
the pulse ascends to the unheard. Though sound
is left below, compatible numbers
continue climbing
That’s why the masters of man’s sound
enthralled by breeze and shower
and friendliness of field and leaf
reiterate the triad tirelessly
sustained beyond the call of need or taste
The level field
the rising cliff or tree
are the co-ordinates of the soul
In simple chords sustained
beyond all reason
one master celebrated greenery
striding and hunched, hands clasped behind his back.
88
�REVIEW
89
To Save the Ideas
A Review of Daniel Sherman’s Soul, World, and Idea: An
Interpretation of Plato’s Republic and Phaedo. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2013. viii + 410 pages, $110.
Eva Brann
“To save the phenomena” of heavenly motions by undergirding
them with rational, that is, mathematical, hypotheses—that is said
to be the problem Plato set for astronomers in a passage from the
Republic frequently referenced by Daniel Sherman.1 His own
project is, as I understand it, the inverse one: to save the Platonic
ideas by a new interpretation of the dialogues in the title of his
book. It might be said to be the deeper and more difficult problem
to solve—and just as enticing.
But what, you may think, is the use of an inviting review, when
you blanch at the price? This book, written by an alumnus of St.
John’s (Annapolis, 1963) after a long teaching career and obviously
much study and reflection, should be kept in mind by anyone of us
who has more than a nostalgic interest in the Platonic dialogues; if
you can’t afford it, you might persuade your local library to acquire
it or get it for you on interlibrary loan.
It is surely a book not to be overlooked in any serious study of
the Platonic dialogues, not just the Republic and the Phaedo. But—
in any responsible review there must be “buts,” and I’ll get them
out of the way, the more uninhibitedly to do this huge work justice—its very volume raises some obstacles, thought-provoking
enough to induce the following little prefatory meditation on voluminousness.
There is an aphorism by Callimachus (third century BCE), the
most famous librarian of the great ancient Library at Alexandria:
mega biblion, mega kakon, which our wicked undergraduates at
St. John’s used to translate: “A great book is a great evil.” What he
actually meant is probably: “A long book is a big pain,” since he
1. Republic 528 ff. Simplicius (Commentary 2.43, 46) reports Plato’s
challenge to the astronomers.
�90
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
considered long epics to be antiquated. Having, on several occasions, inflicted such pain, I have come to think of book length as
an independently significant factor. For one thing, it is involved
with the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” literature—between a difficult, rebarbative original and its ancillary elucidation. There’s “learning’s crabbed text” and then “there’s the
comment,” as Robert Browning says in “The Grammarian’s Funeral.”
A primary text may be as long as it pleases, say, the roughly
seven hundred pages of the Critique of Pure Reason or the nearly
double that of War and Peace. But a secondary text, a commenting
explication? Well, how can it help but be a good deal longer than
the original? It is, after all, an explication or “unfolding,” an explanation or “planing-out,” an exposition or “setting-out,” an elucidation or “bringing-to-light.” Anything that is smoothed-out will
be larger in bulk than it was in its original implicitness or self-entanglement. However, the length of an exegesis that “leads-out” of
a textual complexity is a very real problem of human temporality.
Even for willing learners, since ars longa, vita brevis, if the artfulness of the text is great and the commentator tries to be adequate
to it, there is the risk of displacing it, because human life is always
short on time. Moreover, while words clarify, wordiness obscures
matters.
To my mind this means that to make up for its preempting bulk,
an interpretation has the obligation to be easier—and so, faster—
to read, and the interpreter has the obligation to accordingly be
willing to accept a loss of subtlety and depth. Although one might
say that a great text is one long aphorism, being too brief for what
it bears, surely the difference between a weighty text and its analysis is not merely that of succinctness and amplitude. In addition,
an interpretation should willingly forego that mysterious penumbra
of connotation and resonance which attends a great book and candidly admit that a great author’s scope is apt to exceed the interpreter’s perspective (not withstanding his—dubious—advantage
of an added historical distance). To say it plainly: secondary writing has a smoothing function; to it shallowness is mandatory. So
much here for one of its qualities; more about its quantity below.
�REVIEW | BRANN
91
There is a now often deprecated notion behind the “primary/secondary” distinction which goes beyond that of “original/commentary,” namely, “great/not-so-great.” The one main mark of textual
greatness is just this: exposition-proneness. Whatever spatial
metaphor you may apply to the effort—illuminating the surface,
delving into the depths, unrolling the convolutions—there is always more to be said about it. The exegete may be exhausted; the
book never is. Put another way: A great book will contain many
serendipities but few inadvertencies. (Even Homer nods, but rarely.)
Thus the interpreter’s care is safely invested; there will be returns.
I have slipped from “commentary” to “interpretation” because,
while a commentary might be pretty innocent, hovering around the
factual extrinsicalities of the text, interpretations get inside it and
are fraught with potential culpability. First of these is inadequacy
to the meaning of the text: To interpret well, you have to begin
reading literally, attend to the letter of the text. Any willing student
can be trained to do that. But then it gets complicated, especially
for the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Who among the participants
understands what Socrates is asking and what he himself is saying?
What is Socrates’s intention? Where is Plato? Which words or suppressions bear the meaning of the conversation? In what sayings
or silences is its locus of truth? The effort of cluing this out is very
nearly simultaneous with the exposition of that truth or of its occlusion—here’s a version of that notorious “hermeneutic circle,” that
the parts are known by the whole, but also, inversely, the whole by
its parts.2 Inadequacy, lack of acuteness in construing the text from
both ends, here vitiates the interpretation—but that is not at all the
problem of Sherman’s book, and thus not my problem here.
Second, the pedagogic ineffectiveness of interpretative commentary: I want to frame this aspect of secondary writing as a large
problem, so to speak, that is little regarded—the problem of bulk.
Having myself perpetrated several big books, I suppose I’m qualified. Here’s the problem: In writing of that sort there are levels of
aboutness. At the bottom there is, once again, what the primary
2. The “hermeneutic” or interpretational art is named after the herald-god
Hermes, one of whose offices it was to convey plainly the meaning of
messages.
�92
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
book literally says. On top of that (or wherever it’s to be located)
there is the originating writer’s meaning—not that he failed in saying
what he intended, but that he may have reached for a new language
to convey his original notions, or that he may have suppressed complete articulation so as to involve the attentive reader. For most (no
longer all) interpreters, it is an article of hermeneutic faith that there
is such an implicit meaning, that its novel language often needs an
interpreter, that the author’s intention is often not immediately obvious—and that they’re elected to open up the book to others’ view.
So on top of that comes the secondary writer’s own understanding
of the primary text, which any candid commentator will, by that
little margin of modest doubt, know how to distinguish from its
underlying template. And now, to top it off, there is a tertiary level,
huge and growing: the more or less deviationist opinions of all the
fellow interpreters, who each have different perspectives, reconcilable and irreconcilable. And in this perspectival fecundity lies
the proof both of the primary text’s grander scope and of its human
limitations.
Secondary bulk is a real and present danger: smoothing turns
into smothering. Oddly enough, there is a device for the self-neutralization of big secondary books: the Index. For original books,
excerpted reading is a hermeneutic no-no, precisely because of the
hermeneutic circle, because the clue to the whole may lie in any
or all parts. Not so in interpretative commentaries, whose writer
should not be out to piggy-back a masterpiece on the underlying
text, but should help the user to check out names, find definitive
passages, and follow up themes. Indices affirm the secondary
writer’s modesty; a detailed index signifies the writer’s blanket
permission to spot-read, to use the interpretation in thinking about
the text thus served. Primary texts usually aren’t indexed to begin
with. Soul, World, and Idea has an index, but I wish Lexington
Books had invested in a more ample one.
“Careful” unpacking, analysis, reading, is a phrase, the favorite
one in Soul, World, and Idea, of hermeneutic virtue. Here’s the
“but”: it leads to pertinent paraphrases of the text to be interpreted,
together with commenting qualifications, modifications, cautious
retractions—in short, to lengthiness. Add to this the dutiful inclu-
�REVIEW | BRANN
93
sion, both in the text and in long footnotes, of tertiary commentary,
in which the work comes to grips with, analyzes, critiques, or accepts a large number of contemporary interpretations by fellow
scholars. Just as the careful reading often yields welcome insights
(of which I’ll give an example a little below), the referencing of
scholarship is often helpful. Instead of just citing names and numbers, Sherman actually reproduces arguments. But it nearly doubles
the book’s length.
I am, as they say, “conflicted” about both of these efforts: the
written record of “careful reading” and the learned absorption of
“scholarship.” Who can doubt the value of carefully thinking
through a worthy text by engaging in extensive internal i-dotting
or the propriety of responsively considering others’ understandings
and making a mental note of their putative mistakes? But, then,
isn’t it the next best step to allow the bulk—not the gist—of our
own thinkings and others’ errors to pass away, unpublished, into
forgetfulness? Treat them as ephemeral, and let them die within
days of their birth (as do those eponymous ephemerids, the
mayflies) and enter forgetfulness, there to become the soil of reflection. Shouldn’t philosophy be resolutely anti-cumulative, ever
at the beginning? Absent a firm settlement of my misgivings about
bulky writings and extensive sourcing, I take refuge in a very practical solution: at least to pay attention to what is near and dear, and
certainly to the works of alumni.
So let me start with a sample of insights Daniel Sherman’s book
offers, combining close reading and responsiveness to scholarship
(p. 165). An interesting issue is “the autonomy of philosophy” seen
in personal terms, namely as the ability of ordinarily thoughtful
human beings to withstand the social order. Pierre Bourdieu, a
French sociologist, surmises that the categories imposed by the
power structure are intractable because they are unconsciously involved in the very struggle to escape them; thus even the not-soconforming characters of the Republic respond to Socrates’s
sedition with responses varying from “metaphysical fury,” through
friendly doubt, to sullen withdrawal. Against this defeatism, Sherman pits his interpretation of Platonic discourse as being very
awarely situated in medias res. Socrates indeed operates, albeit
�94
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
quite consciously, in the context of the social setting and its implicit
opinions. He employs dialogic practices to make these explicit and
to ascend, starting from within the social and natural world, to the
alternative realm of Ideas; the ideas are thus both continuous with
and opposed to the given social context, hence in a tension of critique and acceptance with respect to ordinary meanings. One might
say that Sherman saves the autonomy of thinking from circumstance by arguing that it is its very implication in the opinionenvironment of the world which, when brought to awareness,
gives it its rightful claim to independent knowledge. (P. 165.)
I’ve begun with this example, taken from the middle of the book,
because it is typical of Sherman’s saving, composing, middle-ofthe-way responses to exaggeratedly alienating views of Plato’s
project. Now it’s time to give a glimpse of the over-all structure of
the book, chapter by chapter. Keep in mind that this is a dense exposition, consisting of four-hundred meticulously argued pages, so
my summary will be skeletal indeed, and my queries will loom
larger than they would were the detail not suppressed.
The Introduction sets out the interrelation of cognizing soul,
experienced world, and Sherman’s own conception of discourseembedded ideas, in the Republic and the Phaedo. He reviews the
various values accorded by scholars to their dramatic aspect, from
mere embellishment, through an attendant enactment of philosophical life to an inextricable involvement of action and argument.
Jacob Klein3 was an early and vivid proponent of this third view,
and Sherman recalls Klein’s influence on him in the warm appreciation of his Preface. In particular, Klein’s close-to-life reading
of the dialogues is reflected in Sherman’s “most radical and challenging suggestion”: the ideas are not atemporal beings separated
from the world but have a temporal, world-implicated dimension;
consequently the Platonic account of ideal being can the better be
the operative basis of a philosophic life of learning, teaching, talking. Images and image-making—and image-recognition, I would
add—will be crucial in drawing the ideas into human cognition
and moral activity.
3. Jacob Klein (1899-1978) was tutor (1938-69) and dean (1948-58) at
St. John’s College, and teacher until his death.
�REVIEW | BRANN
95
Chapter 1. The Interlocutor’s Request analyzes the problems
posed to Socrates in the Republic by Plato’s two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus: to show that justice is an inherent good,
hence a source of happiness. Here, I might comment, is a first
occasion for Sherman’s “careful parsing”; he delves deep into
the shallowness of Socrates’s talking partners. I think that approach, a dimension of the whole book, is a little hard on these
young men, as well as the all-but-boys of the Phaedo. After all,
they are there all night in the Republic and all day in the Phaedo,
attentive and eager; they do about as well as would any of us. If
I’d been there I wouldn’t have intruded my every mental reservation either, and, I think, that the same experience of a tacit
critical descant that Plato asks of a reader, Socrates respects in
his companions. We must supply knowing smiles, snickers,
raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, just as in a St. John’s seminar.
I think Socrates is more apt to bring out his present partners’
strengths than to expose their efforts to our cavils—if they’re
young.
To satisfy the brothers’ request Socrates sets up that problemfraught analogy between the offices of the castes of a well-constituted political community and the powers of the parts of the
soul. Sherman’s thorough expository prose obscures a little—a
dramatic hiccup would have helped—the arresting political assumption of this magnifying image, in which the individual psychology is said to be mirrored in the communal “constitution”
(whence the Greek title Politeia, “Polity”): civic justice is understood as the image of psychic adjustment. The consideration
of imaging becomes more urgent.
Chapter 2. Discourse treats of the possibility of realizing a
city so constituted. Recall here that Socrates in fact gives an unambiguous final answer: It makes no difference whether the
ideal city will ever exist or is just a model laid up in heaven; the
point is to practice our inner politics in its image—to use its politeia in turn as a model for constituting our own, individual,
psychic balance (592b). However, Sherman introduces several
levels on which the possibility question may play out. One condition for the existence of the just city is that a philosopher-king
will turn up—and, I would add, before he arrives there must be
�96
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
a pre-royal philosopher-founder—a proven unlikelihood, as is
shown by Plato’s misadventures with Syracuse’s tyrant-dynasty,
set out in his Letters. Therefore Sherman now reviews these
royal philosophers’ nature and their education, and in preparation, the underlying characteristics of degrees of cognition and
their objects. Thus the “digression of the central books” (p. 77)
is justified. Some readers may recall that Rousseau saw the center of the Republic in these books. Whatever the title may imply,
he says, it is really a treatise on education (Émile I) and, I might
add, on the constitution of the soul and the beings of the world.
Apparently, Sherman agrees (p. 137). However, he regards the
application of the ontology (the account of Being) and its realization in a program of education as provisional, incomplete.
The Phaedo is a necessary supplement. In any case, for him the
prerequisite imaging of the ideal in discourse looms yet larger.
Chapter 3. The Cave: Education and the Lack of It deals with
the Image of the Cave (the venue of human life) and the Divided Line (the gradation of beings and the ascent of cognition). Sherman takes the cave to be the city and, in clever
accord with the order of the Republic’s earlier books, where
city precedes soul, but in reversal of Books VI-VII, where the
enabling ontological line precedes the consequent civic cave,
manages neatly to insinuate his main thesis, the implication of
the Ideas in the human experience and knowledge of the world.
A bonus is Sherman’s account and critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of the Cave Image as embodying a loss of openness to the direct presence of beings, a receptivity still retained
by the Presocratics. Sherman shows that Heidegger himself actually appeals to the “ungrasped essence,” said to be deformed
by discourse, an appeal that vitiates the purity of his cherished
immediacy. Since Sherman himself supposes that beings come,
so to speak, into Being only in thinking and its speech, he argues that Plato’s image-dynamics more adequately facilitates
the sharing of Ideas between soul and world than does Heidegger’s hope of “unhiddenness.”
Chapter 4. The Divided Line and Dynamic of Ascent gives a
dynamic interpretation of the Divided Line, as an ascent and
�REVIEW | BRANN
97
descent, turn and turn-about, of living thinking, whose motor,
so to speak, is imaging: the Divided Line represents the cosmos, both its shifting appearances and its stable beings, as a
top-down cascade of images and a bottom-up effort of imagerecognition.4 Sherman begins with the triple causation attributed to the Idea of the Good, which is off the line, “beyond
Being.” It is a hyper-principle that brings things into being, allows them to flourish, and makes them knowable (as its image,
the sun, causes birth, growth, and visibility). Sherman deals
with a scholarly claim (Annas’s) that the Good is too impersonal and offers no human fulfillment thus: As the source of
the world’s intelligibility it is surely good for human beings. I
would add that the Good was in Plato’s “Unwritten Doctrines”5
named the One; thus it is a principle of unification, hence responsible for all human community, be it the civic union of
politics or the private bond of friendship; that is why it is introduced in the Republic.
There follows a close reading of the Line as a ladder of dialectic
ascent, which cannot be thrown away—“a serious claim” (p. 134)
moving toward Sherman’s interpretation of the Ideas as tied to psychic activity. The problem of images comes ever more front and
center in a critique of one scholar’s (Patterson’s) analytic treatment
of the sort of things the original Forms (Ideas) must be if worldly
things are their images: The Form is what its name says it is, but
not as having the qualities its namesake images possess. This
makes more sense than you’d think (though like all analytic expla4. “Image-recognition,” which is the mode of ascent along the Divided
Line, is Jacob Klein’s rectifying translation of eikasia, often understood
as a mode of guessing, conjecturing (as by Sherman himself, p. 151). Thus
the ability to distinguish between original and copy becomes the basic and
pervasive ontological capacity. Images, the objects recognized by imagerecognition, the central problem of Plato’s Sophist, present a never-ending
enticement to ontological reflection, some of which is being carried on in
issues of this journal: Review of Eva Brann, The World of the Imagination
(1991) by Dennis Sepper, The St. John’s Review 42.1 (1993): 1-19; review
of Dennis Sepper, Understanding Imagination (2013) by Eva Brann in
this issue, 1-16; and now this review of Sherman’s book.
5. Plato’s oral speculations, reported first by Aristotle.
�98
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
nations it’s flatly clarifying rather than brightly illuminating): A
Horse-Form is what a horse in truth is, but it’s not for riding. Sherman must object. Whatever this analysis of being a form means, it
implies that forms, ideas, are quite separate in kind from their physical images; he is preparing to bring forward a way of understanding the (moderated) separateness of Ideas from Soul and World
that requires their (ultimate) interdependence. The rest of the chapter concerns the soul’s different cognitive relations to the rising reality of the objects represented by the upright Line.
Chapter 5. Education and the Mind’s Eye attends to
Socrates’s filling in the lack of education in the Cave with the
education for the philosophic rulers. Sherman dwells on the
significance of Socrates’s beginning the program of study with
arithmetic—not the technique of numerical calculation but the
science of the nature of numbers.6 This science, beginning with
the unit, the one that constitutes each of the unit-assemblages
called arithmos, has special powers of philosophical levitation.
The “one” that is the beginning of counting-up, of generating
numbers, is, one might say, the inverted image of the One that
is the principle of the unity of all that is, the Good: the least
constituent mirrors the whole constitution.
From the first study I pass directly—Sherman leaves no such
lacuna—to the final one, dialectic, which dwells on the Ideas:
“Dialectic, then, produces the image of discourse [my italics]
as the song of reason of which the relations of Ideas as a harmony of the whole is the ultimate objective content” (p. 198).
Sherman means this literally: the identity of Ideas is inseparable from the relations among them, and those relations are insubstantial, it would seem. By “insubstantial” I mean that
normally relations emanate from and terminate in beings,
6. He takes his departure from Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992). Alumni
of the St. John’s Program will recognize all the elements of Socrates’s
program of learning, but will want to ponder the fact that we begin our
mathematical studies with Euclid’s geometry, with shapes and magnitudes
rather than with numbers and multitudes. I’d like to hear speculations
about, and opinions of, this pedagogic reversal.
�REVIEW | BRANN
99
which is why humans have to be somebody to relate to somebody. It’s not that existence as a mere node of relations is unthinkable, but rather that it’s demeaning. However, since the
treatment of the objects of dialectic, the Ideas, is deliberately
inexplicit in the Republic, it is in any case insufficient for a
persuasive theory of ideal being, and that deficiency makes
room for Sherman’s speculation.
Chapters 6-8. The Phaedo’s Arguments for Immortality, The
Problem of Wrong Beginnings, From Logos to Idea—these
chapters bring in the Phaedo’s fuller account of the soul as capable of learning and its more direct treatment of the Ideas as
necessary hypotheses; “image” and “separation” (chorismos)
are the concepts to be further clarified (p. 211).
In Chapter 6, the issue is whether the separation of the soul
from the body that the Phaedo appears to propose, be it as a
means of moral purification or as a condition of immortality,
is to be taken literally or imagistically, whether it is logos or
mythos (p. 221, though as it turns out logoi are also “images”).
Sherman prepares for his denial of this separate existence of
the soul and that of the Forms, whose separation is implicated
in the immortality and thus in the separability of the soul, by
arguing that if the reading of the text is properly dramatic, separation will always appear as “mythical” (p. 256), that is to say,
figurative—and that the naive boys of the Phaedo are not up
to the image-recognition required by Socrates’s myths.
It is a little absurd to balk at a book’s bulk and then to ask
for more. But, by concentrating on the boys’ inept literalism,7
an image-ontology, though projected in Chapter 7, is displaced
by a critique of the interlocutor’s powers of image-recognition
and interpretation. Such an ontology would, I think, give an
account of two aspects of image-being: 1. whence comes the
difference in plenitude of being that distinguishes an original
from its image, that admixture of being and non-being which
7. I keep saying “boys.” Simmias and Cebes are neaniskoi (Phaedo 89a),
adolescents with incipient whiskers or youths with first beards. To me
they seem the age of freshman, boys and men in turn.
�100
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
makes an image a mere image to the detriment of its dignity
(as set out in Plato’s Sophist);8 and 2. what is that similarity,
that admixture of sameness and difference, that connects an
image to its original—a far more complex question. It is this
second inquiry that would seem to me pertinent to Sherman’s
central thesis, which will involve a right reading of imagistic
logoi or rational mythoi. Here is how the philosophical problem
of similitude presents itself to me: Can objects from realms that
are conjoined by no exhibitable “isomorphism,” no structural
identity, have an image-relation? How far can the ordinary
word “image” be stretched, salva significatione, with its meaning being saved?
But perhaps before ontology should come phenomenology, an
account of the way imagining works and images appear.9 Sherman
puts to use a long passage from Proust’s Remembrance of Things
Past (p. 236), a practice I like very much because good novelists
are master-phenomenologists—it’s their métier. Marcel is enamored of a black-eyed woman, but every time he re-envisions her
the memory presents her as blue-eyed—as he says, because she
was a blonde. Perhaps, he perversely concludes, if her eyes had
not been so strikingly, intensely black, he would not have been so
particulièrement amoureux with her as blue-eyed. Sherman understands Proust’s passage—due notice being given to its perversity—
to illuminate a kind of “recollection,” here of dredging up those
image-memories from the soul in which the image of an object
brings with it the image of a person, as in the Phaedo a lyre is associated with its owner, a beloved boy. His point is that this boyimage lacks observed detail; it is of a “total person,” and the details
8. Generally the original is distinguished by several primacies: in time,
dimensionality, functionality, reality. Not so in representative art: A
mound of two-dimensional, inedible, unreal apples, painted by Cezanne
from a prior arrangement, is generally regarded with more respect (and
certainly costs more) than a bag of Pink Ladies bought by anyone at the
supermarket. That’s the valuation Socrates wants, on ontological grounds,
to forestall in Republic X.
9. As Sherman comes near saying (p. 388). For if human discourse is
image-making, then its interpretation is image-recognition (p. 391).
�REVIEW | BRANN
101
may well be mistaken. But—here’s the difficulty—Marcel is not
making a mistake. He knows, first and last, that the woman is
black-eyed. He is engaging in deliberate perversity: the imaginative potentiation by willful modulation of an observed reality that
is too opaquely positive for a languid sensibility. More simply put:
Marcel rearranges reality on the slight excuse of blondness to make
it his; so adjusted, it furnishes the object of his self-pleasingly
repetitive daydreams (je repensai); you might call it bed-ridden
love.10
I’ve picked on the Proust passage because Sherman infers from
it a solution to the problem of similarity I posed just above:
The picture does not look exactly like its original, but
then neither does the lyre look like the young boy, yet
we bridge this difficulty by our ability to respond to the
image as image. The sense of both “like” and “unlike”
is in fact multiple; it can be both in order of vivacity (picture vs. object) and visual resemblance (lyre-person).
And this is true of relations of the non-visible of “resemblance” and recollection (p. 237).
Sherman concludes that in the lyre-boy passage Plato is stressing
the possibility of such non-similar resemblance (I’ve intentionally
put it as a contradiction in terms), and that is what I want to question: When push comes to shove, how far up the ascent to Being
can image-recognition take you without obscuring the very nature
of the objects, the Ideas, which you want to attain?11
10. Proust’s way with love meets its refutation in a charming movie, It
Happened in Brooklyn, a 1947 film directed by Richard Whorf, starring
Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, and Jimmy Durante. The Sinatra character
takes his girl for granted, Lawford’s is really in love with her. Durante
(Brooklyn’s wise man) tests Sinatra: What’s the color of her eyes? He
dithers: perhaps blue? And so with other detail. Lawford knows on the
instant: brown. Q.E.D.: True love is hyper-observant; in fact that’s its
hallmark: acutely observational concentration.
11. Sherman has certainly considered, but apparently without consequence, the notion that for the highest thought, for noesis, the imagelogos might fail (p. 392, n. 1); but perhaps it is fairer to say that because
he gives so much “a wider interpretation” of images and image-making,
he considers the restriction overcome.
�102
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In Chapter 8, From Logos to Idea, Sherman’s thesis is fully developed, once again with the aid of the Phaedo, where on his last
day Socrates himself says more about the Ideas than anywhere
else.12 Socrates recounts his taking refuge in the use of of logoi for
looking at the truth of beings, lest his soul be blinded by sensory
looking. To pursue this way Socrates has recourse to hypothesizing
(literally, “sup-posing”), a way of proceeding by hypotheses,
namely Ideas, such as the Beautiful Itself (Phaedo 100a ff.). Sherman observes helpfully that a Socratic hypothesis is not, as for us,
a theory to be verified by being tested against experience, but the
converse: experience derives such being and intelligibility as it has
through some sort of presence in it of the forms (pp. 294-5).
But to test (worldly) things against the (transcendental) idea
means—and here I am not certain I follow (that is, understand
rightly or, if I do, agree)—to test them against the “idea functioning
as a logos” (ibid.). Moreover, it now turns out that “the hypotheses
as the particular idea expressed as a dianoetic [discursive] logos is
the idea at work,” and that this logos-idea is in fact to be verified,
not to the detriment of the idea but to the logos which may have
applied it wrongly by misclassifying the things of which it meant
to give an account. This human action (praxis) is, then, “a verification of the idea as logos, that is to say, as a hypothesis which is
an image of its idea” (p. 299; I’ve italicized the last clause). But
Socrates has already said that his images are both deficient and not
logoi: “for I don’t at all concede that somebody who looks into beings in accounts [logoi] looks at them in likenesses [images] to a
greater extent than one who does so in actions” (Phaedo 100a)13—
namely, does not look at them at all.
12. Along with his first appearance, as a boy in the Parmenides, so that
they are shown to preoccupy him first and last as problems; the Socratic
Ideas are ever works-in-progress. In the Symposium and the Phaedrus the
vision of the Ideas is imaginatively consummated.
13. I’ve taken this rendering from Plato’s Phaedo, trans., with introduction
and glossary by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 1998). We thought that “in actions” means something
like “in sensory reality” (p. 14). My own sense, expressed elsewhere, is
that the Phaedo’s blatantly unpersuasive arguments for the immortality of
�REVIEW | BRANN
103
The clearest formulation of Sherman’s thesis I found is this:
“The subjective form reflected in a logos must be seen as an image
of the objective Idea: the form is a rational image” (p. 217). The
soul’s ability to make and read “noetic images”14 is its very immortality, and the ideas it images are correspondingly eternal (p.
320). The logos-involved soul, that is, the form-informed soul and
the ideas share an ontology because they are interdependent;
“though something more than concepts, ideas do not have any real
independent existence outside this human dialectical triad of world,
soul and idea” (p. 387). And, as the logos-soul, the soul of the subjective form, is immortal and atemporal in the act of knowing in
which it accepts the eternal idea, so, reciprocally, the objective
ideas are timeless because they are congruent with the soul, not
because of some otherworldly stability (ibid.).
This account, if I have it correct, is certainly circular,15 which is no
argument against it. The most invulnerable philosophical accounts
are circular; they are ontological mirror images of the above-mentioned hermeneutic circle: Grounds “cause” consequences, consequences “confirm” grounds; inquiry requires pre-knowledge,
knowledge comes from inquiry. But in this perfect mutuality of
soul and idea, the outside third, the world (and the Idea of the Good
that makes the world intelligible) have somehow dropped out; how
are worldly things, which ideas were to serve both as causes
(sources of existence) and as reasons (sources of intelligibility),
actually involved in the triad?
the soul are each occasions for Socrates’s formulating the questions he is
leaving behind; he is handing on his forms as works-in-progress, as problems for future philosophy.
14. Sherman apparently identifies “rational” (dianoetic, discursive) and
“noetic” (intellective, directly beheld); they are, however, different segments
on the Divided Line.
15. While circularity—certainly no venial sin in secular argumentation—
is excusable in philosophical discourse, equivocation is, except in deliberate, inspired double-speak (such as Socrates’s “invisible looks,” the
Ideas) not so acceptable. I think some of my difficulties stem from subtle
meaning-shifts in key words such as image, separation, soul, rationality—
shifts away from common usage and also variations of use within the book.
�104
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
There is surely much at stake here for those of us who have the
sense that the explication of these matters might be, in all unhyperbolic sobriety, a matter of life and death. The reason is that, if we
believe that philosophical reflection (even if only occasional) makes
life more—and death less—real, this is an ever-present question:
Are there supersensible realms for us but also beyond us, attainable
but not just yet? And Sherman is surely speaking to just that question, but perhaps not altogether clearly.
Chapter 9. Closing the Circle. Now Sherman “closes the circle”
by returning to the Republic, to its last book. On the basis of his
theory of thinking as primarily image-recognition, he defends
Socrates’s condemnation of the imitative arts as practiced primarily
by painters and also poets against various scholarly critiques:
Socrates is not simply against the fine arts and their ways with reality, but he, in fact, has knowledge of a more veracious imagemaking and a more truth-telling myth-making (p. 349). So
Sherman ends by recurring to the inadequacy of the conversation
partners here, especially the vein of reward-seeking he discerns in
Glaucon (which is, in accord with the pervasive human theme of
the Republic, the happiness to be gotten from practicing justice
even incognito). Finally he resumes his own hermeneutic preoccupation by interpreting in his own mode the final myth, the myth
of Er, who returned from the Afterworld: It requires us “to see
through our images to the invisible in this life” (p. 379).16
Although it is not Sherman’s modus scribendi to collect his theses in one place succinctly and crisply as he goes, the Conclusion
does contain some summations, and therefore I may properly park
my three main queries under its title, ready to withdraw them if
I’ve misread the text.
16. That sounds just like our understanding in the Phaedo translation: the
Socratic invitation to practice death in this life (61c ff.) intends us to rise
in thought to the invisible realm here and now (and, of course, now and
then). But we did not mean that the realm of invisibility is somehow subjective, that is, only equivocally objective, psychically objective, so to
speak, or, on the other hand, that human beings come within actual sight
of it—except perhaps Socrates in the several episodes mentioned in the
dialogues, when he seems to be enraptured (e.g., Symposium 175b, 220c).
�REVIEW | BRANN
105
1. This three-pronged question eventually arises in reading Platonic texts: Do the thirty-six dialogues form a somewhat organic
corpus, are the dialogues parts of a whole, or is each dialogue its
own dialectic universe, a conversational world of its own? In reading dialogues, we should, I have no doubt, begin with the latter
supposition. But for a global interpretation it seems necessary to
take notice of the ensemble. Sherman leaves the erotic dialogues,
the Symposium and the Phaedrus, out of account, and in these (as
well as in Plato’s Seventh Letter) the ascent to the Ideas is a work
of love, the virtues are practiced to disencumber the soul from the
world, the logos ceases as the soul comes within sight of the Ideas,
and the sojourn with them has an ecstatic element. In fact, in the
Symposium it is said explicitly of the paradigm form, Beauty, that
it is “neither some logos nor some knowledge” (211a).17 So I think
that Sherman’s sort of implication, his dialogical immanence, has
to be balanced, reconciled—whatever—with the other-world separateness of the Ideas as desirable and distinct objects. And, to be
sure, that is practically impossible within the constraints of “careful” dissection, scholarly respectability, and the effort to keep Plato
plausible to contemporaries. For it requires a certain—rightly suspect—suspension of scrupulosity.18
2. I have misgivings about a Socratic (though not so much about
a Platonic) ontology of the soul. To be sure, Socrates is a master
of psychology, of the soul’s phenomenology. But it seems to me
that in the Socratic dialogues, and so in Plato’s view of Socrates,
the human soul hovers outside and around the structure of beings
and Being. As Sherman flips the Socratic sequence of Divided Line
and Cave, to give preeminence to the human context, so he seems
to me to have flipped the Divided Line laterally, so to speak. Reading left to right, the four line segments representing objects of
17. However, the logos—not as thinking but as uttered language—is
imaged, “as in a mirror,” namely, in sounds (Theaetetus 206d).
18. It is a fair question what role the very desire for a beautiful Beyond
plays in making it plausible. One side might well say that such longing
vitiates sober inquiry. The other may counter that, on the contrary, the
desire is itself a testimonial to transcendence, since it is fed by veracious
intimations.
�106
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
knowledge come first, on the left side, together with their inherent
kind of knowability. The four corresponding human capacities, including image-recognition, are appended in one sentence (Republic
513d) to the right—an afterthought, as it were. But Sherman gives
them priority. Perhaps the thoughtful soul’s standing among beings
remained a rousing enough problem in the Platonic Academy for
Aristotle to center his own philosophy around its solution, achieved
by setting up the unmovable moving divinity of his cosmos as Nous,
“Thought” or “Intellect,” whose activity is noesis, “intellection,”
the highest power for Socrates. Thus Aristotle made possible an integration of soul and being—and a soul-ontology. For now beings
do not one-sidedly inform the soul, but intellect reciprocally moves
the world into its own being, its fulfillment.
But if it is the case that the soul for Socrates is not within but
about being, then it may be difficult to make it the part-parent of
the Ideas. And even if the soul is a being among beings, I don’t
grasp just how the Ideas can be in their relation to it dependent and
also in themselves independent, in short, how they can be both subjective and objective. I am all for paradoxes; I think our world is
such that they are its most adequate type of speech—provided the
inner nature of the beings that elicit them is first clearly worked
out, so that paradoxical speech is summary speech, language that
collects necessarily disparate insights. That is why I here conclude
with queries rather than with counter-claims—because I’m not sure
how the “both/and” is justified, what mental incongruities I must—
and would willingly—entertain to get the good of the duality.
3. Now comes the more technical crux of these inquiries. Just
how is logos imagistic? Out of the welter of uses for the word
logos, let me choose the two most prominent ones: word (or noun)
and rational discourse (or thoughtful speech). One word names,
intends (how is unknown) numerous instances, distinct in time,
place, or shape (morphe) and yet the same in some respect (or we
would not have a natural inclination to use this logos collectively);
that something “same” in all of them is what a logos picks out and
names; it is Socrates’s form (idea). A word conveys (how is unknown) the idea without being in any normal sense a likeness: I
think it is impossible to detect any image-function in this naming-
�REVIEW | BRANN
107
logos without stretching the meaning out of all recognition. I shall
say why.
“Rational discourse” consists largely of propositions conveying
meaning. Some of these sentences are descriptive and raise mental
images (how is unknown), and such logoi are indeed image-making
(Plato, Sophist 234c). Others, however, are not descriptive but dialectic or “dianoetic;” they “think through” the thought-structure
of appearances and beings, and such logoi are only forcibly imagistic. To be sure, in the lower reaches, some logical arguments can
indeed sometimes be represented in spatial diagrams19 (how is unknown), because the logic-diagrams image not the proposition but
a mental image, a quasi-spatial corralling of class-members: Visualize “All bulls are bovines” as a herd of cattle, enclosed in a
barbed-wire fence, which includes a round pen just for the uncastrated males; then erase the cattle and retain the spatial schematism.
So, if, going from the second to the third part of the Divided
Line, I recognize by the power of dianoetic (thoughtful) imagerecognition that a geometric sphere is the true, more being-replete
original of a soccer ball (quite a feat, since to ordinary thoughtless
image-recognition the ball is surely more real), it is not because
the logos is an image but because it isn’t; it’s about images; it comprehends them. In other words, insights of image-recognition (eikasia) seem to be expressible in logoi, but they aren’t images.20 I have
a suspicion why that is: The logos has a negative capability: not or
non-, while images have no inherent negativity. They have the
same thoroughgoing positivity as the spatial world. It takes words
to dub any aspect or space, even emptiness, as a not-this or an absence. As I said, with Sherman I like to see the novelists bear me
out: The fatal Marabar Cave, in Forster’s Passage to India (Ch.
XIV), is the venue of negation in words, but in experience it is a
resounding “boum”—for negation has no sensory image as such,
and so propositions that are negated can’t be wordlessly imaged.
19. Such as Euler diagrams.
20. Sherman actually speaks mostly of image-making rather than imagerecognition. But I think the logos penetrates rather than produces images.
The difficulty may be located just here: What, in Sherman’s view, is the
work, what are the processes proper to logos?
�108
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In sum, I’m not sure whether language intends, symbolizes, or represents,21 but it doesn’t seem to be at all isomorphic with sensible
objects so as to image them. And when it comes to speech about
the Forms, verbal, expressible thinking seems to fail, as Sherman’s
helpful report of scholars’ battles, for example, with self-predication22 amply shows.
****
These queries have been about Sherman’s unquestionably
thought-arousing interpretation of the Republic and the
Phaedo, or rather, about its philosophical consequences; indeed
they are the very proof of its interest. But Sherman also has,
besides the intention of doing the texts justice by reading them
as conversations among differently inclined and diversely responsive human beings, a motive, a hoped-for effect, which his
interpretation is to serve: to let us, with Socrates, “see ourselves as essentially engaging collectively in a discourse that
brings us together rather than drives us apart” (p. 392). And
that aim is beyond querying; what is an open question, one on
whose terms Sherman’s opus focuses the mind, is this: Do we
come closer to the way things are by recourse to the workinghypothesis of Ideas, unattainable in this life but informing the
soul from beyond with expectant desire and responsive logoi?
Or do we do better by means of Sherman’s thesis of a human
rationality so inseparably involved with the Ideas that they are
“not manifest” outside this union, within which they are interpretable “as essentially atemporal experience wholly in this
21. I half suspect that Sherman would answer my difficulty by saying that
he has enlarged the meaning of “image” so as to mean representation, a
way of re-presenting something, of recalling, of standing-for a thing, that
requires no similarity. I think it would still be necessary to show how
logos “represents.” The proper naming of logos’s relation to the things it
is about is, I think, the perplexity of language.
22. For example is the Idea of Justice itself just? The problem is a version
of the question raised in a note above: Is “similarity” reciprocal between
an idea and its copy? I should say that to me philosophy becomes wonderful just when “rational speech” (actually a redundancy: logikos logos)
fails, becomes para-doxical, “counter-credible.”
�ESSAYS & LECTURES |
109
life” (p. 386)—as our experience, it seems, not as unequivocally separate Beings?
Has Daniel Sherman saved the Ideas and if so, are they
Socrates’s Ideas? I leave that question open. But he has surely
done his part to see that the “myth was saved” (Republic, 621b)
and is now before us to consider—just as Er did by not drinking of the River of Forgetting.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
109 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
The St. John's Review, Spring 2014
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T.H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Arnaiz, Deziree
Sachs, Joe
Fried, Michael N.
Recco, Gregory
Wiener, Linda
Eagleson, Hannah
Kalkavage, Peter
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 55, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2014.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
St_Johns_Review_Vol_55_No_2_Spring_2014
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
St. John's Review
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a7a955d179c2ddd970df9e334e615396.pdf
3418c82c26f49cb2fce20f0f1ea8bf53
PDF Text
Text
The St. John’s Review
Volume 55.1 (Fall 2013)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Deziree Arnaiz
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800.
©2013 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing
The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at
www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml.
��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Tocqueville’s Worst Fears Realized? The Political Implications
of Ralph Waldo Emerson’sTranscendental Spiritualism .............1
Bryan-Paul Frost
“At the Very Center of the Plenitude”: Goethe’s Grand Attempt
to Overcome the 18th Century; or, How Freshman Laboratory
Saved Goethe From the General Sickness of his Age ..................40
David Levine
Special Section: Justice
Editor’s Note .....................................................................................70
The Actual Intention of Plato’s Dialogues on
on Justice and Statesmanship .......................................................71
Eva Brann
Reflections on Justice in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov..............................................................80
Chester Burke
Peaceniks and Warmongers: The Disunity of Virtue
in Plato’s Statesman......................................................................89
Peter Kalkavage
Raskolnikov’s Redemption ...............................................................99
Nicholas Maistrellis
Justice in Plato’s Statesman ............................................................110
Eric Salem
Reviews
Getting to Know Kierkegaard Better
Book Review of Richard McCombs’s
The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. ..............119
James Carey
Plato’s Political Polyphony
Book Review of Plato: Statesman,translated by
Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. .........................134
Gregory Recco
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
�Tocqueville’s Worst Fears Realized?
The Political Implications of
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
Transcendental Spiritualism
Bryan-Paul Frost
It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters
at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science
fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess
wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once
the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.
But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is
Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism—a faith that
equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious
communion with the natural world. . . .
If this narrative sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism
has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation
now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he
went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven
through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose
mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the
galaxy together.”
Hollywood keeps returning to these themes because millions of Americans respond favorably to them. . . . A recent
Pew Forum report on how Americans mix and match theology found that many self-professed Christians hold beliefs
about the “spiritual energy” of trees and mountains that
would fit right in among the indigo-tinged Na’Vi.
As usual, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming.
—Ross Douthat, “Heaven and Nature,”
New York Times, December 2009
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville delivered a blunt
verdict on the increasing popularity, in democratic countries, of pantheism: “Among the different systems with whose aid philosophy
Bryan-Paul Frost is the Elias “Bo” Ackal, Jr./BORSF Endowed Professor of
Political Science and adjunct professor of Philosophy at the University of
Louisiana at Lafayette.
�2
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
seeks to explain the universe, pantheism appears to me one of the
most appropriate to seduce the human mind in democratic centuries;
all who remain enamored of the genuine greatness of man should
unite and do combat against it.” For a writer whose moderation and
nonpartisanship are well known, these remarks are a heavy indictment indeed. Why did Tocqueville believe that pantheism is both
so alluring and so debilitating to democratic peoples? And whom
precisely did he blame for the seduction? The second of these questions is easier to answer. Tocqueville singles out the Germans and
the French for introducing pantheism into philosophy and literature, respectively. The editors of one of the most recent translations
of Democracy in America indicate that Tocqueville probably has
in mind philosophers such as Leibnitz, Fichte, and Hegel, on the
one side, and writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine and Edgar
Quinet, on the other side.1
Since Tocqueville found the democratic urge to be particularly
strong in the United States, one is naturally led to wonder whether
there might not be some American authors whose writings exhibit
the same worrisome tendencies. This paper will enlarge on Tocqueville’s critique by studying an American essayist who, probably
unwittingly, revealed in more concrete detail the full extent of Tocqueville’s fears about pantheism: Ralph Waldo Emerson.
At first glance, Emerson seems an unlikely mark for such a
charge. After all, in such inspirational essays as “Self-Reliance,”
he seems to champion “human individuality” and greatness, and
is a severe critic of majority tyranny, intellectual apathy, and the
slavish pursuit of wealth and reputation—all of which Tocqueville
too denounced as unhealthy extremes to which democracy is prone.
On the other hand, Emerson was also a founding member of, and
chief spokesperson for, the American Transcendentalist movement,
and his religious convictions had strong strains of Neoplatonic and
pantheistic spiritualism. Emerson’s transcendentalism had no little
impact on his political and ethical writings: indeed, his unique
brand of spontaneity, intuition, and creativity was based upon an
individual hearkening to the voice of God within him, a God that
permeated all nature and with the aid of whom one sought to act
in conformity with one’s unique calling. Emerson’s thought, it
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
3
turns out, despite its apparent support for individual greatness, rests
on spiritual principles that eventually corrode, and ultimately undermine, both genuine human nobility and healthy democratic
ethics. In what follows, we will attempt to uncover the political
implications and effects of Emerson’s spiritualism—a spiritualism
whose basic tenets, as the preceding epigraph makes clear, are still
very influential today.
Easy Answers, Unmoored Souls:
The Debilitating Effects of Pantheism and Fatalism
Tocqueville’s brief treatment of pantheism (DA 2.1.7, 425–26) occurs as part of his discussion of the “Influence of Democracy on
Intellectual Movement in the United States.” The purpose of this
section is to articulate how the mind of a democratic people is influenced and shaped by democracy itself. This is an especially important topic in relation to democracy; for, as Tocqueville points
out earlier in the book, democrats rely only on their own reason
when judging or evaluating, and not on such factors as age, experience, tradition, class, and so on—precisely because, as egalitarians, they bow to no superior authority (DA 2.1.1, 403–4). One
might say this about the philosophic method of Americans, who
closely follow Cartesian precepts, Tocqueville says, without ever
having read Descartes themselves: in America, Je pense, donc je
suis means “I am the only one who can be relied upon to judge
things which are of concern to me.”
Of course, Tocqueville knows that democrats are not all
equally capable of making wise and informed decisions on their
own, and they will thus turn to sources of authority and intellectual
devices that will not offend their pride or undermine their fundamental belief in equality. In fact, Tocqueville argues, democrats
turn to an anonymous but omnipresent public opinion to supply
convenient answers and ready-made beliefs. He identifies the
source of this behavior in what he calls “the theory of equality applied to intellects”: “The moral empire of the majority is founded
in part on the idea that there is more enlightenment and wisdom in
many men united than in one alone” (DA 1.2.7, 236). Indeed, democrats are particularly susceptible to rely on and trust public opin-
�4
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
ion inasmuch as egalitarianism isolates and atomizes individuals
from one another; consequently, to go against public opinion leaves
one feeling small, feeble, and helpless (DA 2.1.2, 408–9). Moreover, Tocqueville explains why democrats have a tendency for general ideas and over-simplifications: these tools make thinking and
judging easier, even if they inevitably compromise accuracy. This
ease in thinking passes for skill, and so, overlooking the sloppiness
introduced by generalities, democratic peoples become prouder of
their intelligence even as they become lazier in their thinking (DA
2.1.3 and 4, 411–16).
Tocqueville notes, however, that there is at least one area in
which dogmatic or fixed opinions and general ideas are salutary
for democratic peoples, namely, in matters of religion. Religion
provides the necessary counterweight to the ill effects of individual
isolation or atomization and love of material pleasure—the twin
dangers to which democrats are most prone. By raising one’s mind
to the heavens, and by inculcating duties to one’s fellows, religion
imposes obligations and responsibilities that are contrary to the desires democrats would likely pursue if left to themselves (DA 2.1.5,
417–19). It is in this context that Tocqueville turns to pantheism,
and in this context it appears to be the culmination of his critique
of democratic thought.
Democrats are attracted to pantheism for two principal reasons.
In the first place, pantheism feeds the democratic prejudice to reject
all traditional sources of authority and rely exclusively on one’s
own reason. As everyone is part of the same, undifferentiated
whole (God included!), no claim to superiority or authority can
hold: human particularity or individuality is obliterated in universal
homogeneity. But it is precisely the elimination of particularity or
individuality that, while being so attractive to democrats, is also
so dangerous. Democrats are further atomized and enfeebled as
everyone is swallowed up in the whole, which encompasses all
Being. As Tocqueville explains: “As conditions become more
equal and each man in particular becomes more like all the others,
weaker and smaller, one gets used to no longer viewing citizens so
as to consider only the people; one forgets individuals so as to think
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
5
only of the species” (DA 2.1.7, 426). We are, quite literally, withdrawn into our own little world, and this leaves democrats all the
more susceptible to the crushing and deadening weight of public
opinion: indeed, public opinion might become ever more despotic
as pantheism takes hold, for there is nothing—not even God Himself—that can stand as a bulwark against its dictates and demands.
To use language Tocqueville will use later in part 2 of the same
Volume (DA 2.2.2, 482: “On Individualism in Democratic Countries”): while democracy fosters the creation of atomized and isolated individuals, pantheism then eliminates the particularity of the
individuals thus created.
In the second place, pantheism appeals to the desire for unity,
general ideas, and single-minded explanations—indeed, it satisfies
this desire as no other religious or philosophic doctrine can. By reducing all Being—God and man, visible and invisible, change and
continuity—into a single whole, which alone is eternal and true
and real, democrats generate remarkably crisp, easy, and pleasing
answers when it comes to those first questions about human existence which trouble the soul (cf. DA 2.1.5, 418). By the same
token, however, this easy solution has deleterious effects on the
(already limited) intellectual capacity of democratic peoples: pantheism “nourishes the haughtiness and flatters the laziness of their
minds” (DA 2.1.7, 426) in the same way as all general ideas do.
But pantheism is more problematic than this. By collapsing the
material and immaterial world into a single whole, pantheism inadvertently collapses, or even eliminates, the tension between the
duties and obligations we owe to others and to heaven, on the one
hand, and the earthly desire for material well-being and pleasure,
on the other hand. Tocqueville is hardly so sanguine as to believe
that this tension could ever be overcome. He cautions religions that
they should neither try to uproot the desire for well-being (the implication is that this desire is generally stronger than the desires
proper to religion) nor try to provoke unnecessary conflicts with
generally accepted public opinions. Nevertheless, by keeping this
tension alive and well, democratic society is able to enjoy the salutary effects of religion and avoid the spiritual degradation to which
�6
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
democracy is prone. In sum, pantheism both exacerbates the worst
effects of what Tocqueville describes as “individualism” and undermines the salutary effects of religion on a democratic people.
One peculiar aspect of Tocqueville’s discussion is that it is not
quite clear whether pantheism is a philosophic doctrine or a religious system, or both, or neither. Tocqueville describes pantheism
as both a “doctrine” and a “system,” and in the latter case, he once
indirectly implies that it is a “philosophic system.” He never states,
however, that it is a “religious” doctrine or system. Nonetheless,
Tocqueville also seems to oppose pantheism to philosophy per se,
as when he says that the “Germans introduce [pantheism] into philosophy,” and that “[a]mong the different systems with whose aid
philosophy seeks to explain the universe, pantheism appears to me
one of the most appropriate to seduce the human mind in democratic centuries” (DA 2.1.7, 425–26). Could it be that pantheism is
a sort of secular religion, a sort of middle ground between Christianity and atheism? And if this is true, then would not the growing
strength of pantheism be one indication that a people are moving
away from religion properly speaking? In this respect, it is important to note that Tocqueville concludes the chapter preceding his
discussion of pantheism, “On the Progress of Catholicism in the
United States,” with this prediction:
It is one of the most familiar weaknesses of the human
intellect to want to reconcile contrary principles and to
buy peace at the expense of logic. Therefore there always have been and always will be men who, after having submitted some of their religious beliefs to an
authority, want to spare several others and let their
minds float at random between obedience and freedom.
But I am brought to believe that the number of these
will be smaller in democratic than in other centuries
and that our descendants will tend more and more to
be divided into only two parts, those leaving Christianity entirely and others entering into the bosom of the
Roman Church (DA 2.1.6, 425).
To the extent that pantheism is not a religion—to the extent that pantheism signifies the near absence of true religious conviction—then
a people embracing pantheism will be prone to moral and political
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
7
servitude, as Tocqueville tried to show a bit earlier in the text.
When religion is destroyed in a people, doubt takes
hold of the highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each becomes accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about matters
that most interest those like him and himself; one defends one’s opinions badly or abandons them, and as
one despairs of being able to resolve by oneself the
greatest problems that human destiny presents, one is
reduced, like a coward, to not thinking about them at
all.
Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens
the springs of the will and prepares citizens for servitude.
Not only does it then happen that they allow their
freedom to be taken away, but often they give it over.
When authority in the matter of religion no longer
exists, nor in the matter of politics, men are soon frightened at the aspect of this limitless independence. This
perpetual agitation of all things makes them restive and
fatigues them. As everything is moving in the world of
the intellect, they want at least that all be firm and stable in the material order; and as they are no longer able
to recapture their former beliefs, they give themselves
a master (DA 2.1.5, 418).
Since pantheism appears to loosen religious sentiment, the widespread acceptance of this “doctrine” among a democratic people
might well indicate that they are becoming enervated and susceptible to bondage in the form of political salvation. Thus, although
Tocqueville claims that new religions cannot be easily established
in democratic times (for no one is willing to submit to an “intellectual authority” which is “outside of and above humanity” [DA
2.1.2, 408]), pantheism can be established, precisely because the
source of its belief is not outside of humanity, but within it, and
because it is not really a religion as Tocqueville understands the
term.
We can round off our consideration of Tocqueville’s ideas
about the effects of democracy on the thought of its citizens by
looking briefly at his discussion of the tendencies of democratic
�8
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
historians, a topic he said he would discuss at the beginning of the
chapter on pantheism. Democratic historians, he says, are prone to
underestimate or ignore the role of particular causes—that is “great
men”—in the course of history. He finds the root of this tendency
in democracy itself.
When . . . all citizens are independent of one another,
and each of them is weak, one finds none who exert a
very great or above all a very lasting power over the
mass. At first sight, individuals seem absolutely powerless over it, and one would say that society advances
all by itself—by the free and spontaneous concourse of
all the men who compose it (DA 2.1.20, 470).
Historians who adopt this attitude tend to think that history has a
sort of inevitable motion that cannot be regulated by human
agency.
When any trace of the action of individuals on nations
is lost, it often happens that one sees the world moving
without discovering its motor. As it becomes very difficult to perceive and analyze the reasons that, acting
separately on the will of each citizen, in the end produce the movement of the people, one is tempted to believe that this movement is not voluntary and that,
without knowing it, societies obey a superior, dominating force (DA 2.1.20, 471).
Such a force seems nearly impossible to resist, and belief in it leads
first to the conclusion that human freedom is illusory, and then to the
deduction that individuals are not responsible even for their own actions, let alone for the actions of their nation.
Even if one should discover on earth the general fact
that directs the particular wills of all individuals, that
does not save human freedom. A cause vast enough to
be applied to millions of men at once and strong enough
to incline all together in the same direction easily seems
irresistible; after having seen that one yields to it, one is
quite close to believing that one cannot resist it (DA
2.1.20, 471).
If the notion of such an irresistible force were to gain widespread
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
9
currency in the thought of a democratic people, society would simply grind to a halt due to the general belief that no one is strong
enough to take any action that matters, any action that can push
back against the tide of history. The very possibility of human
greatness would fade out, because the freedom that nourishes that
possibility would no longer present itself to the mind.
Historians who live in democratic times, therefore, not
only deny to a few citizens the power to act on the destiny of a people, they also take away from peoples themselves the ability to modify their own fate, and they
subject them either to an inflexible providence or to a
sort of blind fatality. . . .
If this doctrine of fatality, which has so many attractions for those who write history in democratic times,
passed from writers to their readers, thus penetrating the
entire mass of citizens and taking hold of the public
mind, one can foresee that it would soon paralyze the
movement of the new societies (DA 2.1.20, 471–72).
In summary: Tocqueville understood that living in democratic
times could lead to modes of thought that would be highly detrimental, both for the freedom of the individual and for the freedom
of the whole people. In particular, the doctrines of pantheism and
fatalism dispose people to subservience: the first because it enhances individualism and weakens the moral force of religion; the
second because it eliminates the feeling that the individual has any
agency in, or responsibility for, the course taken by events. If Tocqueville is right, then anything that assists the spread of pantheism
and fatalism will present a danger to democratic societies.
Emerson’s Transcendental Spiritualism
In order to understand the political implications of Emerson’s spiritualism, and to see if that understanding leads to precisely the
consequences that Tocqueville feared, it is first necessary to lay
out Emerson’s views on transcendentalism, in particular, and on
Christianity, in general. Our effort here will be focused on showing
that Emerson’s spiritualism is remarkably similar to Tocqueville’s
pantheism.
�10
Transcendentalism
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Although Emerson is often referred to as one of the principal innovators of American Transcendentalism, in his essay “The Transcendentalist” (1843), he denies that transcendentalism is a new or
original school of thought. In fact, he says, the roots of transcendentalism—which he also calls idealism—are as old as thinking
itself, and it is one of only two modes of thinking.
As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects,
Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on
experience, the second on consciousness; the first class
beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say,
The senses give us representations of things, but what
are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealist
on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration,
on miracle, on individual culture. These two modes of
thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends that
his way of thinking is in higher nature. He concedes all
that the other affirms, admits the impressions of sense,
admits their coherency, their use and beauty, and then
asks the materialist for his grounds of assurance that
things are as his senses represent them. But I, he says,
affirm facts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts
which are of the same nature as the faculty which reports them, and not liable to doubt; facts which in their
first appearance to us assume a native superiority to
material facts, degrading these into a language by
which the first are to be spoken; facts which it only
needs a retirement from the senses to discern. Every
materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never
go backward to be a materialist (RE 81).2
Whereas a materialist (e.g., John Locke) acknowledges the independent existence of an external world accessible through sense
impression and confirmed through experience, a transcendentalist
or idealist (e.g., Immanuel Kant) privileges his own consciousness
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
11
and intuition, arguing that the “external world” is mental or spiritual, and is only apprehended or revealed through an individual,
self-conscious mind. The transcendentalist does not dispute that
objects are perceived by the senses; rather, he questions whether
sense perception is an accurate, complete, and final representation
of the object in itself.
After arguing that the materialist’s confidence in the solidity
of facts and figures is ill founded, Emerson makes the following
comparison:
In the order of thought, the materialist takes his departure from the external world, and esteems a man as one
product of that. The idealist takes his departure from his
consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance.
The materialist respects sensible masses, Society, Government, social art and luxury, every establishment,
every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of
space, or amount of objects, every social action. The
idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical,
namely the rank which things themselves take in his
consciousness; not at all the size or appearance. Mind
is the only reality, of which men and all other natures
are better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history,
are only subjective phenomena. . . . His thought—that
is the Universe. His experience inclines him to behold
the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing
perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard all things as having a
subjective or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid
Unknown Centre of him (RE 82–83).
While Emerson’s transcendentalist appears at first glance to be
wholly sovereign and self-determined, he is also open to influences
or forces from without—albeit influences of a certain sort:
The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of
spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light
and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He
�12
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to
demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications
to the state of man, without the admission of anything
unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus the spiritual measure of inspiration is the
depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he
resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures
onthe spirit than its own (RE 84).
In order to develop a more detailed image of the transcendentalist, we must attempt to concretize Emerson’s elliptical remarks
about “spirituality.” What—or who—is this “Universe” which
“beckons and calls” the transcendentalist from inactivity “to
work,” which issues him the “highest command,” and with which
he seeks some sort of “union” (RE 91 and 95)? Emerson refers to
this deity or highest principle in a variety of ways with no discernable difference in meaning: in the essay “The Over-Soul” (1841)
alone, he uses the terms “Unity,” “Over-Soul,” “the eternal ONE,”
“Highest Law,” “Supreme Mind,” “Maker,” “Divine mind,” “Omniscience,” and “God” quite interchangeably. All of these terms
seem to refer to a transcendent spiritual force that permeates and
animates all existence—both human and non-human nature, organic and inorganic—and that binds and unites everything together
in a pure and sublime oneness or wholeness.
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and
particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this
deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is
all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing
seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one (RE 237).
Every individual is contained within this whole, and although the
ultimate source of both our being and the whole is unknown or hidden, before its power our soul is laid bare and we are revealed for
who we are.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the
present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is
that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the
soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-Soul,
within which every man’s particular being is contained
and made one with all other; that common heart of
which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which
all right action is submission; that overpowering reality
which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains
every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his
character and not from his tongue (RE 237).
13
Our communion with and access to this deity is through our own
soul, which Emerson states is neither an “organ,” nor a “function,”
nor a “faculty”: the soul is the unpossessed and unpossessable
“background of our being” which transcends time and space. If a
man is the “facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good
abide,” the soul would be a light shining from within or behind this
facade, illuminating all and giving direction to our will and intellect; and when we allow the soul to “have its way through us,” intellect becomes genius, will virtue, and affection becomes love (RE
238–39).
The perception and disclosure of truth in and through the
soul—“an influx of the Divine mind into our mind”—is what
Emerson calls “revelation.” Although revelation varies in both its
intensity and character—from the transfiguring to the tepid, from
the prophetic to the prosaic—all persons have the capacity to be
so moved, and all persons who are so moved belong to the same
general class of individuals, whether they be a Socrates or a St.
Paul. One reason for this vast resemblance among “prophets” is
that the “nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of the absolute law” (RE 243–44). Unfortunately, the precise
content of this law is not articulated—indeed, it cannot and should
not be articulated. Revelation does not occur through words, nor
does it respond to our questions.
Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In
past oracles of the soul the understanding seeks to find
�14
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from
God how long men shall exist, what their hands shall do
and who shall be their company, adding names and dates
and places. But we must pick no locks. We must check
this low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive; it is
really no answer to the questions you ask. . . . Men ask
concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments
of heaven, the state of the sinner, and so forth. They even
dream that Jesus has left replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak
in their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the
soul, the idea of immutableness is essentially associated.
Jesus, living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of these,
never made the separation of the idea of duration from
the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to
teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. . . .
These questions which we lust to ask about the future
are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them.
No answer in words can reply to a question of things
(RE 244–45).
We must apparently rest content with Emerson’s assurances that,
if we “forego all low curiosity” and live in the infinite present of
today, these questions will somehow be answered or resolved
through the silent workings of the soul. The key to existence is an
almost child-like innocence, simplicity, and authenticity, complete
honesty with oneself and with others, utter openness to the OverSoul and consequently all creation through it; being insincere, sophistic, or double in any way indicates disharmony in the soul and
distance from God.
These remarks naturally raise the question as to whether
Emerson’s deity is a caring or providential being. To begin with,
in what sense would one pray to this entity? Certainly, Emerson
does not understand prayer in any ordinary or traditional sense.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
15
He describes his notion of prayer in “Self-Reliance”:
In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which
they call a holy office is not so much as brave and
manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign
addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses
itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and
mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life
from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a
beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes
dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As
soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He
will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the
farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the
rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true
prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends
(RE 147–48).
Those who pray or beg to attain some selfish end (material goods
or worldly success) falsely assume a separation between themselves and the divine; those who express regret or recite creeds display an “infirmity” of the will or intellect (RE 148). Properly
speaking, prayer is the act of a healthy, self-reliant individual contemplating or celebrating the existence of God within his soul, and
it can be manifested in the simplest actions.
Nonetheless, Emerson’s deity is more than a transcendent spirit
animating existence, for he also affirms that God the “Maker of all
things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us over things” (RE 242–43). This supreme creator,
however, is not the God of the Old Testament, but the divine mind
or soul of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists: the world is an emanation
or overflow from the divine mind; all creation is contained within
this whole, and all the variety in nature is encompassed within this
unity (RE 18ff., 118–19, 252ff., 293). Although the divine maker
can apparently choose to inspire specific individuals, and although
�16
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
he sent Jesus into the world (albeit not in the sense of his being the
son of God), God does not perform miracles in any ordinary or traditional sense of the word. Christianity’s moral doctrines and not
its miracles are what move Emerson to belief, and the attempt to
convert others through miracles is a spiritual abomination: genuine
conversion comes through genuine instruction, and this is strictly
a matter of free internal acceptance, without any external compulsion whatsoever (RE 67–69, 106–8, 237). The greatest miracle of
all would seem to be the shattering and transfiguring beauty of the
universe as well as the immutable natural laws that govern its operation. At all events, whatever the precise character of this personal and mystic union with the Over-Soul, it seems ecstatic,
ineffable, and utterly compelling; it is much more a matter of the
heart than the intellect; and it does not rely on traditions, institutions, and rituals.
Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the
soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships
God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of
this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It
inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing
to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place,
effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments!
When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased
from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart
with his presence. . . .
Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all
thought to his heart; this, namely, that the Highest dwells
with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind,
if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know
what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet
and shut the door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other
men’s devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him,
until he have made his own (RE 248–49).
Although much more could certainly be said about Emerson’s transcendentalism, it seems clear from this overview that, at least from
Tocqueville’s perspective, Emerson’s “religious” system or doc-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
17
trine exhibits precisely those characteristics Tocqueville had described about pantheism: the material and immaterial world is encompassed in an undifferentiated unity or whole to which we are
inextricably and inexplicably linked.
Having briefly discussed Emerson’s transcendentalism, let us
now turn to the question of whether it exhibits some of the dangerous characteristics that Tocqueville feared. Does Emerson’s
spiritualism, for example, nourish “the haughtiness” and flatter
“the laziness” of our minds in the same way that all general ideas
do? A strong indication is Emerson’s doubt, in “The Over-Soul,”
about whether everyday language can capture the deity’s essence:
Every man’s words who speaks from that life must
sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same
thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My
words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and
cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold!
their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal
as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane
words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven
of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected
of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law (RE 237–38).
Clearly, Emerson thinks that language, unaided by divine inspiration, cannot convey divine insights. In fact, he suggests in the Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 that the very attempt to
communicate religion has an inherently corrupting effect. Historical Christianity, for example, has fallen away, he says, from the
true message of Jesus.
Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the
doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells,
with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.
The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no
preferences but those of spontaneous love (RE 68).
�18
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Similarly, in “Self-Reliance” (1841) he also faults “all philosophy”
in its attempt to inquire into the divine source of such entities as
life, being, justice, and the soul.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes
us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When
we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we
ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul
that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its
absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates
between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary
perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so,
like day and night, not to be disputed (RE 141–42).
It would seem that certain subjects are off-limits to philosophical
speculation because to communicate one’s findings profanes the
subject matter and is thus a sacrilege. Ultimately, Emerson’s religious understanding might be ineffable or untranslatable because
it rests on an entirely individual, and therefore inherently subjective, communion or experience. Emerson’s religious system or
doctrine is sweepingly comprehensive, but he relieves us from having to think about its specifics by cutting off all philosophic discussion. Thus Emerson forces his spiritual ideas to be extremely
simple and general.
But it is precisely this generality which, while appealing to
lazy minds, also leaves people without any real answers to those
fundamental questions of human existence that Tocqueville sees
as critical in religious dogma. Without answers to those questions,
democratic intellects expose themselves to all sorts of dangers. Although Emerson claims that questions concerning the immortality
of the soul, providence, and the afterlife are not properly asked of,
or answered by, his deity, Tocqueville has warned us that the democratic soul will become enervated or even paralyzed over time by
seeking answers to all these deep questions, and then become ripe
for political and moral enslavement.
Indeed, one wonders whether Tocqueville would even consider
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
19
Emerson’s spirituality to be a religion at all inasmuch as it refuses
to provide answers about primary questions. At the very least, by
collapsing the tension between the material and immaterial world,
Emerson seems to have undermined what Tocqueville sees as the
salutary effect of religion on a democratic ethos, namely, promoting duties to others and limiting the unbridled pursuit of wealth.
Of course, there is nothing in Emerson’s spiritualism that encourages the opposite tendencies, and Emerson says on more than one
occasion that the mere pursuit of wealth is slavish. Nevertheless,
absent any sort of “divine sanction” or “divine punishment” to
deter those who might be tempted to forego their obligations to
others, one wonders how Emerson’s transcendentalism, over the
long run, could fully support a healthy democratic ethos when
democratic passions run so clearly in the opposite direction.
Unitarian Christianity
This assessment of Emerson’s spiritualism needs some amplification. After all, Emerson was (however briefly) a Unitarian minister,
and therefore his rather “unorthodox” transcendentalism must be
understood in the context of his more “orthodox” Christianity. Certainly any complete account of Emerson’s religiosity must give
due weight to his understanding of Christ and Christianity; but, as
we shall see, even when this is taken into account, it is difficult to
reach conclusions that differ much from our previous assessment.
Let us begin with Emerson’s sermon called “The Lord’s Supper,” delivered on Sunday 9 September 1832, in which Emerson
argues that a close reading of the New Testament indicates Jesus
never intended the Eucharist to become a permanent institutional
ritual of the Church; and even if he did intend it, the ritual is actually harmful to the genuine religious sentiment Jesus intended to
instill (RE 99–109).3 But even aside from these claims, Emerson
finds the most persuasive case against the Eucharist in the aversion
which he has to the symbolism of the bread and the wine, which
he refers to as “the elements”:
Passing other objections, I come to this, that the use of
the elements, however suitable to the people and the
modes of thought in the East, where it originated, is
�20
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
foreign and unsuited to affect us. Whatever long usage
and strong association may have done in some individuals to deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their use
is rather tolerated than loved by any of us. We are not
accustomed to express our thoughts or emotions by
symbolical actions. Most men find the bread and wine
no aid to devotion, and to some it is a painful impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of
Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another.
The statement of this objection leads me to say that
I think this difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled
to the greatest weight. It is alone a sufficient objection
to the ordinance. It is my own objection. This mode of
commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is
reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed
that it was enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, and that
he even contemplated making permanent this mode of
commemoration, every way agreeable to an Eastern
mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own
feelings, I should not adopt it. I should choose other
ways which, as more effectual upon me, he would approve more. For I choose that my remembrances of him
should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him
as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship,
and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do those
whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a
moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of
love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true
commemoration (RE 106–7).
Because every religious ritual has the potential to impinge upon
the autonomy and independence of the soul—upon its freedom to
choose the manner and method of worship—no ritual or form can
ever be declared inviolate and sacrosanct.
Freedom is the essence of this faith [i.e., Christianity].
It has for its object simply to make men good and wise.
Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants
of men. That form out of which the life and suitable-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
21
ness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes
as the dead leaves that are falling around us (RE 108).
To hold onto outmoded rituals is to betray the very purpose of
Christ’s crucifixion, for Jesus was sent to deliver mankind from
religions in which ritual forms are more important than personal
transformation.
That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that
for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end
that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who
have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal
religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. The whole world was full of idols
and ordinances. The Jewish was a religion of forms; it
was all body, it had no life, and the Almighty God was
pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men
that they must serve him with the heart; that only that
life was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows (RE 108).
In the end, Emerson himself will judge the worthiness of all traditional ceremonies, conventions, and customs—even those that
Jesus might have specifically ordained.
Emerson’s departure from the traditional institutions and doctrines of Christianity is even more pronounced in his Harvard Divinity School Address, in which he identifies two fundamental
errors in the administration of the Christian church. He describes
the first in this way:
It [historical Christianity] has dwelt, it dwells, with
noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The
soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand
to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and
fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of
man. The manner in which his name is surrounded with
expressions which were once sallies of admiration and
love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all
generous sympathy and liking (RE 68).
�22
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
The Church’s obsession with the personality of Jesus distorts and
vulgarizes his teaching by claiming that he was the son of God.
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He
saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by
its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived
in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to
what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates
himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take
possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me, God acts;
through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see
thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what
a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the
same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no
doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by
the Understanding. The understanding caught this high
chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age,
‘This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill
you, if you say he was a man.’ The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the
place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes (RE 67–68).
The Church fails to understand that Jesus was a prophet not because he was divine, but because he alone saw the divinity of all
men. 4
The second great error of the Church is a consequence of the
first: by regarding Jesus and his message as an historical figure
who established the religion in the far distant past, the living spirit
is extinguished from present worship. By failing to make the soul
in all its glory the foundation of religious instruction, contemporary
preachers (unintentionally, to be sure) smother the joyous temperament in their congregations that characterizes genuine piety. This,
in turn, corrodes the faith of the nation as a whole. Rehearsed rather
than inspired, doctrinaire rather than personal, formal rather than
uplifting, monotone rather than celebratory, “historical Christianity
destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the ex-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
23
ploration of the moral nature of man” (RE 73). Emerson offers his
auditors a vivid sampler of the sorts of “moral” subjects whose absence in American churches causes people to think twice about
participating in public worship:
In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me,
is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that
the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he
is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds
the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my
heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? Where
shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew men to
leave all and follow—father and mother, house and
land, wife and child? Where shall I hear these August
laws of moral being so pronounced as to fill my ear,
and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action
and passion? The test of the true faith, certainly, should
be its power to charm and command the soul, as the
laws of nature control the activity of the hands—so
commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying. The faith should blend with the light of rising and
of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird,
and the breath of flowers. But now the priest’s Sabbath
has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are
glad when it is done (RE 71).
The power and the beauty that Emerson demands from vital religion are missing from most modern Christianity.
What does Emerson recommend to repair this situation?
I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus
with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith
makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own
forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold
as the new worship introduced by the French to the
goddess of Reason—to-day, pasteboard and filigree,
and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather
let the breath of new life be breathed by you through
the forms already existing. For if once you are alive,
you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The
�24
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
remedy to their deformity is first, soul, and second,
soul, and evermore, soul (RE 77–78).
Emerson thus does not advocate the creation of “new rites and
forms” but the spiritual reinvigoration of those forms already at
hand. As for the current generation of preachers, they must stride
forward in a spirit of fierce independence from all traditional authority, maintain the most rigid personal integrity and virtue, and
be open to the sublime wonder and limitless potential in man—
which is the true gospel of Christ, and is as alive today as ever (RE
75–78). Emerson’s views were so unorthodox that many of the faculty members at Harvard publicly denounced the speech. He was
not invited back to speak at his alma mater for some thirty years.
Two features of Emerson’s heterodox Unitarianism are particularly significant in the context of the questions we are pursuing.
First, his absolute reliance on his own judgment exemplifies the
practice he recommends to everyone: the individual alone is the
sole judge in matters of religious doctrine and form. What the individual determines to be satisfactory is necessarily so, and that
judgment is sufficient in itself. Second, Jesus’s fundamental message, according to Emerson, fully supports transcendentalism (and,
we maintain, pantheism): we are to find and worship the god within
all of us.
What sort of religious reform could proceed from Emerson’s
appeals? He may have wanted spiritual revival within the Church,
but achieving that revival on his terms would require the rejection
of so many aspects of traditional, orthodox Christianity that one
wonders just what sort of “church” would remain. All things considered, Emerson’s iconoclastic Unitarian Christianity imparts a
unique flavor to his pantheistic spiritualism, but since it remains
pantheism at bottom, it still promotes the dangerous effects that
Tocqueville feared.
The Individual as Supreme Lawgiver
The foregoing discussion has concentrated on the first aspect of
the Tocquevillian critique of Emerson’s spiritualism—how its generality and simplicity flatters the democratic intellect. We must
now ask about the second aspect: What effect does Emerson’s spir-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
25
itualism have on individuality and the capacity of individuals to
remain free? We approach this question by examining Emerson’s
teaching about the source of individual actions and judgments—
especially moral and ethical judgments.
Throughout his writings, Emerson insists that the transcendentalist is a self-legislating individual: there is no law or commandment that is unconditionally binding upon him. And there is no
institution—no government, no church, no society—that is worthy
of his respect and allegiance unless, as is said in “The Transcendentalist,” it “reiterates the law of his mind” (RE 83). The transcendentalist’s conduct is not governed by deliberation or experience,
but by intuition, spontaneity, and trusting one’s instincts—even, it
seems, when one can give no rational account of them. Only spontaneous action—which is receptive to and motivated by the
prompting of the divine voice within—is genuinely obedient to
God. By becoming the channel through which the divine makes itself manifest, we shed all gross vanity and pretension while simultaneously solidifying and strengthening our own character.
A little consideration of what takes place around us
every day would show us that a higher law than that of
our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple,
spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting
ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and
love—a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of
care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the
centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that
none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its
strong enchantment into nature that we prosper when
we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound
its creatures our hands are glued to our sides, or they
beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes
to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance
for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the
right word. Why need you choose so painfully your
place and occupation and associates and modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible
right for you that precludes the need of balance and
�26
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and
congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the
stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom
it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth,
to right and a perfect contentment. Then you put all
gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the
measure of right, of truth, of beauty (RE 176).
By keeping our soul open to the ebb and flow of the Over-Soul,
we will be made privy to the truth; we will become genuinely
moral by attentively listening to the poetry of our own heart, which
is itself a reflection of the poetry of the universe and its animating
spirit. Emerson replaces the ancient injunction “know thyself” with
“trust thyself,” because the latter contains or is the means to the
former (RE 133).
Emerson’s celebration of individual intuition, integrity, and
spontaneity is stated perhaps nowhere more succinctly and powerfully than in his most famous and inspirational essay, “Self-Reliance” (1841). Like Moses, Plato, and Milton, we must learn to
heed the flash of genius when it ignites within us, trusting, almost
child-like, that God has a purpose in our work and that divinity
does not traffic in counterfeit forms. But if God urges us to listen
to our heart, society does not, and the more we become accustomed
to the ways of the world, the more our native light of genius grows
dim (RE 132–34). Two problems arise from this tension between
God and society: conformity and consistency. Regarding conformity, he considers it nearly impossible to resist:
[T]he discontent of the multitude [is] more formidable
than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough
for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage
of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation
of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor
are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies
at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it
needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it
godlike as a trifle of no concernment (RE 137–38).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
27
Regarding consistency, Emerson downplays its importance, and
argues that sincerity, over the long run, will exhibit its own logic
and integrity: “Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing” (RE 139).
Emerson highlights these two problems because they, more
than anything else, undermine the self-trust necessary to act spontaneously or instinctively. Self-trust is the source of all spontaneous
and ingenious action.
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who
is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a
universal reliance may be grounded? . . . The inquiry
leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of
virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all
later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last
fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find
their common origin. For the sense of being which in
calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not
diverse from things, from space, from light, from time,
from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously
from the same source whence their life and being also
proceed. We first share the life by which things exist
and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and
forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that
inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which cannot
be denied without impiety and atheism (RE 141–42).
To those who might argue that overstressing individual self-reliance
in this way could well have injurious effects on society’s necessarily
collaborative structures—such as government and the family—and
could delude a person into committing atrocities in the name of “intuition” and “spontaneity,” Emerson’s response in this essay is unaccommodating: So be it.
I remember an answer which when quite young I was
prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont
�28
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the
church. On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?”
my friend suggested—“But these impulses may be
from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not
seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I
will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to
me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names
very readily transferable to that or this; the only right
is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what
is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence
of all opposition as if every thing were titular and
ephemeral but he (RE 135).
Emerson holds that we must give expression to the unique incarnation of the divine within us. We must not continue to be the predictable herd animals that we are at present: conformity—not
self-reliance—is the real threat to a vibrant political and civic life.
Indeed, ignoring the divine voice within us, since it is the sacred
source of all life and wisdom, is true atheism and impiety. Self-reliance thus turns out to be God-reliance—if by “God” is meant the
divine voice within as you interpret it (RE 141–45).
It is here, with all probability, that Tocqueville would find the
most dangerous implications of Emerson’s spiritualism: he forthrightly rejects any moral guidance that comes from without and demands that individuals judge for themselves. Of course, it is
precisely this celebration of individual autonomy that causes many
to classify Emerson as a staunch “individualist”—not in Tocqueville’s derogatory sense as applied to someone withdrawn into
himself, but in the complimentary sense of someone who, opposing
mass opinion and fashionable trends, stakes out his own ground.
Emerson is certainly aware, as we have seen, of the force exerted
on the individual by majority opinion. But he does not believe, as
Tocqueville does, that individuals left to be their own moral legislators and lawgivers become atomized and isolated in society, leaving them more susceptible to the tyrannizing and homogenizing
effects of public opinion. To Emerson’s mind, individuals must rely
on themselves rather than on traditional sources of authority if they
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
29
are going to be genuinely moral and have the strength to withstand
mass opinion.
Notwithstanding Emerson’s contagious optimism, one question persists throughout his discussion of the individual as judge
and executor of his own laws: How does one distinguish between
inspiration and madness? Even if we are all part of a greater whole,
what standard can be employed to determine whether someone has
correctly “received” and spontaneously acted upon the moral law?
Why could someone not simply claim that his subjective experience points to an entirely different philosophical system than
Emerson’s? How would Emerson refute such a claim?
In the first place, Emerson suggests that everyone knows the
truth of what he is saying in the depths of his own heart. If we
would be honest with ourselves, if we would return to our better
thoughts and listen intently to the sublime whisperings of the soul,
we would understand as he understands, and act authentically as
he acts authentically.
If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave
to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not
selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest,
and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt
in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day?
You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as
well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us
out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends
pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power,
to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their
moments of reason, when they look out into the region
of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the
same thing (RE 146).
In the second place, Emerson refers several times to a moral sense
or sentiment in all men which commands and forbids actions, and
which is rooted in or is coextensive with the Divine Mind. But while
Emerson acknowledges the existence of a conscience, it neither
seems to be in command, nor are its laws capable of articulation. For
Emerson, the moral universe is accessible by all of us subjectively,
but it cannot be formulated into any sort of objective ethical code:
�30
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the
presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this
homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem
foolish details, principles that astonish. The child amidst
his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human life, love,
fear, justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These
laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be
written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They
elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly
in each other’s faces, in each other’s actions, in our own
remorse. The moral traits which are all globed into
every virtuous act and thought—in speech we must
sever, and describe or suggest by painful enumeration
of many particulars (RE 64).
And finally, in the third place, Emerson claims that spontaneous
action is so compelling that its example almost compels imitation:
by being law unto oneself, one becomes a universal legislator.
A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True,
as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he
stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt
them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun,
journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium
of the highest influence to all who are not on the same
level. Thus men of character are the conscience of the
society to which they belong (RE 331).
If this is true, however, it is hard to square with Emerson’s insistence on autonomy. How can individuals be true to themselves by
following someone else’s law? If the law were universal, then it
would make sense to follow the example of a virtuous person. But
this contradicts Emerson’s belief in the individual divine voice that
speaks to each person uniquely.
By having us be our own lawgivers, by asserting that “[o]ur
spontaneous action is always the best” (RE 264), is Emerson not
unwittingly advocating indulgence in our worst passions? In the
essay called “Circles,” he tries to defend himself against this
charge:
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
31
And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader
exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an
equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would
fain teach us that if we are true, forsooth, our crimes
may be lively stones out of which we shall construct
the temple of the true God!
I am not careful to justify myself. . . . But lest I
should mislead any when I have my own head and
obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am
only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on
what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if
I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle
all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane;
I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at
my back (RE 260).
This very convenient disavowal of setting an example sidesteps
the effect of Emerson’s teaching on others; he does not want to
take responsibility for the behavior that might be unleashed or justified by his doctrine of self-legislation. Not everyone’s spontaneous impulses and private intuitions would lead to the sort of
fortunate and moderate choices that Emerson seems to make.
If we return now to Tocqueville’s democratic man seeking
moral guidance in an egalitarian society, we see that Emerson has
nothing to offer him. The evaporation of human individuality in
the Over-Soul, the directionless invocation to look to one’s own
inner divinity, and the refusal to take responsibility for one’s example in the world all leave democratic man in the lurch. It is no
wonder that he turns to public opinion for moral guidance.
The Ambiguity of Politics
One way to temper the debilitating effects of majority opinion, in
particular, and the spiritual trajectory of the principle of equality,
in general, is through political activity. Over and over again, Tocqueville shows us how civic engagement at the local level can help
to cure the ills to which democracy is prone. In respect to the particular issues of this essay, civic participation and institutions help
to prevent our slide into individualism. We are unable to withdraw
�32
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
into our own world of family and friends when we must take part
in various community activities. Civic engagement also tempers
our rage for general ideas: when we are practically engaged, we
see the necessary limitations of such ideas. Emerson, however, in
many ways discourages political activity—and perhaps necessarily
so. The rapturous inner life of the transcendentalist likely makes
all political activity seem paltry and pale.
In “The Transcendentalist,” Emerson observes that these individuals are both solitary and lonely. They are solitary because nothing that society can offer appeals to them: whether it is popular
entertainment or commercial competition, they see most of what
excites society as little more than drudgery and thoroughly degrading in comparison to their talents. They are lonely because the
human fellowship they seek is so acute and fervent that few persons could satisfy or endure the demands of such a relationship:
tolerating neither frivolity nor hypocrisy, they are seen by most
persons as rude, shallow, or simply ridiculous (RE 87–90). But if
Emerson’s transcendentalist is indifferent toward such things as
the accumulation of riches and wealth, so too is he indifferent toward politics in almost all its manifestations. From the great political debates of the day to the building of empires to the prospect
of rule, the transcendentalist finds little in this petty arena to tempt
him from his solitude.
But their solitary and fastidious manners not only withdraw them from the conversation, but from the labors
of the world; they are not good citizens, not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the
public and private burdens; they do not willingly share
in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in
the enterprises of education, of missions foreign and domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. . . .
What you call your fundamental institutions, your
great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and,
when nearly seen, paltry matters (RE 90).
Emerson does not deny that there are great and holy causes—albeit
far fewer than most imagine—but by the time a potentially worth-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
33
while cause reaches the political arena, it has been prepackaged and
predigested for public consumption. Since the transcendentalist attitude is a blanket critique of political life, Emerson rightly concludes
that this outlook will strike society as threatening. The disdainful
aloofness from the world of those who hold such beliefs, together
with their willingness to abjure the public burdens that make community possible, seem like a direct accusation of society; and society
will not remain indifferent, but will retaliate against this challenge to
what it holds dear. But despite the fact that society treats these individuals as outcasts, and despite the fact they seem to perform no useful occupation, Emerson insists that they are the moral touchstones
by which to judge whether “the points of our spiritual compass” are
true. Society therefore has an interest in them and a duty to “behold
them with what charity it can” (RE 95).
To the extent that Emerson hopes to improve American society,
he directs his appeals for moral reform at the individual and not the
group: there is little or no salvation through political activity unless
the individual himself has first been spiritually transformed. In the
essay “New England Reformers” (1844), he points out two problems
in attempting the former before or without the latter. First, all political reforms tend to be partial:
I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and
the indication of growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the individual, to be the affirmative
principle of the recent philosophy, and that it is feeling
its own profound truth and is reaching forward at this
very hour to the happiest conclusions. I readily concede
that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity,
there has been a noise of denial and protest; much was
to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who
were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his
removal of rubbish; and that makes the offensiveness
of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the
work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault
on the kingdom of darkness they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and
�34
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
power of benefit. It is of little moment that one or two
or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but
of much that the man be in his senses (RE 406–7).
In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst
of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false
churches, alike in one place and in another—wherever,
namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, there it will
do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth it shall abrogate that old condition, law, or school in which it stands, before the law
of its own mind (RE 408).
Emerson here disparages piecemeal efforts at social change as futile or misguided given the enormity of the task. By contrast, “a
just and heroic soul” will be able to abolish the old condition
through the force of his character and actions in the here and now.
Second, reformers overestimate the power of associations or
numbers. Groups are no better or worse than the individuals who
make them up, and unhealthy individuals make unhealthy groups:
indeed, the more united and efficacious a group is politically, the
more it will require its members to compromise their unique individuality, forcing out those of superior talent (RE 407–10).
These new associations are composed of men and
women of superior talents and sentiments; yet it may
easily be questioned whether such a community will
draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the good;
whether those who have energy will not prefer their
chance of superiority and power in the world, to the
humble certainties of the association; whether such a
retreat does not promise to become an asylum to those
who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the
strong; and whether the members will not necessarily
be fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot
enter it without some compromise. Friendship and association are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of
the best of the human race, banded for some catholic
object; yes, excellent; but remember that no society can
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
35
ever be so large as one man. He, in his friendship, in
his natural and momentary associations, doubles or
multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one (RE 408–9).
Thus, Emerson’s aim is not political but private, an attempt to
unify our presently disharmonious souls. “The problem of restoring
to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption
of the soul” (RE 38). “This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of
the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man” (RE
55–56). How this domestication will occur without radical political
changes (e.g., in the education system [cf. RE 410–11]) is not clear.
In sum, it would seem that Emerson’s rapturous spiritualism casts
a long shadow over politics and political activity: civic engagement
is neither an Aristotelian fulfillment of our nature nor a Tocquevillean means to maintain its health.
A Corrective to Democratic Historians
In conclusion, it is necessary to point out that there is at least one
area where Emerson’s philosophy is in harmony with Tocqueville’s,
namely, in his deep appreciation for the power of great individuals
and individual action. In his essay on Abraham Lincoln and the
Emancipation Proclamation, or in his address commemorating the
anniversary of the end of slavery in the British West Indies, one
does not read about immutable and unseen forces propelling men
ahead on the unstoppable current of history. In this respect, at least,
Emerson’s celebration of the individual is the same as Tocqueville’s.
Nonetheless, this celebration of individual initiative and independence is coupled with yet another potentially worrisome aspect
of Emerson’s writings. Just as he conceives the individual as the
standard in judging the rectitude of an action and the worth of an
institution, so too he conceives of the new American nation as a
standard in judging its own needs. America must emancipate itself
from the tyrannizing effects of a slavish veneration of the “mind
�36
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
of the Past” (RE 46)—especially Europe’s aristocratic past—in all
its incarnations: history, philosophy, art, architecture, and literature.
Although this call for originality can already be seen in the opening
paragraph of Emerson’s first book Nature (1836), perhaps the most
stirring expression of this sentiment is his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa
address, “The American Scholar” (1837), which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence”
(RE 3, 846). The moment some form of the past is declared perfect
or inviolate, then the present generation will atrophy and cease
thinking and creating—it will become a satellite of the past rather
than its own solar system. The genius of an age is lost when it passively accepts the dogmas of the past and does not actively seize
upon and articulate its own creative principles: “The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized [sic] now for two hundred years”
(RE 47). Indeed, we must not subordinate our own thinking to the
thinking found in books:
Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be
sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s
idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is
too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of
their readings. But when the intervals of darkness
come, as come they must—when the sun is hid and the
stars withdraw their shining—we repair to the lamps
which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to
the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we
may speak (RE 48).
Books should be used to guide the scholar back to the light of his
own inspirations.
Emerson is not rejecting the past outright. His frequent praise
of past philosophers and authors and poets demonstrates this. Instead, he wants to challenge what he calls the backward—that is,
conservative—tendency of all institutions to defend some ancient
authority and to use this as an excuse for not moving forward.
The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or
creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of
here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop
with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say
they—let us hold by this. They pin me down. They
look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his
hindhead: man hopes: genius creates (RE 47).
37
The past must come alive for the present and speak to its concerns
and circumstances. If it fails to do this, then it need not be studied
and must not be revered. Discard the relics of the past or reanimate
them—if Greece or Rome or Constantinople or Paris or London
do not speak to us, we need not worry: someone or something else
will (RE 115–17, 120, 130–31, 140, 150–51, 272–73).
Emerson sees some encouraging signs of intellectual liberation
in the growing prevalence of “the near, the low, the common” as a
new subject of literature (RE 57). He saw that contemporary writers and artists were beginning to expand the range of their interest
beyond traditional high subjects to include the more mundane:
The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the
philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life,
are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a
sign—is it not?—of new vigor when the extremities are
made active, when currents of warm life run into the
hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote,
the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is
Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the
low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the
antique and future worlds. What would we really know
the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the
pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the
glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body;
show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me
the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the
polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and
the shop, the plough, and the ledger referred to the like
�38
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
cause by which light undulates and poets sing; and the
world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumberroom, but has form and order; there is no trifle, there
is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the
farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench (RE 57–58).
Because the lowest objects are bursting with the same sublime soul
as the highest, they can be made the focal point of a literary and
spiritual renaissance appropriate for this new era and new nation.
At the end of the day, Emerson applauds the fact that the same
egalitarian political movements, which both raised the “lowest
class in the state” and gave new dignity and respect to the “individual,” are now fostering an appropriate egalitarian literature (RE
43, 57–58). Emerson here reveals what Matthew Arnold calls his
remarkable “persistent optimism” (RE 846) in the potential of each
and every individual to become a fully realized human being: he
repeatedly affirms that all men have “sublime thoughts” (RE 76);
that all possess a “native nobleness” (RE 242); that all are wise;
that all are latent prophets; that all have the potential greatness of
George Washington and Julius Caesar; that all carry within a
“miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal
History” (RE 267). Even genius is less a matter of innate ability
and more a matter of art and arrangement, and of giving free reign
to the divine, which is in all of us (RE 411ff.). As Henry David
Thoreau rightly said in his journals about his friend: “In his world
every man would be a poet, Love would reign, Beauty would take
place, Man and Nature would harmonize” (RE 847). We are left to
wonder, however, whether Emerson’s suspicions of the past, coupled with his new emphasis on “the near, the low, the common” in
literature will, over time, help to sustain his celebration of genuine
human greatness, or eventually undermine and distort it in a predictable but unhealthy democratic fashion.
NOTES
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Harvey
C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000), 425–26, hereafter cited in the text as DA, followed by volume,
part, chapter, and page number. In general, I have used this translation
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
39
throughout, although I have checked it against the French original for accuracy. See also the four-volume, bilingual, historical-critical edition of
the same, ed. Eduardo Nolla, trans. James T. Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010).
2. References to Emerson’s works are from The Essential Writings of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library,
2000), hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as RE. All emphasized
words in quotes are contained in the original. For details on his life and
times, readers may consult with profit Gay Wilson Allen, Waldo Emerson:
A Biography (New York: Viking Press, 1981).
3. Emerson was ordained as the Unitarian pastor of the Second Church
of Boston in 1829. In June 1832, his grave reservations concerning the
sacrament of communion reached a crescendo, and he asked the Church
if he might stop administering it in its present form. After considering his
petition, the members of the Church were unable to grant it. Because
Emerson would “do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart” (RE
109), he judged it best to resign as pastor, and he stated his reasons for
doing so to the congregation in the sermon we are about to discuss. Although Emerson continued to give sermons to various churches throughout his life, his service at the Second Church was his first and last
appointment as a permanent pastor.
4. Emerson also suggests the likely cause of this error. It was only natural
that a soul as “great and rich” as Jesus’s, falling among a “simple” people,
was bound to overwhelm them. They were thus not able to see that Jesus’s
true message was that they needed to discover and make manifest the gift
of God in their own soul and not that Jesus was the son of God Himself
(RE 69). Given the simplicity of the “primitive Church,” Emerson is very
hesitant to adopt any of its doctrines or practices. The early Christians
not only refused to shed their “Jewish prejudices” but they were rarely
enlightened by the example of Christ himself. Emerson thus concludes
that “[o]n every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a
judgment more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the
practice of the early ages” (RE 105).
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
40
“At the Very Center of the Plenitude”:1
Goethe’s Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18th Century;2
Or,
How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe
From the General Sickness of his Age
We have failed to restore to the human spirit
its ancient right to come face to face with nature.
—Goethe3
Nature has become the fundamental word
that designates essential relations . . . to beings.
—Heidegger4
Goethe teaches courage . . . that the disadvantages
of any epoch exist only to the fainthearted.
—Emerson5
1. Incidental Thoughts, Fruitful Life
To everyone: Welcome! To our freshman in particular: a special
Welcome!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: We know him first as a poet and
playwright—seniors will read his Faust next week. Yet there is another Goethe that is less well known but who, from his own point
of view, is of equal, if not greater consequence,6 the Goethe who
spent his life studying nature—botany, zoology, geology, meteorology, theory of color—and is known, in this regard, for his work
in morphology. I would like to speak about this lesser known
Goethe tonight.
There are two subtitles to this evening’s lecture “At the Very
Center of the Plenitude.” The first is given to it by Friedrich Nietzsche, the second, my own curious invention. The first is “Goethe’s
Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18th Century.” As we will see,
from Nietzsche’s perspective Goethe was a philosophical thinker
of the highest order who inherited, as we all do, ideas from previDavid Lawrence Levine is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa
Fe, New Mexico. This lecture was originally presented as the annual Dean’s
Lecture to open the thirty-seventh academic year at the Santa Fe campus.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
41
ous generations and thinkers, ideas that he thought were ill conceived and needed to be rethought. Thanks to these ideas, we had
become, according to Goethe, “blind with seeing eyes.”7
Similarly the second subtitle, “How Freshman Laboratory
Saved Goethe from the General Sickness of his Age.” This clearly
reflects our unique studies here at St. John’s. Here too we see
something of greater moment than we might first have seen. Here
we will have a chance to see that his life’s work studying nature—
as seen in the paper that we read in freshman laboratory—has a far
greater significance than just “science,” great though this is in its
own right.8 For Goethe the study of nature was the necessary antidote to a growing tendency—“sickness” he called it—that needed
to be countered for the sake of our lives and health.
Goethe’s thinking, though philosophical, is not systematic, and
that means there’s no one place where his deepest thinking is to be
found. Just the opposite, his profoundest thought is to be discovered throughout his works, and not just in his major works, but
minor ones too, often just jottings here and there, on slips of paper,
in the margins of books, the corners of newspapers, in brief letters,
in short wherever occasion found a suitable surface for pen and
ink to secure for a time his emergent thoughts. These were often
then collected into “maxims and reflections,” sometimes inserted
as the thinking of one of the characters of his novels, sometimes
collected under his own name.
These occasional thoughts will provide much of the material
for tonight’s talk. But incidental thoughts are not necessarily insignificant thoughts.9 Not unlike flotsam and jetsam, thoughts appear throughout our day. Are these daily musings ‘distractions of
the moment’ or ‘disclosures of moment’? Such irrepressible
thoughtfulness and imagination gives added dimension to the thin
linearity of time. A day punctuated by the wondrous, sparked by
light, is not just another day. Daily discovery is meat not spice,
nourishment, not just flavoring. And its joy is invigorating. The
mundane is thereby transformed. Thinking happens.
One such collection of thoughts is a book of selected conversations by his secretary Johann Peter Eckermann, a man of no
small talent, who took it upon himself to record for posterity per-
�42
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
sonal conversations he had with his world famous employer during
the last nine years of his life. These are intermittently and imperfectly recorded, often self-conscious, sometimes seem contrived,
and are frequently without a definite outcome. There we find observations about passing acquaintances, deliberations about the
wine list for the evening dinner, plans for journeys to be taken, personal estimates about famous and not so famous authors and statesmen, latter-year reflections and regrets about his youthful writings,
plans for the reconstruction of the local theater that had burned
down, conversations with his patron the Grand Duke of Weimar,
observations about his wife and children, expressions of hope and
disappointment about friends, frustrations about works of his that
had been overlooked or were under appreciated. But throughout
the rich array, there emerge as well recurrent themes and persistent
questions of consequence.
The same author mentioned above, Nietzsche, says the following: “Apart from Goethe’s [own] writings, and in particular
Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann, the best German book
there is, what is there really of German prose literature that it would
be worthwhile to read over and over again?”10 “The best German
book there is,” worth “reading over and over again”? Hardly on
the face of it.
Though perhaps prone to hyperbole and “philosophizing with
a hammer,” Nietzsche was not prone to misrepresentation. What
could he mean by such exaggerated praise? Perhaps what is remarkable is not the book per se, but what is portrayed therein? Perhaps what is notable is not its ultimate literary value—the book is
not on our program—but the attempt to record a life that is in no
way ordinary? Indeed, even through Eckermann’s eyes we glimpse
new possibilities for a human life that aspires to what is extraordinary, a fullness of possibility rarely seen. We glimpse a paradigm
of a fully engaged, ever creative, wholesome fecundity. In short,
we see philosophy as a way of being in the world, not as a book
bound between leather covers.
2. “Everything Nowadays is Ultra”
In 1825, late in life, Goethe wrote a letter to his friend, the composer Zelter, in which he reflected on the character of life as it had
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
43
come to be lived in their lifetime:
Everything nowadays is ultra, [he writes] everything is
being transcended continually in thought as well as in action. No one knows himself any longer; no one can grasp
the element in which he lives and works or the materials
that he handles. Pure simplicity is out of the question; of
simplifiers we have enough. Young people are stirred up
much too early in life and then carried away in the whirl
of the times. Wealth and rapidity are what the world admires. . . . Railways, quick mails, steamships, and every
possible kind of rapid communication are what the educated world seeks but it only over-educates itself and
thereby persists in its mediocrity. It is, moreover, the result of universalization that a mediocre culture [then] becomes [the] common [culture].
He then adds ruefully: “We and perhaps a few others will be the
last of an epoch that will not soon return.”11
According to Goethe, a radical transformation of our way of
being has taken place: 1) a change in the character of human thought
and action, 2) a change in our knowledge of ourselves, 3) a change
in our sense of place, and finally, 4) a change in the character and
efficacy of education.
“Everything nowadays is ultra”: As early as the beginning of
the nineteenth century, what was coming to characterize human
life—and thereby change the face and depth of human experience—was the speed (die Voloziferishe) at which life was lived, a
hitherto unheard of, dizzying and disorienting pace such that young
people—but not only—could only be caught up in “the whirl of
the times.” “Being caught up” means living some other life than
one’s own, being inauthentic.
“Railways, quick mails, steamships”: Ever faster communication changes the lived dimensions of life: time quickens, distance
collapses. There is no delay between an event and its hearing. “It’s
as if we were right there.” A leisurely walk is replaced by a carriage
ride, thereafter by a train ride, then a jet plane, and now by . . . a
transporter (or at least in our imaginations). The wait for “news”
from the pony express, a telegram, a phone call, a pager continues
to shrink. Our e-mail pings or our blackberry vibrates: we hear about
�44
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
an event “as it happens” no matter the distance. Life, in short, is lived
in fast forward. Goethe asks “Who can possibly keep up with the
demands of an exorbitant present and that at maximum speed?”12
This matter of life’s ever accelerating pace in not a philosophically indifferent one for Goethe. “The greatest misfortune [Unheil]
of our time,” he says elsewhere, “which let’s no thing come to
fruition, is that one moment consumes the next.”13 While the speeding up of things may assist us in “keeping informed” and “staying
in touch,” it also subtracts from other essential dimensions once
thought definitive of human life. It makes certain things more difficult, if not impossible, specifically those things that take time, for
example, those that require slow assimilation and acclimation,
above all human learning and experience. It takes time away from
thoughtful reflection and other possibilities of human carefulness.
For time and leisure (skolē) are the proper gestational home of reflection, philosophy and human care.
We hear too that our thought processes are affected: “everything is transcended in thought [as well as in action].” We have
somehow been made to think differently. We live at a new level of
abstraction, beyond the immediate, simple, obvious, primary
world, such that we no longer even understand “the element in
which we live.” What could this mean?
And most curious of all, Goethe says “No one knows himself
any longer.” How is this even possible? Elsewhere he says: “Learning fails to bring advancement now that the world is caught up in
such a rapid turnover; by the time you have managed to take due
note of everything, you have lost your self.”14 Are we not always
the same no matter our circumstances?
Education too is thereby affected. It is suggested that we might
even become “over-educated,” mis-educated, that education itself
has become, somehow, distorted. He reflects: “For almost a century
now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men
engaged in them.”15 Rather than distinction, we have mediocrity;
rather than a high culture, we have an ordinary one. What then of
the rewards of “perspective,” “balance” and “excellence” once
thought the outcome of an ennobling education?
The “whirl of the times” has only accelerated many, many fold
�45
ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
since 1825. The author could not possibly have envisioned the pace
at which we live our lives today. To be sure, on first hearing, one
might be inclined to take the above observations as the grumbling
of a man seeing the world pass him by (empty biographism). We
might, however, also take this as notice to think better about the
character of our lives in our ultra-ultra world.
3. “The General Sickness of the Age”
Life is our lot rather than reflection.
—Goethe16
Goethe’s exclamation that “nowadays . . . no one knows himself
any longer” clearly needs further consideration. How could this
be? Don’t we know ourselves?
Throughout the modern disciplines—the physical sciences,
history, even poetry and literature—was a growing trend, evident
to Goethe, to what he called “subjectivity.” Juniors and seniors will
remember, in the Discourse on Method, Descartes’s identification
of the “ego” as the primordial truth about which we alone can be
immediately “certain.” The immediate evidence of this self-intuition then provides the standard of truth for all else, now thought
true only if “clearly and distinctly” conceivable to us. Odd though
this may sound, this new self-certainty leads to our world being
reconceived as “the external world,” about which we can now have
only a small measure of certainty and that of its radically stripped
down mathematical qualities. To be sure, this made a “modern science” of such a world possible, yet it gave us a new definition and
sense of self that was problematic.17 This excessively polarized and
reduced view of the ego as “subject”—understood as standing
“over against”18 some bare objective world—is what Goethe meant
by “subjectivity:” polarized, withdrawn, exiled to its own interior
world, and thereby alienated from any sense of world in which it
could feel itself integrated or at home.19
For Goethe the consequences of this influential (nay, fateful)
redefinition of self are nowhere better seen than in his own vocation, poetry. We have all heard the caricature of the modern “romantic” poet: a suffering recluse, retreating to his Paris garret,
whose only truth is his inner pain. But for Goethe there is, unfor-
�46
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tunately, an element of truth to be found therein: He observes: “All
the poets [today] write as if they were ill and the whole world were
a lazaretto [leper colony]. They all speak of the woe and misery of
this earth and the joy of a hereafter: all are discontented. . . . This,”
he adds, “is a real abuse of poetry.”20 “I attach no value to [such]
poems.”21
From Goethe’s perspective, “whoever descends deep down
into himself will always realize he is only half a being,”22 and being
half will discover there limited resources for creativity. “A subjective nature has soon talked out his little internal material and is at
last ruined by mannerism [that is, excessive affectation],”23 he
notes regretfully. “Such people look at once within; they are so occupied by what is revolving in themselves, [that] they are like a
man in passion, who passes his dearest friends on the street without
seeing them.”24 With reduced openness to the world around them,
they have become “blind with seeing eyes.” This excessive onesidedness, and consequent risk of self-absorption, Goethe named
“the general sickness of the present age [heutigen Zeit],”25 and led
Doctor von Goethe to his famous diagnosis: “What is Classical is
healthy; what is Romantic is sick.”26 Sick? Unhealthy, unproductive, foundationless, and ultimately untruthful. We lose our fullest
selves.
Goethe thus found himself standing at the point of the divide
where, for all our efforts to think about each separately, subject
and object were being ever more pulled apart. This experiential
breach was of fundamental concern because, when either is overpolarized—when the soul is diminished as an isolated, worldless
ego (psyche), res cogitans or when the world is diminished as external, even foreign, barren res extensa—both subject and object
are diminished for want of their natural correlate. If I may indulge
in a somewhat dramatic image: like a man standing between two
horses pulling him apart, Goethe found that—for the sake of
health27—he had everything he could handle to keep himself and
the world whole.28
Goethe himself thus resisted being “caught up in his time;”
he was not a “romantic.” As he said, “my tendencies were opposed
to those of my time, which were wholly subjective; while in my
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
47
objective efforts, I stood alone to my disadvantage.”29 His “objective efforts”? How could he resist the subjective tendency?
4. “The Element in which we Live”
In all natural things there is something wonderful. . . .
So we should approach the inquiry . . . without aversion,
knowing that in all of them there is something
natural and beautiful.
—Aristotle30
Surprising though it may seem to some, the answer is nature. Thus
it is apt that the Goethe we first meet is not the poet but the Goethe
who spent his whole life researching “the element in which we
live,” that is researching into nature. It is this “objective” involvement that saved him from the excesses of his—and our—time, not
to mention giving him “the most wonderful moments of his life.”31
So, what is nature?—OK, a simpler question.—What is a
plant? Which grammatical form best names its being, a noun or a
verb (or a gerund, a verbal noun)? By plant do we intend a static
state or an activity alive with change, something that has grown or
some process of growth?32 Clearly we need to name both—form
that is also in the process of self-formation. “Growth is the point
of life.”33
For us here in the Southwest, sumac, oak, aspen, pinõn, mallow and mullen are different kinds of plants. The principle at work
is the same throughout the stages of the life cycle of a mallow, for
instance, from seedling to flowering, fructifying plant. Hence we
name it one thing—a mallow—despite all these various stages and
differing formal manifestations.34
But it is not only this individual plant that is before us, so is
the species “mallow,” and even further so is the kingdom “plant,”
and these, as Goethe will insist, not as abstract concepts in the mind
but somehow in the living instance itself. Thus Goethe sought to
account for plant life as such, despite the dizzying fact that they
take infinitely many and wondrously different shapes. Sumac,
aspen, mallow are in “inner essence” still “plants.”35 What is
needed in this view is to identify the unifying principle at work
(not “underlying”) in each and every form at whatever stage of
growth and complexity they might be. But how to do so? And how
�48
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
to find a language that captures this universally active principle of
forms forming themselves?
To do so Goethe had to depart radically from his contemporaries and from their analytical approach. But in so doing this departure brings him closer to us. We can see this at the outset of the
Metamorphosis of Plants that we read in freshman laboratory,
where he appeals, not to results of the latest scientific journals, but
to our own untutored experience. He begins: “Anyone who has paid
a little attention to plant growth. . . .”36 This means that we, ordinary human beings, still have access to a realm of primary significance, one not to be diminished as “pre-scientific,” if what is
meant thereby is “pre-insightful.” Rather we, you and me, have
deep access into what is before us.37
Indeed he is critical that, with all our education and learning,
we may on the contrary be closing ourselves off from this primary
level of our experience. He often referred to a passage in one of
his early plays to illustrate this eclipse of experience by theory:
[A]s it is said in my Goetz von Berlichingen, that the
son, from pure learning, does not know the father, so
in science do we find people who can neither see nor
hear, through sheer learning and hypothesis. Such people look at once within; they are so [pre-] occupied by
what is revolving in themselves, that they are like a
man in passion, who passes his dearest friends in the
street without seeing them. [Rather] the observation of
nature requires a certain purity of mind that cannot be
disturbed or preoccupied by anything. . . . It is just because we carry about with us a great apparatus of philosophy and hypothesis, that we spoil all.38
“Like a man in passion”: Ideas, no less than passions, can take hold
of our minds, preventing us from seeing what might otherwise be
evident and thereby preventing us from attending to our primary
experience.39 So overwhelming are our present-day theoretical preoccupations that—in one of his most shocking statements of all—
Goethe claims that we no longer even concern ourselves with
nature. “That nature, which is our [modern] concern, isn’t nature
any longer,” he says.40 Extraordinary!
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
49
What has been lost, in Goethe’s view, is a sense of the wholeness of wholes and the interrelatedness and integration of all things,
in short, Nature (capital N). This loss is the necessary consequence
of any approach wherein wholes are but “by-products”41 of uncoordinated, underlying, isolated forces and elements (“matter in the
void”). Looking at things in terms of their parts—elements, simples, particles, atoms—analytical ways of thinking stumble in the
face of the Humpty Dumpty problem: how to put the whole back
together again.42 If we begin with parts, we end up with reconstituted conglomerates, aggregates, bunches, but the wholeness of
things, the integral reality, remains a secondary phenomenon, a
mystery, if not an accident.43 Here too we’ve become “blind with
seeing eyes.”
Juniors are soon to read and seniors will remember Descartes’s
famous experiment with the wax at the end of Meditations II. There
Descartes places a piece of fresh bees wax near a burning candle,
whereupon it melts and loses its original color and smell, texture
and shape (i.e. primary as well as secondary qualities), that is loses
all its original properties but res extensa, mere extension (though
this changes too). This experimental method is designed to bring
us to see what is “elemental” (if not fundamental). Descartes then
proceeds to claim that by “an act of intuition of reason” he—and
we—would know this transmogrified, charred lump in front of us
to be the same thing as before his infernal experiment. He asks,
who would not so conclude thus? (Aristotle, for one) Well . . . if
that were a plant, and not an amorphous hunk of bees wax, who
would concur with Descartes that what remains is the same as what
was put to the flame?44
The analytical flame dissociates or separates what originally
was together. It “kills.” So this method.45 The disfigured, deracinated, blackened carcass of the plant is anything but, the living
whole, nowhere to be found. The mass of matter lying before
Descartes is “the same” only if life and death are not different, and
if form is not an active principle but a derivative by-product. With
this “lethal generality”46 we lose—and lose sight of—“the spirit of
the whole,” as Goethe would say. For this reason, he claimed as
well that the modern approach—subjectively predisposed to take
�50
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
the objects of our experience in such a reduced way—loses its
claim to “objectivity.”47
The question for Goethe—and for us—is whether and how we
can recover the whole. Is it still possible to begin elsewhere, think
differently such that the whole is retained along with its manifold
parts? Can we yet begin where we naturally begin, with what is
“first for us” (Aristotle), with integral wholes?
5. Our Ancient Right
The spirit of the actual is the true ideal.
No one who is observant will ever
find nature dead or silent.
—Goethe48
Goethe thus sought “another way,” in order, as he said, “to restore
to the human spirit, its ancient right to come face to face with nature.” 49
He asks: “What does all our communion with nature amount
to . . . if we busy ourselves with analyzing only single portions,
and do not feel the breath of the spirit that dictates the role of
every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through an immanent law?”50 Thus “phenomena once and for all must be removed
from the gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic [torture] chamber [Marterkammer],” he said, “and [be] submitted [rather] to the
jury of [common human understanding].”51 But how are we to do
this, to return to “common human understanding”?
Since apparently we can live in more than one world, Goethe
makes his bid—“naively” yet knowingly52—to reclaim nature as
our home-world. “If we are to rescue ourselves from the boundless multiplicity, atomization and complexity of the modern natural sciences,” he says, “and get back to the realm of simplicity,
we must always consider [this] question: how would Plato [or
any non-modern] have reacted to nature, fundamentally one
unity as it still is, how would he have viewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?”53 We need to remove what
“now” stands in the way.54 We need somehow to shuck off our
modern predisposition to see all things as artificially reconstituted55 and see our world, rather, as one might whose vision was
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
51
not so refracted. But how?
Mindful that “the first stages of a discovery leave their mark
on the course of knowledge,”56 Goethe first seeks to reorient us.
To begin with, “anyone who has paid a little attention” has to acknowledge that our primary and original experience of things is
otherwise than we’ve been brought to conceive. “In nature,” he
said, “we never see anything isolated: everything is in connection
with something.”57 Any account, then, of our experience must
begin here with the unity and interrelatedness of all things.
Herein lays Goethe’s unified field theory: “I abide by what is
simple and comprehensive,” he says.58 (This he also calls his
“stubborn realism.”59)
As we heard, a certain kind of undisturbed purity of mind—
clarity, breadth of survey, attention to manifest differences—is
the pre-requisite to any genuine openness. In the garden, along a
path, in the laboratory, we need first to see the things themselves,
to recognize the ways and means that the plant [or whatever our
object] uses,”60 “to follow it carefully through all its transitions,”61 in short, “to follow as carefully as possible in the footsteps of nature.”62 “In the process,” he says, “we become familiar
with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself.
From this point of view everything gradually falls into place
under higher principles and laws revealed not to reason through
words and hypotheses, but to our intuitive perception [Anschauung] through phenomena.63” In this way, our relationship to
things is not at first “speculative,” but what Goethe calls “practical,” that is grounded in the concrete experience of individuals
and the real.64 (Here have we a model of openness and extreme
care that will serve us well, not only in the laboratory, but
throughout our work at the college.)
Given this, given observation that is undertaken with a “truly
sympathetic interest,”65 a remarkable transformation can then
begin. We can be moved to insight. In an often quoted passage
from the Introduction to his Outline of a Theory of Color, Goethe
addresses this process of natural ideation. He writes:
An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never
met . . . that [bare] empirical data should be presented
�52
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
without any theoretical context. . . . This demand is
odd because it is useless to simply look at something.
Every act of looking [naturally] turns into observation, every act of observation into reflection, every act
of reflection into the making of associations: thus it is
that we theorize every time we look carefully at the
world. The ability to do this with clarity of mind, with
self-knowledge, in a free way, and (if I may venture
to put it so [he adds]) with irony, is a skill we need in
order to avoid the pitfalls of [modern scientific] abstraction.66
Nature converses with us. Like any organic transition, thought is
the natural and continuous outgrowth of its prior condition, the
fruit of concrete experience. As such we are naturally led to a
higher integration through “the practical and self-distilling
processes of common human understanding.”67 “We theorize every
time we look carefully at the world.”
When we are able to survey an object in every detail,
grasp it carefully and reproduce it in our mind’s eye [he
reflects, then] we can say we have an intuitive perception [Anschauung] of it in the truest and highest sense.
We can [rightfully] say it belongs to us.... And thus the
particular leads to the general [as well as] the general
to the particular. The two combine their effect in every
observation, in every discourse.68
As much as we take the lead in inquiry, then so too are we led
by what we are inquiring into. Experience is bi-directional. Subject-object; object-subject. True sympathetic observation results
in the recapitulation in our summary imagination of the originating principle. The object becomes for us as it is in itself. In this
way the object “belongs” to us as much as we, in communion, belong with it. Our natural correlation is thereby reestablished, the
Cartesian subjective reduction of experience is offset, if not reversed, and a kind of renewed originality is returned to human experience, widening and opening our purview69, whereby we might
be thought once again to come “face to face” with nature. Our ancient right is thereby restored.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
53
6. The Original World
. . . the sublime tranquility which surrounds us
when we stand in the solitude and silence of nature,
vast and eloquent.
—Goethe70
A living thing cannot be measured
by something external to itself.
—Goethe71
This reunion of observer and world—we should say union—is possible because of a unique human faculty—one out-rightly denied72
or at least overlooked by other modern thinkers—but to which
Goethe again and again returns our attention. As we read: “When
we are able to survey an object in every detail, grasp it carefully
and reproduce it in the mind’s eye, we can say we have an intuitive
perception of it in the truest and highest sense.” This capacity for
concrete, summary “intuition,” intuitive perception, Anschauung,
is our faculty for experiential wholes wherein the actively unifying
principles at work in the world manifest themselves. Deny it and
we have no wholes. They are not deduced, inferred, or synthesized.
We do not have to go beyond or behind73 the phenomena to see
these at work. These are made known to us at the level of our primary experience. We “see” them.
There’s a famous story: At a meeting of the Society for Scientific Research in Jena there was a “fortunate encounter” between
Goethe and the poet Friedrich Schiller—whose poetry at the time
Goethe thought too romantic, too subjective. Goethe sought to explain to him his own attempt to articulate such a principle whereby
the natural plenitude of plant life might be accounted for. His
“idea” was, he admits, “the strangest creature in the world,”74
wherein the whole range of plant formation might be seen as
“stemming” or “derived” from an aboriginal form that was in this
regard the formal progenitor of the whole kingdom. Goethe named
this the Urpflanze,75 the original or originary plant.76
Schiller’s first response to this suggestion reflected his philosophical background, in particular his indebtedness to Kant. “This
is not an observation from experience,” he said, “This is an idea.”77
Schiller could not see what Goethe claimed he saw. He was disin-
�54
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
clined—as we may be—to grant that this was anything but a “regulative idea” constructed by reason to help it organize its experience, not a principle at work in the world organizing the
phenomenal array of plant forms. It was merely an idea, merely
“subjective.” For him and for Kant, it couldn’t be anything more,
as in their view phenomena are themselves constituted by consciousness and are thus not things in themselves.
Convinced, rather, that he had identified the objective generative source of all plant forms, Goethe replied: “Then I may rejoice
that I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with
my own eyes!” For Goethe, perception and reason, as moments of
a natural process, are not disparate faculties, but continuous. Thus
this, and all other Ur-phenomena, immanent and at work throughout our experience, are real and hence must be available to us on
the primary level of common human understanding.78 He wonders:
“Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that
through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may
become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?”
He thus insisted that he could see with his eyes something to which
others seem to have become blind.79 (Despite this fundamental difference, the two became close friends.)
But more needs to be said about this “strangest” of all creatures
that holds, in Goethe’s words, “the secret of the creation and organization of plants” (or any family of phenomena). As we mentioned earlier, Goethe’s interests were vast and not restricted to
botany; he also did research in osteology or bone formation. Indeed
it was Goethe who discovered the role of the intermaxillary bone,
the missing link that allowed zoologists to connect man and ape
anatomically. In a passage from his work On Morphology, we see
most clearly the point of origination of his thinking concerning Urphenomena:
The distinction between man and animal long eluded
discovery. Ultimately it was believed that the definitive
difference between ape and man lay in the placement
of the ape’s four incisors in a bone clearly and physically separate from other bones. [Goethe provides the
link.] . . . Meanwhile I had devoted my full energies to
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
the study of osteology, for in the skeleton the unmistakable character of every form is preserved conclusively and for all time. 80
55
The developmental history of an organism is not past; rather the
history of successive generational transformations is preserved
and encapsulated in the fullness of any present form. Just as osteogeny can now be seen to recapitulate phylogeny, so more generally can any such morphological account. This “pregnancy”81
of the present form allows of a new kind of thinking to uncover
the Ur-principle at work, a reverse thinking that “traces the phenomena [back] to their [empirical] origins.”82 (This is the first
methodological principle of the new science of morphology83).
In another context he reflects on this Ur-principle, now also
called an “archetype”: “an anatomical archetype will be suggested here, a general picture containing the forms of all animals
as potential, one which will guide us to an orderly description
of each animal.”84 The Ur-principle is thus a kind of omni-potential in conversation with its environment and out of which the
whole polymorphic metamorphosis issues. “All is leaf.” As such
these are not ideas in the usual sense of Plato or Kant, neither
separate nor abstract. Rather they are like ideas in enabling us to
give an account of the unifying principles at the origin of the
plenitude. They are like ideas, as well, in that they might serve
as a kind of “formula” providing a way to generate new forms—
if only in imagination.85 The “derivation”86 is not of hypothetical
but real possibilities. Though they are more like the eidos in Aristotle, an active principle embodying the manifold fruitfulness
of nature, here however “the secret of the creation and organization” of the family of forms. (He sometimes called it entelechy.87)
Thus whatever the family of phenomena—botany, osteology, geology, meteorology, color—Ur-phenomena emerge. We
come to see the unifying principle, the spirit “that dictates the
role of every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through
immanent law.” From this “empirical summit,88” all things can
be seen as unified. Thus we have order out of chaos,89 integration where we might otherwise have discontinuity. The plenitude is comprehended.
�56
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Therefore when you pick up Goethe’s Metamorphosis of
Plants to read, or any of his other writings on nature, do not close
yourselves off when hearing its foreign language, rather attempt
to hear its new voice and direction for the understanding of nature, “the element in which we live.” Whether, indeed, Goethe
has bequeathed us a fruitful path by means of which our ancient
right might be restored or whether it is but a false portal, is for
each of us to determine for ourselves.
7. Against Self-knowledge
Everything that liberates our mind
without at the same time imparting
self-control is pernicious.
—Goethe90
Where are we, then, in the midst of all this? Is there a lesson to be
learned about ourselves from this “other way of studying nature”?
As we’ve seen there are two unities that are reestablished by
Goethe’s way of thinking: there’s the unity of wholes that had been
fragmented, and the unity of observer and world that had been
alienated. Let us think more about the latter.
This unity of observer and world means that, like any organism, man cannot be known, nor know himself, apart from his
world—his environment— which sustains him and of which he is
an integral part. Given the polarized, inauthentic, and diminished
sense of self that is the consequence of the divorce of the “ego”
from its world in modern thought, it is understandable, then, that
to Goethe “no one knows himself any longer.” This led him to his
famous—if at first shocking—remark concerning the Delphic oracle: “I must admit,” he said, “that I have long been suspicious of
the great and important sounding task: ‘know-thyself.’ This has always seemed to me a deception practiced by a secret order of
priests who wished to confuse humanity with impossible demands,
to divert attention from activity in the outer world to some false
inner speculation.”91 Self-knowledge—or what we take to be
such—can be misleading, indeed disabling.
But how can we make it truthful . . . and enabling? As we
would expect, for Goethe the success of our efforts to know ourselves depends on the degree to which we are willing to extend
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
57
ourselves beyond ourselves. “Man is by all his senses and efforts
directed to externals—to the world around him ,92” he stresses, and
thus “the human being knows himself only insofar as he knows the
world; he perceives the world only in himself and himself only in
the world.”93 This brings to mind his earlier observation: “Whoever
descends deep down into himself will always realize he is only half
a being;” this thought was then completed with “let him find . . . a
world . . . and he will become whole.”94 In short, that we might be
drawn out of our overly self-polarized existence, we need to
reestablish ourselves once again as worldly beings, fully engaged
with and in our natural correlate “the outer world.”
Thus he answers the question “How can we learn self-knowledge?” in this way: “Never by taking thought but rather by action.”95
This reply should not surprise us, for it was our history that our very
attempts to think about ourselves and the world brought us to this
unnatural polarization. Thus it is “activity in the outer world” alone
that is necessary to restore a balanced polarity and healthy equilibrium. We see this in Goethe’s own “objective activity”:
Without my attempts in natural science, I should never
have learned to know mankind [including himself] as
it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure
contemplation and thought, so closely observe errors
of the sense and of the understanding, the weak and
strong points of character. All is more or less pliant
and wavering . . . but nature understands no jesting; she
is always true, always serious; always severe . . . the
errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her, she despises; and only to
the apt, the pure and the true, does she resign herself
and reveal her secrets.96
Here we see Goethe learning lessons from nature that once were
thought the fruit of introspection and the study of the human sciences. The book of nature, as other texts, can serve as an occasion
for self-reflection. “The apt, the pure, and the true” learn about
themselves and other human beings as they self-critically open
themselves up to new fields and methods. The earlier passage, “For
almost a century now the humanities have no longer influenced the
minds of men engaged in them;” comes to mind. It is followed by:
�58
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
“it is a real piece of good fortune that nature intervened, drew the
essence of the humanities to itself and opened to us the way to a
true humanitarianism from its side.”97 The study of nature can thus
be a liberating study, freeing us from the burden of blinding conceptions and enabling us to return to our original worldliness
wherein we, once again, can open ourselves to our fullest possibilities. In this way, the study of nature is properly a liberal art.
8. The Grand Attempt
Where do we meet an original nature?
Where is the man with strength to be true,
and to show himself as he is?
—Goethe98
Finally, certain questions emerged earlier about our modern way
of life. How are we, given the “demands of an exorbitant present,”
not to get “caught up” in the whirl of our times and to reclaim a
sense of productive leisure? For Goethe the answer is . . . nature,
whose rhythms, it was once thought, could not be accelerated, and
through our study of which intimations of timeless self-sameness
might prove a refuge and shape our own being in the world. How
are we to regain a footing “where everything is in flux of continual
change”? Here too, the answer for Goethe is nature, our home
world, whose inherent lawfulness, as evidenced in the unities of
life forms, can thus provide a secure base upon which to take our
next steps. How are we to know ourselves more completely? Nature is especially needed here to offset our tendency to over selfinvolvement and to return us to our original fullness of being. And
how are we to educate ourselves more truthfully? Since modern
education only brought us, in Goethe’s view, to become “blind with
seeing eyes,” he sought in nature a complement—not to mention
an antidote—whose truthfulness would bring us “to see with seeing eyes” that fullness of view, perspective and measure that is the
proper fruit of serious study. Our question: can our own sustained
reflection on these questions, beginning with freshman laboratory,
lead to lessons such as these as well?
By way of conclusion I would like to quote Nietzsche one last
time. Toward the end of his life (1889), he himself tried to capture
in one of his aphorisms “the European event” that was Goethe.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
59
This distillation lives up to his well-known boast that he “wrote
whole books in one sentence,”99 though in this case he is somewhat
more loquacious, for it took him a whole paragraph to epitomize
this extraordinary life:
Goethe—not a German event but a European one: a
grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century
through a return to nature, through a going-up to the
naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century.—He bore within him its
strongest instincts: sentimentality, nature-idolatry, the
anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary. . . . He called to his aid history, the natural sciences,
antiquity, likewise Spinoza, above all practical activity;
he surrounded himself with nothing but closed horizons; he did not sever himself from life, [rather] he
placed himself within it [that is, “at the very center of
the plenitude”]; nothing could discourage him and he
took as much as possible upon himself, above himself,
within himself. What he aspired to was totality; he
strove against separation of reason, sensuality, feeling,
will (—preached in the most horrible scholasticism by
Kant, the antipode of Goethe); he disciplined himself
to the whole, he created himself. . . . Goethe was, in an
epoch disposed to the unreal, a convinced realist; . . .
Goethe conceived of a strong, highly cultured human
being, skilled in all physical accomplishments, who,
keeping himself in check and having reverence for
himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and
wealth of naturalness, [one] who is strong enough for
this freedom. . . . A spirit thus emancipated stands in
the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything
is redeemed and affirmed—he no longer denies. . . .
But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I
have baptized it with the name . . . Dionysus.—100
Those who’ve read more widely in Nietzsche will recognize this
last act of baptism as extraordinary: there is no higher, nor deeper,
nor more original mode of being for Nietzsche than this aboriginal
�60
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
and creative life force that he identifies in the person of Goethe:
1) this rare independence from it’s times, 2) this extraordinary, if
circumspect, positivity, 3) this unlimited and deep interest in all
things, 4) this secure groundedness in practical, concrete reality,
5) this insistence on our original, primary experience, 6) this noble
distance from suffering, 7) this incomparable sense of measure,
and of course 8) this Olympian courage. If not Dionysus, then what
name or word would be appropriate?
Goethe and Nietzsche saw that we moderns have a hard choice
before us: between disaffection and engagement, between cynicism101 and wonder. Goethe somehow was able to affirm life, to
say YES!102
So we ask you tonight to consider this figure, how he might
move you to “discipline yourselves to the whole” and summon the
natural fecundity of your inherence.
And we ask you tonight “to place yourselves within life,” to
seek out what is primary and original and, daring to speak the language of discovery, to speak “poetically.103”
And we ask you tonight to “make time” for thoughtfulness,
that you transform the mundane with the joys of daily discovery,
that your life be rich and your days not ordinary ones.
One last comment: Eckermann observed that even until
Goethe’s last days (that is, into his eighty-third year), he was continually learning. May this be so for you as well.
Thank you.
NOTES
1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, #337; also
#664 (hereafter MR). Given as the annual Friday night “Dean’s Lecture”
to open the thirty-seventh academic year at St. John’s College, Santa Fe.
See MR #864. This talk is a further development of work begun in 1986
(see Levine, “The Political Philosophy of Nature, A Preface to Goethe’s
Human Sciences,” (hereafter Political Philosophy) Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 11 [1986]: 163-178). It was Thomas McDonald who introduced me to the work of Eric Heller and Karl Löwith, and all three
who introduced me to the depth of Goethe’s thinking; my debt to them
continues. For the ambiguity and greatness of Goethe’s “grand attempt,”
see Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, trans. John Ox-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
61
enford, (London: E. P. Dent, 1951 [1850]) (hereafter ECK), October 20,
1828.
2. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Hammondworth: Penguin, 1968 [1889])
(hereafter TI), 102.
3. “Analysis and Synthesis” (hereafter AS), in Goethe, Scientific Studies,
(hereafter SS), ed. and trans. Douglas Miller, Vol. 12 of Goethe: The Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 48. The publication of this collection of Goethe’s disparate scientific works has
provided a new occasion for further reflection about his “grand attempt.”
4. Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1,” in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998) (hereafter Phusis), 183.
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” in Representative Men
(New York: Marsilio, 1995 [1850]), 195.
6. ECK January 4, 1824, May 2, 1824, February 18 and 19, 1829.
7. ECK February 26, 1824.
8. ECK March 1, 1830.
9. Outline of a Theory of Color (hereafter OTC), in SS, #743; see also
note 21.
10. Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” in Human all too
Human, A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingdate (Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press, 1986) Vol. II, Part II, #109, 336.
11. Letter to Zelter, June 7, 1825; in Löwith, Karl, “The Historical Background of European Nihilism,” “The Fate of Progress,” Nature, History,
and Existentialism, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of History
(Evanston, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1966) 4, 156-7; From Hegel
to Nietzsche, the Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1964), 27-8, 177-181 (hereafter HN); also
MR #480.
12. MR #474.
13. MR #479.
14. MR #770.
15. HN, 226.
16. “The Enterprise Justified,” in On Morphology, SS, 61.
�62
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
17. The ego or modern self is doubtful of all but bare existence, where
even the externality, the worldness of the world, is in question.
18. For an interesting reflection on the problem of the subject-object polarity, see Heidegger, Phusis, 188.
19. A modern irony: man is least at home in a world of his own conception.
20. ECK September 24, 1827.
21. ECK September 18, 1823. By contrast, all of Goethe’s poetry was insistently “occasional,” that is objectively motivated: “The world is so
great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never want for occasions for poems. But they must be occasioned [poems] [Gelegenheitsgedichte]: that is to say, reality [Wirklichkeit] must give both impulse and
material. A particular event becomes universal and poetic by the very circumstance that it is treated by a poet. All my poems are occasioned
poems, suggested by real life, and having therein a firm foundation.” A
radically different orientation and tone is apparent here. See also January
29, 1826 and MR ##337, 393, 119.
22. MR #935.
23. ECK January 29, 1826: also MR #1119.
24. ECK May18.24.
25. ECK January 29, 1826.
26. MR #1031; ECK May 2.1829.
27 .A comparison with Nietzsche is appropriate here.
28. ECK March, 14, 1830; also December 21, 1831; and “Significant
Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase” (hereafter ITP), in SS, 39.
29. ECK April 14, 1824; also “The Content Prefaced,” (hereafter CP) in
On Morphology, SS, 67, and HN, 6-7.
30. On the Parts of Animals, I.v. 645a16, 19-27.
31. Fortunate Encounter (hereafter FE), SS, 18.
32. “The Germans,” Goethe notes, “have a word for the complex of existence present in the physical organism, Gestalt [or structured form] . . .
[whereby] an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in character. But if we look at all these Gestalten [all these forms], especially organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing is
at rest or defined—everything is in flux of continual motion. This is why
the Germans frequently and fittingly make use of [another] word Bildung
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
63
[formation] to describe [both] the end product and what is in process of
production as well.” “The Purpose Set Forth,” in On Morphology, SS, 63.
33. ITP, 40.
34. CP,. 69; also Eric Heller, “Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth,” in
The Disinherited Mind (hereafter Heller) (New York: Meridian, 1959), 10.
35. Metamorphosis of Plants (hereafter MoP), in SS, 60, 67.
36. MoP, 76.
37. OTC #743.
38. ECK May 18, 1824; also January 17, 1830.
39. This is the “modern cave.” We may not be disposed at first to include
the philosophers among the “opinion makers” parading above and behind
the chained onlookers in Plato’s cave (Republic VII). But they are wordsmiths and as such we are indebted to them for our language and lenses
as well; see also Hegel, “Preface,” Phenomenology of Spirit, trans, A. V.
Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), #33, 19-20: “In modern
time the individual finds the abstract ready made . . . . Hence the task
nowadays consists . . . in freeing determinate thoughts from their fixity
so as to give actuality to the universal and impart to it spiritual life.”
40. MR #1364.
41. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, II.
42. “These attempts at division also produce many adverse effects when
carried to an extreme. To be sure, what is alive can be dissected into its
component parts, but from these parts it will be impossible to restore it
and bring it back to life.” See “The Purpose Set Forth,” in SS, 63. The
natural plenitude is now compounded exponentially by the analytical dissolution or decomposition of wholes; cp. Heidegger’s characterization
that the original “atomic bomb” is to be found here in our modern analytical disassociation or explosion of all things into bits, parts and particles. See Martin Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poety, Language, Thought,
trans. Albert Hofstader (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 168.
43. And thus the diminished reality of those who think that a home is
bricks and mortar, and humans their chemical makeup.
44. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, II, AT, 19-34. How
someone could even think this is worth further thought.
45. A science that had given up trying to explain our experience was simply incomprehensible—not to mention infuriating—to one so firmly
�64
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
rooted in the actual (“at the very center of the plenitude”). “The Extent to
Which the Idea ‘Beauty Is Perfection in Combination with Freedom’ May
be Applied to Living Organisms,” in SS, 22; also ECK September 2, 1830;
see also Goethe’s longstanding debate with the Newtonian school and their
tendency to substitute secondary for primary phenomena; OTC ##176,
718.
46. “The Enterprise Justified,” in On Morphology, SS, 61.
47. In this regard one might want to compare Goethe’s and Nietzsche’s
respective attempts to “stave off the nihilistic consequences of modern
science” See David Lawrence Levine, “A World of Worldless Truths, An
Invitation to Philosophy” (hereafter Worldless Truths)in The Envisioned
Life: Essays in Honor of Eva Brann (Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2008), 163.
48. OTC #158.
49. AS, 48.
50. ECK September 2, 1830; also Heller, 16.
51. MR #430: gemeine Menschen verstand (not “common sense”); cf.
“Empirical Observation and Science,” (hereafter EOS) SS, 25.
52. “Naively”: see Levine, Political Philosophy, 163-78.
53. MR #664; also ECK January 29, 1826: “People always talk of the
study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except that it says, turn
your attention to the real world.”; see also OTC #358. Yet as we shall see
Goethe is not an ancient but seeks to carve out a middle position between
ancient and modern science. While there is deep agreement with Aristotle
about our experience of nature in terms of wholes, there is disagreement
about what is eternal. In making form eternal, Aristotle, he said, was
prone to “precipitousness.” By contrast, for him it is the process, not the
form, which abides. “Everything is in flux of continual motion.”
54. “There is no worse mistake in physics or any science than to treat secondary things as basic and . . . to seek an explanation for the basic things
in secondary ones” (OTC #718). It’s as if we were “to enter a palace by
the side door” and thereafter base our description of the whole on our
first, one-sided impression. See “General Observation” (hereafter GO),
SS, 42 and OTC, 160); also, #177, 716 and its application to the “grievous” Newtonian error at #176.
55. See Heidegger, Phusis: “The act of self-unfolding emergence is inherently a going-back-into-itself. This kind of becoming present is phusis.
But it must not be thought of as a kind of built-in ‘motor’ that drives something, nor as an ‘organizer’ on hand somewhere, directing the thing.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
65
Nonetheless, we might be tempted to fall back on the notion that phuseidetermined being could be a kind that makes themselves. So easily and
spontaneously does this idea suggest itself that it has become normative
for the interpretation of living nature in particular, a living being has been
understood as an ‘organism.’ No doubt a good deal of time has yet to pass
before we learn to see that the idea of ‘organism’ and of the ‘organic’ is a
purely modern, mechanistic teleological concept, according to which
‘growing things’ are interpreted as artifacts that make themselves. Even
the word and concept ‘plant’ takes what grows as something ‘planted,’
something sown and cultivated” (195), and “But is not phusis then misunderstood as some sort of self-making artifact? Or is this not a misunderstanding at all but the only possible interpretation of phusis, namely,
as a kind of techne? This almost seems to be the case, because modern
metaphysics, in the impressive terms of . . . Kant, conceives of ‘nature’ as
a ‘technique’ such that this ‘technique’ that constitutes the essence of nature provides the metaphysical ground for the possibility, or even the necessity, of subjecting and mastering nature through machine technology”
(220).
56. GO, 42.
57. ECK May 12, 1825; also AS, 48.
58. ECK April 11, 1827.
59. FE p. 20.
60. “The Influence of Modern Philosophy,” (hereafter IMP) in SS, 28.
61. MoP #77.
62. MoP #84.
63. OTC #175.
64. EOS, 25.
65. OTC #665. There are times when Goethe seems to anticipate Husserl’s
phenomenological approach, in particular in “The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject” [hereafter EMOS], in SS, 16, and IALO,
22, where the rigor and thoroughness of something like “eidetic variation”
seems to be proposed. The question is living form: “We cannot find
enough points of view nor develop ourselves enough organs of perception
to avoid killing it when we analyze it,” that is, multiple adumbrations
may give us a kind of whole but at the risk of rendering the outcome a
‘mental composition’ (as in Kant). It would be interesting to see how
Husserl and Heidegger treat life in its original vitality. See also OTC #166.
�66
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
66. “Preface,” OTC,. 159. We’ve taken the liberty to add the specification
“modern scientific” to abstraction. Throughout his OTC Goethe addresses the problems of scientific cognition and its tendency to excessive
abstraction (##310, 716, 754, and p. 162). For Goethe, as for Hegel, this
tendency is consequential and reckless. See note 52.
67. EOS, 25.
68. “Polarity,” in SS, 155; OTC #175; Letter to Herder, May 17, 1778 (in
Heller, 10).
69. OTC #732 (“expanded empiricism”).
70. “On Granite,” in SS, 132.
71. “A Study Based on Spinoza,” in SS, 8.
72. Despite Kant’s denial of such a human faculty in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, Goethe found a window of opportunity. He wrote that
Kant had “a roguishly ironic way of working: at times he seemed determined to put the narrowest limit on our ability to know things, and at
times, with a casual gesture, he pointed beyond the limits he himself had
set.” The passage in Kant that Goethe alludes to reads thus: “We can . . .
think [of a kind of] understanding which [unlike our discursive one
is] . . . intuitive, [and] proceeds from the synthetical-universal (the intuition of the whole as such) to the particular, i.e. from the whole to the
parts. . . . It is here not at all requisite to prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible, but only that we are led to the idea of it—which too
contains no contradiction—in contrast to our discursive understanding,
which has need of images (intellectus ectypus) and to the contingency of
its constitution.” However, Goethe then drew the opposite conclusion:
“Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an
intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy
of participating spiritually in its creative process?” he wonders. “Impelled
from the start by an inner need, I had striven unconsciously and incessantly toward primal image and prototype, and had even succeeded in
building up a method of representing it which conformed to nature. Thus
there was nothing further to prevent me from boldly embarking on this
‘adventure of reason’ (as the sage of Konigsberg himself called it).”
“Judgment through Intuitive Perception” (hereafter JIP), in SS, 31-2; also
EMOS, 11-17. Cf. Kant’s “aesthetic normal idea” in Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment, §17.
73. OTC #177; if we deny this faculty of intuitive perception we have no
real wholes.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
67
74. Letter to Herder, May 17, 1787: “I am very close to discovering the
secret of the creation and organization of plants. . . . The crucial point
from which everything else must needs spring. . . . The Urpflanze is to
be the strangest creature in the world. . . . After this model [visual formula] it will be possible to invent plants ad infinitum, which will all be
consistent...would possess an inner truth and necessity. And the same law
will be applicable to everything alive” (Heller, 10). Also OTC #175, “Polarity,” in SS, 155.
75. Urpflanze is often translated as “symbolic plant.” While this rendering
might be helpful if we keep a strictly Goethean notion of symbol in mind
(as in MR #314), this translation more often misdirects us if it suggests
to the reader either a mental abstraction or a literary device. Rather it
seeks to embody the manifold fruitfulness of nature “in potential” (“Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing
with Osteology” (hereafter GICA), in SS, 118).
76. “All is leaf.” MoP #119; OTC #120.
77. FE, 20; ECK November 14, 1823.
78. Letters to Schiller, February 10, 14, 1787 (in Heller, 20).
79. Hegel too—who otherwise was well disposed to Goethe’s project, indeed helped Goethe see how it fit into the larger scheme of the development of ideas—Hegel too nevertheless failed to see the Urpflanze as
anything but an abstracted archetype (See Hegel, The Letters, trans. Clark
Butler and Christiane Seiler [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1984], 681-711; HN, 11).
80. CP, 68-9. And we read in the Metamorphosis of Plants of the calyx
that it “betrays its composite origins in its more or less deep incisions or
divisions.”
81. ITP, 41.
82. OTC, 166. This may sound like ‘deconstruction,’ yet we would have
to consider whether it represents a true break with analytical thinking, as
Goethe seeks to do here.
83. CP, 69. Just as it led to his “discovering” the Ur-principle of the plant
kingdom, so Goethe is led in his other studies to “postulate” one for the
mammal family: “In the process I was soon obliged to postulate a prototype against which all mammals could be compared as to points of agreement and divergence. As I had earlier sought out the archetypal plant I
now aspired to find the archetypal animal; in essence the concept or idea
of the animal.”
�68
84. GICA, 118.
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
85. Letter to Herder, May 17, 1787; OTC #175; “Polarity,” 155.
86. ITP, 41 (“ . . . my whole method relies on derivation”).
87. Aristotle’s eidos is not subject to metamorphosis. On the other side,
in Darwin the metamorphosis of form is not an unfolding of immanent
form but the haphazard “evolution of species” and creative adaptation on
the part of active wholes becomes “random selection.” See note 51. My
thanks to John Cornell for his helping me think this through.
88. OTC, #720.
89. OTC, #109.
90. MR #504.
91. ITP, 39. Also “If we take the significant dictum ‘know thyself’ and
consider it, we mustn’t interpret it from an ascetical standpoint. It does
not by any means signify the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our
modern hypochondriacs, humorists, and ‘Heautotimorumenoi’ [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to yourself, watch
what you are doing so that you come to realize where you stand vis-à-vis
your fellows and the world in general. This needs no psychological selftorture; any capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice
and of the greatest practical advantage to everyone (MR, #657).” He objects only to those isolating tendencies of the subjective sciences and psychologies that are heir to the fateful alienation, if not divorce, of the ego
from the world.
92. ECK April 10, 1829.
93. ITP, 39.
94. MR #935; the whole passage reads “let him find a girl or a world, no
matter which, and he will become whole.” This is typical (see Eric Heller,
“Goethe in Marienbad,” in The Poet’s Self and The Poem, (London:
Athione Press, 1976).
95. MR #442 (“Try to do your duty and you’ll soon discover what you’re
like.”); also ##770, 935; ECK January 29, 1826.
96. ECK February 13, 1829.
97. HN, 226; also ECK October 18, 1827: In a conversation with Hegel
about the potential for modern sophistry of the “dialectic disease,”
Goethe says: “Let us only hope that these intellectual arts and dexterities
are not frequently misused, and employed to make the false true and
the true false. . . . The study of nature preserves me from such a disease.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE
69
For here we have to deal with the infinitely and eternally true, which
throws off as incapable everyone who does not proceed purely and honestly with the treatment and observation of his subject. I am also certain
that many a dialectic disease would find a wholesome remedy in the
study of nature.”
98. ECK January 2, 1824; also March 12, 1828.
99. TI, #51.
100. Ibid., #49; cf. MR #864.
101. ECK January 2, 1824; letter to Zelter, June 18, 1831 (in HN, 27).
102. See also ECK January 24, 1825, October 12, 1825; February 1, 1827;
October 18, 1827; February 12, 1827; MR ##191 and 1121. See Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, passim. This affirmation is what Nietzsche found most admirable, indeed he was envious of this, for it was not
available to him. See “Afterword: Goethe and Nietzsche,” in Levine,
Worldless Truths, 163-65.
103. “A More Intense Chemical Activity in Primordial Matter,” SS, 137.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
70
Special Section:
Justice
Editor’s Note
In November of 2012, O. Carter Snead, Professor of Law at Notre
Dame Law School and Director of the Notre Dame Center for
Ethics and Culture, invited five tutors from St. John’s College in
Annapolis to speak at the Center’s thirteenth annual fall conference
entitled The Crowning Glory of the Virtures: Exploring the Many
Facets of Justice.
The following five papers were delivered on a panel session,
together with a sixth: “The Relevance of Lay Views on Punishment
to Criminal Justice” by Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law
and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt Law School. A greatly expanded version of the paper was published the following month: Christopher
Slobogin and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, “Putting Desert in its
Place,” 65 Stanford Law Review 77 (January 2013). The article can
be accessed online at the following URL:
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/sites/default/files/
Slobogin-65-Stan-L-Rev-77.pdf
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE
The Actual Intention of Plato’s
Dialogues on Justice and Statesmanship
Eva Brann
71
Cicero famously said of Socrates that he was the one who brought
philosophy down from heaven to earth. This must be some other
Socrates than the one of the Platonic dialogues, perhaps
Xenophon’s of the Memorabilia. After all, even the comic Socrates
of Aristophanes’s Clouds is a meteorologist, a watcher of the heavens, though he does it hoisted up in a basket, butt up. Of course,
he is a sky watcher, since that is where the vaporous and loquacious
Clouds—Aristophanes’s comic version of the Forms—are to be
found. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that
Socrates connected earthly matters, such as politics, to the invisible
heavens, the realm of the forms.
There are three Platonic dialogues overtly and extendedly concerned with politics. The first, the second longest of all the dialogues, is the Republic, in Greek Politeia. It bears the subtitle,
added in antiquity, “On the Just.” The second is the Statesman, in
Greek Politikos; its ancient subtitle was “On Kingship.” And the
third, the Laws, Nomoi in Greek, subtitled “On Legislation,” is by
far the longest.
In the Republic Socrates is both narrator and main interlocutor.
In the Statesman he is the originating occasion of the dialogue but
not a participant. He sits it out as an auditor, perhaps at times somewhat skeptical; the leading speaker is a visitor, or stranger, from
Elea, Parmenides’s hometown. Finally, the Laws don’t even take
place in Athens but in Crete, and Socrates doesn’t appear at all,
though there is an anonymous visitor, a stranger from Athens. Who
doubts that the Laws is a work of practical politics, in fact the
mother of constitutions? As the Athenian says: “Our logos . . . is
of cities, and frameworks and law-giving” (678a). Perhaps we
might even say that the farther Socrates is from a dialogue the more
it is merely earthly.
When I speak, in my title for this brief talk, about “The Actual
Intention” of the first two of these dialogues, I imply that in them
�72
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
all is not as it seems. Here is Rousseau’s opinion of the Republic,
taken from the first book of his Émile: “Those who judge books
merely by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the
finest treatise on education ever written.” And, indeed, the central
books of the ten that comprise the Republic are taken up with the
ontology, the philosophical framework, that must underlie education, and with the ensuing education itself. To be sure, the education discussed is that of the philosopher kings who will found and
maintain that best Politeia, the civic framework with which the Republic is concerned (473c).
And yet again, neither this civic framework for the best city,
which will be superintended by the philosopher kings, nor its justice is actually the intended topic of the Republic. For recall that
this city is devised as a model writ large of the soul (368d), a model
from which we can conveniently read off the nature of individual,
internal justice. The book we call the Republic rests on are two
tremendous assumptions: One is that political frameworks—not
only the best but even more strikingly the worst—are analogous
to, enlarged projections of, the soul. And the other, even prior one,
is that the soul ought to be our first topic of inquiry, and it is only
on the way to it that we discover political ideals: Psychology absolutely precedes Politics; Souls make States.
Thus it would be a fair argument to say that the particular political justice which is generally understood to be the peculiar contribution of the Republic is, in fact, a civic construction meant in
the first instance to incorporate a notion appropriate to internal,
psychic justice. For the three castes of the best city are delineated
in such a way that the famous definition of justice as “doing one’s
own business,” which falls out from the community’s constitution,
is applicable to the soul as Socrates conceives it. In other words,
the just city is built from the first to be an enlarged soul.
Let me outline how Socrates makes it work. These castes are
functionally defined, each by its own specific task within the city.
Moreover, they form a hierarchy of command and responsibility
such that any one caste’s transgression is in fact rebellion, factional
strife. Such internal dissension is, however, nearly the worst fate—
as any Greek knew or should have learned in the course of the
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN
73
Peloponnesian War (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.82)—
that could befall a political community, because it is the prelude to
tyranny. To reiterate: for Socrates, the maladjusted and dysfunctional soul is the antecedent cause of political evil.
It is to me an unresolved problem whether Socrates was in politics the anti-egalitarian he is sometimes accused of having been.
In his demeanor, and what matters more, his conversations, he
seems as populist as possible, not much impressed by smart young
aristocrats about to go to the bad, like Critias, Charmides and Alcibiades; moreover, in the Republic he says of a democracy that
it’s “handy for searching out a politeia” (577d)—which happens
to be what he himself is doing right then, down in the city’s most
democratic district, its harbor. The solution to the problem depends
on how we look at the kallipolis, the “fair city” that he’s found or
made: Is it and its justice a serious political proposal, on a par in
earnestness with Aristotle’s Politics in antiquity or Locke’s, Montesquieu’s, and Rousseau’s works at the beginning of modernity?
In view of the motive for the constitution of Socrates’s city, that is
a reasonable question.
To lend my exposition some specificity let me give you the
briefest reminder of the model city, both as best and as paradigmatic for the soul—and let me once more anticipate the result: The
human soul too will be a hierarchy of functional parts, and it too
will sport the virtues displayed by the city, now operating in individual human beings much as they did in the community.
At the bottom of the city’s castes, then, are the craftsmen and
tradesmen whose business it is to perform their particular work
well and profitably, and to attend just to those assignments and no
other. Beyond that, they are pretty free and prosperous, and thus
satisfied. They are without a specific caste virtue other than competence, for they are driven by appetite rather than character. But
they are the class for the particular operation of the most encompassing virtue, justice. Justice is the virtue of the part and the
whole, of each part doing its own thing and thereby preserving the
integrity of the whole. (Temperance is another non-specific virtue,
that of agreeableness in the sense that each caste is accepting of its
position in the hierarchy.)
�74
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
The middle caste consists of the warriors who guard the city,
and it is the training ground of kings. This caste is defined by their
spiritedness, and it is the locus of honor, the source of a soldier’s
satisfaction through danger. These warriors do have a particular
virtue, courage.
The ruling caste is comprised of the philosopher kings, whose
virtue is wisdom and in whom the intellectual part, thoughtfulness,
dominates. Their satisfaction is the highest; their happiness is subject to interruption by the duties of governing. This hardship is,
however, alleviated by their affection for the young they teach—
and by a more selfish fact: that the city is essentially set up to protect philosophizing, one of quite a few signs that all is not as it
seems in this Republic.
There are certainly some other odd, even bizarre, aspects to be
observed in this political device. Its strict hierarchy of command
is inverted in respect to prosperity; the lowest caste, the craftsmen
and merchants are the rich ones, the warriors are allowed no
wealth. At the end of the books on the construction and the deconstruction of this city, we’re told outright that it is “a model laid up
in heaven” for anyone to look at who “wishes to found himself;
he’ll practice its politics only and no other” (592b; italics mine).
In other words, we really have all along been participating in soulconstruction rather than city-construction. But oddest is the notion
that the governors of this “fair city,” the philosopher kings, don’t
want to rule it—indeed, this reluctance is a criterion of fitness.
In fact, the education is set up so as to cancel political ambition—indeed, to capture the love of future kings for another realm,
to alienate them from the earthly city. For they are to have a carefully graduated program of learning, elevating them beyond the
world of appearances into the world of forms, the world of pure
trans-earthly being. That’s why Cicero’s dictum that I began
with—about Socrates bringing philosophy down for the heavens
to the earth—sounds so, well, inept.
In particular, the study that is the capstone of the education,
that levers the learner into this world of being and drags him out
of the terrestrial slime, is dialectic (531 ff.), of which more in a
moment. Now for Socrates—to the astonishment and disgust of a
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN
75
practical statesman like Jefferson, who waded contemptuously
through the “whimsies” and “nonsense” of the Republic (to Adams,
July 15, 1814) – the study of supra-worldly forms, of beings, is the
proper foundation for government. This is especially the case insofar as statesmanship is concerned with the virtues of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom. For obviously, to properly locate
these in the city, in the civic community, it is necessary to know
them. But to know them is not a matter of empirical research but
of dialectical (that is, ontological) inquiry, a matter of the study of
beings as beings, the study of Being itself. So the education does,
after all, have a political purpose—if we agree that ethics, the inculcation and preservation of virtue, is the end of the polis and its
politikoi, the civic community and its statesmen. I do not think any
contemporary citizen, attached to our Madisonian tradition, can
really agree—nor wholly disagree—and that is one of the many
reasons why the Republic is indispensable to political inquiry. For
it raises the question of justice in this original way: Is justice in the
sense of the Republic, as the proper adjustment of the faculties of
the soul—in particular the ready subordination of the lower parts
to reason—the condition for political unity and civic peace? From
this question falls out a whole slew of problems: Can we commit
ourselves to a psychology of faculties such as those involved in
the Socratic psychic constitution? And if so, is the adjustment of
the functions and their subordination to reason a persuasive analysis of psychological soundness? And if so, does it follow that the
adjustment is a political—or even a social—task? And if so, can a
democracy produce government wise enough to accomplish these
psychic adjustments, to induce virtue?
Before going on to the Statesman, I want to return to Rousseau:
Is the real business of the Republic indeed education, rather than
politics? Socrates never says so explicitly, nor can he, since the
program there presented is not just an education for leadership
loosely speaking, but very specifically the education of kings—
and, as Socrates makes very clear, of queens (540c). It is an education very specifically geared to the Republic’s polis—although
it will, amazingly, become the general model of higher, liberal education, lasting until the middle of the last century.
�76
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Nevertheless, I think Rousseau is right. Indeed, some aspects
of this “fair city” have been politically and socially realized: the
equality of men and women and (to some extent) the community
of marriage partners and children. But by and large it has remained,
blessedly, “a pattern laid up in heaven,” for it has its repulsive aspects. Its educational program, on the other hand, has, as I said,
cast loose and become viable even in a democracy, because what
is nowadays called its elitism is not an intellectually integral part
of this kind of learning. In fact, the college where my two translation partners and I teach, St. John’s College, is a remarkably close
incarnation of it, and it revels in its intellectual egalitarianism. That
is one more element in an argument that political justice is not the
actually intended topic of the Republic.
So now to the dialogue called The Statesman, a conversation
to which Socrates only listens. Here, at one point, things become
startlingly explicit. Near the very middle of the conversation the
stranger makes an announcement under the form of a rhetorical
question asked in that throwaway tone that alerts the reader of dialogues to a crucial turn. It concerns the ostensible search for the
true statesman. “Has it been proposed,” he asks, “for the sake of
this man himself rather than for our becoming more dialectical
about all things” (285d)? And the answer is: plainly for learning
to think dialectically. We thought we were learning about governing well; it turns out we are involved in a logical training exercise
using a universally applicable technique—dialectic, the expertise
of dividing and collecting subjects by terms.
Socrates is, once more, not a participant in this conversation,
and this dialectic is not quite his dialectic. His dialectic was a way
by which apt students, through being questioned cleverly and answering carefully, had their opinions, their mere assumptions
about the way things are, demolished and then reconstituted, so
that they might be led up into a solid knowledge of the true
sources of these things. It was, in short, an ascending way of learning. The stranger’s dialectic is a method that works the other way
around. From a tacitly assumed overview of the whole, the accomplished dialectician makes divisions (diaireseis). When he has
arrived at what will in later time (when this method has turned
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN
77
into the technique of classification) be called the “lowest species,”
he goes back up, making a collection of terms. These add up to a
definition. Many of our students begin by thinking that that is
what Socrates does when he philosophizes—he makes definitions.
Of course a collection of terms is not what Socrates looks for
when he asks, say, the question, “What is justice?”—but it is a
preparation for an answer.
Is definition-making, however, what the Elean Stranger believes to be the profitable end product of the dialectic for which
the statesman is only an example? No, nothing so unsubtle, as I’ll
try to show in a minute.
Not that this more subtle use of division is likely to have satisfied the auditing Socrates. We three translators of the Statesman
express this sense of his skepticism by our assignment of the last
speech of the dialogue. Someone says: “Most beautifully . . .
you’ve completed for us the kingly man, stranger, and the statesman.” Now the stranger’s interlocutor in the Statesman is a young
man who is also called Socrates. There is some question among
scholars whether the older or the younger Socrates speaks this valedictory line. We thought our Socrates, the older one, couldn’t have
thought it, and so he didn’t say it.
Here is what the stranger does with the dialectical art of division. First, the whole dialogue is a composition of divisions. To
see its handsome design, that of a tapestry, it is helpful to work
through its dialectical episodes and the way they are sewn together,
like the pieces of a figured robe. The beauties of this dialogue are
not imaginatively visual but logically structural; this text is a texture. But this cloaklike characteristic is not just a stylistic formalism. It signals that this new dialectic is a craft that produces
practical results. Its physical exemplification, and the great
metaphor of the dialogue, is weaving, cloak-making in particular.
And making intertwined, protective, enveloping compositions
turns out to be the royal art, the discerning and composing craft of
the statesman. This is no transcendentally derived wisdom, but a
technical expertise. For the subject of the Statesman, as contrasted
with the Republic, is unambiguously political; it is concerned with
human herds. However, from the vantage point of the king of
�78
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
crowds, of herds, the internal relations disposing the soul of an individual human being, which are the concern of the Republic, recede; they lie below the royal oversight. And with that distance
diminishes the interest in justice, which was, after all, the right relation of the soul’s parts. So justice is indeed no big concern of the
statesman, be it of the man or of the dialogue named after him.
So the statesman, who is, thus, not a philosopher king but an
expert ruler, sees each soul from afar as displaying one permanent
characteristic. My colleague Peter Kalkavage will point out the exceedingly interesting consequences for statesmanship of what he
discerns and what, again as a consequence, true statesmanship must
be. It is, its royal denomination notwithstanding, an expertise much
closer, I think, to our idea of politics than the philosophical rule of
the Republic.
Then what happens to the stranger’s startling claim, with
which I began my remarks on the Statesman? How can the dialogue’s real purpose be an exercise in dialectic when it will be
shown to be so precise and practical a doctrine about managing
multitudes?
Well, the Statesman is neatly reflexive. It is, one might say, a
self-reentrant dialogue. For by relentless dialectical division the
stranger establishes the precise location of the statesman in the
whole economy of crafts and sciences, materials and products,
regimes and rulers, virtues and vices. And in the course of doing
that, he is indeed also giving a lesson in the method of division to
young Socrates. It may even be that his teaching actually has more
effect on a finer young man who is also present, a second silent
listener, one of old Socrates’s two favorite partners in inquiry,
namely Theaetetus (the other being Glaucon in the Republic).
Then here’s the denouement: The art of dialectic, the ability
to distinguish perspicaciously the parts of any subject, an art for
which weaving is a very precise figure, is the true statesman’s expertise. Statesmanship, then, is the craft of setting up a civic
framework, a loom upon which the citizens of various temperaments, here the warp and woof, are interwoven into a cloaklike
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN
79
texture, which represents at once the body politic and its protective cover, as if to say that a well-interlaced citizenry will wrap
itself in its own constitution for security.
On this conclusion old Socrates may, after all, have smiled.
For among the Greeks weaving is always a women’s art, and that
women might match men as rulers is a teaching of his Republic.
So ends the Statesman, a dialogue that sets forth a doctrine of governing which requires an expertise for which participation in the
dialogue is itself the training.
�80
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Reflections on Justice in Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
Chester Burke
The last book of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is entitled
“A Judicial Error” because Dmitri Karamazov, the eldest Karamazov brother, is incorrectly found guilty of murdering his father Fyodor. Nearly all the spectators in the packed courtroom are stunned
by the verdict, despite the fact that most of them had assumed that
Dmitri had indeed committed the murder. Only his brother
Alyosha, his recently captivated love Grushenka, and his other
brother Ivan are certain of Dmitri’s evidence—Alyosha, because
of the innocence on Dmitri’s face when he said he hadn’t done the
deed; Grushenka, because “Dmitri isn’t the sort of man who would
lie” (683);* and Ivan, despite his loathing of Dmitri, because he
visits Fyodor’s illegitimate son Smerdyakov the night before the
trial and forces him to confess to the murder. Later that night,
Smerkdyakov commits suicide. Ivan’s testimony becomes worthless when, suffering from brain fever, he goes mad on the witness
stand, claiming that the only witness to this stunning revelation is
the Devil.
The first chapter of this final book is entitled “The Fatal Day.”
In the paragraph that concludes the previous chapter, Alyosha says
to himself, “Yes, with Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s
testimony; but he will go and testify . . . God will win!” (655) Having heard these three powerful words, “God will win,” the reader
is thrown into the human drama, that is, the trial. How can the truth
emerge from such a gigantic public spectacle, in which every one
of the participants has entered with his private opinions and passions? Dostoevsky characterizes the spectators, standing “in a
closely packed lump, shoulder to shoulder” (657), as having been
* Page references are to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov,
trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Strauss
& Giroux, 2002).
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE
81
enflamed by impatience. The women favor Dmitri’s acquittal and
the men, many of whom have been personally insulted by Dmitri,
wish to see him punished. The prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, trembles at having to oppose a famous Petersburg defense attorney,
whom he feels has overshadowed him since their younger days in
Petersburg. He believes that everything is at stake in this trial, both
for himself and for Russia. Fetyukovich, the famous defense attorney, exudes an air of confidence. The reader may feel a little uneasy
when Dostoevsky describes his eyes as small and inexpressive:
“his physiognomy had something sharply birdlike about it, which
was striking” (660-61). The material evidence with which the
reader is so familiar, wrenched from its living context, is on display
in the middle of the courtroom.
The prosecutor, known for (and sometimes ridiculed for) his
passion for psychology, puts together an account that seems to
make sense of all the facts, even though the defense attorney, having digested the situation with astonishing rapidity, is able to discredit many of the witnesses. Readers take delight in this passage,
because they have previous knowledge of these witnesses and the
ugliness of their souls. The prosecutor tells the compelling story
of Dmitri finishing “a poem” (717) that culminates in the murder
of his father, the stealing of 3,000 rubles, and running off madly to
find his lover Grushenka, only to relinquish her to a man who
abused her as a young girl. The defense attorney then accuses the
prosecutor of writing his own novel, of being a psychological poet
whose psychology is two-pronged and therefore equally capable
of proving a given statement of fact and its opposite. He masterfully shows that only the totality of the facts— and not a single
one of them in isolation—speak against his client.
Though he claims to demonstrate the limitations of psychology, the defense attorney is in fact a far better psychologist than
the prosecutor. He argues persuasively that there was no money,
no robbery, and no murder—at least no murder committed by
Dmitri. Seeing far deeper into Smerdyakov’s soul than most, the
defense attorney gives good reasons why Smerdyakov could have
killed his natural father.
�82
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Only the reader has the privilege of having witnessed Dmitri,
filled with loathing in front of his hateful father, pulling out a brass
pestle from his pocket—and then not using it. Why didn’t Dmitri
kill his father? “God was watching over me then,” Dmitri used to
say afterwards. This is another reference to a divine intervention
that seems to have no place in a court of justice. (Recall Alyosha’s
“God will win!”) Due to Fetyukovich’s skill in destroying each
part of the whole accusation, there is, however, a reasonable chance
that Dmitri will either be released or at worst given minimal punishment. But in the chapter entitled “A Sudden Catastrophe,”
Dmitri’s spurned lover Katya, ready to sacrifice her honor for his
brother Ivan, who has just been carried out of the court suffering
an attack of brain fever, comes forward with a letter from Dmitri
that she has been withholding. She presumably intends to use the
letter to save Dmitri, despite the fact that he has stolen 3,000 rubles
from her—the entirety of which she thinks he has spent in a single
drunken binge with her rival Grushenka that night before the murder. In this letter, written just two days before the murder, Dmitri
says that he will get hold of the money he has stolen from her, even
if he has to rob and kill his father to do so. The reader knows that
Katya asked Dmitri to send these 3,000 rubles to a relative in
Moscow, though she fully believed at the time that he would spend
the entire sum on Gurschenka. Two other facts must be remembered: 1) before the events of the novel, Dmitri lent Katya 5,000
rubles to cover up a financial indiscretion committed by her father;
2) Dmitri (who did not in fact steal the 3,000 rubles from his father)
spent only half of Katya’s 3,000 rubles during his wild night with
Grushenka. He retained the rest in a packet tied around his chest,
uncertain whether to return the unspent half to Katya (thus removing half of his disgrace), or to keep it for the opportunity of running
off with Grushenka.
It is only natural that the reader should be confused by the intricate adding and subtracting of monetary sums. Dostoevsky, always in need of money himself, deftly uses sums of money to show
how human beings struggle to regulate equality, honor, pride, and
justice among themselves.
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE
83
But back to the letter. This suddenly revealed document, an
apparent blueprint of the murder, gives “mathematical significance” (619) to the prosecutor’s case. And though the words
“mathematical significance” are a clear signal to readers of Dostoevsky that whatever is certain in this way is certainly not true, it
is equally certain that a jury will be very unlikely to yield a verdict
of not guilty in the face of such evidence.
Aware of the difficulty of achieving a verdict of not guilty, and
despite having just produced his own “demonstration” that there
was no money, robbery, or murder, Fetyukovich (whose name in
Russian suggests the words “jerk, drip, sourpuss”) addresses the
jury, changing his tone and his approach: “I have it in my heart to
speak out something more to you, for I also sense a great struggle
in your hearts and minds. . . Forgive my speaking of your hearts
and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end.” “I do not renounce one iota of what I have just
said, but suppose I did, suppose for a moment that I, too, agreed
with the prosecution that my unfortunate client stained his hands
with his father’s blood” (741).
This begins the second part of Fetyukovich’s summary to the
jury. Dostoevsky entitles the chapter “An Adulterer of Thought,”
without any comment on this astonishing title. Since the corpse of
a father is the only fact in the case that could speak against his
client, Fetyukovich tries to show that Fyodor was not at all a father.
He masterfully summarizes the most poignant scenes in the novel
in order to paint Fyodor in the worst possible light. He shows why
it would have been completely natural for Dmitri to have beaten
and killed his father (who is in truth not a father) with the fatal pestle (which the reader knows was not even the real murder weapon)
without intention or premeditation. “Such a murder is not a murder.
Such a murder is not a parricide, either. Such a murder can be considered parricide only out of prejudice” (747). The attorney then
invokes a passage from the gospel according to Matthew, and compares Dmitri’s plight to that of Christ. The most terrible punishment, but the only one by which Dmitri’s soul will be saved, would
be for the jury to overwhelm him with mercy. Only then would
�84
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Dmitiri— horrified by his deed—which, according to the defense
attorney’s earlier argument, Dmitri had not done)—realize that he
was guilty before all people.
Fetyukovich “adulterates thought” by fabricating a dangerous
novel (“novel upon novel,” shouts the prosecutor [748]), a concoction that is all the more wicked because it is a false image of Father
Zosima’s teaching. And, more important, it is the opposite of what
Dostoevsky has spent his whole life attempting to articulate. Only
the prosecutor, “breathless, inarticulate, confused” and “shaking
with emotion” (748), has the courage to respond. Of course his response will receive no sympathy from the mass of spectators, especially the mothers and fathers, who have amazingly enough
become enraptured by the words of the adulterer. Though the prosecutor is vain and beaten down by a failed life, though his superficial psychology prevents him from understanding the motives
and actions of the human beings right in front of him, he knows
with certainty that one cannot kill and not kill at the same time,
that one cannot praise and immortalize a man who murders his father, and that a false image of Christ and religion have been fabricated by his talented competitor. The reader is easily irritated by
the just response of this pathetic man (the prosecutor will himself
die soon after the trial) to a powerful and dangerous speech that is
arguing for a new understanding of human justice, one that includes a notion of mercy which could only be found in God or in
the heart of an individual human being.
I have pointed out that Dmitri, the prosecutor, and the defense
attorney have all been accused of acting out novels. By his subtle
but powerful use of chapter titles, Dostoevsky himself takes the
harshest stance toward the defense attorney. The Russian word for
“adulterer” (or “fornicator”) is a variation of the word for “lover.”
Fetyukovich, who claims to be able to feel “invisible threads that
bind the defense attorney and the jury together,” whom everyone,
including himself, expects to pull off some kind of miracle by proving Dmitri innocent when he is guilty, ends up by “proving” Dmitri
guilty when in truth he is innocent. His call to regenerate not only
Dmitri but also Russia herself is met with rapture and enthusiastic
weeping among the spectators, and the reader too is likely to be
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE
85
sympathetic. When he pleads with the jury to show mercy to
Dmitri even if he did kill his father, he shows himself not to be a
seeker of truth but to be unjust—indeed, an adulterer of thought.
He is unjust because he portrays Christ as an enlightened and compassionate liberal rather than the Son of God, who died in order to
save human beings from the power of sin.
We can detest Fyodor Karamazov in the depths of our souls.
We can pity the children that he brought into the world. We can
wish that he were dead and wonder why such a man is alive. But
we cannot excuse the man who killed him. That man, Smerdyakov,
hangs himself from a nail on his wall with a brief note saying that
he alone is responsible for his own death. This extreme isolation
is what Dostoevsky sees as the dreadful future of a world that denies God. Instead of hanging an icon or image of God on the wall,
we will end up destroying ourselves. Dostoevsky the novelist, committed to real justice and truth, cannot allow the jury to be won
over by this adultery of thought, even though what results is a momentary injustice in a court of law. By entitling the next chapter
“Our Peasants Stood Up for Themselves,” he shows that he is
pleased that the peasants (who comprise half of the jury) are not
seduced by this highest and ultimately most dangerous form of seduction. Though their verdict was incorrect, the peasants understood a deeper truth and rightly stood up for it. Their hearts rejected
false novels.
But the real novel ends several months after Dmitri receives
his sentence. It ends with the burial of a ten-year old schoolboy,
Ilyusha. Dmitri had gravely insulted Ilyusha’s father, a retired and
drunken officer known as the Captain, by dragging him out of a
tavern and across town, pulling him by his wispy beard. Desperate
to provide for his family—his wife and older daughter are crippled
and ill—the Captain was employed by Fyodor, assisting him in
shady financial dealings. One of them was to buy up Dmitri’s
promissory notes so as to bring him to financial disgrace. Seeing
his father publicly humiliated, the young Ilyusha begged Dmitri to
forgive his father, “rushing up to everyone asking them to defend
him, but everyone laughed” (192). When Ilyusha’s schoolmates
heard about the incident they teased him mercilessly. The next day
�86
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
he angrily threw stones at them, but he himself received a great
blow to the chest. He came down with a fever, and died two days
after Dmitri was sentenced for the murder he did not commit.
Given Dostoevsky’s masterful juxtaposition of scenes and
events, it would be easy to connect Dmitri’s punishment with the
death of this young boy. As the proud and angry Katya says to
Alyosha, “Dmitri committed a rash and unjust act, a very ugly act”
(193). She commissions Alyosha to give a large sum of money to
the Captain in recompense for this act. The attempt at justice (in
truth Katya, herself recently injured by Dmitri, considers herself a
fellow sufferer) does not work at first. The Captain initially takes
the money, imagining a way out of abject poverty for himself and
his miserable family. But suddenly, shaking and tearful, flings
down the money at Alyosha’s feet. He will eventually take not only
this money, but much more from the generous, though proud,
Katya. But his son will nonetheless die and the doctors will not be
able to cure his family.
It was not unlikely that the previously consumptive Ilyushka’s
life would have been short. But that is not the point. All of us are
continually doing harm to our fellow human beings. While it does
not seem possible that any system of justice could regulate the
damages, we humans are always trafficking amongst one another,
exchanging goods and money in an attempt to achieve some kind
of fairness.
“Each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most
of all” (289). This puzzling statement, lying powerfully in the
background of the novel, is said repeatedly by Father Zosima
throughout the novel. I have tried to show that Fetyukovich’s version is a dangerous adulteration of this claim. Dmitri, Ivan,
Smerdyakov, and even Alyosha can be held responsible for the
death of their father. Yet only one human being killed Fyodor and
it is the responsibility of the legal system to find and punish that
human being. Dmitri had previously thrown his father to the floor
and brutally kicked him, suspecting that Fyodor was hiding
Grushenka from him. Though drunk, he had written the damning
letter. Ivan had tacitly given Smerdyakov permission to kill Fyodor
by leaving town on the day of the murder; even worse, he had spent
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE
87
much of the night before his departure listening for sounds in the
house, unconsciously anticipating and desiring that someone would
come and kill his dreadful father. Alyosha, distracted by the death
of his hero Zosima, and overwhelmed with grief by the dishonor
of Zosima’s rotting corpse, had forgotten to keep in contact with
Dmitri. But Smerdyakov, having spent his entire life serving a family whose members he despised—except for Ivan, whose respect
he craved—understood the character of these Karamazovs, at least
in its baser aspects. He was able to set up a scenario in which it
would be possible for him to kill Fyodor, who trusted him, and
then steal the 3,000 rubles for which Dmitri had claimed he would
risk all. With this money, Smerdyakov imagined that he could start
a new life. And only Ivan could get Smerdyakov to confess—Ivan,
who, though he hated bitterly both his father Fyodor and his
brother Dmitri, had a conscience deeper than he himself knew.
During their conversation about the murder, Smerdyakov comes
to understand the emptiness and dishonesty of Ivan’s thoughts,
though he understands nothing of Ivan’s heart. And in that understanding about his former idol, he gives up on life, which had never
offered him anything but pain and misery. Smerdyakov—far cleverer and wiser than even the most observant reader could suspect—
sees that Ivan is more like his father than any of the brothers.
The chain of responsibility is endless. Grushenka says in
court, “It all happened because of me” (682)—claiming responsibility both for Fyodor’s and Dmitri’s falling in love with her.
Shortly thereafter, she says of Katerina, who had tried to charm
her out of loving Dmitri, “She is the cause of everything” (683).
And at the time of Dmitri’s arrest, Grushenka, hearing that Dmitri
had supposedly killed his father, had cried, “I am the guilty one,
first and foremost, I am the guilty one!” (457)
But everyone gets the problem of justice wrong, precisely because it is impossible to see clearly into the heart of another
human being. Father Zosima immediately understands the danger
looming before the Karamazov family in the first chapters of the
novel. That is why he bows before Dmitri and encourages Alyosha
to look after him. But Zosima cannot control the outcomes stemming from human nature. He can only preach “active love”—a
�88
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
difficult and profound concept derserving of another talk—and he
can pray.
While I do not claim that the following is a solution to the
problem of human justice, I’d like to end this talk with a quotation
from Father Zosima:
If it were not for Christ’s Church, indeed there would
be no restraint on the criminal in his evildoing and no
punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a
mechanical one . . . , which only chafes the heart in most
cases, but a real punishment, the only frightening and
appeasing punishment which lies in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience (64).
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE
Peaceniks and Warmongers:
The Disunity of Virtue
in Plato’s Statesman
Peter Kalkavage
89
I want to begin by saying how my theme is related to justice. Plato
and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that is very much at issue, and at risk, in Plato’s Statesman.
Perhaps at risk as well is the wholeness of logos or discourse.
Plato’s mysterious stranger from Elea delights in division. In
the Sophist he uses the method of dividing genera or kinds to pin
down the elusive professor of wisdom. In the Statesman he uses
this same method, with some modifications, to show the genuine
statesman and king “naked and alone by himself” (304a). But the
stranger isn’t all about logic. Like Socrates, he enjoys images of
all sorts and regularly avails himself of their curious power to illuminate. In the Statesman, soon after the great myth about reversed
becoming, the stranger announces the need for paradigms in inquiry.
He tells young Socrates that they would do well in their search if
they came up with a paradigm that would, in its small and humble
way, help to reveal the magisterial form, the eidos, of the true king
(277d).
This paradigm, as we soon hear, is weaving (279b). Politics is
the master-art that weaves together all the other arts in the city and
bends them to its high purpose. But it is not until late in the dialogue, almost at the end, that the precise meaning of the paradigm
is explained. The true statesman, we discover, knows how to interweave courageous and moderate types of souls. To use the language of the paradigm, he combines the warp or hard woollen
threads, which resemble courageous natures, with the woof or soft
threads, which resemble moderate natures. Properly combined,
these human threads produce “the web of statesmanly action”
(311B). This web is the wisely constituted polis—the beautiful end
of politics conceived as a productive art.
�90
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
But the path to this beautiful end requires an account that the
stranger calls “somewhat astonishing”—astonishing because it
proceeds from the view that virtue is not a happy unity, in which
different portions of virtue are “friendly” to one another, as the
many say and as Socrates suggests in other dialogues. On the contrary, virtue has within it, and seems even to be defined by, a war
between courage and moderation. The stranger is unsparing in his
formulation. The two virtues, he says, “have a deep-seated enmity
toward one another and maintain an oppositional faction in many
of the things that are” (306b). The stranger, we must note, does not
ask Socrates’ question: What is virtue? Instead, he posits an opposition between two forms of virtue. This opposition, more than anything else in the dialogue, defines the political art.
To illustrate his point, the stranger urges young Socrates to consider the two forms (eidē) that come to light when we praise things
for their beauty—various doings and makings, whether of bodies
or of souls (306c). We praise things that manifest “keenness and
swiftness.” These can be the things themselves or their images—
the swift movement of a runner, for example, or a vase painting
depicting such a runner. The name for what underlies such praise
is andreia, “courage” or “manliness.” This is the form we are admiring when we praise the keen and the swift.
But we also praise what the stranger calls “the gentle form of
generation.” We praise as beautiful those actions and thoughts that
are quiet, modulated, slow, and careful. The name for this form is
orderliness or composure, kosmiotēs (307b) It refers to moderation
as the virtue of keeping things measured and undisturbed. We think
of things like a smooth transition in a piece of music or a soothing
tone of voice. To sum up, we are thoroughly contradictory in our
praise of beauty. We praise as beautiful those things that have a
manly look, and we also praise the look that is opposed to manliness. Furthermore, we blame as ugly both what is opposed to manliness and what is opposed to the opposite of manliness, that is,
what is opposed to moderation. We do all this, we should note, not
because we are inept but because beauty itself is self-opposed.
Shifting now from things that display opposed virtues to the
very natures of courage and moderation, the stranger refers to these
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE
91
as “looks [ideas] destined . . . to be split apart in hostile faction.”
He then turns to the people who have these natures in their souls,
not by choice or upbringing but by nature (307b-c). Faction is here
described as a feud between warring families. Members of each
family judge the beautiful and the good solely in terms of their
family virtue, and hate members of the other family simply because
they are in the other family. This love of Same and hate of Other
blinds each family to the common, if problematic, eidos of virtue
that both families share. Each family, by virtue of its virtue, is blind
to the virtue and beauty of the other. As a consequence, members
of neither family really know their own virtue, since they do not
know why and in what manner their characteristic virtue is beautiful and good. Because of this blindness and the mutual hate it engenders, the two families, though they live in cities, may be said
to occupy, in Hobbes’s phrase, a pre-political “state of nature” with
respect to virtue.
As if this situation weren’t bad enough, the stranger goes on to
say that the family feud between noble types is child’s play compared with the disease that is “the most hateful of all for cities”
(307d). It is here that the stranger shows why the two forms of
virtue, and the two opposed types of soul, constitute the central
problem of politics. Indeed, he demonstrates the urgent need of the
political art in the Reign of Zeus, the era in which the world has
been abandoned by its divine shepherd and guide.
The stranger gives a devastating portrait of what happens to
cities that fall prey to the ethos of peace at any cost. He refers, paradoxically, to the eros for composure (307e)—the only appearance
of this word in the dialogue—as if to say: “Look at these people,
young Socrates. To themselves they seem all calm and reserved,
but in fact they have a disordered desire for order. Why, they are
as crazy as a man in love!” Perhaps there is also the suggestion
that eros, for the stranger, is to be associated with what is soft or
tender rather than with the sort of tough love that Diotima describes
in the Symposium (203c-e). In any case, because of their unmeasured love of order, these people slip unwittingly into an unwarlike
condition and raise their children to be similarly unwarlike. The
condition spreads through the city like an infection and becomes
�92
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
more virulent with each generation. Since unmixed moderation
cannot accommodate itself to the aggression of an enemy, cannot
rouse citizens to display a decisive and manly spirit when this is
needed, the city eventually loses its freedom and becomes enslaved.
The very same result awaits the macho city that wants war at
any cost and is driven by thymos, spiritedness, rather than eros.
The rage for courage leads citizens and rulers to be constantly tensing up their cities for opportunities to display what they wrongly
take to be the whole of virtue. Before too long, the city that idolizes
courage eventually picks a fight with the wrong adversary, an
enemy it can’t vanquish, and so is vanquished in turn. Like the
peace-loving city, the war-driven city ends in destruction and slavery (308a).
Now we normally think of faction, stasis, as the strife between
two parties within a single city. But the stranger’s view in the present context is very different. The political problem par excellence
is, for him, not violent heterogeneity (for example, champions of
oligarchy vs. champions of democracy) but virtuous homogeneity,
the idolatry of one of two opposed virtues, either courage or moderation. To be sure, there is faction in its usual sense within the
form of virtue. This is the eidetic situation, known only to the
philosophic statesman. But the real-life political problem occurs
when the two naturally opposed virtues are not simultaneously
present. Hence, as the stranger sees it, the devastating political outcome of the principle “likes attract and opposites repel” is enacted
on the stage of inter-polis relations, when a city suffers destruction
at the hands of another city rather than from internal discord. The
stranger is surely not unaware of the evils of faction in this latter
sense—the horrors, for example, that Thucydides describes in the
case of Corcyra (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War,
3.82). But for the stranger this is not the central political problem,
which has its source in the eidetic opposition between the beautifully tough and the beautifully gentle that pervades “many of the
things that are.” The problem is not vice, or human nature simply,
or intense disagreement over which regime is best, but virtue,
which is by nature turned against itself.
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE
93
We might try to make sense of the stranger’s unsettling account
by citing Aristotle’s distinction between natural and ethical virtue,
the latter being guided by the intellectual virtue of phronēsis or
practical wisdom, which allows the virtuous individual to avoid
excess and deficiency by perceiving the mean (Nichomachean
Ethics, 6.13). This is helpful to an extent, but it takes the sting out
of the stranger’s insight into why virtue is a problem. The stranger
would no doubt agree with Aristotle’s opinion that virtuous dispositions, when left to themselves, are dangerous, and that they
need practical wisdom in order to be reliable virtues. But far more
important to the stranger is the primordial dyad of courage and
moderation—the dyad that defines the task of the political art.
That task is not how to interweave a multiplicity of virtues in order
to make them one but how to unite two naturally opposed virtues
so that they may complement rather than repel one another and
contribute their distinctive powers to the political web. These are
toughness and flexibility, quickness and caution, forcefulness and
grace.
It is tempting to say that the problem of politics, for the stranger,
is that of knowing how to interweave the male and the female
forms of ethical beauty. It is true that each virtue, by the stranger’s
account, must apply to both men and women. How else could one
trait come to dominate a city’s population through marriage and
procreation? Nevertheless, the manliness of courage strongly suggests as its correlate the femininity of moderation. If we admit this
sexual distinction in the case of the two virtues, it becomes interesting, to say the least, that the paradigm for political wisdom in
the dialogue is the feminine art of weaving. This may be Plato’s
way of showing that, of the two opposed virtues, moderation, as
the love of order and peace, is closer than courage to justice and
wisdom. It may also show Plato’s philosophic preference for
music over gymnastic, since weaving engages in deft material harmonization. In good statesmanship, as in philosophy, grace trumps
force to become the greatest force of all. This is true even for our
tough-minded, methodically rigorous stranger, who tells young
Socrates that the statesman and good lawgiver knows how to instil
right opinions in others “by the muse of kingship” (309d).
�94
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
The stranger proceeds to outline the education and nurture that
will generate the needful thing—the artful synthesis of virtuous
opposites in a coherent political whole. This whole, this web, in
order to be beautiful, requires beautiful threads that have been previously prepared by means of a subsidiary art. Statesmanship, like
all compositional art, is elitist: only the best materials will do. And
so, there must be an artful way to determine who is fit for an ethical-political education, and who is not. This consists in observing
children at play in order to see which ones show signs of a virtuous
disposition, whether of courage or moderation. The stranger lays
special emphasis on those who prove to be uneducable. He describes them as “violently driven off course by a bad nature into
godlessness and arrogance and injustice” (308E-309A). The political art, here seen in its harsh and decisive aspect, casts them out
“by punishing them with death penalties and exiles and the greatest
dishonors.” And those who “wallow in ignorance and much baseness” are put into the class of slaves.
The stranger at this point explicitly connects the union of manly
and moderate natures with the intertwining of warp and woof
(309b), in effect closing the paradigm-web he began to weave earlier in the dialogue. The city, in order to be a durable garment suited
to the protection of all those it embraces, needs both kinds of
human threads: the hard and the soft. This unity of opposites requires a two-tiered system of civic education that produces two
sorts of “bonds”—one higher, one lower. The higher bond is said
to be divine, since it applies to the part of the soul that is “eternalborn,” the part that thinks and holds opinions. The lower, human
bond is marriage, which applies to what the stranger calls “the animal-born part,” that is, the part of the soul that has to do with bodily desire. The bonds are produced successively: first the higher,
then the lower. Once the higher bond of right opinion is in place,
the stranger asserts, the lower one isn’t difficult to bring about
(310a). This optimism presupposes that the divine bond is strong
enough to overcome the greatest of all human drives—the erotic
attraction that human beings have for one another and that connects
them, as we hear in the Symposium, with the striving for immortality (207a).
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE-
95
The higher tier of the educational process aims at inculcating
“genuinely true and also steadfast opinions about beautiful and just
and good things” (309c). These opinions are implanted in both
types of noble individuals. In other words, the inculcation of “one
opinion about what’s beautiful and just and good” supersedes the
idolatry of a single virtue and overcomes the natural impulse to
welcome one’s like and shun one’s unlike. Moderate and courageous individuals will share the opinion that it is good for the city
that they mingle, and bad if they don’t. In other words, they will
learn to respect, if not love, a virtue higher than either courage or
moderation—the virtue of justice. They will believe that they and
their respective virtues are threads that must be woven together to
form the political web.
I note in passing that the education the stranger describes is
based entirely on the cultivation of habits and right opinion. There
is no philosophic education for guardians, no turning of the soul
from becoming to being, as there is in the Republic. The stranger’s
version of a city in speech may be the work of a philosophic statesman, but it does not appear that this statesman, though possessing
kingly science, is in fact a king in this city.
The stranger dwells on how the higher sort of education, which
aims at the divine bond, tempers the excess in the two opposed
virtues. If a manly individual takes hold of true opinions about
what is good and beautiful and just, he will “grow tame and in this
way be most willing to commune with just things.” Without these
opinions, he will degenerate into a beast (309e). Similarly, the
order-loving individual who holds these same true opinions will
become “genuinely moderate and intelligent,” and the one who
doesn’t will rightly be called simpleminded or foolish. The establishment of these true opinions takes place through laws and customs that apply only to those naturally suited for an ethical
education. This education, the stranger asserts, is the “drug” prescribed by the ever-vigilant art of politics. It is the antidote for onesided virtue.
At last we reach the stranger’s account of marriage, the “human
bond” implanted by the political art. This bond, though lower than
the other, is crucial, since the city’s continuance and well-being
�96
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
depend on procreation through sexual union. We should recall that
it is not courage and moderation per se that bring about political
downfall but rather the gradual build-up and concentration of a single virtue through sexual generation over the course of time. As
the stranger approaches his culminating definition, he gets down
to the nitty-gritty of why people marry. He dismisses those who
marry for wealth or power and focuses on those whose care is family and children. These are the people who marry, or who arrange
the marriages of their sons and daughters, for the serious (if wrong)
reason that they always choose partners who are of their own family when it comes to virtue and eschew members of the opposite
family.
The political art counteracts this error, goes against nature, by
compelling members of each “family” to overcome their natural
repugnance for the other and to marry against type. This will prevent the spread of a single trait by producing hybrids that combine
both virtuous types. The stranger does not say what home life will
be like for married opposites, nor does he care. The only thing that
matters, from a political standpoint, is that the virtues are mixed
rather than kept separate. Of course, genesis in the Reign of Zeus
is unpredictable: there will always be children whose nature reduplicates that of, say, a courageous mother rather than a moderate
father. And so, the political art must exercise perpetual vigilance
and continually oversee marriage and sexual union. The war on
nature must go on.
The needful union of opposed virtues must be enforced at the
highest level of the city—that of the rulers. The stranger acknowledges that it is possible for one individual to have both virtues
(311a). The monarchic city must choose this sort of individual as
its supervisor. If more than one ruler is required—if the city is aristocratic—then the ruling class must have both kinds of virtuous individuals. The reason is that moderate rulers are cautious, just, and
conservative, but they lack, the stranger says, the needful acuity
and vigor, which would be supplied by the courageous among the
ruling class. The stranger ends his “astonishing account” of virtue
on a negative note: “And it’s impossible for all things having to do
with cities to turn out beautifully in private and in public when
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE
97
these characters [courage and moderation] aren’t present as a pair”
(311b).
Only one thing remains: the final definition of the web that is
produced by the true statesman’s knowledge. Will this web, as the
stranger glowingly describes it, ever be woven in deed as it is in
speech? From the stranger’s perspective, it does not matter. The
goal was to define statesmanship solely in terms of the statesman’s
knowledge or science, apart from whether he actually rules,
founds, reforms, or advises (259b).
What, then, does the statesman know? Not, it seems, how to
lead individuals to virtue, but how to temper the virtue they already
have by nature. The statesman’s wisdom is the wisdom of defence.
That is why the stranger tends to dwell more on bad things to be
avoided and feared than on good things to be sought and aspired
to. Politics is a defensive art. It is embodied in the web that ends
the dialogue. Strange to say, when we finally find the statesman
“naked and alone,” he turns out to be a maker of garments, which
earlier in the dialogue were placed in the class of defences (279c280a). He is the maker of the web that is both the body politic and
the political cloak that defends the otherwise naked city from its
enemies, the virtuous from their monomania and wrong marriages,
and all its inhabitants from exposure and need. Perhaps most of
all, the political web protects the city from the ravages and uncertainties of time. A good garment is one that wears well. It must
protect us from seasonal extremes. The same is true of the political
garment, which must defend the city not only during the winter of
war and its discontents but also during the summer of peace, prosperity, and inattention.
In Plato’s Statesman, politics appears in its true light only when
it is seen in the context of the stranger’s cosmic myth about the
Reign of Kronos and the Reign of Zeus. The myth compels us to
judge the tension-riddled, endangered life we have now by contrasting it with an earlier peaceful life that ended in disappearance
rather than old age and death, that had no sex or sexual desire, and
that needed neither politics nor clothes. The myth discloses what
is most needful for beleaguered humanity in this our Reign of
Zeus—the era that depends on the god-like statesman and shepherd
�98
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
because it can no longer depend on a kindly nature and a caretaking
god.
I suspect that the world for the stranger is, like virtue, fundamentally incoherent. Strictly speaking, there is no kosmos, no permanent world-order that grounds the inherent goodness of the
virtues. Instead there are two opposed cosmic eras, two opposed directions of becoming, and two opposed forms of human life and
human nature. In the Reign of Zeus—that is, in the realm of politics—the “condition of ancient disharmony,” the tendency toward
degenerateness that is woven into the very constitution of the world
on account of its bodily being, asserts itself (273c). That is why we
need the Promethean powers of method and art—to make order
where there is no order. In the Statesman—one of Plato’s fascinating experiments in post-Socratic philosophy—Plato tempts us to
consider the grounds and implications of this modern-sounding
world-view.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES
Raskolnikov’s Redemption
Nicholas Maistrellis
99
The narrative of Crime and Punishment is very straightforward.
An impoverished university student named Raskolnikov plans and
commits a murder. The murder accidently turns into a double
murder. There follows a sequence of incidents and conversations
that reveal the turmoil this act causes in the soul of the criminal.
Through two conversations with a young prostitute named Sonya
the murderer finally confesses his crime, first to her and then to
the authorities. Finally there is an epilogue in which we are told
that Raskolnikov is sentenced to a period of imprisonment in
Siberia. Sonya follows him to Siberia. Remarkable things happen
to him there.
Of all the four great novels of Dostoevsky–Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov—it is only
in this one that Dostoevsky creates a sustained dialectic with the interior life of one and only one character. Crime, on the other hand,
is a theme in all the novels, but it’s only in this one that Dostoevsky
focuses single-mindedly on unfolding the nature of crime, together
with its causes and effects in the human soul. This makes it particularly relevant to the theme of this conference. However, Dostoevsky is not as interested in criminal justice as he is in the effects
of crime, first on the soul of the criminal, and finally, on the whole
human community. This doesn’t mean that he ignores justice. In
fact, the question of Raskolnikov’s debt to society occupies a large
part of the book, especially in the interrogation of Raskolnikov by
Porfiry Petrovitch, the investigating detective who suspects very
early in the book that Raskolnikov is the murderer, and in the conversations with Sonya, the prostitute who befriends Raskolnikov.
Considerations of justice are a dialectical moment in the unfolding
of crime, and not the highest moment. By “dialectical moment” I
mean that the claims of justice are gathered up and form part of the
transformation of the redeemed criminal. These dialectical moments
cannot be the highest moment of the transformation.
�100
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Now, the claims of justice could be said to be satisfied when
the criminal is punished. But Dostoevsky is not interested in punishment as retribution. He thinks it is ineffective. He is interested
in punishment only in so far as the demand for it arises in the criminal himself, and results in his redemption. The highest moment
is when the criminal acknowledges his crime and asks for forgiveness from the whole human community. Thus, Dostoevsky’s treatment is “psychological,” if it is clear that by psychology one does
not mean a putative science of the soul, but an attempt to get to
know another human being. In his notebooks on Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky makes the extraordinary claim that it is the
crime itself that makes Raskolnikov a moral being. “His moral development begins from the crime itself; the possibility of such
questions arises which would not have existed previously.”1 It is
impossible in a short paper to do more than give a sketch of this
theme, and even this sketch will focus on only a few incidents.
Let me begin with Dostoevsky’s account of crime. The commission of a crime, for him, is a sign that the criminal has separated
himself from his fellow human beings. It is not the crime that separates the criminal, but some transformation in his soul which
causes him to focus his attention entirely on himself. Such transformations are hard to discern. Often, even those closest to the
criminal are puzzled about what is going on. Even the criminal
himself is not fully aware of what is moving him. He becomes surprised at his own behavior. I think this is Dostoevsky’s reason for
believing that ordinary punishment is useless in reforming the
criminal. Since the criminal has separated himself from society, he
feels that the power of society is arbitrary and that the freedom he
has given himself precisely by his separation from his fellows
makes retribution merely another act of violence equivalent to his
own. He both resents the power of society and despises it. Redemption cannot come from actions done to the criminal; it has to
arise in his own soul.
The whole novel takes place over the span of two weeks, and
the crime occurs at the end of Part I, about three days into the action. In the days leading up to the crime, Raskolnikov has stopped
going out. He has stopped seeing his friend Razhumikin, and has
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS
101
stopped communicating with his mother and sister. He has also
stopped tutoring students. He has no income. He hasn’t paid his
rent for a long time. He spends most of his time sleeping in his
room—a horrible garret. He eats only when Natashya, the caretaker, brings him something. He is withdrawing from the world.
On the very first page of the novel, the narrator says, “He was so
immersed in himself, and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady, but of meeting anyone at all.”2 Very soon, however, we are introduced to an
ambiguity in Raskolnikov. At the beginning of the second chapter
of Part I, we are told that he “was not used to crowds. . . . But now
something suddenly drew him to people.”3 This is the first indication of the doubleness in Raskolnikov’s soul. He separates himself
from others, but he cannot do it with his whole soul. Later we will
learn that it is this doubleness that makes redemption possible.
The sequence of events in Part I leading up to the murder is
very important to Dostoevsky’s dialectic, so I will take some time
going over them. On the first day, Raskolnikov wakes up, goes out,
and almost immediately visits the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna,
whom he is planning to murder. He pretends he wants to pawn
something. Dostoevsky carefully reveals to us Alyona’s poisonous,
grasping character. This visit is a rehearsal of the murder, so the
murder is committed twice in his soul. He assures himself of the
rightness of what he is planning by reminding himself of Alyona’s
wickedness. By this he shows the conventional side of his character, which he despises. He then decides that he wants to be with
people, and decides to go to the tavern. There he enters into conversation with Marmeladov, a civil servant and a drunkard who is
deliberately destroying his own life and his family’s life. Raskolnikov helps bring him home and meets his consumptive wife and
hungry children. Marmeladov is the father of Sonya, the fourteenyear-old prostitute with whom Raskolnikov falls in love. When he
departs, Raskolnikov leaves behind, without saying anything, most
of his money. The narrator makes it clear that Raskolnikov’s own
generosity at this moment is unintelligible to him. He returns home
and goes to sleep.
The next morning, he is given a letter from his mother that re-
�102
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
counts in great detail her numerous trials, including the decision
by his sister to marry someone despicable in order to escape
poverty. While reading the letter, the narrator tells us, his face was
wet with tears, but when he finishes, “it was pale, twisted convulsively, and a heavy bilious, spiteful smile wandered over his lips.”4
Raskolnikov returns to wandering around town, and he encounters a drunk girl whose disheveled clothing had clearly been
thrown on her by those who had made use of her before turning
her out on the street. She is being followed by a middle-aged, welldressed man whose intentions are obvious. Raskolnikov’s first impulse is to help her. He yells at the man, and calls to a nearby police
officer for assistance. He gives the officer some money for a taxi
to bring the girl home when they find where she lives. The narrator
then tells us, “At that moment it was as if something stung Raskolnikov, as if he had been turned about in an instant.” He immediately says to the police officer, “Forget it! What do you care? Leave
her alone. Let him have fun. . . . What is it to you?”5 Raskolnikov
now identifies with the presumed violator.
He then continues his frantic pilgrimage through St. Petersburg, and finally collapses in complete exhaustion under some
bushes, where he falls asleep. He dreams a terrible dream: He is a
boy walking with his father and they witness a peasant beating his
horse to death, accompanied by cheers from the crowd. He tries to
stop the peasant, but he cannot. He asks his father to explain, but
he only replies that it is none of their business. When Raskolnikov
wakes up, he exclaims, “Thank God it was only a dream!” followed almost immediately by “God! But can it be, can it be that I
will really take an axe and hit her on the head and smash her skull
. . . slip in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal, and tremble,
and hide, all covered with blood . . . with the axe . . . Lord, can it
be?”6 He has now identified himself not with the helpless witness
of the slaughter but with both the murderer and the victim, and he
is horrified. He continues walking and inadvertently discovers by
means of an overheard conversation that Alyona’s sister Lizaveta
will not be in their apartment at a certain time on the next day. He
takes this as a kind of presentiment, and the narrator tells us, “He
was not reasoning about anything, and was totally unable to reason;
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS
103
but suddenly felt with his whole being that he no longer had any
freedom either of mind or of will, and that everything had been
suddenly and finally decided.”7
On the next day, the third day, he kills Alyona with an ax. Unfortunately, Lizaveta comes home unexpectedly, and he has to kill
her too. He hurriedly and inexpertly steals some things and returns
to his apartment. He falls asleep again. He sleeps for a very long
time.
This is the account of Raskolnikov’s actions before, during,
and after the crime. The main thing I want to point out is Raskolnikov’s extraordinary ambivalence: he affirms the crime and yet is
horrified by it. He rejects human contact and yet seeks it. He weeps
for his mother and sister, yet he is filled with spite, and so on. He
cannot affirm anything in himself whole-heartedly.
Dostoevsky has structured the crime quite deliberately. In the
first place, he makes Alyona an unsympathetic victim. She is
greedy and selfish, and looks it. He does not want our confrontation
with the issue of crime to be sentimentalized by feelings of pity
for the victim. On the other hand, Lizaveta is a sympathetic character. We find that, although simple-minded, she is kind. In fact,
she is friendly with Sonya. Raskolnikov murders her purely for the
sake of concealment. So the disunity in Raskolnikov is mirrored
in the victims. Also, it is essential to the narrative that there is no
evidence against Raskolnikov. Through an improbable series of
circumstances, and in spite of his own blunders, Raskolnikov escapes undetected from a building filled with people, and manages
to hide what he stole before he is searched. Dostoevsky makes it
clear that all this is purely by chance, and even in spite of Raskolnikov doing things that could make it more likely that he would
be suspected. Dostoevsky has, in fact, constructed something like
a controlled experiment in which all variables except for the feelings and reactions of the criminal are controlled. If Raskolnikov is
to be found out, it would have to be by some action of his own.
We are ready now to consider the crime from Raskolnikov’s
point of view. He initially gives two reasons for the crime: first, he
needs the money to advance his career; second, he needs the money
to help his mother and sister. He understands both to be humani-
�104
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tarian reasons. He is a very able man, and if he could advance his
career, he could do valuable work for mankind. He is a very able
man, and if he could advance his career, he could help his mother
and sister—and especially, he could prevent the unfortunate marriage of his sister, which she is clearly undertaking for financial
reasons. Contrasted with this is the fact that Alyona is a terrible
person, who not only has done nothing good for anyone but, in
fact, has done untold harm. Her death would be a blessing. Underlying these reasons is the idea that for the sake of humanity higher
human beings can transgress ordinary moral and civil laws. In fact,
Raskolnikov accepts the idea that great men do this all the time.
His recurrent example is Napoleon. In fact, Raskolnikov apparently
wrote an essay, which had been published, on this theme. Dostoevsky does not give his readers the opportunity to read it.
Up to this point in Raskolnikov’s internal dialectic, he considers himself a great man like Napoleon or Isaac Newton, a superior
person who needs to sacrifice ordinary conventions for some
higher good. But the conduct of the crime continually speaks
against this. The theft was botched because he didn’t take the time
to find the large cache of money in the apartment. He hides and
keeps the money and jewels he did manage to steal, ostensibly because it would be too dangerous to spend the money or sell the
jewels, but it is clear that its presence horrifies Raskolnikov because it reminds him of what he did. It becomes increasingly clear
that the reasons given for the crime do not come close to revealing
what is in his soul, or what he thinks is in his soul. This comes out
most decisively in what he says to Sonya during their second conversation:
“I tormented myself for so many days: would Napoleon
have gone ahead or not? It means I must already have
felt clearly that I was not Napoleon . . . . I endured all,
all the torment of this babble, Sonya, and I longed to
shake it all off my back: I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for myself, for myself alone. I
didn’t want to lie about it even to myself! It was not to
help my mother that I killed—nonsense! I did not kill
so that, having acquired means and power, I could become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS
killed—killed for myself alone—and whether I would
later become anyone’s benefactor, or would spend my
life like a spider, catching everyone in my web and
sucking the life-sap out of everyone, should at that moment have made no difference to me! . . . And it was
not the money above all that I wanted when I killed,
Sonya; not the money so much as something else. . . .
I know all this now. . . . Understand me: perhaps, continuing on that same path, I would never again repeat
that murder. There was something else I wanted to
know; something else was nudging my arm. I wanted
to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a
louse like all the rest, or a man? Would I be able to step
over or not! Would I dare to reach down and take, or not?
Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right—”
“To kill? The right to kill?” Sonya clasped her hands.8
105
What did Raskolnikov mean here when he says that he committed the crime entirely for himself?
The question of freedom was very important to Dostoevsky,
and especially the claim that the only way for a human being to affirm his freedom is through the commission of a crime for its own
sake. It is present in one way or another in all four of his major
works. Think, for example, of Nikolai Stavrogin in Demons. Dostoevsky takes this idea very seriously, and, in fact, affirms its truth
in some way. It is freedom that Raskolnikov is seeking, First, he is
seeking freedom from the bounds of social conventions, and also,
most importantly, from what he considers his own sentimental tendencies. This is why he has to separate himself off from other
human beings, why this separation is the source of crime. I do not
believe that Dostoevsky is saying that all criminals have motives
exactly like those of Raskolnikov, but I do think that some separation from mankind is at work in all criminals. Dostoevsky is particularly interested in exploring what happens when someone tries
to do this deliberately. After he commits the murder, Raskolnikov
is still torn, but now the stakes are much higher than before. Now
he has to see if he has the fortitude to affirm his crime, not as a
project, but as his deed. This affirmation would be the sign that
he was in fact a superior being, a free man, and not an ordinary
�106
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
criminal. But he discovers very quickly that he cannot affirm his
crime as he wishes. Sentimental regrets plague him. He becomes
ill, and experiences an almost overwhelming desire to confess. It
is this desire to confess which that exposes him to the interest of
the police. He now begins to feel regret for what he has done, but
this is not the regret the reader might expect. He does not regret
that he has done something wrong; he regrets that he cannot wholeheartedly affirm his crime. Of course, there is a part of him that
does regret the crime profoundly, that knows that he has done a
terrible thing; but it takes the the entire rest of the book for Raskolnikov to acknowledge that this other part is truly himself, and not
internalized convention. The doubleness we have seen in Raskolnikov’s behavior is now revealed as a doubleness within himself.
Through our own ambivalence, which is revealed to us as we read,
Dostoevsky shows us that this doubleness is not peculiar to Raskolnikov, but is true of us as well.
The novel proper ends with Raskolnikov’s confession, once to
Sonya, and once to the police. He has two conversations with
Sonya: the first is a rehearsal of his confession; the second is his
actual confession. This behavior mirrors the commission of the
murder. The confession to the police also has a doubleness about
it. He goes to the police station to confess, but at the last moment
runs out of the station. When he sees Sonya looking at him from
the street, he returns to the police station and confesses. The novel
ends with Raskolnikov’s confession, but the motive for it ambiguous. Is Raskolnikov finally filled with true remorse and the desire
for repentance, or is he confessing because he has failed to live up
to his own view of the murder and himself? Is he simply acknowledging his failure to affirm his crime? The novel inclines us to the
latter account, but it is hard to be sure.
In the Epilogue (which, by the way, does not appear at all in
Dostoevsky’s notebooks), we are told the Raskolnikov was sentenced to eight years hard labor in Siberia. Dostoevsky makes it
clear that both spirits in Raskolnikov are still at war during his imprisonment. The narrator tells us that Raskolnikov was suffering
not from remorse at the crime he committed, but from “wounded
pride” at the fact that he had to confess in order to find “some peace
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS
107
for himself.”9 But this was not repentance. “He did not repent of
his crime.”10 By the end of the Epilogue, however, he does repent.
How does this happen? I only have time here to give a bare sketch
of this transformation.
The first and most fundamental element of the change is his
love for Sonya. This love began almost from the moment he first
met her. This love was not intelligible to him. In fact, it annoys
him, and he tries to get rid of it, but it is clear, whether he likes it
or not, that she is what ties him to life itself. In Siberia, she becomes indispensible to him.
A second element in the change arises after an extraordinary
experience he undergoes while in Siberia. He discovers that all his
fellow prisoners, who have had much harder lives than he, love
life. “He looked at his fellow convicts and was amazed at how they,
too, all loved life, how they valued it! It precisely seemed to him
that in prison they loved and valued it even more, cherished it even
more than in freedom.”11 This experience, combined with his realization of the depth of Sonya’s love, brought about his transformation. Retributive punishment did nothing to heal his soul; but the
experience of living with dangerous, desperate men who nevertheless loved life made him whole again. This experience makes him
realize the meaning of the murders he committed: they were acts
against life itself, and thus against all human beings. In some
wholly mysterious way, this experience allows him to discover the
love of life in himself.
Let me end with a brief epilogue: a story of retribution and
penance related by my friend and colleague, Howard Zeiderman,
in an essay about the educational work he has been doing the last
fifteen years with prisoners at the maximum security prison in Jessup, Maryland. A group of prisoners were discussing a drawing as
a text:
The text was a drawing by Kathe Kolwitz, Prisoners
Listening to Music. The three prisoners depicted are
skeletal, with hollow eyes—and all seemingly gripped
by something. The session was not going very well and
I regretted trying to use a text that connected too
vividly with their situation. A number of the younger
�108
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
members were clearly repulsed by the drawing. When
I asked why a few who spoke often were silent, Larry
answered. “It’s scary looking at them. I don’t want that
to be me.” As he finished, another prisoner, Craig, a
man almost seventy years old who first served time
more than fifty years before, laughed. “You don’t understand nothing. They’re not dying. They’re gettin’
past their hungers. It’s the music that makes them
pure—like angels. Listen—when I was young down
south we had a chaplain. Every day he would play
music for us. Old music, beautiful. At first we couldn’t
listen to it. We never heard nothing like it. Sometimes
a song would last a long time, no words. But then we
started to love it. We would listen like in the picture,
and we’d remember things. And we’d cry. Sometimes
you could hear ten men cry. And sometimes the priest
would cry too. We were all together in it. But then he
retired and a new chaplain came. He was different. He
wanted us to see the doctors and counselors, the case
workers. They would ask us questions about ourselves
and make us go to classes, programs. They were working on us and the music ended. It was different. It was
them against us.” Correction, as Craig sensed, is entirely different from penance.12
NOTES
Fyodr Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1967), 64.
1
Fyodr Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Richard Pevear and
Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage, 1993), 3.
2
Ibid., 11.
Ibid., 39.
5
Ibid., 49.
6
Ibid., 59.
7
Ibid., 62.
8
Ibid., 419
9
Ibid., 543.
3
4
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS
10
11
Ibid., 544.
Ibid., 545.
109
Howard Zeiderman, “Caged Explorers: The Hunger for Control,” The
St. John’s Review 53.2 (2012): 157.
12
�110
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Justice in Plato’s Statesman
Eric Salem
Ordinary politicians love to talk about justice, and to go on—and
on—about all the just things they have done, are doing, or mean to
do in the future. We see it all the time—just turn on the television,
especially in an election year. But what about the genuine article,
the true politikos, the statesman who possesses genuine political
science and who practices or could practice the genuine political
art? What role does justice play in such a man’s thinking and doing
and speaking?
A selective glance at our tradition suggests that justice plays a
very large role indeed. Consider, for instance, our own founding
documents—certainly works of statesmanship of a very high order.
The Constitution bluntly proclaims in its preamble that one of its
purposes is to “establish justice.” And the Declaration declares,
among other things, that governments exist for the sake of justice—that “governments are instituted among men to secure” the
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Or consider the
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s prolegomena to the Politics: his
treatment of justice is longer by far than his treatment of any other
virtue, and second in length only to his two-book treatment of
friendship—a topic that, for Aristotle, is itself deeply intertwined
with matters of justice and political life. Or to move a little closer
to our chosen topic, consider the Republic, Plato’s most famous
book about political affairs: all of Book I is devoted to justice, and
the inquiry into the goodness of justice that begins in Book II is
based on the assumption that an investigation of a well-constituted
city is bound to come across justice—because well-ordered cities,
like well-ordered souls, always contain it. In other words, all of
these texts suggest that a fairly deep connection exists between
politics and justice, and between thinking about justice and thinking about politics.
Suppose, then, we turn as novice readers to Plato’s Statesman,
which purports to be an inquiry into the nature of the statesman,
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM
111
the politikos, and the nature of his art or science, politikē. Given
the sketch we have just seen, we might expect the dialogue to contain a series of acute reflections on the relation between justice and
the true science of politics. We might even expect the Stranger
from Elea to take up again the question that Socrates had wanted
to pursue further at the end of Book I of the Republic, the “Socratic” question, “What is justice?” In fact we get nothing of the
sort. We get a strange, vast myth about the cosmos; we get an extended—some might say over-extended—account of weaving and
its attendant arts; we learn that men as herd-animals closely resemble pigs, on the one hand, and chickens, on the other. But we hear
next to nothing about justice.
To begin with, there is no extended discussion of justice in the
Statesman—no discussion of what it is or whether it’s good or bad
or anything else. As a matter of fact, justice-words, that is, words
cognate with Greek word for justice, turn up only about thirty times
in the entire dialogue. (In the Republic such words turn up more
than two hundred times in Book I alone.) What’s more, only about
half those appearances have the moral and political connotations
that we ordinarily associate with the word “justice.” In fact the
Greek word for justice, dikaiosunē, the word that is so central to
Socrates’s inquiry in the Republic and Aristotle’s inquiry in the
Ethics, does not appear in the Statesman at all. The word injustice
does turn up, once, but it refers, not to a tendency in citizens that
needs to be corrected, but to a disqualification for citizenship altogether. As for the remaining cases in the dialogue where justicewords are used with moral or political meaning, most are
disappointingly conventional, while the most interesting or promising phrases appear to come out of nowhere.
What are we to make of this peculiar state of affairs? Does
the relative rarity of justice-words in the dialogue point to a deep
divergence between the Stranger’s approach to politics and human
affairs and the approach of Socrates? Do considerations of justice
simply not play a major role in his thinking about politics? Do his
interests lie elsewhere? Or, on the contrary, is the Stranger’s thinking about politics shaped by a distinct conception of justice, but
one that leads him to employ the language of justice sparingly?
�112
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In the end I want to suggest that the Stranger’s thinking about
politics is in fact profoundly shaped by a certain conception of justice—a peculiar one, to be sure, but perhaps no more peculiar than
the one Socrates lays out in the Republic, and perhaps not so very
different from it either. But I mean to approach this conclusion in
a rather roundabout way, by first considering seriously the possibility that the Stranger is just not very interested in justice and that
his lack of interest is reflected in his thinking about the science of
politics. My hope is that this indirect approach will force out into
the light what is distinctive about his understanding.
If the Stranger is not interested in justice, what is he interested
in? Almost any page of the Statesman—or the Sophist—gives us
the answer: the arts and sciences, including his own science or art
of division. In the Phaedrus, Socrates calls himself a lover of collections and divisions, and elsewhere in the dialogues he makes
constant use of analogies with the arts. But the Stranger goes much
further: he seems to see the whole human world as an interconnected array of always-multiplying arts, the sorting out of which
into their more or less natural divisions is one of the philosopher’s
prime tasks. Angling and sophistry, louse-catching and generalship,
doctoring and potion-making—all these arts and at least fifty more
make their appearance somewhere in the Sophist or Statesman.
The Stranger’s myth, his cosmic vision, helps us to understand
this remarkable proliferation of arts and the Stranger’s acute interest
in them. During the age of Saturn, we enjoyed a carefree life under
the care of the gods. With no regimes and no families, we lived on
the fruits that sprang spontaneously from trees and bushes, talked
with the animals, slept naked on the grass and woke up every
morning feeling just a little bit . . . younger. But that time is long
past. This is the age of Zeus. The world has grown harsh, the gods
have withdrawn, and we grow old. We have been left to our own
devices, and those devices, the first fruits of our new-age thinking,
are the arts. Men need food; the arts of agriculture and herding and
hunting (including the art of angling) must be developed. Men need
shelter from winter cold and summer sun, from the animals that no
longer like us and from . . . other men. The arts of wall-making and
house-building, shoe-making and armor-crafting, rug-making and
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM
113
wool-working must come on the scene. This list could go on: along
with needs arise desires. Every need or desire demands a new art,
and every new art demands a new sub-array of subordinate arts to
provide materials to be worked up and tools to work with.
Atop this dizzying array of arts is a kind of art of arts, an überart, if you will. For man the artisan is also man the herd animal,
and the human herd, like all herds, needs to be tended and managed. This art or science of herd management as applied to the
human herd is . . . statesmanship. Its task is neither simple nor easy.
It must rule over the other arts and sciences, deciding which ones
are to be learned and to what degree. To retain its purity of purpose,
it must keep itself separate from the arts most akin to itself, the arts
of persuasion and generalship and judging. Under certain circumstances it must engage in lawmaking. But its most difficult task
has to do with the noblest natures under its sway. Just as nature left
to itself, and permeated by the Other, seems to give rise to deception, and thus to sophistry (including the sophistry that masquerades as statesmanship), so too, human nature left to itself seems to
give rise to two distinct and opposed temperaments: courageous
natures and moderate natures. Left to themselves, these natures
tend to separate from each other and, in the end, degenerate into
self-destructive factions. To combat this most dangerous of threats,
the statesman must become a master weaver, a webmaster of the
spirit and of the body too; he must find ways to knit together the
lives of the city’s noblest natures. For only thus can the city become
and remain a self-bound, self-sufficient whole.
This would seem to be a good time to ask what place, if any,
justice has in this picture of politics and political life. The obvious
answer seems to be: a place that is important, but rather small and
decidedly subordinate. Human herd management would seem to
differ from other forms of herd management in this: all herding involves giving commands, but members of the human herd, especially in the age of Zeus, seem to need explicit commands or
prescriptions, explicit rules, to govern their communal life. These
rules, which allow men in cities to get along with one another, constitute justice. Now from the point of view of citizens, especially
artisan citizens going about their daily, commerce-driven lives,
�114
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
such rules—we call them laws—might seem to be the most important manifestation of the political art. But they are in fact only an
imperfect and secondary manifestation of that art, in part because
they are riddled with imprecision, and in part because, as we have
already seen, the first business and real work of the political art
lies in the weaving together of courage and moderation. It would
be a mistake, according to this account, to think of justice as a
virtue, just as it would be a mistake to think of justice as something
high, a criterion that the political art has to look up to as it goes
about its business. Justice is nothing high or deep or fancy; it is
nothing but the set of rules, invented by the statesman, that allow
us to lead reasonably decent lives in an unfriendly world.
Is this account of justice in the Statesman adequate? Does it,
as we say, do justice to the Stranger’s view of justice? There are
certainly a number of passages in the dialogue that lend credence
to it. For instance, at one point the Stranger makes it very clear that
the power of the judge is separate from, and sub-ordinate to, the
art of the statesman. Then he asks if the judge
has any power more far-reaching than, in matters
pertaining to contracts, that of discerning the
things ordained as both just and unjust by keeping
in sight whatever is laid down as lawful and which
it received from a law-giver king (305b).
It looks here as if justice is simply identical to the legal, as it
is defined by the law-giving king—that is, the statesman. This language of contracts also turns up a bit earlier, in the course of the
Stranger’s critique of law and its lack of precision, when he speaks
of those who “supervise the herds with respect to the just and their
contracts with each other” (294e). Once again justice seems to be
equated with the contractual obligations defined by the law—and
the baseness involved in dealing with matters of justice, its distance
from real statesmanly activity, is underscored by the re-introduction of the language of “herds.” The text of the Statesman also
lends support to the thought that justice is not a virtue: there is no
place in the dialogue where the Stranger states or even implies that
it is the statesman’s task to instill justice or anything resembling
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM
115
justice in the souls of his citizens. The closest we get is the suggestion very near the end of the dialogue that moderate natures
tend to be more just than courageous ones, but this does not seem
to be a matter of education, and in any case, “just” in this context
seems to mean “cautious and therefore inclined to follow the law.”
The meaning of “just” here is perfectly compatible with passages
that identify the just with the legal; it simply means “law-abiding.”
Are we to conclude, then, that justice has no meaning in the
Statesman other than a set of rules laid down by the statesman in
his law-making capacity, and then turned over to a subordinate
power? We might have to reach this conclusion were it not for a
handful of odd passages where the Stranger seems to be pointing
us in a different direction. Let me briefly go over three of them. In
the first, the Stranger argues that rulers in “the correct regime” can
do anything, including banishing and even killing inhabitants, “so
long as they make it better from worse and preserve it as far as
they’re able by using science and the just” (293d). In the second,
which comes just as he is beginning his critique of law, the Stranger
notes that law “could never, by having comprehended what’s most
excellent and most just, command what’s best” (294a-b). And in
the third, the Stranger claims that:
there is no error for thoughtful rulers, whatever
they do, so long as they guard one great thing, and,
by at all times distributing to those in the city
what’s most just with intellect and art, both are
able to preserve them and make better men from
worse as much as possible (297a-b).
These passages share several features in common. In all of
them, the just is linked to, and subordinated to, the good —either
the good of the citizens or the good of the city. In addition, the just
is paired with, or at least linked to, thought in some form—science
in the first passage, comprehension in the second, and intellect and
art in the third. Finally—and most important for the issue we are
considering—in all three passages the just in these passages simply cannot be identified with what is lawful or what is defined
by the law. In the first passage, the just seems to function as a
�116
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
criterion or standard at least co-equal with science; according to
the second, the just cannot be comprehended by law; and in the
third, the just arises directly from intellect and art, without the
mediation of law. Clearly then, justice or “the just” has more than
one meaning in the Statesman and in the Stranger’s mind. But exactly what does it mean in this second set of passages? For instance, what does it mean in the peculiar phrase “science and the
just”? We can’t look to the immediate context of the phrase for an
answer. In all three passages the language of justice seems to come
out of nowhere.
To answer this question we need to take a step back. I mentioned earlier that there are a number of places in the Statesman
where the language of justice is used with a meaning that is nonmoral and non-political. Let me add that, with one exception,
which I’ll get to later, every appearance of this language before the
“science and the just” passage falls into this category. Now in all
of these earlier appearances, “just” and “justly” have a specific
meaning and specific range: they are used to characterize speech
or thought; and they refer to correctness or precision or aptness of
thought or speech, as when we say, in English—as I did a little
while ago—that we want to do justice to someone’s thought or that
someone has gotten something “just right.” Now it is “precisely”
this meaning of justice that I think we must import, and are meant
to import, into the passages in question. The intellectual quality
that the Stranger prizes most in his own science of division—the
ability to divide well, to find a “part” that is also a “form” (262b263b)—is also the quality that defines or gives meaning to justice.
Thus when the Stranger says that rulers in the “correct regime”
must employ “science and the just,” “the just” is not being introduced here as an extraneous criterion that comes out of nowhere.
It rather refers to the exactness or precision of application that is
implicit in the very notion of science—in this case, the science of
statesmanship. Or again, when the Stranger faults the law for failing to comprehend what’s most excellent and most just, he is simply faulting the law’s characteristic lack of precision: because laws
are necessarily universal, they cannot help but miss what is best
here and now and must be inexact in their attainment of it. It should
�SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM
117
come as no surprise, then, that the Stranger keeps referring to the
“correct” or “most correct regime” where we would probably say
“best regime”—the best regime is, for him, “precisely” the regime
in which precision or correctness is the ruling principle.
There is another way to formulate this thought in the language
of the dialogue. At the very center of the Statesman there is an extended discussion of the art of measurement, and at the very center
of that discussion, the Stranger introduces, without much explanation, the phrase “the precise itself.” Why? It turns out that the very
existence of statesmanship—in fact the very existence of all the arts
that generate something—rests on the existence of something called
due measure. All the arts aim to achieve or produce some good.
Sometimes they miss the mark: they fall short of or exceed their
aims. But when they bring about the goods they aim at, they attain
what the Stranger calls “due measure.” At such moments, when
they get things just right, when they arrive at due measure, the precise itself is present. But what holds for the other arts holds for
statesmanship as well. Whenever the statesman, aiming at the
preservation or improvement of his city or its citizens, brings about
this good, he attains due measure, and in attaining due measure,
he participates in the precise itself. But if I am right in thinking
that, in at least a select number of passages in the dialogue, the just
coincides with what is correct or precise, then at such a moment
the statesman can also be said to have achieved justice. To achieve
the good is to achieve justice.
This brings me to my final point. I want to bring what I have
just said to bear on the most important activity of statesmanship:
the weaving together of courage and moderation. I mentioned a little while ago that there is one passage early on in the dialogue
where the language of justice is not used to refer to precision of
thought. It occurs in the myth. Interestingly enough, precision is
also mentioned but here refers to precision in the movement of the
cosmos. The claim is that when the cosmos is first allowed to move
on its own, it moves with precision, but over time, because of the
bodily aspect of the cosmos, it gradually winds down. Everything
beautiful in the cosmos comes from its composer, while everything
“harsh and unjust” has its source in this “fellow nursling of
�118
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
primeval nature” (273b-d). Of course this is a myth and we have
to be careful about what we extract from it. Still, I cannot help but
think that the Stranger is here positing something like a primal
principle of disorder, a principle that is always at war with beauty,
with precision of movement, with the very notion of a cosmos, that
is, an ordered whole. That he associates this principle with harshness and injustice suggests that this principle is at work in the
human world as well: the city is an attempt to found something
like a human cosmos in the face of primal disorder, primal imprecision, primal injustice. The ordinary arts that ground ordinary life
within cities are one aspect of this cosmos-formation. Each is an
attempt to bring forth due measure within some specific context;
each is an attempt to wrestle with its material’s resistance to being
given proper form. But the greatest of such attempts is the effort
of the statesman to bring forth due measure in and through his
weaving together of courage and moderation. Justice in the primary
sense, then, is not to be found in law-making or judging in accordance with law. Nor is it to be found in the accomplishing of this
or that good thing for the city. It is found right here, in the overcoming of primal injustice, primal resistance to having a city at all.
We might think of it this way: In the Sophist, the Stranger suggests
that being is not rest, or motion, or some third thing. He suggests
instead that being is the belonging together of rest and motion. But
within the sphere of politics, courage corresponds to motion and
rest to moderation. Where, then, and what is justice? It is not something present in the soul of the courageous man, nor something
present in the soul of the moderate man. Nor is it some third thing
hovering over the two. Instead, justice in the primary sense is present whenever the statesman, by thinking precisely and achieving
due measure, keeps the primal dyad from falling asunder; it is there
both in and as the belonging together, the being woven together,
of courage and moderation.
�REVIEWS
Getting to Know Kierkegaard Better
119
A Review of Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical
Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2013. 244 pages, $36.00.
James Carey
On first looking into Kierkegaard, the student who has already read
around in the history of philosophy or has limited his studies primarily to twentieth century philosophy, whether analytic or “continental,” is likely to find himself puzzled at several levels. He may
have heard that Kierkegaard is both a Christian and an existentialist, even a founder of existentialism, and he might be interested to
find out how one man can be both of these things at once. Or,
doubting that one man could be both these things at once without
being confused, he might be inclined to shrug him off. But then he
may also have heard that Heidegger was profoundly influenced by
Kierkegaard and that Wittgenstein declared him to be a “saint.” So
he sets out to get a better sense of who Kierke-gaard is and what
he is aiming at. After reading the first few pages of, say, Fear and
Trembling, he comes quickly to recognize that he is in the presence
of an original and incisive thinker. But he also encounters obscure
arguments and formulations that seem more colorful than illuminating. And sooner or later he runs up against assertions about the
relation of Socrates to Christianity that seem naïve at best, perverse
at worse. He begins to suspect that Kierkegaard, for all his undeniable brilliance, is in full control of neither his intellect nor his
imagination. After reading a relatively accessible book such as
Philosophical Fragments he might turn to Concluding Unscientific
Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (the latter book four times
the length of what it is advertised as a “postscript” to) in hopes of
finding a resolution to some of the perplexities in which the former
James Carey is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.
�120
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
work left him. Instead, he finds himself by turns beguiled and exasperated by an art of writing that is both concentrated and ironic.
He is not sure whether he is being led towards the truth or being
manipulated. And if he has not done so sooner, he begins to wonder
exactly what Kierkegaard intends by presenting some of his books,
but then not all them, under pseudonyms, and in particular why one
book is presented as written by Climacus and another by anti-Climacus. Can all Kierkegaard’s books be understood as expressing
his own thoughts? Can any of them be understood as expressing
his own thoughts? Not knowing how to find an answer to these
and related questions, the student may decide at this point to postpone engaging with the full sweep of Kierkegaard’s project until
later on, more or less indefinitely later on.
Needless to say, not all who have struggled with Kierke-gaard
at some stage of their studies fit the above profile. But some—I
suspect quite a few—do fit it. After reading through one or two of
Kierkegaard’s books and probing around in a few others, they will
profit immensely by stepping back from his oeuvre and reading
Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. Those who have read a larger number of Kierkegaard’s
books will profit immensely as well. I for one can say that there is
a not a single question I have asked myself about Kierkegaard over
the years that McCombs’s carefully argued and beautifully written
book does not answer, clearly, comprehensively, and convincingly.
The title of McCombs’s book expresses his general intention,
which is to show that Kierkegaard is a rational thinker and that he
employs paradox in the service of reason. What Kierkegaard calls
“subjectivity” McCombs calls “paradoxical rationality.” The
provocative conclusion of McCombs’s study is that paradoxical
rationality reaches its perfection not in knowledge, either theoretical or practical, but in faith. In this review I will highlight only a
few of the observations that McCombs makes en route to this conclusion.
In Chapter 1, McCombs considers evidence in favor of the
view the Kierkegaard is an irrationalist and then evidence in favor
of the view that he is a rationalist. He argues, persuasively, that the
preponderance of evidence is in favor of the latter view. When
�REVIEWS | CAREY
121
Kierkegaard directly or through one of his pseudonymous authors
affirms what he calls a contradiction, he means not a flat-our logical absurdity but rather “a tension or an unresolved opposition”
(13).1 And, as Kierkegaard sees it, “when the believer has faith,
the absurd is not absurd—faith transforms it” (22). Kierkegaard’s
Climacus calls the Incarnation a contradiction. But, as McCombs
points out, to show that such a thing is an irresolvable logical contradiction “one would need a thorough understanding of the
essence of God and of temporal, finite human existence” (13).
Kierkegaard is aware that this understanding is not at our disposal.
The appearance of irrationality is only feigned by Kierkegaard. It
is a pretense in the service of a pedagogical aim. “The human
model for Kierkegaard’s incognito of irrationalism is Socrates. If
Socrates ironically feigned ignorance in the service of knowledge,
Kierkegaard ‘goes further’ and ironically feigns irrationality in the
service of reason” (2). He “creates Climacus specifically to address
and appeal to philosophical readers . . . in order to find such readers
‘where they are’ and to lead them to subjectivity” (5). Where philosophical readers “are” is not simply in their thinking but in their
existing. There is, it should go without saying, more to existing
than thinking.
Near the conclusion of this chapter, McCombs offers a perceptive analysis of the limitations of Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling. This author attempts to
show to philosophical readers who regard faith as a demotic substitute for knowledge, or as a station that gets aufgehoben on the
way to absolute knowing, that genuine faith, as exemplified by
Abraham, is in fact rare, awesome in the exact sense of the word,
and more difficult to achieve than any knowledge we humans can
attain or pretend to. But Kierkegaard also subtly leads his readers
to see that Johannes de Silentio can, or rather will, only admire
faith. He will not attempt it. Faith is a task—a task that Silentio
evades (24). Faith is, moreover, not merely a task but “a difficult,
dangerous, strenuous, and painful duty, and human beings will do
virtually anything to evade such a duty” (30). In Fear and Trembling, “Kierkegaard first tries to get readers to admire the greatness
of faith, and then breaks the distressing news to them that the faith
�122
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
that they admire is an absolute duty.” Kierkegaard has “constructed
Fear and Trembling so ingeniously that interpretation of it unexpectedly and disconcertingly turns into self-examination” (31).
In Chapter 2, McCombs argues that subjectivity or paradoxical
rationality is, like all rationality, consistency. It is consistency not
just of thought, however, but of the whole person. “To be subjective means consistently to relate oneself, the subject of thinking,
to what one thinks. It is to think about life and action, most of all
about one’s own life and action, and to strive to feel, will, and act
consistently with one’s thoughts” (35). Not everyone who prides
himself on the consistency of his thinking aims at this more comprehensive consistency. For example, a person who holds in his
thinking that everything is determined—whether by the will of
God, physical mechanism, or the apparent good—and that the future is thereby fixed, nonetheless deliberates and acts, as all human
beings must, on the assumption that the future is not fixed and that
how it turns out depends in some measure on one’s choices. Such
a person is not wholly rational no matter how impressively his theory holds together qua theory merely.2 His speculative thinking,
however consistent it may be in itself, is inconsistent with his practical thinking. Kierkegaard’s subjectivity is not so much the opposite of objectivity, an inner and private domain as distinct from an
outer and public one, as it is the whole of rationality. Subjectivity
comprehends objectivity as a part, assigning it its altogether legitimate, though limited, role within a properly integrated life of reason. Subjectivity, for Kierkegaard, is integrity.
It is “Kierkegaard’s belief that thinking is unavoidably interested.”(37). Objective thinkers frequently claim to be disinterested.
But they are wrong. For objectivity is not without an interest: speculative reason (which could be called, somewhat misleadingly, objective reason) is interested in the true, just as practical reason
(which could be called, also somewhat misleadingly, subjective
reason) is interested in the good. Pursuit of the true and pursuit of
the good are two pursuits of one and the same reason.3 As McCombs later points out, interest derives from interesse, literally,
“to be in between” (155). Human reason is in between the temporal
and the eternal. It moves teleologically from the temporal toward
�REVIEWS | CAREY
123
the eternal, as it moves teleologically from the conditioned toward
the unconditioned and from the finite toward the infinite.
Subjective thinkers have a better appreciation of the wholeness
of reason, its teleological orientation toward both truth and goodness, than do objective thinkers. Kierkegaard suspects that many
who take pride in their commitment to objectivity use the search
for knowledge “as a way to delay or to evade ethical action” (45).
He also thinks that, “because the human will is free, the rationality
of human beings—his own included—is always precarious” (75).
This is true of speculative reason no of less than of practical reason.
McCombs speaks of the “shaky foundations” of logic and its “liability to perversion” (60). In my view, logic per se—certainly its
indemonstrable but self-evident first principles, such as the principle of non-contradiction—is sound.4 But logical principles and
rules of inference, unimpeachable in themselves, can be used to
deduce questionable conclusions from questionable premises. In
that way logic can assist one in rationalizing the satisfaction of certain desires that, unlike the desire for integrity in thought and action, are not intrinsic to reason and are often at odds with the telē
of reason. “When these desires are threatened by the strenuous requirements of ethics, they fight back with astonishing cunning and
sagacity, by co-opting the powers of logic for specious reasoning
and self-deception” (60). And So McCombs rightly recommends
“rectifying [not logic itself but] one’s use of logic” (65).
In Chapter 3, McCombs distinguishes between traditional negative theology, which he understands to be primarily theoretical,
and the negative theology of Climacus, which he understands to
be primarily practical. “Climacus thinks that if anything has priority in salvation it is or would be love and not knowledge” (87).5
This chapter contains helpful accounts of the Kierkegaardian conceptions of resignation and guilt-consciousness, and of
Kierkegaard’s arresting formulation that “to need God is a human
being’s highest perfection” (88-89; on resignation see also 106).
Of course, from the perspective of Christianity all human beings
need God. The perfection of humanity consists then not in the need,
simply, but in the recognition of the need and the follow-through
on what it ultimately entails: “reverence, awe, adoration, worship,
�124
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
or as Johannes de Silentio calls it, ‘fear and trembling’” (88-89).
We naturally desire perfect happiness; but for Kierkegaard perfect
happiness is “the good that is attained by absolutely venturing
everything” (95), for it is “essentially uncertain” (98). McCombs
concludes this chapter with a reflection on how Kierkegaard understands the relation between the good and one’s own good. There
is no “tension” between them: “one most truly loves the good by
loving one’s own good in the right way” (99).6
In Chapter 4, McCombs shows what Kierkegaard means by
simplicity. It is “translating one’s understanding . . . immediately
into action” (101). Just as McCombs discloses limitations, which
Kierkegaard intends his readers to recognize, in Johannes de Silentio’s admiration, absent imitation, of faith, so he discloses limitations in Climacus’s conception of “hidden inwardness.” Climacus
recognizes that there is something wrong with flaunting one’s efforts at becoming a Christian. But, McCombs notes, “going out of
one’s way to look ‘just like everyone else’” while “being very different from most people in one’s heart” can stand in the way of
“witnessing the truth and thus risking suffering and persecution”
(112; cf. 117-118; 124). In Chapter 5, McCombs continues the critique of Climacus he initiated in Chapter 4, with the focus now on
the limitations of indirect communication and its need to be complemented by direct communication. By expressing himself so
obliquely and paradoxically, Climacus runs the risk of detaining
the reader in the process of interpretation so that he fails to undertake the practical tasks that it is Climacus’s main intention to urge
him toward. McCombs intends this chapter as a criticism of Climacus, not necessarily of Kierkegaard. But because “Kierkegaard
never explicitly addresses some of the vices or weaknesses of indirect communication” (115), McCombs concedes that perhaps
Kierkegaard “is not adequately aware of its pitfalls and shortcomings” (117). As the chapter progresses, criticisms of Kierkegaard
himself come to replace criticisms of his pseudonymous author.
Though Kierkegaard recognizes that his position is one of faith and
not knowledge, his employment of indirect communication does
not allow much room for serious confrontation with thoughtful criticisms of Christianity. McCombs goes so far as to express a con-
�REVIEWS | CAREY
125
cern that if Kierkegaard not only does not know where the full truth
about Christianity lies—and no believer can claim to know—but
is actually wrong about where the full truth lies, he “bears responsibility for risking the ruination of many lives” (131). More direct,
and less indirect, communication would go a long way toward reducing this risk. It would leave the reader greater freedom to make
a responsible decision for or against faith, being more cognizant
of both the case for and the case against, in light of the very little
that we humans are actually capable of knowing beyond the
shadow of a doubt.
In the first five chapters of his book McCombs occasionally
speaks to some of the initially mystifying albeit intriguing things
that Kierkegaard says about Socrates. In Chapter 6 and 7, and also
in part of Chapter 8, he treats Kierkegaard’s interpretation of “the
figure of Socrates” thematically. McCombs makes, I think, as wellinformed and cogent a case as can be made for the coherence of
Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates.
In Chapter 6, McCombs shows how and why Kierkegaard
presents Socrates as embodying “climacean capacity,” which is the
capacity “to be a climber over boundaries and a transgressor of
limits” (134).7 “[T]he climacean capacity is a power of synthesizing an eternal, infinite, universal, and absolute ideal with or in the
temporal, finite, particular, and relative aspects of oneself and one’s
everyday life, which is to say that the climacean capacity is a capacity for subjectivity” (154). “Human beings seem to be finite,
temporal, particular, and conditioned animals. And yet they also
seem to be able to conceive, however inadequately, the infinite,
the eternal, and the unconditioned.” (157).8 As Kierkegaard sees
it, “Socratic ignorance is an essential component of faith and Christianity” (135). According to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the Philosophical Fragments misrepresents Socrates “as an
objective thinker, whereas he was really a subjective thinker”
(139). Climacus recognizes that “if one could not discover one’s
incapacity before God, then neither could one exist as a being who
attempts to live in time according to an eternal ideal” (147). “[T]he
god is ‘present just as soon as the uncertainty of everything is
thought infinitely’” (151).
�126
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Whereas in Chapter 6 McCombs focuses on Kierke-gaard’s
understanding of Socrates’s ascent, in Chapter 7 he focuses on
Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates’s downfall. Kierkegaard
finds this downfall expressed in a striking passage from the Phaedrus. There Socrates confesses that he does not know himself.9
And so he investigates himself rather than other things in order to
find out whether he happens to be a monster (thērion) more multiply-twisted and lustful (epitethymenon) than Typhon or a gentler
and simpler animal having by nature a share in a certain divine and
non-arrogant (atyphon) allotment.10 As Kierkegaard interprets this
passage from the Phaedrus, “‘he who believed that he knew himself’ becomes so perplexed that he cannot decide between utterly
opposite self-interpretations.” This is the “downfall of the understanding.” Kierkegaard, through Climacus, suggests that Socrates
actually willed this downfall (162-163).
On first hearing, this suggestion sounds like Kierkegaardian
hyperbole. But, if the will is the appetite of reason,11 then human
reason is naturally propelled by its own appetite toward truth, including, paradoxically, the truth that human reason is not capable
of answering all the questions it naturally proposes to itself.12 In
the case at hand, Socrates’s will propels his reason toward selfknowledge; but the knowledge he attains is that he does not have
complete self-knowledge. It is in this way that Socrates wills the
downfall of his understanding. The will moves reason to the discovery and acknowledgment of its natural limits. This is not a merely
negative development, however. For “to will the downfall of reason
is to transform and perfect reason” (163). As McCombs writes in
an earlier chapter, “[T]he power of reason comes to light in the act
of becoming aware of its weakness” (69).
This transformation and perfection is not of theoretical reason
alone, but of practical reason as well (cf. 211).13 The standard interpretation of the downfall of reason is that it results in “an openness or receptivity to a divine revelation of truths that exceed the
capacity of natural reason” (164). McCombs thinks that this interpretation is correct as far as it goes. But he thinks that it does not
go far enough, for it places stress only on the theoretical consequences of the downfall. As McCombs argues, it has practical con-
�REVIEWS | CAREY
127
sequences as well. “The thing that falls in the downfall of the understanding is the whole human capacity to achieve the highest
human end—an eternal happiness, which includes not only joy, but
wisdom and goodness as well. Consequently, the downfall is a disavowal of the pretentions that one can become good, wise, and joyful on one’s own, a rejection of the determination to rely only on
oneself in striving for one’s highest end” (165).
The disavowal of these pretensions results indeed in an openness to revelation. According to Christianity, there is a revelation
of truths regarding action: how to become truly good through repentance, on the one hand, and through cultivating love of God
and neighbor, on the other. And there is a revelation of truths regarding being as well: that God is a Trinity of persons, without the
slightest compromise to his unity but as its perfection through the
unqualified love that unites the three persons, and that one of these
persons became incarnate in order to save us from sin and call us
toward fuller and fuller participation, through love, in the divine
nature.14 “[O]ne accepts revelation not in order to become a better
philosopher but in order to become a better person” (165).
It should be noted that Socrates’s qualification in the Phaedrus
that he does not “yet” know himself implies that he has not simply
given up on the possibility of attaining complete self-knowledge.15
Furthermore, any openness to revelation that he might have arrived
at is, in the absence of actual revelation, an openness only to the
possibility of revelation.16 But until and unless Socrates does attain
complete self-knowledge, he cannot definitively know whether all
so-called choice is merely a case of being determined by the apparent good, more precisely by the apparent best;17 or whether, instead, man is capable of radically free choice and
self-determination, including the abuse of radically free choice and
self-determination that is sin. The crucial issue, then, is whether
Socrates has any inkling of sin. Though “Climacus claims that neither Socrates nor anyone else can be aware of sin without revelation” he nonetheless “portrays Socrates as suspecting his sinful
condition” and “as suspecting that he is misrelated to the divine
owing to Typhonic arrogance” (167-168; cf. 175). Plato surely expects the reader of the Phaedrus to remember that Typhon was, as
�128
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
McCombs says, “an arrogant, violent, and defiant enemy of the
gods.” Moreover, with his hundred heads, he was “presumably not
even friendly to himself” (167). A monster like Typhon cannot be
happy.
We noted earlier that the interest of reason lies in its being between the temporal and the eternal, and that it moves teleologically
from the temporal toward the eternal. According to Kierkegaard, it
cannot reach its ultimate telos without supernatural assistance. This
assistance becomes available only when the eternal, at its own initiative, becomes temporal “in the fullness of time.” In what Christians
believe to be the historical event of the Incarnation, a synthesis of
the eternal and the temporal is achieved in deed and not just in
thought. The Incarnation is for Kierkegaard the paradox (146); it is
the absolute paradox (219).
Assuming both (1) that neither complete self-knowledge nor
complete knowledge of the whole and its ground is humanly possible, and (2) that one has heard the Gospel of Christ, Kierkegaard
thinks that only two responses to what one has heard are possible:
faith, which is not knowledge,18 and offense, which is not doubt. Offense is “a delusion of rational autonomy”—deluded because human
reason has limits and thus is not “self-sufficient.” Offense is “unhappy self-assertion”—unhappy because one asserts oneself on the
basis of what one knows, deep down, is insufficient knowledge of
oneself. In the human being there are “two elements in tension with
one another: a desire for happiness and a desire for autonomy or selfsufficiency.” These elements are incompatible, and “one or the other
of them must fall. Faith . . . is the downfall of the desire for self-assertion, while offense is the downfall of the desire for happiness”
(176-177).
In Chapter 8, McCombs further explores the consequences of
Kierkegaard’s conviction that there are no “public demonstrations of
the answers to certain crucial questions: Is there a personal God who
created and maintains the world? Does a human being have an immortal soul? Is there a best life for human beings?” (184) If by “public demonstrations” Kierkegaard means rationally accessible
demonstrations, it can be countered that there are such demonstrations, pro and contra, on these and related matters, particularly in
�REVIEWS | CAREY
129
medieval theology and in the reaction of modern philosophy against
medieval theology. There has indeed never been universal acceptance
of either theological or anti-theological arguments. But then there
has also never been universal acceptance, not even by the greatest
minds, of many philosophical arguments, such as, for example, the
divergent arguments regarding the scope of human knowledge (think
of Hume and Hegel), the relation of acts of thought to the objects of
thought (think of Plato and Husserl), the relationship between the
good and the pleasant (think of Kant and Mill), and the authority of
reason (think of Aristotle and Heidegger). It is likely that there is no
“public demonstration” on these matters because the public is insufficiently perceptive to follow the arguments. In considering a disagreement between great philosophers, say, the disagreement
between Locke and Leibniz on how much our knowledge arises from
the senses, one has to consider the possibility that one of the two
thinkers penetrated closer to the root of the matter than did the other.
It seems improbable that there will ever be universal acceptance of
most philosophical and theological demonstrations. But that does not
mean that these demonstrations are not rationally accessible.
That theological and philosophical demonstrations are so controverted might not be due solely to different capacities for clear
thinking. McCombs highlights Kierkegaard’s conviction that character cannot be easily separated from the quest for knowledge.
“[D]esires, fears, emotions, actions, and habits have an influence
on what and how a person thinks, or on what a person can see,
understand, know, or become aware of. In other words, some desires, habits, emotions, and actions are conducive to truth, and
some are inimical to it” (192). McCombs illustrates this claim by
referring to the limitations of Meno and Ivan Karamazov. “[T]he
deep thinker must be a spiritual knight with the strength and
courage to think terrible thoughts that others cannot endure to
think” (193). One terrible thought, of course, is that, even if there
is a first cause or ground of our finite existence, it takes no interest
in us and how we live our lives. But an equally terrible thought is
that we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we know this
to be true when we do not, and cannot, know any such thing. Both
terrible thoughts have to be explored.
�130
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
McCombs writes, “It is hard to believe that a person who
often lies to himself about his own actions and qualities, about the
actions and qualities of other people, and about his social and personal relations to other people will be honest when he tries to answer the most important philosophical questions” (194; cf. 65).
The examined life does not consist exclusively, or even primarily,
in the reading and discussion of philosophical texts. Most of all it
requires ongoing self-examination, including especially the examination of conscience that is needed to check the self-deception
that is at the root of sin, including the sin of vanity, especially intellectual vanity (cf. 215). McCombs recognizes that not all intellectual endeavors are equally compromised by corrupt character.
Corrupt character has little effect on “cognition of scientific, mathematical, and linguistic truths.” But corrupt character can pervert
“cognition of human nature and the best life for human beings”
(202). Anyone who is attempting to live a wholly rational life,
whether he is a believer or a nonbeliever, stands under an obligation of ongoing and unrelenting self-scrutiny.
On Kierkegaard’s understanding of the close connection between theory and practice, McCombs writes, “Seeing for oneself
requires acting for oneself…by one’s own self-activity, at one’s
own risk, and on one’s own responsibility. In short, autopsy requires autopraxy” (198). One gains humility, and thereby overcomes doubt through “the bitter method of trying to imitate Christ
and failing” (215). Humility is notoriously misunderstood, and
caricatured as well. McCombs corrects the common misunderstanding: “a meek and beaten-down milksop does not have the audacity to believe. . . . Honestly admitting one’s utter weakness
before God takes the greatest human strength. . . . [O]nly heroes
of the spirit have the audacity to believe . . . what pride cannot
tolerate and therefore willfully ignores: namely, a supreme being
to whom humans ought utterly to subordinate themselves” (215).
In humility, self-transcendence overcomes irrational egoism and
self-importance.
Kierkegaard’s project, like Pascal’s and Dostoyevsky’s, is obviously based on the assumption that the existence of the Biblical
�REVIEWS | CAREY
131
God cannot be definitively disproven. But some philosophers have
advanced arguments, not subjective but objective arguments,
aimed at definitively disproving the existence of God, especially
as one who freely reveals himself. So a non-Kierkegaardian, but
not anti-Kierkegaardian, task remains for the theologian. First to
examine these arguments dispassionately to assess their cogency;
and then, if they are found to be less than absolutely compelling,
to expose their limitations. For if a man thinks—let us assume,
thinks altogether innocently—that the concept of Christ as true
God and true man, both together, is a logical contradiction, then
exhorting him to imitate Christ is pointless. There is still a lot left
for the theologian to do at the level of objectivity.
McCombs ends his book by raising a question that some readers will have already asked themselves: has Kierkegaard merely
conscripted Socrates into his project? McCombs answers in the
negative. “[T]here are many passages in Plato’s dialogues in
which Socrates professes ignorance, self-blame, suspicions of his
own monstrosity, repentance, and in which he warns against a
self-justifying egoism that undermines truth and justice. Together
these passages seem to constitute a solid basis for a responsible
interpretation of Socrates as a thinker who willed the downfall of
his own understanding because he suspected something very like
sin” (218). McCombs supports this answer with references to the
telling texts. One might object that he has cherry picked the passages that support the Kierkegaardian interpretation of Socrates.
But all interpretations of Plato that aim at taking the dialogic form
of his teaching seriously have to come to terms with everything
that is said and happens in the dialogues, including occasional observations of Socrates’s that do not fit with preconceived notions
of what Platonism is supposed to be. The passages that McCombs
cites in support of Kierkegaard’s Socrates are not more salutary
and comforting than passages one might cite in support of someone else’s Socrates. On the contrary, they are among the most startling and disconcerting passages to be found in the entire Platonic
corpus. It is the singular, though by no means the sole, merit of
McCombs’s study that it forces many of us, just when we thought
�132
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
that we, with the assistance of our teachers and our friends, might
have finally gotten a relatively firm grasp of what Socrates is up
to, to take a fresh look at the enigmatic figure through whom Plato
presents his teaching.
NOTES
1. Unless otherwise noted, numbers in parentheses after quotations refer
to the pagination of The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard,
even where the sentence quoted is Kierkegaard’s and not McCombs’s.
2. Determinism cannot be known, definitively and beyond the shadow of
a doubt, to be true. As David Hume has shown, the proposition, “Every
event has a cause,” is not an analytic judgment. It follows a fortiori that
the proposition, “Every event has a cause outside itself,” which is the thesis of determinism, is not an analytic judgment. It can be denied without
contradiction. The thesis of determinism is not self-evident; and any attempt to demonstrate it begs the question.
3. This is also the view of thinkers as different as Thomas Aquinas and
Kant.
4. Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 71b20-35; 72a26-31; 72b19-2;
90b19-100b18; Metaphysics 1005b6-1006a10; 1011a7-13.
5. Kierkegaard seems here to be close to Gregory of Nyssa, who understands the supernatural end of man to consist not simply in a reposeful
intellectual vision of God, but in infinite and yet unimpeded progress,
progress in love especially. Gregory interprets the claim that we are called
to become partakers of the divine nature (koinōnoi theias physeōs—2
Peter 1: 3-4) to imply theosis, i.e., becoming more and more like God.
This goal, perfect love, can be infinitely approached by man, starting even
in this life, but never attained once and for all, even in the next life. Perhaps surprisingly, Kant similarly understands immortality of the soul to
consist in infinite progress. See Critique of Practical Reason Part 2, Bk.
2, Ch. 2, iv.
6. McCombs draws attention (199) to a remarkable statement made by
the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws: “Truly the cause of all errors
(aition . . . tōn pantōn hamartēmatōn) is in every case excessive friendship for oneself ” (731e3-5). If Plato is expressing his own thought here,
it is not easy to see how he could have held, as some seem to think he
held, that the good is essentially one’s own good, understood narrowly
as one’s own sweet pleasure.
�REVIEWS | CAREY
133
7. As McCombs notes (173), it is likely that Kierkegaard selected the
pseudonym “Johannes Climacus” (Greek, Iōannēs tēs klimakos, literally,
“John of the Ladder,” the name given to a twelfth century Christian monk
and saint, who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent) with an eye on the
“ladder of love” described in the Symposium.
8. Whatever share irrational animals have in the eternal, there is no reason
to think that they conceive of the eternal, much less concern themselves
about it.
9. Phaedrus 229e8.
10. Ibid., 229a3-a8. McCombs notes that the name Typhon can be translated “puffed up” (167). On the difficulty of complete self-knowledge,
consider the qualifier eis dynamin at Philebus 63c3.
11. Aristotle, De Anima 432b5-8 and 433a8-31; Thomas Aquinas Super
Sent., lib. 2 d. 30 q. 1 art. 3, ad 4. Summa Theologiae 1-2 q. 6, introd.; q.
8 art. 1, co.; q. 56 art. 5, ad 1; ibid., 3 q. 19 art. 2, co.; Kant, Critique of
Practical Reason, Book 1, Ch. 1, Theorem 3, Remark 1.
12. See the first sentence of the “First Preface” of Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason.
13. Here Kierkegaard parts ways with Kant. Consider the qualification
in the sentence cited in the previous note: “in one [!] species of its cognition.”
14. Cf. note 5 above.
15. See pō at 229e8 and eti at 230a1.
16. An inability to refute, and hence a consequent openness to, even the
bare possibility of revelation would situate the philosopher qua philosopher in an untenable position, at least according to Leo Strauss: Natural
Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953). 75.
Cf. “Reason and Revelation” (appended to Heinrich Meier’s study, Leo
Strauss and the Theological-Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006] 150, 176-177; “Progress or
Return” (in Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity,
ed. Kenneth Hart Green [Albany: State University of New York Press,
1997], 117, 131. On this crucial point, however much they otherwise differ, Strauss and Kierkegaard are in essential agreement: opposition to
faith cannot consistently be based on an act of faith, or on anything resembling faith.
17. Gorgias 466e2; Meno 77d8-e3.
18. John 20:29.
�134
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Plato’s Political Polyphony
A Book Review of Plato: Statesman. Translated by
Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2012. vii + 166 pp.
$10.95.
Gregory Recco
Continuing the work begun in their previous two translations of
Plato,* Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem have now
translated Plato’s Statesman. In addition to the translation, the volume includes an introduction, a glossary, an interpretive essay, and
two appendices. The introduction situates the dialogue in the context of Plato’s works, both dramatically and conceptually, announcing its main themes and connecting it with other
works—particularly its immediate dramatic predecessor, the
Sophist, and its thematic siblings, the Republic and the Laws. The
translation contains footnotes that provide pertinent literary or cultural background, references to other dialogues, and pointers to the
attached glossary when particularly important words or ideas first
appear. The glossary, like those in the earlier translations, is organized into meaning-clusters, groups of related or associated words
that together make up one important conceptual unit of the dialogue. The selection and discussion of these words, then, constitutes a work of interpretation—or at least the preparation of
material for such a work—and gives the translators a natural opportunity to discuss the rationale behind their English renderings
of important Greek terms. After the glossary comes a substantial
essay on the whole of Statesman, a thoughtful recapitulation and
reflection that presents a systematic and thorough survey of questions raised in the dialogue. Finally, the appendices: the first
*Plato: Phaedo (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1998) and Plato:
Timaeus (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001).
Gregory Recco is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
�REVIEWS | RECCO
135
graphically presents an overview in word and image of the practice of weaving which forms the dialogue’s most densely intertwined “paradigm,” or model, of the work of statesmanship; the
second unravels and graphically portrays the various heuristic
“divisions” by which the Stranger investigated questions of definition in the Sophist and here seeks the politikos, or statesman.
The translation is of very high quality—a fact that will likely
not surprise readers of the team’s previous two efforts. To describe
its excellence I must make some preparatory remarks about what
a translation is, who Plato is, and how Plato ought to be translated.
And I must discuss the particularities (or rather peculiarities) of
the Statesman.
The art of translation possesses, in a particularly pronounced
degree, a feature that characterizes all arts: What directs the activity
of artists is not their own wishes and ideas, but the necessities of
the work to be done. Becoming the practitioner of an art involves
a kind of surrender to something alien, namely, the determinacies
of the product and the conditions of its production. In translation,
this relinquishment of authority is especially evident in the very
nature of the work, which consists of transplanting a thought that
belongs to someone else from its native home into the foreign soil
of another language while keeping it intact and alive. Because the
translator does not create the being of that which he translates, his
excellence consists in his ability to let the thought of another shine
forth unimpeded and unaltered.
Plato’s thought poses special challenges to the prospective
translator, because the dialogue form in which it predominantly
resides gives it a uniquely amorphous character unparalleled anywhere else in Western literature. Because of their polyphonic conversational style, the dialogues of Plato give no authoritative
indication of how they are to be interpreted, no explicit endorsement of some message, so that it is quite difficult to say just what
Plato’s thought actually is. Without some definite notion of how
to deal with this difficulty, the choices and judgments that the
translator must make run the risk of being severally ad hoc and,
taken together, inconsistent. But in the dialogues themselves Plato
is completely silent about this difficulty. Faced with this apparent
�136
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
authorial dereliction, it is tempting to conclude with a kind of misplaced strictness that the phrase “Plato’s thought” signifies but
does not refer, as Heraclitus nearly says of the oracle at Delphi.
But this is the counsel of despair, and it leaves out the third leg of
Heraclitus’s saying: the oracle, who does not speak, but gives sign,
does not conceal. Something similar must be said of Plato. Even
cursory comparison of the dialogues uncovers themes that recur
with some frequency. Longer acquaintance reveals how generous
Plato can be to the careful reader, who discovers that the cracks
in the surface form a pattern, so to speak. The latter point deserves
fuller and more literal articulation, both on its own terms and because it is so often overlooked—which leads to bad interpretation
and consequently to bad translation.
Many of the dialogues take on the outward form of a “Socratic”
conversation, with one dialectically more experienced person taking the lead and questioning another in what seems to be a more or
less directed way, so that the latter gradually takes on views suggested by the former. But the inner truth of the dialogues is that
they are documents bearing witness to the event of thinking, paradoxically more akin to Thucydides’s record of a great event than
to Hippocrates’s scientific investigation of the causes of sickness
and health. The dialogues are not treatises of Socratic dogma thinly
disguised as conversations, but more or less dramatized presentations of what it looks like to think. I say “dramatized” because, as
I hinted above, that is where Plato’s artistry lies: this is his real
work, which is also something like the work of a translator.
Plato’s art is to show us the event of thinking, by dramatically
portraying what it looks like when it happens among human beings, in both its grandeur and its modesty. To say that thinking is
such and such, or has such and such characteristics, is perhaps a
fairly idle and undemanding pursuit, but to show it—that is, to
make manifest through a single instance the structure of intelligibility that informs it and gives it life—is an accomplishment of an
exceedingly high order. Somehow the dialogue must both be a conversation and exhibit “conversationality.” Not surprisingly, the investigation of how conversing ought to take place in order to get
at truth is one of those recurring themes that give the dialogues of
�REVIEWS | RECCO
137
Plato their distinctive mark. But the exhibition of thinking as such
occurs in several other, less immediate, ways. To note just one,
briefly, let me point out the structure of errancy and return, or wandering and recapitulation.
In the Statesman, as in the Sophist and so many other dialogues, the tentative answers given to the guiding questions are
forever turning up inadequate, coming unmoored as they are jostled by fresh contenders that look no less promising, even if they,
too, ultimately fall apart. This is especially evident in the bewildering multiplicity of “definitions” that fail, by the very fact of
their being multiple, to hem in or pin down the sort of men being
sought in these two dialogues. The various ways in which the dialogues can acquaint us with perplexity, and thus make us feel
thought’s errancy, are probably familiar to many readers. No less
important, however, is a dimension of thought that tends to belong
less to the one questioned than to the one doing the questioning:
to put a name to it, the dimension of redemption, of making up for
what has gone wrong by noticing how it has gone wrong. The dialogues are chock-full of bad arguments, wrong turns, and dead
ends. But these errors never just lie there. They stand out, and and
were made to stand out by their author. Plato calls on us to respond
more adequately than Socrates’s interlocutors and to consider how
an attentive and active questioner might help things move forward
from there. Giving us the opportunity to become better at thinking
is a great gift that is squandered by dogmatic interpretations (and
the translations founded on them), for they can see only the degree
to which the things said in the dialogues do not form a very compelling body of theory, even as they tantalizingly hint at one.
Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem understand quite well both this difficulty and other difficulties related to Plato’s portrayal of the
drama of thinking; their understanding guides their choices and
contributes greatly to the excellence of their translations.
In general, Plato’s artistry exists on the level of style, in the
nuances of diction and register, metaphor and allusion, that reveal
the character behind the thought, and give us something further to
think about when the resources of the argument turn out to be insufficient to answer all our questions. In the case of Socrates, this
�138
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
is well known and acknowledged, though less so for his interlocutors: it is a commonplace to mock their “dialogue” as merely a series
of more or less undifferentiated assents. The characters in Plato who
are generally considered to be well drawn are usually the ones who
disagree, and they are considered better drawn the more vehemently they disagree with Socrates (like Callicles and Thrasymachus). The Statesman has neither of these advantages: its main
speaker is the somewhat opaque Stranger from Elea, and its main
respondent is the somewhat colorless Young Socrates. Not a very
promising circumstance for the translation that seeks to reveal a
Plato who is a master of style. It is the particular excellence of this
translation that it is able to show us a Plato who is at work in his
accustomed ways even in these changed circumstances.
The translation is above all else trustworthy. If a word or
phrase jars (such as Socrates’s having “mixed it up” with Theaetetus on the previous day [258a]), consulting the Greek reassures
(perhaps he is meant to sound relatively informal compared with
the Stranger or perhaps he wants to recall the Stranger’s mixing of
the eidē). Words whose polysemy is troublesome are rendered consistently, in a neutral and readable way that has no axe to grind.
Instead of translating most replies as “Yes, Socrates,” the translators make the responses both differentiated and differentiable, an
absolutely invaluable aid to the close reader who is keeping watch
over the fitness of the interlocutor’s responses. The Stranger’s
humor, which verges, it is no exaggeration to say, on aridity, appears in all its understated, deadpan glory. Picture the face of a very
serious old man intoning these words: “The king at least is manifest
to us as one who pastures a certain horn-shorn herd” (265d). Even
when the syntax becomes tortuous, the translation remains not only
readable, but even speakable. What is perhaps most impressive is
that the translation’s readability does not come at the cost of overly
interpretive (or inventive) construal. Heidegger said approvingly
of Kant that he left obscure what is in itself obscure. In this rendering of the Statesman, it should be said that what is puzzling in
the original remains so in translation, but because of what is said,
not because of any obscurity in how it is said. The translation’s
simultaneous readability and faithfulness (in the fullest sense of
�REVIEWS | RECCO
139
that word), coupled with its generous and thoughtful supplementary materials, strongly recommend its use for classroom study by
serious students, with or without some knowledge of the Greek. It
should also be of interest to, and useable by, any sort of serious
reader at all. In contrast to the translators’ earlier editions of the
Phaedo and the Sophist, this one clearly distinguishes the functions
of the Introduction and the Essay, placing the latter, appropriately,
after the dialogue itself. The “Essay” pithily and unpretentiously
raises questions that cut to the very heart of the dialogue, questions
about the nature and possibility of rational politics, and questions
about the very identity of philosophy. No mere “student edition,”
this; the Plato scholar, too, will find much here that advances serious thinking.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
139 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
The St. John's Review, Fall 2013
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T.H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Arnaiz, Deziree
Sachs, Joe
Frost, Bryan-Paul
Levine, David
Burke, Chester
Kalkavage, Peter
Maistrellis, Nicholas
Salem, Eric
Carey, James
Recco, Gregory
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 55, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2013.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
St_Johns_Review_Vol_55_No_1_Fall_2013
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
St. John's Review
Deprecated: Directive 'allow_url_include' is deprecated in Unknown on line 0