1
20
127
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FRIDAY NIGHT FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2019–20
St. John’s College | Annapolis, Maryland
2019 Fall Semester
Date
Speaker
Title
August 23,
2019
Joseph Macfarland, Dean
St. John’s College, Annapolis
The Christopher B. Nelson
Lecture
“Speaking Freely and the
Conversational Virtues”
August 30
All-College Art Seminar
September 6
Stephanie Nelson
Associate Professor of Classical Studies
Boston University
“The Eternal Present of the
Iliad”
September 13
Michael Zuckert
Professor of Political Science
University of Notre Dame
“Philosophic Anthropology
and the Emergence of
Liberal Constitutionalism”
September 20
Mark Alznauer
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Northwestern University
“Hegel on Reason in
History”
September 27
David Fung, pianist
Concert
October 4
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 11
James Lennox
Professor Emeritus
Department of History and Philosophy of
Science
University of Pittsburgh
“William Harvey and his
Aristotelianism”
October 18
Benjamin Storey
Associate Professor
Political and International Affairs
Furman University
“The Pursuit of Happiness:
Four French Thinkers on
Our Restless Quest for
Contentment”
60 COLLEGE AVENUE | ANNAPOLIS | MD 21401 | 410-263-2371
SJC.EDU
�October 25
All-College Seminar
November 1
Arthur Melzer
Professor, Department of Political Science
Michigan State University
“Philosophy Between the
Lines: The Lost History of
Esoteric Writing”
November 8
Ronna Burger
Professor of Philosophy
Tulane University
“Jerusalem and Athens:
The Family Drama in the
Bible and in Greek
Thought”
November 15
Zena Hitz
Tutor, St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
“The Moral Fragility of
Human Beings”
November 22
Gail Weiss
Dean’s Research Professor of Philosophy
George Washington University
“Beauvoir’s Critical
Phenomenology of
Women’s (Limited) Agency
under Patriarchal
Disciplinary Regimes”
November 29
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
December 6
King William Players
“The Shape of Things” by
Neil LaBute
December 13–
January 5
Winter Vacation
No Lectures
60 COLLEGE AVENUE | ANNAPOLIS | MD 21401 | 410-263-2371
SJC.EDU
�2020 Spring Semester
Date
Speaker
Title
January 10,
2020
Antonio Meneses, cello and Paul Galbraith,
guitar
Schubert, Bach, and Brazilian composers
Concert
January 17
Sarah Ruden
Visiting Scholar, Author and Poet
University of Pennsylvania
The Andrew Steiner
Lecture:
"Vergil's Aeneid and
Augustine's Confessions:
Reading, Writing, Being
Human."
January 24
George Russell
Tutor, St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
For Hume’s Select Readers:
The Books We Keep, The
Books We Burn, and Why
January 31
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 7
Mitzi Lee
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Colorado
“The Virtue of Justice in
Aristotle’s Ethics”
February 14
All-College Seminar
February 21
Karin Ekholm
Tutor, St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
"Where Thought Lingers
and Love Plays: Art in
Eliot's Middlemarch"
February 28–
March 15
Spring Break
No Lectures
March 20
Parker Quartet
Salonen, Szymanowsky, Beethoven Op. 132
Cancelled - Concert
March 27
James Hankins
Professor of History
Harvard University
Cancelled - The Italian and
Humanists and The Virtue
of Humanitas
60 COLLEGE AVENUE | ANNAPOLIS | MD 21401 | 410-263-2371
SJC.EDU
�April 3
Ange Mlinko
Author and Poet
Associate Professor, Department of English
University of Florida
Cancelled - “Why Do the
Poets Still Speak of the
Gods?”
April 10
Bill Pastille
Tutor and NEH Chair, St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
Cancelled - NEH Lecture:
“There to Here and Back
Again: The Down-to-earth
Mysticism of Plotinus”
April 17
Dashon Burton, Baritone
Cancelled - Concert
Brick by Brick: Changing
America Through Song
April 24
King William Players
Cancelled
May 1
Reality Show
Cancelled
Spring 2020 semester lectures and performances cancelled due to COVID-19 and campus
closure.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE | ANNAPOLIS | MD 21401 | 410-263-2371
SJC.EDU
�
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.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
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Original Format
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pdf
Page numeration
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4 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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule 2019-2020
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2019-2020 Academic Year.
Creator
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Office of the Dean
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2019-2020
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Subject
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). Calendars
Language
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English
Identifier
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LectureSchedule_Annapolis_2019-2020
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Dublin Core
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Title
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<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.
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Office of the Dean
Publisher
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
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Original Format
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paper
Page numeration
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65 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
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The College, The St. John's Review, July 1980
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XXXII, Number 1 of The College. Also referred to as The St. John's Review. Published in July 1980.
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
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1980-07
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Contributor
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Radista, Leo
McClay, Wilfred M.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Sisson, Barbara J.
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Wilson, Curtis A.
Brann, Eva T. H.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
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ISSN 0010-0862
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_32_No_1_1980
St. John's Review
The College
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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.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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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.
Original Format
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Word doc
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule 2018-2019
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2018-2019 Academic Year.
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
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-2019
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Language
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English
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2018-2019
Lecture schedule
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•
SJC
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2016-2017
FffiST SEMESTER
Date
Title
Speaker
August 26, 2016
Mr. Joseph Macfarland
Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Two Good Men in
Aristotle's Ethics, or does
a liberal education
improve one's
character?"
September 2
Mr. Elliott Zuckerman
Retired Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
All in C Major: On the
beginning of Bach's WellTempered Clavier
September 9
Mr. Robert Abbott
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"The Horses of Achilles"
September 16
Mr. Steven Crockett
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Who should elect the
President?"
September 23
(Homecoming Weekend)
The Parker Quartet
Concert
September 30
Dr. Leon Kass
Professor Emeritus
University of Chicago and
Madden-Jewett Chair
American Enterprise Institute
"The Ten
Commandments"
October 7
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 14
Dr. Matthew Crawford
Senior Fellow and author
University of Virginia's
Institute for Advanced Studies
in Culture
"Attention as a Cultural
Problem and the Possibility
of Education"
60 College Avenue I Annapolis, Maryland 21401
I 410-263-2371 I www.sjc.edu
�Lecture/Concert Series - First Semester 2016-2017
Date
Speaker
Title
October 21
(Parents' Weekend)
Faculty Panel on Iliad
Book 24
October 28
All College Seminar
November 4
Folger Consort
"Songs of Shakespeare"
November 11
Dr. Jan Blits
Professor
School of Education
University of Delaware
"Deadly Virtue:
Shakespeare's Macbeth"
November 18
King William Players
Perfonnance
November 25
Thanksgiving Holiday
December 2
Michael Grenke
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"The Meaning of Rome"
December 9
Dr. Shobita Satyapal
Associate Professor
Department of Physics &
Astronomy
George Mason University
"The Connection between
Supermassive Black
Holes and Galaxies"
December 16 January 8
Winter Vacation
No Lectures
Book 24 of Homer's Iliad
�•
SJC
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2016-2017
SECOND SEMESTER
Date
Title
Speaker
January 13, 2017
Julian Lage - guitar
Fred Hersch - piano
Jazz Concert
January 20
Matthew Linck
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Thinking about Nature"
January 27
All College Seminar
February 3
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 10
Howard Fisher
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"In Praise of Caloric"
February 17
Richard DeMillo
Mellon Grant Speaker Digital Technology
"A Revolution in Higher
Education: Tales from
Unlikely Allies"
February 24
Elizabeth Yale
University of Iowa
"The Books of Nature"
March 3March 20
Spring Break
No Lectures
March 24
Chester Burke
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Does a Single Photon
Exist?"
March 31
(Steiner Lecture)
Lydia Polgreen
Steiner Lecturer
The Huffington Post
"American Identity in the
Age of Trump"
60 College Avenue I Annapolis, Maryland 21401
I 410-263-2371 I www.sjc.edu
�Lecture/Concert Series - Second Semester 2016-2017
Date
Speaker
Title
April 7
St. John's College Orchestra
Concert
April 14
Fawn Trigg
NEH Chair
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
with Nicolas Pellon - piano
"On Some Silences in
Beethoven's Piano
Sonatas"
April 21
(Croquet Weekend)
Steven Hancoff (Alumnus)
Johann Sebastian Bach
and The Six Suites for
Cello Solo -A Fanciful
and Extravagant Allegory
April 28
King William Players
Performance
May 5
Reality Show
No Lecture
May 12
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
�
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
pdf
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
4 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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule 2016-2017
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2016-2017 Academic Year.
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
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-2017
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Abbott, Robert Charles, Jr.
Crockett, Steven
The Parker Quartet
Kass, Leon
Crawford, Matthew
Folger Consort
Blits, Jan H.
Grenke, Michael W.
Satyapal, Shobita
Lage, Julian
Hersch, Fred
Linck, Matthew S.
Fisher, Howard
DeMillo, Richard A.
Yale, Elizabeth
Burke, Chester
Polgreen, Lydia
St. John's College Orchestra
Trigg, Fawn
Hancoff, Steven
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
August 26, 2016. Macfarland, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/2403" title="Two good men in Aristotle's Ethics"><span>Two good men in Aristotle's </span><em>Ethics </em></a>(typescript)
September 2, 2016. Zuckerman, Elliott. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/967" title="All in C Major">All in C Major</a> (audio)
September 9, 2016. Abbott, Robert. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1078" title="The horses of Achilles">The horses of Achilles</a> (audio)
September 9, 2016. Abbott, Robert. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1139" title="The horses of Achilles">The horses of Achilles</a> (typescript)
September 16, 2016. Crockett, Steven. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1097" title="Who should elect the President?">Who should elect the President?</a> (audio)
September 30, 2016. Kass, Leon. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1254" title="The ten commandments">The ten commandments</a> (audio)
December 2, 2016. Grenke, Michael. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1500" title="The meaning of Rome">The meaning of Rome</a> (audio)
January 20, 2017. Linck, Matthew. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1798" title="Thinking about nature">Thinking about nature</a> (audio)
January 20, 2017. Linck, Matthew. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1784" title="Thinking about nature">Thinking about nature</a> (typescript)
February 10, 2017. Fisher, Howard. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1799" title="In praise of Caloric, part one">In praise of Caloric, part one</a> (audio)
February 12, 2017. Fisher, Howard. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1800" title="Entropy, the new Caloric, part two">Entropy, the new Caloric, part two</a> (audio)
February 17, 2017. DeMillo, Richard. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1928" title="A revolution in higher education">A revolution in higher education</a> (audio)
February 24, 2017. Yale, Elizabeth. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1946" title="Books of nature">Books of nature</a> (audio)
March 24, 2017. Burke, Chester. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/2042" title="Does a single photon exist?">Does a single photon exist?</a> (audio)
March 31, 2017. Polgreen, Lydia. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/2043" title="American identity in the age of Trump">American identity in the age of Trump</a> (audio)
April 21, 2017. Hancoff, Steven. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/2657" title="Johann Sebastian Back and The Six Suites for Cell Solo">Johann Sebastian Back and <em>The Six Suites for Cello Solo</em></a> (audio)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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PDF Text
Text
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2017-18
St. John’s College – Annapolis, Maryland
FALL 2017 SEMESTER
Date
Event
August 25, 2017
“Plutarch’s Swarm”
Speaker: Joseph Macfarland. Dean
St. John’s College, Annapolis
September 1
All-College Art Discussion
September 8
(Homecoming Weekend)
Concert
Jason Vieaux, Classical Guitar
September 15
“Abraham Lincoln and the Daughters of Dred Scott: A Reflection on the
Declaration of Independence”
Speaker: Diana Schaub, Professor of Political Science
Loyola University
September 22
“Recognizing Odysseus”
Speaker: Margaret Kirby, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
September 29
“Music and the Problem of Human Desire”
Speaker: Gregory Freeman, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
October 6
Long Weekend
No lecture
October 13
Concert
The Parker Quartet
October 20
All-College Seminar
60 College Avenue | Annapolis, Maryland 21401 | 410-263-2371 | sjc.edu
�October 27
“God and Philosophy in Descartes’ Meditations”
Speaker: Henry Higuera, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
November 3
(Parents’ Weekend)
“The Student, by Anton Chekhov: A Story About Us Told and Glanced
At by Louis Petrich”
Speaker: Louis Petrich, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
November 10
“’Be a sinner and sin boldly’ – Martin Luther and Christian Freedom”
Speaker: Tom May, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
November 17
“At the Crossroads of the Cave: Plato and Heidegger on History and
Nihilism.”
Speaker: Gregory Fried, Professor & Chair
Department of Philosophy
Suffolk University Boston
November 24
Thanksgiving Holiday
No lecture
December 1
“The Significance of Quantum Mechanics”
Speaker: Bernhardt Trout, Professor of Chemical Engineering
MIT
December 8
John by Annie Baker
King William Players
December 15 – January 7
Winter Vacation
No lectures
60 College Avenue | Annapolis, Maryland 21401 | 410-263-2371 | sjc.edu
�SPRING 2018 SEMESTER
Date
Event
January 12, 2018
“Duns Scotus’s Modal Argument for the Existence of God—An
Introduction”
Speaker: Jim Carey, Tutor
St. John’s College, Santa Fe
January 19
“Hume on Animals”
Speaker: Aaron Garrett
Department of Philosophy
Boston University
January 26
“On Aquinas”
Speaker: André Barbera, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
February 2
Long Weekend
No lecture
February 9
Concert
Nordic Voices
February 16
“Franklin, Autobiography, and the St. John’s Program”
Speaker: Matthew Davis, Dean
St. John’s College, Santa Fe
February 23
All College Seminar
March 2 – 18
Spring Break
No lectures
March 23
“Visual Epistemology—A humanist perspective”
Speaker: Johanna Drucker
Department of Information Studies
UCLA
60 College Avenue | Annapolis, Maryland 21401 | 410-263-2371 | sjc.edu
�March 30
(Good Friday)
Steiner Lecture
“What was the Purpose of Archimedes’ Floating Bodies”?
Speaker: Reviel Netz
Stanford University
April 6
“The Wonder in the Word ‘Open’”
Speaker: Dan Harrell, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
April 13
Kristensen Lecture
“Utopia, Ideology and Grand Strategy in the 21st Century”
Speaker: Arthur Herman, Author
April 20
“Are individuals beings?”
Speaker: Hannah Hintze, NEH Chair, Tutor
St. John’s College, Annapolis
April 27
The President by Ferenc Molnar
King William Players
May 3
Reality Show
60 College Avenue | Annapolis, Maryland 21401 | 410-263-2371 | sjc.edu
�
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Lecture/Concert Schedule 2017-18
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Macfarland, Joseph C.
Vieaux, Jason
Schaub, Diana
Kirby, Margaret
Freeman, Gregory A.
The Parker Quartet
Higuera, Henry, 1952-
Petrich, Louis
May, Thomas
Fried, Gregory, 1961-
Trout, Bernhardt L.
Carey, Jim
Garrett, Aaron
Barbera, André
Nordic Voices (Musical group)
Davis, Matthew
Drucker, Johanna, 1952-
Netz, Reviel
Harrell, Daniel M., 1961-
Herman, Arthur, 1956-
Hintze, Hannah
King William Players
Relation
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August 25, 2017. Macfarland, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3106" title="Plutarch's swarm">Plutarch's swarm</a> (audio)
September 22, 2017. Kirby, Margaret. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3187" title="Recognizing Odysseus">Recognizing Odysseus</a> (audio)
September 22, 2017. Kirby, Margaret. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3186" title="Recognizing Odysseus">Recognizing Odysseus</a> (typescript)
October 27, 2017. Higuera, Henry. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3447" title="God and philosophy in Descartes' Meditations">God and philosophy in Descartes' <em>Meditations </em></a>(audio)
November 3, 2017. Petrich, Louis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3450" title="The Student, by Anton Chekhov">The Student, by Anton Chekhov</a> (audio)
November 10, 2017. May, Tom. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3454" title="Be a sinner and sin boldly">Be a sinner and sin boldly</a> (audio)
November 10, 2017. May, Tom. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3457" title="Be a sinner and sin boldly">Be a sinner and sin boldly</a> (typescript)
November 17, 2017. Fried, Gregory. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3456" title="At the crossroads of the cave">At the crossroads of the cave</a> (audio)
December 1, 2017. Trout, Bernhardt. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3461" title="The significance of quantum mechanics">The significance of quantum mechanics</a> (audio)
March 23, 2018. Drucker, Johanna. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3803" title="Visual epistemology">Visual epistemology</a> (audio)
March 30, 2018. Netz, Reviel. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3805" title="What was the purpose of Archimedes' Floating Bodies?">What was the purpose of Archimedes' <em>Floating Bodies</em>?</a> (audio)
April 6, 2018. Harrell, Daniel. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3819" title="The wonder in the word "open"">The wonder in the word "open"</a> (audio)
April 13, 2018. Herman, Arthur. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3828" title="Utopia, ideology and grand strategy in the 21st century">Utopia, ideology and grand strategy in the 21st century</a> (audio)
April 20, 2018. Hintze, Hannah. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3832" title="Are individuals beings?">Are individuals beings?</a> (audio)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/365157d9b3345c682e4a39c80ece9fd2.pdf
4c4ca8e0c489cb6ef3c1ffef0d556fed
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 58.2 (Spring 2017)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Assistant
Sawyer Neale
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Joseph Macfarland, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or to Review@sjc.edu.
© 2017 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Leibniz’s Monadology and the Philosophical Foundations of
Non-locality in Quantum Mechanics .....................................1
J. H. Beall
Depth Versus Complexity .................................................................25
Eva Brann
A Note on Apollonius’s Reconceptualization of Space ....................43
Philip LeCuyer
“Aristotelian Forgiveness”: The Non-Culpability
Requirement of Forgiveness ........................................................52
Corinne Painter
On Two Socratic Questions ..............................................................77
Alex Priou
Poem
Sabbatical..........................................................................................93
Louis Petrich
��Leibniz’s Monadology and the
Philosophical Foundations of
Non-locality in Quantum Mechanics
J. H. Beall
One of the most troubling aspects of our understanding of modern
physics generally, and quantum mechanics specifically, is the
concept of “non-locality.” Non-locality appears in an entire class
of experiments, including the so-called “two-slit” experiment. In
these, particles and “quanta” of light can be emitted and absorbed
individually. Yet in the way these particles or quanta traverse the
space and time between emission and absorption, they appear to
behave not as point particles, but as though they were distributed
throughout the entire spatial volume and temporal extent of the
experiment. That the phenomenon of non-locality has recently
been corroborated over macroscopic distances of the order of 10
kilometers makes these effects all the more remarkable.
In this lecture, I shall review the experiments and arguments
that have led to an acceptance of non-locality in modern physics,
and will suggest that the concept of space and time that this
understanding implies is consistent with Leibniz’s Monadology,
in which our ideas of space and time are fundamentally different
from those given to us by our intuitions.
1. Leibniz’s Monadology
Leibniz’s writings on the philosophical, mathematical, and
natural sciences represent a coherent, if somewhat surprising
whole. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the
Monadology, the Discourse of Metaphysics, and the LeibnizClark correspondence.
Leibniz begins with the view of God as a maker, a being who
makes the world the best it can possibly be.
Jim Beall is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This
lecture was originally delivered on December 4, 2015.
�2
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Part and parcel of this view is Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient
Reason. It goes something like this: one monad can only be
different from another because of its different character or
qualities. I’ll use a modern idea of a monad to illustrate this: an
elementary particle like an electron. I hope my choice will become
plausible a bit later when we start the discussion of quantum
mechanics.
Is one electron the same as another? If so, if there is no
difference between “this electron” and “that electron,” then they
would be the same, since by the Principle of Sufficient Reason
they cannot be distinguished. But my simply pointing to them is
an indication of the differences. “This electron” is different from
that one, because it has an explicitly different representation that
is indicated by my pointing at them. If I were to insist on a
Cartesian representation of this difference, I can make a threedimensional coordinate system with a particular origin and three
orthogonal axes, labeled x, y, and z. Numbering these axes, I can
locate “this” electron and distinguish it from “that” electron by
the use of three numbers, x1, y1, z1, and x2, y2, z2. I can then say
that I have a representation of each of these two electrons as
different, given these two sets of three numbers. I can even
represent their separation of this electron from that electron by a
three-dimensional version of the Pythagorean theorem.
Leibniz makes this explicit several places in his works. For
example, in the essay, “On Nature Itself,” he states this point in
arguing against Descartes’s reliance on geometry in physics.
Given such an identity or similarity between objects,
not even an angel could find any difference between its
states at different times, nor have any evidence for
discerning whether the enclosed sphere is at rest or
revolves, and what law of motion it follows. . . . Even if
those who have not penetrated these matters deeply
enough may not have noticed this, it ought to be accepted
as certain that such consequences are alien to the nature
and order of things, and that nowhere are there things
perfectly similar (which is among my [Leibniz’s] new
and important axioms) (Paragraph 13).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BEALL
3
Of course, electrons have other properties as well: charge,
mass, angular momentum (they seem to spin like tops), magnetic
moment (they act like tiny bar-magnets), velocity, momentum,
and kinetic energy, among other things. Each of these qualities
or characteristics can also be represented by a series of numbers
or “coordinate expression.” I’ve always fancied that in a very
formal sense an electron or any other elementary particle (had
Leibniz known about them) could be represented as an aggregation of numbers (or coordinate expressions) related to another
monad. This other monad could also be represented in a similar
way. By the Principle of Sufficient Reason, some of these coordinate expressions are different from the coordinate expressions
of all other monads.
The other thing to mention about monads is their unity.
They are “simple.” They do not have parts. According to
Leibniz, they represent a unity of different properties, much like
a geometric point that is the nexus of many geometric lines.
Leibniz states that:
Everything is full in nature. . . . And since everything is
connected because of the plenitude of the world, and
since each body acts on every other body, more or less,
in proportion to its distance, and is itself affected by the
other through reaction, it follows that each monad is a
living mirror or a mirror endowed with internal action,
which represents the universe from its own point of view
and is as ordered as the universe itself (Principles of
Nature and Grace, Based on Reason, Paragraph 3).
Some even have the property of being “be-souled.” So look
around you. According to Leibniz, you are sitting among a
reasonably large group of monads, each of which is capable of
noticing you and regarding you as separate, individual “beings.”
There is one final thing about monads (among their many
interesting properties) that bears on our discussion of quantum
mechanics. As Leibniz says at another point in the Monadology:
The monads have no windows through which something
can enter or leave (Monadology, Paragraph 7).
�4
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Monads have no “windows.” Yet each monad is a representation
to a greater or lesser extent of everything else in the Universe
because it is linked to all other monads by means of its relation
to God. That is, each monad is a reflection of the entire
Universe precisely because it is in some way a projection of a
part of God. The debt Leibniz owes to Plato’s Republic for this
concept (note that I did not say “image”) is nowhere directly
acknowledged by Leibniz, but it is manifest. The one quarrel
Leibniz would have with my associating him with the image of
the Cave in the Socratic dialog is simply that it is an image
rather than something that dwells in the understanding. For
Leibniz’s God is, at least to my thinking, a Mathematician, and
He, like Dedekind, holds that mathematics has no need of
geometry.
In this conception, then, there is a profound similarity
between all of our connections with one another and with the
physical, social, and moral world.
It seems clear, therefore, that Leibniz does not think that
space has an actual existence. As he states explicitly,
As for my own opinion, I have said more than once that
I hold space to be something relative, as time is, that I
hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order
of successions (Letters to Clark, Leibniz’s Third Paper,
Paragraph 4).
This is radically at odds with Newton’s Principia, in which
Newton seems to deduce the existence of absolute space from
the existence of absolute (i.e., accelerated) motion. For Newton,
space is the “sensorium of God.”
Let us ponder this for a moment. For Newton, space has an
existence. We can look out into the space before us and hold it in
our minds as something, even though we can (as Kant does) in
our imaginations remove all of its contents from the space that
holds it. What is left over is space, be it a cubic centimeter in
front of us or a volume 100,000 parsecs on a side.
When Leibniz sees this emptiness, he views it as an actual
metaphysical void, something that not even God can relate to. As
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BEALL
5
such, it is an abomination. Leibniz cannot accept a thing that God
cannot act upon, and the idea of an actual void is such a thing.
Since God must be able to act on all creation, a genuine
metaphysical void cannot exist. This is one of the reasons why
the Leibniz-Clark correspondence (Clark was taking Newton’s
part) makes little headway to change the authors’ minds. The
grounds of the conversation are radically different.
It is a worthy anecdote to relate that Leibniz and Newton
never acknowledged the other’s invention of the differential and
integral calculus. And it is helpful to note that Newton’s development of the calculus relies on geometrical constructions, while
Leibniz’s relies on an evolution of Descartes’ algebra. It is true
that Leibniz uses sketches of curves and lines for his derivations,
in part because we are visual creatures, but Leibniz’s derivations
do seem to be less reliant on images of extension.
Thus, for Leibniz, extension has no actual existence. What
we interpret as extension, as space, is a representation given to
us by God. It is very likely that the same is true for time in
Leibniz’s metaphysics. This separation is like a three-dimensional
Pythagorean theorem whose terms are given to us. What we
interpret as a spatial extension is a coordinate interval that we
call space, just as temporal separation is a coordinate expression
that we call time. What separates us, what we interpret as
distance, is just a shadow on a Cave wall caused by our origin
within a common light. What separates us from the amber light
of ages past is an equivalent coordinate expression whose
regularity is provided by God.
I cannot resist at this point recalling for you the yarn in the
Odyssey when the hero is among the Phaeacians, and Homer
brings us back from the story Odysseus is telling into Alkinoos
and Arete’s palace hall with its feast and polished stone floors
and torchlight. The momentum of that telescoping does not stop
there, but places us back firmly into the present where we realize
that we are reading words two thousand years old about a story
that is a thousand years distant even from that remote past. Like
Leibniz’s God, Homer has linked us to the ages, and three
millennia are as nought.
�6
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
One other element of Leibniz’s philosophy will prove
useful later: Leibniz directly addresses the problem of a Deity
that weaves out our destinies to construct the best of all possible
worlds. This Deity knows everything we are capable of doing,
knows all of our potentialities, and further, knows all of our
past.
And since every present state of a simple substance is a
natural consequence of its preceding state, the present is
pregnant with the future (Monadology, paragraph 22).
Thus, the “demon” in Laplace’s Essay on a Theory of Probability
takes its inspration from Leibniz. Laplace says explicitly:
We ought then to regard the present state of the universe
as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the
one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which
nature is animated and the respective situation of the
beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast
to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the
same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of
the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing
would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be
present to its eyes (Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on
Probabilities, Chapter II).
Leibniz seems to recognize the determinism of such a God, but
sidesteps the troublesome argument of the lack of free will by
claiming that God knows all possible predicates of our being, and
so chooses the path which we would follow anyway!
I regard the foregoing comments about Leibniz’s Monadology as a preamble to our discussion of the problem of nonlocality in quantum mechanics, especially as the concept of nonlocality has been articulated by interpretations of the work of
John Bell, an elementary particle theorist who worked at CERN
before his untimely death in the Fall of 1990. But first, I shall try
to provide some background on the landscape in which Bell
developed his justifiably famous theorem.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BEALL
7
2. An Eternal, Golden Braid: Quantum Mechanics in
Rutherford, Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, and Einstein
It is surprising at first glance that of the four papers Einstein
published in 1905, the one for which he was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Physics was not the paper on special relativity, entitled
“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” (Annalen der
Physik 17 [1905]: 891-921); nor the famous E=mc2 paper, “Does
the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?”
(Annalen der Physik 18 [1905]: 639-641); nor the one on Brownian motion, “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in
Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of
Heat” (Annalen der Physik 17 [1905]: 549-560).
(As an aside, it is worthy of note that this is the one
hundreth anniversary of the publication of the 1915 paper on
General Relativity, and the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of
Maxwell’s publication of his theory of light as electromagnetic
waves.)
The actual phrasing from the Nobel Prize Committee was
“for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his
discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” The so-called
“photoelectric effect” paper has a curious title: “Concerning an
Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation
of Light” (Annalen der Physik 17 [1905]: 132-148). This was the
publication that marked the beginnings of what is now called
Quantum Mechanics.
In the paper, Einstein characterizes the wave theory of light
in the following manner:
The energy of a beam of light from a point source (according to Maxwell’s theory of light or, more generally,
according to any wave theory) is continuously spread over
an ever increasing volume.
In the next paragraph, Einstein notes that
The wave theory of light, which operates with continuous
spatial functions, has worked well in the representation
of purely optical phenomena and will probably never be
replaced by any other theory.
�8
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
But in the next paragraph, he says,
It seems to me that the observations associated with
blackbody radiation, fluorescence, the production of
cathode rays by ultraviolet light, and other related
phenomena connected with the emission and transformation of light . . . are more readily understood if one
assumes that the energy of light is discontinuously
distributed in space. In accordance with the assumption
to be considered here, the energy of a light ray spreading
out from a point source is not continuously distributed
over increasing space but consists of a finite number of
energy quanta which are localized at points in space,
which move without dividing, and which can only be
produced and absorbed as complete units.
On the one hand, Einstein allows for a “wave theory” like
Maxwell’s waves in a luminiferous aether in which the light is
transmitted, reflected, and refracted. He “heuristically” considers
light to be a particle during light’s emission from and absorption
into material bodies. It is perhaps ironic that Einstein was never
able to reconcile his conception of the dual nature of light with
the equivalent, dual character of particles as both material bodies
and waves, a solution posed by de Broglie to provide an explanation of Bohr’s model for the energy levels of the hydrogen atom.
Of course, this entire “braid” began with efforts to apply
models from classical physics that explain everything from
cannonballs to asteroids to planets to the very small structures
within matter such as atoms and elementary particles via Galileo,
Thomson, Millikan, and Rutherford.
By way of a truncated outline of the argument, Bohr used the
existence of hydrogen spectral lines and the contemporary work
by Planck to explain so-called blackbody radiation. Planck made
the hypothesis that discrete oscillators in matter had only certain
fundamental modes with which they could vibrate. He asserted
that these oscillators were in equilibrium with the thermal
radiation from matter with a particular temperature, and thus
explained blackbody radiation. Bohr wondered what the “Planck
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BEALL
9
oscillators” could be, since the classical picture of an orbiting
charge holds that it should radiate continuously. He hypothesized
that his atom settled into quasi-stationary states and emitted and
absorbed radiation during transitions from one energy level to
another.
It is likely that everyone in the audience is familiar with
Bohr’s model from high school science classes and many popular
lectures and books on the subject of science. You Seniors are in
the process of completing this sequence of papers.
In fact, the Bohr model has become a commonplace picture
of the atom. But such familiarity hides the utter strangeness of
the concept. The atom is stable for a while, and then is excited or
de-excited by the absorption or emission of light at a specific
frequency. These energy levels are Bohr’s answer to why the
spectra of light from certain gases contains only certain
frequencies. If you sprinkle salt onto the logs in your fireplace,
the resultant light is a brilliant yellow. That yellow light contains
only certain frequencies, frequencies that are as much an indication of the presence of the sodium in salt as your finger prints
are of you as an individual person. We know the constitution of
stars precisely because of this line-spectrum identification of
elements, stars that can be hundreds or thousands of light years
distant.
The strangeness of the idea of the Bohr atom bothered de
Broglie, who reasoned by a kind of symmetry derived from
Einstein’s photoelectric effect paper (wherein light can have a
particulate nature, as well as a wave-like nature) that particles
could perhaps have both a discrete nature and also a wave-like
nature. In an immensely clever argument (he won the Nobel
Prize for it), de Broglie argued that one can calculate the
“wavelength” of a particle by assigning it a specific momentum,
which implies that it has an energy. That energy can be used to
calculate a characteristic wavelength, E = hν = hc/λ. It is a
stunning triumph for so simple an argument that the wavelengths
thus calculated for an electron in the Bohr orbits for hydrogen
is exactly the circumference of the quasi-stationary orbits for
�10
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
electrons in the hydrogen atom. So the electrons are not exactly
particles when they are inside the atom. They also have wavelike qualities.
Schroedinger was a young assistant professor when de Broglie
published his astonishing idea. I have it on good authority that
Schroedinger was assigned the task of giving the journal club
lecture at his university the next week. It’s a bit like these Fridaynight lectures, but less formal and typically they are on a weekday
afternoon. The assignment was something like, “Take a look at
de Broglie’s paper and give us a synopsis of it at the journal club
next Tuesday.”
Schroedinger had a ski trip planned for that weekend (Friday
through Sunday, apparently). Being the persistent soul that he
was, he took a copy of de Broglie’s paper and a book on
solutions to differential equations in various coordinate systems
(rectilinear, cylindrical, and spherical) with him on the ski trip.
The short version of the story is that he didn’t get much skiing
done, but he came back well on the way of inventing wave
mechanics, an explanation for the energy levels of atoms as kind
of standing waves in space. His “eureka” moment came when
he said to his bewildered ski companions, “I have just fit the
energy levels of the hydrogen atom in a way you would not
believe!” The standing waves were similar to the threedimensional oscillations of sound waves in a concert hall. But
standing waves of what?
I believe Schroedinger originally thought of the standing
waves as waves of charge density. The electron has wave-like
qualities à la de Broglie, and it has charge, so it would make
sense as an extension of de Broglie’s hypothesis. But electrons
have discrete charges when they are measured by Millikan in
his famous oil-drop experiment. How come we never see
fractional charges?
Schroedinger’s description of electrons (or any elementary
particle, for that matter) was that they are aggregations of waves
that reinforce in a certain region and cancel out everywhere else.
This makes sense in explaining the energy levels of a hydrogen
atom, but causes other conceptual problems.
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Schroedinger’s description of a
particle as an aggregation of waves
of some sort caused Heisenberg to
analyze the behavior of such particles
when we try to measure them. If we
try to localize the particle as we do in
the act of measurement, we confine
it to a narrower region in space. That
means we add up more and more
waves. Each wave has a slightly
different speed. Schroedinger needed
these different speeds for different
wavelengths in order to get the
“wave-packet” to behave like a particle. But that means that the
momentum of the particle becomes less certain over time, since, in
order to localize the particle, we need to add more wavelengths, and
adding more wavelengths means the velocity (and therefore the
momentum) become more uncertain.
There is actually a calculable limit to the uncertainty in the
momentum times the uncertainty in the position of a particle. It is
greater than or equal to Planck’s constant. This is of course the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation. It says that there is a fundamental,
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and not simply an experimental, limit to our knowledge of the
location of a particle and its momentum.
A particularly helpful illustration of the Heisenberg derivation (and one that will be useful to us later in this lecture can
be had by looking at single-slit diffraction of a plane wave. The
wave can be a wave of light, an elementary particle like an
electron, or even a water wave. If it originates from a far-distant
source, the wave is essentially a series of parallel troughs and
peaks with its propagation direction perpendicular to those
troughs and peaks. When we allow it to approach a screen so that
the peaks and troughs (as seen from above) are parallel to the
screen, we can watch the interaction of the barrier with the
oncoming waves. If there is an opening in the barrier that is of
the same order as the wavelength of the waves, a fraction of the
waves can pass the barrier. When this happens, a part of the wave
front gets through the barrier, but for some fraction of the waves,
the direction of the waves is changed because of the wavefront’s
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interference with itself. This interference produces a dispersion
of the wave front that gives its velocity a vertical component. It
is important to note what has happened here. We have limited the
wavefront in the vertical direction to a δx that is essentially the
width of the slit. It has produced a dispersion in the velocity of
the wave in the vertical direction, a δv.
In Schroedinger’s terms, this dispersion in the velocity of the
wave in the vertical direction (that is, in the same direction as the
opening of the slit) is an uncertainty in the velocity. If we
consider the wave as representing the motion of a particle, then
the localization of the particle within a δx produces an uncertainty
in the momentum of the particle of order δp. This illustration is
not entirely fanciful. In fact, Heisenberg uses it as one of his
derivations of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation. Furthermore,
the smaller the slit, that is, the smaller the uncertainty in position,
the greater the uncertainty in the momentum.
This has led to no end of problems in interpretation. One
example of this is the fact that elementary particles (be they
electrons, protons, or photons), when emitted from a source and
directed toward a screen or grid whose spacings are the same size
as the wavelengths of the elementary particles, will show a
diffraction pattern on a screen downstream from slits. For the
sake of clarity, we will consider only photons, although the
discussion could as well apply to any elementary particle,
including neutrons, protons, electrons, etc.
Let a stream of photons set forth across the chaotic gulf toward
a screen. Imagine this as like a scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost
as Satan launches himself across the chasm between hell and
paradise. These photons are transmitted and diffracted as though
they are electromagnetic waves. When they reach two slits in the
screen, the waves interfere with one another so that there is a very
specific pattern of light and dark lines on the screen downstream
from the slits called a “two-slit” pattern.
Suppose we turn down the intensity of the light. Let us make
the light exceedingly dim, so that when we look at the screen or
detector, we find only one cell on the screen illuminated or
exposed (you remember photographic film, I trust) at a time.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
What happens next is remarkable. This figure shows the
buildup over time of electrons in a two slit experiment at very low
flux levels. We see one quantum at a time arriving . As we watch,
the diffraction pattern begins to develop. We see the characteristic
two-slit pattern. But we have allowed only one quantum (in this
case, electrons) to be emitted at a time. How can we possibly get
a two-slit pattern. Such an experimental apparatus exists. The
results from it behave exactly as I have said.
Apparently, the individual light or particle quantum goes
through both slits at once. It is spread out over the entire space
of the experimental screen (or more properly, the experimental
volume) and then excites only one element of the detector. If this
seems quixotic to you, it is. It is known as “the problem of
measurement” in the vernacular of Shady Bend. The wave
function (remember all those waves adding up to produce the
wave packet) is spread out even for a single particle or quantum
of light. The moment before it hits the detector screen, it is
everywhere on the screen. At the next instant, it collapses into a
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single point. This is known as the “collapse of the wave
function.” The collapse is apparently instantaneous. If these are
material particles or quanta of light, they sort themselves into a
single area on the screen instantaneously.
There were many objections to this explanation, not the least
of which was that it violates causality. The wave-packet description of the two-slit experiment requires that the waves instantly
collapse to a single point, after having, a moment in time before,
occupied the whole of the experiment.
Bohr and Heisenberg made noble efforts to resolve this
apparent contradiction by supposing that the wave function
description of elementary particles was merely a calculation of
likelihood or probability. Since probability is only a likelihood,
the collapse of the wave function is merely the result of a
measurement. And like any measurement, once it occurs, the
answer is always, “Yes. That’s what happened!”
Einstein would have none of it. His famous quote, “God
does not play dice!” about the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was an indication of his
objection to the probability interpretation of the psi-function. In
his view, there was an underlying causal relation between the
elements of the experiments and their outcomes that was not
represented by quantum mechanics (QM). Yet QM is a remarkably successful theoretical method.
In a paper in response to the probability interpretation of
QM, Einstein, Podolski and Rosen (EPR) tried to show that the
uncertainty relation developed by Heisenberg was flawed, and
that some variations of the single or two slit experiment would
give an inroad into figuring out precisely what the momentum
and position of the particle would be. One of the thought
experiments proposed to measure the momentum transferred to
the screen by the impact of the particle, This (by conservation
of momentum) would allow the particle momentum to be
measured exactly, while the position would be localized to the
region within the slit. But when one took into account the
uncertainty in the position of the screen, the Heisenberg
Uncertainty limit returned.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
A variant of one of the thought experiments used two
particles that interacted prior to the slit, and then had one transfer
its momentum to one screen while another’s position was
determined independently. Again, by conservation of momentum
the second particle’s momentum and its position were to be
determined beyond the Heisenberg limit. Each response to EPR
by Heisenberg and Bohr led EPR to further amplifications of the
experimental apparatus. While the correspondence in the
scientific literature led many to accept the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Heisenberg Uncertainty limit, Einstein was
never able to believe the probabilistic nature of Bohr and Heisenberg’s interpretation.
Yet the alternative to a probabilistic interpretation was an
instantaneous collapse of a physical wave function. This instantaneous collapse would clearly exceed the speed of light, and thus
render it difficult to accept, since the limiting speed of the transfer
of information in Special Relativity is the velocity of light. This
is one of the fundamental hypotheses of Special Relativity.
This led John Bell to a further analysis of the two slit experiment, and the theoretical development of Bell’s Theorem (or
Bell’s Inequality), which has allowed many experimental test of
locality, causality, and the predictions of quantum mechanics. It
appears to contradict Einstein’s hopes for a “hidden variable”
theory, wherein true causality would be returned to the world.
Apparently, this is not to be realized.
3. Bell’s Theorem (or Bell’s Inequality)
But how does this happen? Bell’s theorem is essentially a test of
whether or not two particles, once they interact, can be separated
enough so that their states do not influence one another.
Remarkably, it is posed in such a way that it can be implemented
as an experimental test.
Schroedinger called this phenomenon, in which the wave
function of two particles becomes joined by their interaction, an
“entanglement” of the wave functions of the particles. And you
recall that all particles have a wave function description that
guides or governs their behavior.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BEALL
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This hypothesis bears on EPR’s paper. To reiterate, if two
particles interact, then the momentum of one could be determined
by inference due to measuring the momentum of the other, since
the momentum of the pair has to be conserved. At the same time,
the position of the first particle, for which we inferred the momentum, could be accurately measured for its position as long as
the pair were sufficiently far apart. Thus, the momentum and
position of a particle could be measured at a precision which
violated the Heisenberg uncertainty limit. At this point, EPR
could claim that the Heisenberg Uncertainty relation was merely
a practical limit, and that there was some underlying, governing
relation which we simply needed to find, some sort of “hidden
variable” that really determined the evolution of the system.
J. S. Bell was sympathetic to EPR’s view. His theorem (called
variously Bell’s Theorem or Bell’s Inequality) was an attempt to
establish whether or not EPR’s hypothesis could be tested
experimentally. The experimental setup is remarkably simple, but
not trivial. Two particles would be allowed to interact, to become
“entangled,” and then would separate and go off in opposite
directions. After a time, the particles would each be measured to
determine their properties. As with the EPR paper, the hypothesis
that their states could no longer interact would produce one result,
whereas the hypothesis that their states were still entangled when
they were measured would produce another result.1
The next figure (overleaf) shows the results of one of the
experimental tests of Bell’s Theorem, in this case the orientation
of the polarization of photons measured by two separated systems.
The straight line shows the limit of a “local, realistic” hypothesis,
that is, that the results are uncorrelated. Any experimental result
below the diagonal straight line indicates a correlation (that is, an
entanglement) between distant particles and their experimental
1. For a readable proof of the theorem, see Nick Herbert’s book Quantum Reality (New York: Random House, 2011) and his account at
http://quantumtantra.com/bell2.html, as well as his articles “Cryptographic approach to hidden variables” in the American Journal of
Physics 43 1975): 315-16 and “How to be in two places at the same
time,” New Scientist 111 (1986): 41-44.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
apparatuses. Perhaps most important, the results predicted by QM
show a very close agreement with the data!
In some later experimental tests, groups have tried to
estimate the speed of the transmission of the correlations by
changing slightly the timing of the setting of the measuring
apparatuses. In a ground-breaking paper by Robert Garisto
entitled “What is the Speed of Quantum Information?” (Quantum
Physics 2002 [arXiv:quant-ph/0212078v1]) the result of a
measurement conducted at CERN is that the correlations happen
at a velocity at least 10,000 times the speed of light over a
distance of 18 kilometers. I say “at least” because the electronics
of the experi-mental setup could not measure a faster correlation.
So for all intents and purposes, this speed is a lower limit. The
correlations occur effectively instantaneously.
What are we to make of such results? Henry Pierce Stapp’s
paper, entitled “The S-Matrix Interpretation of Quantum Theory”
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(Physical Review 3 [1971]: 1303-20), provides a highly recommended discussion of Bell’s Theorem, despite the imposing title.
(By way of a friendly warning, it’s best to get a bit of orientation
first by reading Section X, “Ontological Problems,” and Appendix B, “World View.”)
To give you some idea of Stapp’s take on Bell’s Theorem, I
quote from his paper at a point just after he shows a concise proof
of that theorem.
A conclusion that can be drawn from this theorem is that
the demands of causality, locality, and individuality
cannot be simultaneously maintained in the description
of nature. Causality demands contingent predictions;
locality demands local causes of localized results;
individuality demands specification of individual results,
not merely their probabilities.
As Stapp puts it:
I can see only three ways out of the problem posed by
Bell’s theorem.
1. The first is to accept . . . the idea that human
observers are cognizant only of individual branches of
the full reality of the world: The full physical world
would contain a superposition of a myriad of interconnected physical worlds of the kind we know. An
individual observer would be personally aware of only
one response of a macroscopic measuring device, but a
full account of reality would include all the other
possible outcomes on an equal footing, though perhaps
with unequal “weights.”
2. The second way out is to accept that nature is
basically highly nonlocal, in the sense that correlations
exist that violently contradict—even at the macroscopic
level—the usual ideas of the space-time propagation of
information. The intuitive idea of the physical distinctness
of physically well-separated macroscopic objects then
becomes open to question. And the intuitive idea of space
itself is placed in jeopardy. For space is intimately
connected to the space-time relationships that are
naturally expressed in terms of it. If there are, between
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
far-apart microscopic events, large instantaneous connections that do not respect spatial separation, then the
significance of space would seem to arise only from the
statistical relationships that do respect it.
3. The third way out is to deny that measurements that
“could have been performed, but were not,” would have
had definite results if they had been performed. This
way out seems, at first, to be closest to the spirit of the
Copenhagen interpretation. However, it seems to contradict the idea of indeterminism, which is also an
important element of the spirit of the Copenhagen interpretation.
Some comments are clearly in order here. The third option
Stapp articulates bears remarkable similarities to Laplace’s
Demon or Leibniz’s God as architects of the best of all possible
worlds. In that instantiation of reality, what we choose is exactly
what we will. But what we will as a predicate of our being is
completely known by the Deity and determined by it.
The first option is known as Stapp’s “many-worlds”
interpretation. That option is often mentioned in the same breath
as Schroedinger’s Cat.
In that interpretation, as Stapp says, the cat is both alive and
dead in the multiply unfolding universe of outcomes. Each point
where the quantum hits the screen represents a starting point for
a separate future.
As an interesting aside, we have some hopes of conducting
Bell’s Theorem type experiments here at St. John’s in a room in
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the basement appropriately called the Quantum Lab. But of
course, no cats will be allowed in that room.
Most people find the second option, non-locality, most
“appealing,” if that is the right phrase.
In the case of the first experimental measurements, conducted with two low-energy neutrons colliding; then recoiling
down separate arms of a vacuum line; and finally having their
angular momenta determined by a Stern-Gerlach apparatus (I will
spare you the details), there were (some thirty or forty years ago)
five measurements, four of which agreed with Bell’s inequality.
Since then, all of the experimental tests of Bell’s theorem have
confirmed it.
To emphasize how surprising this has been, I recall a
conversation I had with Professor Carol Alley at the University
of Maryland when I was a graduate student there. He is a famous
experimental physicist, one who used a laser to measure the
distance to the Moon from a site near Goddard Space Flight
Center during one of the Apollo Lunar Landing missions. As we
talked about Bell’s theorem, and it’s apparent experimental
corroboration, standing in the hallway in the Physics Building at
the University of Maryland, he was clearly quite perplexed that
there was any corroboration of the inequality. As we spoke, his
voice was getting louder and louder. Finally, I said to him,
“Professor Alley, you realize that you are shouting at me?” He
laughed and said, “Well, it’s certainly not you that I’m shouting
at, Jim. It’s the idea of this result!”
Left with the options Stapp articulated, which would you
abandon: causality, locality, or individuality. You cannot have
all three! Most people, faced with these options, give up
locality.
4. Like shadows on a Cave Wall: Leibniz’s ideas of “space”
as a kind of answer to the problem of non-locality
It is time to recall one of the things I am attempting in this lecture:
to use Leibniz’s conceptions of space and time in the Monadology as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of no-locality in
quantum mechanics.
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Let us reiterate the properties of monads. Monads are
singular. That is, they have many properties, but no parts. They
have no windows. All their impressions and reflections of the
Cosmos come through their reflection and articulation of the
Deity, which they represent in a small part.
Finally, it is likely, based on the experimental results of Bell’s
Theorem, that our intuitions of space and time are far removed
from the way the Universe actually is.
5. Concluding remarks
I conclude this lecture with two principal points and some
speculations.
First, it was many years ago that Roger Penrose in a book
called The Emporer’s New Mind, tried to explain the coherence
of mind by the physical effects of non-locality on a relatively
small scale—the electrochemical and quantum mechanical
processes in the human brain (cats, also, most likely, since
Penrose is fond of cats). This coherence would require entanglement of the prior physical states of these electrochemical wave
fronts, but this does not seem terribly surprising.
Second, entanglement does not depend simply or perhaps
even necessarily on proximity. At a fairly formal level, entanglement depends on interaction. The entanglement of cognitive
processes with the experiential world might be sufficient to
explain the commonality of experience, a term which I coin here
in this essay, especially given that the correlations persist over
manifestly macroscopic differences.
This bears, quite generally, on our ideas of culture, also. As
an example, think of how easy or difficult it can be to change
one’s entire conception of the world via a single conversation. I
thank Mr. William Braithwaite for the suggestion.
The concept of non-locality thus articulated can extend far
beyond the possibility of common experience to the possibility
of kindredness with our common weal. We might not, actually,
be separate spheres, hoping to connect, hoping to touch and
know the world. Like shadows on a cave wall, both we as
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individuals and the rest of the sensible world could actually
spring from a common light.
Finally, and this is a bit more speculative, but hardly
original, the entire evolution of the history of the Cosmos has
involved some pretty heavy entanglement. We now call it the
Big Bang.
This brings us to a further point regarding Leibniz’s Deity.
God might not have simply said, “Let there be Light.” God
might have actually been that light.
�Diver Tomb, Posidonia (Modern Paestum)
ca. 480-470, Museum, Paestum
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Depth Versus Complexity
Eva Brann
What a great honor it is to be invited to speak to the philosophers
of Athens, though I came flying into Atlanta through the blue
skies by airplane rather than sailing into the Piraeus over the
wine-dark sea by trireme!
My topic is a duality, an opposition in the way our world offers itself to the search for knowledge, which is mirrored in our
personal predisposition for a way of inquiry.
I’ve learned not to expect an audience to sit with bated breath
until I reveal my own inclination and also not to indulge myself
in post-modern indeterminacies. So I’ll say up front where, as
my students say, I’m “coming from” and, as matters more, where
I’m going with my title, “Depth Versus Complexity.” I think that
the first dimension of depth describes such bottom-seeking
knowledge as we’re capable of searching out; it may be called
philosophia, “love of wisdom.” The second dimension, on the
other hand, describes such surface-covering information as we
can attain by research; it could be named, to coin a term,
philotechnosyne, “love of skillful fact-finding.” Since it seems
to me hazardous, both aimless and dangerous, to plunge into the
depths below a surface that I’m not acquainted with, it also seems
to me that those who attempt such a plunge, which is always
made with eyes closed, should have their eyes wide open above
Eva Brann is a tutor and former dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland. This lecture was first delivered to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia on September 16,
2016.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
and be acquainted with much of the wide surface, always keeping
in mind Heraclitus’ dictum that “Eyes and ears are bad witnesses
to humans that have barbarian souls” (D-K 107). I will cite rather,
in behalf of being extensively informed, Socrates, who lived in
that first Athens as an ardent urbanite. He seems to Phaedrus, his
ostensible guide, like a stranger outside the city in the country
around Athens, and he says that he, Socrates, only learns when
within the city; but he shows that he has far more real local
knowledge than his companion.
The direct opposite of complexity would be simplicity; of
depth it is shallowness. I’m not disavowing but rather avoiding
those antitheses, for now. So I’ll describe the two ways not as directly opposite, but rather as orthogonal to each other. Therefore
let me begin in a somewhat unlikely way: with the most basic
Cartesian coordinate diagram of classical physics, in which the
horizontal x axis represents the fundamental independent variable, time, and the vertical y axis orthogonal (that is, at right angles) to it represents some other physical dimension—early on,
distance, velocity, and acceleration. That’s so even in latter day
elementary textbooks. But at a crucial moment in physics, its first
modern moment, the direction is different. The second theorem
of the Third Day of Galileo’s Two New Sciences (1638), sets out,
under the title of “Naturally Accelerated Motion,” the earliest
clearly quantified law of nature, that for free fall at the surface
of the earth,1 where acceleration is naturally uniform. Here time
is represented by an upright line, while the horizontal stands for
velocity. Moreover, time begins not at what will later be called
the origin, the intersection of the representative lines, but at a release point. Picture the diagram as rendering Galileo, nearly half
a century earlier, standing at the top of the Leaning Tower, about
to start his experiment by letting go of a ball. That experiment
was not, to be sure, an experiment at all but a demonstration of a
remarkable fact already known by Galileo, namely that balls of
different weights would, absent friction, hit the ground together.
1. The third day of creation in the Hebrew Bible is when the earth appears (Genesis 1:9).
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That’s somewhat to my point, since so-called information, gathered by experimental research is, I would guess, far less often put
to use as the source of new discoveries than as the corroboration
of pre-conceived knowledge.
What is a little off my point is the mind-boggling and modernity-determining way Galileo proves the law on the basis of a
postulate suggested by the Pisan demonstration. The postulate
says that, since weight is not involved in free fall close to the
earth’s surface, the simplest possible relation of velocity to time
is to be assumed, namely that the former varies directly with the
latter. Then the velocity-lines, set up horizontally on each moment of time, increase proportionally with the time of falling and
so assume the outline of a triangle whose base represents the velocity at the moment of impact. The interior of this triangle is a
kind of proto-integral, a summation of all the near-infinitesimal
velocity-lines, with side t for time and d/t for distance per unit
time, or velocity. These sides, when multiplied, yield twice the
area of a triangle representing the dimension t·d/t . Simply put,
the area of a triangle, a plane figure, now represents a distance,
a linear figure. I’m moved to say that this counterintuitive procedure instantiates the crucial effect of quantification: the symbolic quantity has no immediately apprehensible similarity to the
quality of the symbolized phenomenon, here distance.
I must interrupt my account here to say, very emphatically,
that Galileo clearly saw what was eventuating and did his clever
and careful best to circumvent the representation of distance by
area, so that his proof is conceptually clear but mathematically
cumbrous. More efficient and less mindful ways would soon be
found.2
As it turns out, the tsunami of information now available is
largely numerical in form and bears a ruptured relation to its qualitative subject. Incidentally, the law of free fall then simply stares
at you from the diagram: Since by the postulate the velocity ratios
2. Of course, this transmogrification had already preceded, when a
length uniformly increasing had been made to symbolize a similarly increasing rate, namely, the ratio of distance to time or velocity, d/t.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
are the same as the time ratios, we can substitute the time for the
velocity and say: In free fall on earth, in abstraction from friction
and in the absence of a force that might increase acceleration, the
distances vary as the squares of the times, d ~ t 2 Let me repeat:
I’m a little off topic with this tale, but only a little, since the story
of non-similar symbolism is deeply implicated in the tale of depth
vs. complexity.
My recall of a moment when time went diagrammatically
downward rather than outward is intended to remind you of other
ways time goes downward—and inward. If Galileo’s ball hadn’t
been stopped at ground zero it would have gone inward toward
the center of the earth.
There is another discipline in which time heads down. In archaeology, the deeper we dug (I say “we” because in my pre-Socratic days I was an archeologist), the later it was in our personal
day, the earlier it became in the world’s time: the deeper down,
the farther back. On our earth, the buried past lies progressively
deeper below the visible now that presents itself on the surface.
These material survivals went, if undisturbed, in readable stratifications, way back into prehistoric times.3
I refer to digging because it is an analogue, perhaps even the
source of metaphor for a psychic capacity called remembering.
In remembering we dive into our memory tank, often to meet a
memory floating or flashing up to forestall or even anticipate our
search. But sometimes we must recollect, dig laboriously downward through stratum after stratum of compacted memories, until
the desired one halts the search. Socrates distinguishes memory
(mneme) from recollection (anamnesis)—e.g., in Symposium
208a, and Meno 81d. Augustine, that great Platonic theologian,
devises an imaginative topology of the soul which visualizes that
3. “If undisturbed:” I recall a day of excitement at the American Excavations of the Athenian Agora (Marketplace), when a pristine Neolithic
deposit was thought to have been discovered. By evening the excavators
had reached bottom—and there lay a little button bearing the legend:
Army of the Hellenes. It came from a Greek army tunic; its presence
spoiled the temporal virginity of the find and with it much of its informational value.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
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depth-sounding destination of recollection (Confessions, Bk. X,
Chs. 11, 12, 17). Our quasi-sensory memory images densely fill
the innumerable fields and caves and caverns of our inward
quasi-spatial memory. Here we wander in remembrance. But yet
deeper within the huge inner world are placeless places for imageless presences such as true mathematical figures (meaning
those drawn with breadthless lengths on an inner quasi-plane),
precepts of the liberal arts, including logic, and the invisible
being of things discerned within, “themselves by themselves,”
the Platonic forms. These flee into the remotest recesses and must
be “excogitated,” literally “driven together and out,” that is, laboriously recollected. Then Augustine extends the depth—or
height—of the soul beyond memory and its recollective recesses.
“I will transcend” (transibo), he says, my memory and “ascending” (ascendans) through and beyond my memorial soul I will
mount up to God who is above me.
To my mind, this is a remarkable correction, or perhaps a
consummation, of Socrates’ account, who never tells, except in
post-mortem myths, how the forms and their ruling principle, the
Idea of the Good, actually come into the soul—or it to them. In
Augustine’s account, they penetrate, they enter, the innermost
depth of the soul, that is to say, the soul opens onto the heights
of Heaven. Depth and height are strangely identical. I will dwell
on this later, but here recall to you that the Latin word altus means
both “high” and “deep,” and also that Heraclitus says “The way
up and down is one and the same” (D-K 60).
Like Augustine, the enhancer of Platonic psychology,
Freud, its traducer, has an outside-in psychic topology. He himself called psychoanalysis “depth-psychology” (Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1926). His early typology in the Interpretation of
Dreams (1900) names at the upper end the perceptual system,
that is, awareness; behind or below comes the preconscious system, that is, the subconscious, where reside psychic facts not
presently in awareness but readily accessible. And deep down
there is the place of the unconscious, a hermetic hell, reachable
only by the experts in deep penetration, by the psychoanalysts.
The motto of Freud’s early book is “If I cannot bend heaven, I
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will raise hell” (Virgil, Aeneid VII 312). And that is why I call
Freud a traducer of the two ancients: For them the light increases with depth, for him the murk. As Lady Macbeth, who
might, poor woman, be a Freudian case, says: “Hell is murky”
(Macbeth, V.i.41).
I’ll return to Augustine’s Confessions, Book XI (23, 27, 28), to
me the highpoint of the inquiry into time. Here memory becomes
the place and the condition of time. Time is a “distention” of the
mind, a dilation brought about by its accumulating memories, and
the amount of this mental stretching is the measure of times. Neither
future nor past are; only the present, the here and now, exists. The
future is expectation now and the past is memory now, and time is
the presently felt extent of this expectational and memorial stretching upward into the future and downward into the past respectively.
To be sure, Augustine says nothing about up or down. But
Husserl, who takes his departure from Augustine in what is probably the greatest application of the phenomenological method to a
subject, namely his Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1905), does exactly that in describing his own “Diagram of
Time” (para. 10). He speaks of the new nows changing into pasts
that continuously “run off’ and plunge “downward” into the depths
marked on a vertical line which symbolizes the “retention,” that is
to say, the memory of impressions.
Before showing you where I plan for all this to be going let me
take a minute to tell you about the etymologies of the words “deep”
and “down.” I am far from imagining that recovered meanings, be
they the careful etymologies produced by learned linguists, who
trace a word to its speculative Indo-European root, or the creative
derivations devised by imaginative amateurs, which have no basis
in research, prove anything at all. The dead-serious but linguistically
dubious etymologizing of certain philosophers strikes me as an improbity, while the apt hijinks of others seem to me good fun.4 But
both linguistically sound etymologies and imaginative verbal jeux
4. An example of—how shall I put it?—unstraightforwardness is Heidegger’s translation of Greek aletheia, “truth,” as “un-concealedness,”
as from alpha-privative a (“un”) and Lethe (“forgetfulness”), from a
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d’esprit can be thought-provoking, the latter because they’re meant
to be, the former because they may tell us something about the development of human reflection. But all in all, etymologies are incitements, not revelations, and poetic play, not philosophy.
Here is the linguistically respectable etymology of “deep.”
The Indo-European root, dheub, gives rise to “dip,” “dive,” as
well as “deep.” Thus it is reasonable to infer that “deep” originally signified plunging into an element and bringing up some
of it. The deepest dipping and diving our earth affords us is the
ocean, the deepest of the deep the Mariana Trench; let it stand
for non-metaphorical, literal, depth and diving. The “down” adjective is similarly physical; it is derived from dune, “hill”;
“down” means “off the hill,” moving from top to bottom.
Now let me do the same for “complexity.” “Com-,” Indo-European kom, signifies “beside, near, with”; “-plexity” derives
from plek-, “to plait,” originally from “flax,” a plant yielding textile fiber. So like depth, complexity is rooted in our dealing with
material objects. I’ve read that the most complicated object
known to us is our brain. I don’t need to insist that its complexity
is non-metaphysical, literal, just because I believe that complexity hardly ever is a metaphor.
We deal with complexity by “ex-plicating,” that is, undoing
the im-plicating entanglements of complexity, or by “ex-plaining,” that is, setting complexities out plainly. The two meanings
of the word “plain,” that is, “clear” and “flat,” have the same origin: the wide “plain” is where things are plain because view is
unobstructed, and the mathematical flat surface, the “plane,” has
the same origin. Hence “explaining” is a mode of extracting
meaning that explicates its subject by projecting it onto a flat surface. Thus, for instance, the brain is contained by a roughly round
skull (because, I imagine, the sphere is that mathematical solid
verb that means “to elude notice.” The etymology has some support,
but there is no evidence that to early and classical authors aletheia
meant anything but truth and genuineness as opposed to falseness and
counterfeit. An example of fun is from Plato’s Phaedrus (252c): Pteros
means, “Winged Eros” since pteron means “feather.”
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which has the lowest ratio of surface to content), so that its involutions need to be explicated in plane surfaces: in marked cross
sections for viewing and labelled schemata for functions and
plane mappings for neural networks.
What I’ve just said can serve to deal with an annoying sort
of argumentative deflection. Someone will interject, to derail
you: “It’s more complex than that.” To which the answer is: “Well
then, if you mean it, draw me a picture.” For complexity is the
eminently diagrammable, spatializable problem; it can be set out
plainly. To be sure, complexity is the opposite of simplicity, and
what these folks often say as the final put-down is: “You’re being
simplistic, you’re over-simplifying.” To which the apparently
merely eristic, that is, merely contentious, answer is: “And you’re
being shallow, superficial,” meaning: your overview has too few
nodes and connections to begin with and doesn’t go into the matter to boot.
It will be the point of my talk to show, perhaps a little too
briefly, that it is not merely argumentative to say that complexity
is a superficial view of the world, but has real non-derogatory
meaning, and then to conclude by attempting a description and—
I’ll be upfront about it—a defense of depth. Just as I don’t want
to say that they are opposite kinds of thinking, so, far be it from
me to claim that complexity and depth are “kinds” of thinking at
all. To my mind, it is plain unthinking to claim that there are different ways of thinking. Thinking is always thinking—always
the same in being “about” something, thus always qualified by
what it is about. It is always the same but often about something
different. For, of course, there are different objects of thought,
different ways to see what you must think about.5 Thus the people
who used to be referred to as primitives, and before that as savages, felt surrounded by well- or ill-intentioned spirits and, most
rationally, concluded that these needed to be propitiated in ways
they themselves might respond too—just as we would.
5. People also employ different devices, modes, ways of thinking, such
as figures, analogies, conjectures; it is hard to see how they could do it,
except against a backdrop of plain mentation.
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Or take Socrates. Some folks say that he was interested in
defining certain objects, that is, in delimiting them in the universe of discourse, in explaining them and their interrelations
verbally. Well, so he was, but only when they were heavily affected with non-being, as in his multi-definitional pursuit of the
sophist in the dialogue of that name, the results of which I’ve
spent some amusing hours diagramming. But when he is within
view of a true being, like one of the human excellences, asking
that notorious “What is . . . ?” question, definition is not his aim,
but a delving descent to depths attained in literal “under-standing” (as we say) or in a truth-following ascent to the heights
achieved through “over-standing” or epi-steme (as the Greeks
say). It is always thinking but sometimes of words, or about objects, or from different positions. Consider that if thinking
weren’t always just that we wouldn’t even know when we have
different intentions.
Now to some gist. What is complexity? Well, first, there are
several kinds I’ve discerned and no doubt others I haven’t.
There’s Wittgenstein’s kind, very clearly set out in the Philosophical Investigations (Part I, 1945, Part II, 1949). He says at
one point: “The deep aspect eludes us easily” (I 387, 594). “Do
not try to analyze the experience in yourself” (my italics, II xi).
So we are to turn to the public use of words, for example, explanations (I 69) and the behavior it induces, called the “language
game.”6 The external view, he says, “reveals a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing” (I 66). His
figure here appears to be one-dimensional, a thread of overlapping fibers (I 67), but since these also criss-cross, the real figure
6. It seems to me that the language game, which teaches meaning by
ostension, doesn’t work except for a dull-witted apprentice: Master
teaches pupil the word “slab” (flagstone) by pointing to an exemplar
and then sends him to fetch another from a pile (I 6). If he’s dull enough,
he’ll come back with a slab, but if he’s brightly observant, he’ll come
back and say: “I didn’t see another just like this one.” The master will
be thrown back on communicating The Slab, itself by itself, since no
one, I think, can see likeness except through modelling essence—but
the last clause goes beyond my present point.
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is clearly two- or three-dimensional. This is verbal complexity,
and it is characterized by overtness, extensive relationality, and
interconnectivity: “family resemblances” (ibid.); its point is to
get on with practicalities; speech is known from its use in the
world.
Another kind of complexity can be characterized as computable: It has sharply defined digital elements related by rules
of computation, that is, problem-solving procedures, algorithms. This complexity is hard-edged: digits in clear calculational relations. The point is to get the solution to the kind of
pre-formulated question called a “problem,” whose relation to
human experience is determined by the fiat of postulation.
Yet a third kind of complexity is informational, characterizable as bits of fact, raw or inferred, singular or aggregated in
categories. Information has only relative existence; in its first
nature it is like a mud flat, which becomes discrete only when
handfuls are molded into a clump of clay. Abstract information
is therefore irrelevantly pre-formed pseudo-knowledge. Thus
information, even when verifiable, consists of relational factoids that become active facts in a context of human intention.
Information becomes relevant to final decision-making when
a desire is formulated and an intention is formed. Then the
point is usually to underwrite the desired action, or to modify,
even to cancel it, if the facts are really terminally unspinnable.
My final, but surely not last, kind of complexity is psychical and social—that is, human. I won’t attempt to delineate it.
Its elements are too various in kind and degree and their relations too difficult, be it by human intention or natural obscurity.
Ungifted experts tend to deliver very gross conceptual depictions of the human world, but very great psychologists and anthropologists (the latter need to be the former more than the
converse, I think) manage to combine an extensive overview
with penetrating insight. I am thinking of the Greeks’
Herodotus and our Tocqueville. They manage to survey the
many phenomena that surface on our earth and to clue out underlying, I would say, the underlying distinctions and commonalities.
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Here, by a natural and easy transition (as Robert Brumbaugh
used to say, when he meant quite a leap7) I shall try to speak of
depth. It might seem presumptuous, did I not think that one may
speak of it without having been there: Trying is all.
To begin with, the deep divers that I have read and even
known, display respect for and acquaintance with phenomenal
complexities.8 I say “phenomenal” because the juxtaposition of
phainomena and onta, sensed “appearances” and intellected “beings” must surely underlie the distinction between complexity
and depth. Let me here say again that complexity usually is and
means to be a literal description of its realm, while depth is a
metaphor, a figural application of a this-worldly phenomenon:
dipping and diving into a material element.9
Thereby hangs a tale, a tale I will foretell in a sentence:
There is no, repeat, no way of speaking of the soul and of the
realm whose emissary it is except by analogy (prosaically) or
by metaphor (poetically). Indeed, all philosophical speech is, I
dare to claim, figurative. Let me remind you of two prime examples. Plato’s Socrates speaks of eidos, literally “look” or “aspect.” But the word is used “meta-phorically,” which means
“carried over” into the realm of thought, in which reside the beings that have “invisible looks.” (Mythically and punningly their
place is in the underwold: Aides aeides, “Hades the Invisible,”10
Phaedo 80d, Cratylus 404b.11) Or take the Stoic invention of the
7. At Yale, I slipped in and out (more out) of his lectures, the only graduate class in philosophy I ever attended at all (1951). The required undergraduate course at Brooklyn College was a big nothing
8. “Even known”: Jacob Klein, Dean of St. John’s College when I arrived (1957).
9. Thus descriptions that mean to delve are usually simplifications. Of
whom is it truer to say “you’re simplifying” than of a novelist who is
experienced in the delineating soul and the world?
10. Aeides: an allusion to the un-murky Greek Hades (Aides), the underworld where dwell luminously invisible things.
11. In other dialogues they are located up high (Symposium 211), in the
heavens (Phaedrus 247).
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“concept,” literally a “grasping together [of particulars].” These
metaphorical ways, the poetry of philosophy, are not, to my
mind, primitive evidence of some logic-overleaping access to
the Unconcealed that hides itself from the prosaic professors,
but our one possible way to reach beyond the sensory world by
taking advantage of the deadness of the metaphors that make up
our latter-day language. It is a semi-extinction that allows us to
use our words as if they had always meant what we mean them
to mean: non-sensory beings directly denoted by pure imageless
speech. Who hears “concept” as an assembling grasp, or “logic”
as a collecting art?12
Aristotle and Wittgenstein actually agree—imagine this!—
that there is articulable thinking not in need of quasi-sensory
imagining. For Aristotle it is the highest kind that functions without imagination: intellecting, noesis, the direct apprehension of
the knowable. For Wittgenstein no understanding of a proposition
is in need of imagining (On the Soul 1129a ff.; Philosophical Investigation I 396). I can believe it of Aristotle that his mind, his
nous, had such a capacity for viewless thinking, sightless insight—do any of ours?13
So, I claim, whether or not we are practicing etymologists,
whether we are literally the “truth-tellers” about our first words
(for that is the etymology of “etymology”), their defunct spirits
tug at us to return to them.
—No way to speak of underlying being non-somatically, I
said a moment ago, and no way to go into sightless depths (divers
without goggles do keep their eyes closed) without first taking
in the surface, the place of laid-out overtness, of infinite particularity, of connecting context. Here’s another Socratic corroboration: Socrates is generally and inattentively presented as
denigrating the multifarious and shifting phenomenal surface on
which we crawl about. But recall that he, an inveterate urbanite,
who says that country places don’t teach him a thing, had more
12. Logic: from Greek logos, whose root is leg-, as in “collect.”
13. It is practically undecidable whether either Socrates or Plato ever
claimed to have come within sight of the forms.
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local knowledge and more scenic sensibility than his companion,
a suburban stroller. That’s in the Phaedrus (229b ff.). And in the
Symposium (206b ff.), Socrates, we learn, has been taught to
think that the ascent into the heights of being must start with the
surely complex, and mostly surface-captivated experience of
falling in love, which is also the first glimpse into psychic depths.
And the same is true of Aristotle and Thomas and Hegel, who all
seem to know a lot about worldly and human complexity, especially the monk.14 I’m not just dropping names here but citing
concrete examples of experiential expansiveness.
With complexity given its due, what then is depth, this mode
figuratively orthogonal to complexity, a mode more askew of than
opposite to it? But I will stall one last time: What is depth and
the way down not?
1. It cannot, by its very nature, be governed by the formalisms of logic. For it is always reached through the revealing
veil of metaphor, which assures that the blunt first law of logic
be set aside, the one that proscribes “p · ~ p.” This law of noncontradiction forbids that a proposition be at once true and not
true, though for its first formulator, Aristotle, this is not a formal
axiom but an affirmation that its intentional object, the thing
meant in declaratory speech, is always a determinate being,
which either is or is not. So with acquiescence in the law of thinking and being goes this very implication, that the spatial world is
determinately, positively, what it is. Not so the depths. The way
down is very much a via negativa on the one hand: “I don’t really
mean what my speech is saying”—and therefore, on the other, a
via in-ventionis, a way of “going into,” of discovery—of things
not quite thinkable.
2. Nor is depth-diving a way of deduction, of the logical descent from maxims to conclusion, nor of induction, the logical
ascent from facts to generalizations.
3. Nor are the depths a mere alternative universe of dis14. Thomas: His “Treatise on the Passions” in the Summa Theologiae
seems to me unsurpassable; consider also Aristotle’s researches in the
animal kingdom and Hegel on history and the arts.
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course, an idly eccentric language game, since, I am convinced,
urgent intimations from that quarter, from our internality, those
pulls that precede articulated speech, are a common, an ineluctable, human experience. This is a claim scarcely capable of
verification other than by testimonial. But I simply believe that
even people who revel in their own and their world’s brute materiality are visited by such transcendent innuendos.
4. Nor is the way into depths subject to a Cartesian method,
prescribed by teachable rules for the direction of the mind.15
*****
What then, finally, is depth and the way down?
Well, to begin with, as Heraclitus says: “The way up and
down is one and the same” (D-K 60).16 I’ll adapt it to my purpose.
Perhaps I can put it thus: The way of our search and its discoveries leads deep down into the depths of our soul, mind, or consciousness, towards what is found last but is in itself first, a
grounding principle.17 Once discovered, it becomes the ruling
principle (arche) of our account-giving as we come back up onto
earth. So the delving and climbing reach the same end, an “alpha
and omega,” the insight and its expression.
That is the way, but the mode of our search is question-asking
rather than problem-solving. In this phraseology, depth is the
15. Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637), Rules for the Direction of
the Mind (1628).
16. He might concede that my experience of the way up and back is different, because I’m facing in opposite directions, but still, the overseeing Logos will give the same account of both. For the Heraclitean Logos
is both immanent, as determining the ratios (logoi) of the elemental
transformations of nature, and transcendent, as the one who gathers,
collects (legei) Everything into One; it is the latter Logos who contracts
up and down into one.
17. My version of Aristotle, Physics 184a: “The way is from things
more knowable to us and clearer, to things clearer by nature and more
knowable.” There is another meaning of “ground,” not mine here. It is
the a priori, the conceptually prior basement upon which to construct
an epistemological edifice, an explanatory system such as Kant erects
(Critique of Pure Reason, B 860).
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venue of questions, complexity of problems. Statements of problems can actually do without question-marks, they are perplexities presented to be explicated, straightened out, conceptually or
practically. Or, if you like, a problem is a hard-edged, well-defined question with a correspondingly jigged answer drawn from
a predetermined pool.
For example, here’s a metaphysical problem: to discern the
number of causes operative in the world. The solution is constrained by such presumptions as these: Everything this-worldly
has a cause, including apparent chance (Aristotle, Physics Bk.
II iv ff.); therefore, if anything is uncaused or self-caused it is a
divinity (Physics, Bk. VIII; Metaphysics, Bk. XII); causes are
multiple, because the world is complexly constituted, and “responsible,” meaning that they come to us as responses forced
from the beings pinned down by an interrogation. And so forth.
The solution is definite, and the discussion continues only insofar as some people reject it.
Here’s a practical problem: On my way back from Athens, it’ll
be a problem how to circumvent the notoriously long security lines
of your Atlanta airport. When I get to the front, I’ll think of other
things. Solving practical problems takes this-worldly know-how;
solving philosophical problems takes other-worldly activity. In either case, when a problem is really solved it is also dissolved; it
becomes moot. People preoccupied by solved problems are told to
get a life. (There actually are some solved philosophical problems
that stay solved, mostly those involving a superseded physics.18)
Questions, on the other hand, seem to me not properly perplexities. They don’t go away, they are perennial, not because
they are demonstrably insoluble but because they are not properly
proposed for solving but rather for going into, deeper and deeper.
The mode of engagement with questions, as I delineate it
for myself, is what Socrates calls aporia—literally, waylessness.19 Therefore the way of searching out the deep is indeed a
18. Some of these do in fact remain interesting, sometimes as testimonials to the concrete impasses that make grand theories implode.
19. Or “unprovidedness.” The above meditation on modes of searching
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meth-odos, a “way-to-be-followed,” but only in the sense of
an oriented movement, not in the modern meaning of a method,
a progress guided by procedures.
Entertaining questions thus requires wisdom, a considering,
reflecting frame of a mind still resonating with past experience
but now focused by desirous expectation. Otherwise put: Questions are a mode of blessed ignorance, a thorough apprehension
of our own cognitive limitations which clears our minds of mere
opinions and, while it prevents us from reaching for personal
originality rather than objective origins, moves us inward.20
A question, then, is a receptive opening in us—who knows
in what capacity of ours. The reception is expectant of an answer—of a spontaneous intimation rather than a driven determination, of an incitement more than a settlement, of a mental
vision or a verbal hypothesis instead of a conclusive solution.
has as a background Aristotle’s Book III of the Metaphysics, which
marks the transition of philosophy from amateur question-asking to professional problem-solving, the second such transition in the West. The
first was from pre-Socratic initiation into Logos or Truth by a divinity
to the Socratic search by going into oneself.
The word “problem” is not actually used by Aristotle in Book III; in
fact he speaks of “difficulties” and aporiai, which I think he assimilates
to “problems” in our sense. Plato already uses problema in the geometry-derived sense. A problem asks for a construction, which yields a
product, as opposed to a theorem, which gives insight. Some ancients—
this is to my point—objected to the notion of a mathematical problem
since mathematics is about knowing, not making (Heath, Euclid’s Elements, I 125). By this distinction hangs a tale extending into modernity,
but beyond the scope of this talk: the development of mathematical objects from concrete items to abstracted symbols.
20. “Blessed ignorance” is my adaptation of Nicolas of Cusa’s title, Of
Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia, 1440)—“blessed” for
“learned” because, of course, it’s precisely not learned. Even though
lots of graduates might be correctly awarded an I.D., an Ignorantiae
Doctor, it would be in the wrong spirit. What Cusanus means by learned
ignorance is the fully realized desire to know that has become unobstructed when we have thoroughly learned our ignorance (Bk. I i). Directing features of this desire are the via negativa (the way of gaining
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Such responses are often fraught simplicities, not abrogations of
difficulties but rather problem-generating fecundities.21
The aim of asking questions is to penetrate spatio-temporal
experience so as to reach the atemporal inwardness, commonly
called the essence, whose surface is the appearance. Here I should
stop because I am being carried away toward an ontological speculation from what I would be glad to call a meditation on, or at
most a phenomenology of, inquiry.22
*****
a foothold in the transcendent by what it is not), conjecture (the way
of holding a well-motivated opinion firmly enough to go on with but
flexibly enough for alteration), and analogy (the way of levering up
thought by recognizing similarities in different venues and through
these likenesses discovering differences). I think that these ways are
mutually implicated, but I have neither studied Cusanus enough nor
sufficiently thought out my notions.
21. Prime examples are to be found in the sayings of Heraclitus and
Parmenides, the two pre-Socratics distinguished by being not “physical”
(Aristotle, Physics 186b), but meta-physical. Here is one example: Parmenides says: “For it is the same both to be aware (noein) and to be”
(D-K 3; D-K 8, line 34)—most often translated along these lines: “For
the same thing can be thought as can be.” Heidegger interprets ingeniously in line with his notion of unconcealment: Being’s essence involves being apprehended (Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), 106).
I think we should not subvert bold depth by refusing to read what is
written. Parmenides regards Being as One, for which his figure is a
sphere. So he countermands the multiplicity inherent in his spherical
metaphor by gnomically intimating that Being is self-aware, self-translucent, self-implicated—as unextended, partless, undifferentiable, being
everywhere and nowhere, just as is awareness when its object is itself.
22. I regard it as somewhat corroborative of the descriptive verity of
my depth metaphor for a tendency of inquiry that it plays no discernible
role for Heidegger either in Being and Time (1927), where phainomena
and onta are assimilated [31, 35] or in the Introduction to Metaphysics,
where Being is self-emergent and involves its own manifesting appearance as a defining delimitation [77]. The reason for this absence is, I
think , that Dasein (an abstraction from a human being) which is only
in caring about its being, is altogether temporal and this-worldly—so
perforce a-metaphorical and un-deep.
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Are there consequences to the preceding exposition? To my
mind, there are personal ones surely—such as the acquisition of
a template to gauge what you’re doing and to judge if a quarter
turn inside and down may be desirable. There are disciplinary
ones probably, such as querying cognitive scientists concerning
the feasibility of inward-turned mental depth emerging from the
ultimate complex structure, the brain. And there are institutional
ones possibly—such as a reconsideration by philosophy departments of their highest degree, now the Ph.D., Philosophiae Doctor. It is, after all, a comical title which claims that you are a
proficient preceptor, a doctor, of the love of wisdom, a teacher,
that is, of love—a situation nowadays full of moral and legal pitfalls. Departments might add a secondary but more sensible degree, the Ph.D.2, to be read as Philosophiae Dilector, a “delighter
and dilettante in the love of wisdom.” For I think that while the
mapping of complexity, which is an institutional way of “doing”
philosophy, can keep you promotion-worthily busy and often
contentedly absorbed, the dilettantish delvers into depths, amateurish because philosophy true to its name cannot be a profession, might also have their diploma, though such diving may
bring up nothing but deep delight:
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song
To such a deep delight ’t would win me . . .
Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
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A Note on Apollonius’s
Reconceptualization of Space
Philip LeCuyer
Apollonius re-envisions Euclidean space. He does this indirectly
by slowly and carefully re-envisioning one of the two most important objects in Euclidean space—the circle. Apollonius reopens the question that Euclid seemed to have settled in
Definition 15: what is a circle?
Euclid’s Elements is the only mathematical work used by
Apollonius in the Conics. The Elements constitute Apollonius’s
intellectual inheritance, a fundamental aspect of which is a concept of space that is essentially negative. Euclid’s series of five
negations is conveyed through the five postulates. The first one
states: “from every point to every point to draw a straight line.”
This means there are no holes in Euclidean space. The second
postulate states: “to produce a finite straight line continuously in
a straight line.” This means there are no edges to Euclidean space.
The third postulate, “to describe a circle with any center and any
distance,” means there is no directionality in space—all radial
directions are equivalent. The fourth, “all right angles are equal,”
means there is no handedness, no distinction between left and
right.
The famous fifth postulate is longer:
If a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles,
the two straight lines, if produced toward infinity (ep’
apeiron), meet on that side on which the two angles are
less than two right angles.
This means that Euclidean space has no curvature. No holes,
no edges, no directionality, no handedness, no curvature. It is an
essentially negative concept.
Philip LeCuyer is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The author thanks Grant Franks, also a tutor in Santa Fe, for fashioning
the figures.
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Apollonius does not—as Lobachevski, Bolyai, Riemann, and
the topologists do many centuries later—change any of these postulates. Rather, he exposes an unarticulated postulate which pervades or underlies the five stated ones, and in so doing introduces
a positive characteristic to space.
There are two sides shown in the fifth postulate: 1) the side
on which the three lines form a triangle, and 2) the other side on
which the lines produced toward infinity diverge forever. Euclid
leaves this other side of things in knowing silence. The Elements
is about the triangle, which is a figure, and about the circle, which
Euclid also defines as a figure, a schema. What then is a figure?
Euclid defines a “figure”as “that which, beneath (hypo) any
boundary or boundaries, is contained (periechomenon)”—literally, that which has a perimeter, a horizon, around it, something
characterized by “surroundedness.” The Elements stands as the
authoritative study of two and three dimensional figures and the
notion of containment. It culminates in the construction of the
five regular solids, and, as its finale, Euclid presents for our contemplation a comparison of the respective linear edges of the five
solids when contained in the same sphere. The definition of figure
governs the Elements from start to finish.
Figures are present in Apollonius’s Conics, but they are not
what is being studied. What is being studied is a set of curves,
first encountered as conic sections, to which Euclidean figures
are attached like monitoring devices on an athlete or a patient.
And what are these curves as a class? As a class, they are not figures because they do not all enclose finite areas. The exact same
reasoning, the same proofs, apply to those that do enclose areas
(ellipses and circumferences of circles) and those that don’t (hyperbolae and the special case of the parabola). If they are not figures, what are they?
One can see a sharp difference between Euclid and Apollonius in the way that each generates what is conical. Euclid does
this by revolving a right triangle around one of its two shorter
legs while that leg, held stationary, becomes the axis of a right
cone. Euclid’s cone is a three-dimensional figure made by revolving a two-dimensional figure. Each type of right cone pro-
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duces a different kind of conic section: one that has a right angle
at its vertex, made by revolving an isosceles right triangle, will
yield a parabola when cut by a plane perpendicular to its surface;
an acute cone will yield an ellipse, and an obtuse cone will yield
an hyperbola. This is true, but it is not true enough. Apollonius
will demonstrate that every size of every shape of each type of
conic is present in every conic surface—both right cones such as
Euclid generated finite versions of, and oblique conic surfaces
such as Euclid never dreamt of.
Apollonius’s foundational definition states:
If from a point a straight line is joined to the circumference of a circle which is not in the same plane with the
point, and the line is produced in both directions, and if,
with the point remaining fixed, the straight line being rotated about the circumference of the circle returns to the
same place from which it began, then the generated surface composed of the two surfaces lying vertically opposite one another, each of which increases to infinity (eis
apeiron) as the generating line is produced to infinity (eis
apeiron), I call a conic surface, and the fixed point I call
the vertex.
A conic surface is not a figure in the Euclidean sense. It is a
boundary, but not a boundary that contains by closing back on itself. Apollonius studies the conics, the parabola, ellipses, hyperbolae, and the circumferences of circles not as boundaries
containing areas, but as lines which reveal something deeper and
more important than space as inert content. (Note that when
Apollonius includes circles in a list together with conic sections,
he always calls them “circumferences of circles.”)
Before I turn to consider the step-by-step transformation of the
key Euclidean proposition through which Apollonius re-understands what a circle is, and so what space is, I will take up briefly
the remarkable last proposition of Bk. I of the Conics. The implications of this theorem are momentous. The pair of opposite hyperbolic sections produced by cutting the upper and lower conic
surfaces with a plane (the upper and lower curves in Figure 1) produce a second set of opposed curves, also hyperbolic and conjugate
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to the first set (the dotted curves). No point on this second set of
curves is on the conic surface. They are merely in co-planar space
with the first set of curves.
How did Apollonius do this? He prepared this moment by
defining (in Definition 11) a “second” diameter, which simply
names what Apollonius had just demonstrated for the ellipse in
Proposition 15. This “second” diameter in the ellipse is conjugate
and is also the mean proportional between the first diameter and
the first diameter’s upright side. It is therefore finite. Do opposite
hyperbolic sections have a “second” diameter? They do have a
conjugate diameter which as such bisects all the external lines
between them parallel to their first diameter (Proposition 16). But
is it finite? This conjugate diameter of the original vertical hyperbolic sections does not touch them anywhere. These sections
extend up and down to vertical infinities whereas the conjugate
diamter extends sideways—neither in nor on, but outside the
conic surface. Apollonius, citing Definition 11, states in Proposition 38 that the finite “second” diameter that was demonstrated
to exist in the ellipse, a finite curve, is also present in hyperbolic
sections. Based on this undemonstrated analogy with the ellipse,
the assumed “second” diameter of the original hyperbolic sec-
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tions is pressed into service as the first diameter of these conjugate curves, which therefore exist, but which were not produced
by cutting a conic surface. Not only that: these conjugate opposite
curves could themselves produce, in reciprocation, the original
hyperbolae without reference to any conic surface.
If this constitutive analogy between hyperbolae, ellipses,
and circumferences of circles holds, it means that conic curves
have no more or less to do with conic surfaces or cones than the
number four has to do with how many legs are on a cow. How
we discovered these curves, how we first produced them, does
not amount to a sufficient account of what they are. Neither
conic surfaces nor cones are ever again considered by Apollonius after this moment of liberation in the last proposition,
Proposition 60, of Bk. I.
The crucial proposition in Euclid, which Apollonius transforms by relentless generalization, occurs at the conclusion of
Bk. II of the Elements (and again in Bk. VI, 13). There Euclid
demonstrates that the square on any ordinate in a circle—i.e., on
any line from a point on the circumference of a circle perpendicular to a diameter, is equal in area to the rectangle on the resulting two segments of that diameter (Figure 2a). His first move, so
to speak, is to substitute this property of a circle for Euclid’s definition. We see this accomplished immediately in the first propositions in Bk. I of the Conics.
In his fourth proposition in Bk. I, Apollonius demonstrates that
the section produced by a cutting plane parallel to the circle used
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to generate the conic surface is itself a circle. Here he does use as
the basis of his proof Euclid’s definition of a circle as a closed figure (schema) in which all the straight lines falling on the circumference from a point within the circumference are equal to each
other. But in the very next proposition, Proposition 5, Apollonius
does not use that definition, but rather the Euclidean property that
the square on the ordinate is equal in area to the rectangle on the
diameter segments, in order to prove that what is called a sub-contrary cut in an oblique conic surface is also a circle. Having substituted this property for Euclid’s definition, the rest of the act of
re-understanding is accomplished by generalization.
The next step is to re-label the lines which embody the property (Figure 2b). Line “a” is still the ordinate. Line “b” is now
the perpendicular (least) distance from the point on the circumference to the one tangent of the ordinate’s diameter, and line “c”
the least distance to the other tangent. This re-labeling brings all
the components of the crucial property together at any and every
point on the curve (except the points of tangency themselves).
In Figure 2c, the restriction on which tangents are allowed is
broadened to include any tangents to the circumference. If both
of the tangents do not touch the same diameter, they will intersect. The line connecting the two points of tangency is no longer
a diameter but now a chord. The distance “a” is revised as shown.
Lines “b” and “c’”are still the least distances from some point on
the circumference to the new generalized tangents. How does it
stand with the square on the revised ordinate “a” vis-a-vis the
rectangle “bc”? This is a difficult problem, and as we gather from
the letter to Eudemus, Euclid was not able to solve it. Here we
have our first glimpse of the full-bodied three-line locus problem.
I will try to indicate why it is important.
Now comes the fundamental proposition—Bk. II, 29 (See
Figure 3). The curve has been generalized into “a section of a
cone or circumference of a circle.” The proposition demonstrates
that AD is a diameter, but Apollonius can only establish this by
a reductio ad absurdum proof. This means that it is not a direct
deduction from particular prior theorems, but an inference from
the system as a whole. It is not true because some other thing is
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true. It is true because otherwise all the other truths would collapse. In this sense, this proposition reveals a principle. It is this
principle, I think, this “additional thing,” that Apollonius was referring to in his letter to Eudemus when he wrote:
The third book contains many incredible theorems of use
for the construction of solid loci and for limits of possibility of which the greatest part and the most beautiful
are new.
And when we had grasped these, we knew that the
three-line and four-line locus problem had not been constructed by Euclid, but only a chance part of it and that
not very happily. For it was not possible for this construction to be completed without the additional things found
by us.
Apollonius’s construction of the locus problem itself in
Proposition 54 of Bk. III looks like figure 4. He cites Proposition
29 of Bk. II as the basis and backbone of his proof. The upshot
of it is that the square on HX (the distance from any point on the
curve to the chord connecting the tangents) is in a constant ratio
(not necessarily equality) to the rectangle BY, ZC. These in turn
are the distances (not necessarily the least) of the same point H
(which can be any point on the curve) to those two tangents. The
angles do not have to be right angles, and they can differ from
each other. Still, whatever the ratio is, it is constant.
These curved lines investigated by Apollonius reveal a property of space that lies deeper than the bundle of Euclidean characterizations. It is the property of constancy. Any two points,
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every two points, though differently located, can have in common
a ratio not of distances simply, but of areas specified by those
distances to three co-planar lines. The areas are no longer statically contained, no longer aristocratically contained “beneath”
the imposed boundary of a figure. They change incessantly. Only
the ratio between them, which is itself not an area, is constant. It
is as if all the points on a conic curve are the same point, exhibiting the same essential relationships to three given co-planar lines,
and differing only in location. The coherence of a conic line
comes about not by an artifice of drawing, nor from without by
the act of cutting a cone, but is intrinsic to the curve itself. A conic
curve is not a figure. It is a law.
For Apollonius, space is no longer the passive recipient of
figure or form that Plato described in Timaeus 51, (“a dream from
which we cannot awaken”), and as Euclid also thought. It is no
longer merely a medium which tolerates logic. The Apollonian
property of constancy in space matches with, and is manifested
by, conic curves, just as the presence of oxygen in the air is manifested by fire, by oxygenation. Space is not outside of time, not
merely eternal; it is constant in and through time. Apollonius has
in this way re-conceived space as a medium which is hospitable
to and enabling of certain lines, conic curves, that share this property. Through Proposition 54 of Bk. III we see that these curves
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in mathematical space can crystallize into a physical path, and
we understand why.
After Apollonius, between every two points there is not only
the austere straight line of Euclid’s first postulate, but an abundance—an actual infinitude—of self-defined intelligible curves.
It will take a bit more generalization to re-join the two sides of
Euclid’s fifth postulate. The three co-planar lines of the locus
problem, the two intersecting tangents and the chord connecting
their points of tangency on the curve, are Euclid’s two non-parallel lines and the line transecting them that we encountered on
the finite side of the fifth postulate. They will be re-drawn as nontangents and a non-chord, as any three co-planar lines, thereby
allowing the part of the curve within the triangle and the part beyond it—the converging finite and the diverging infinite— to be
re-joined as one thing. The constancy of the ratio of areas still
holds over the whole curve. Descartes would undertake that task,
but the heavy lifting in this new conception of space had already
been accomplished by Apollonius.
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“Aristotelian Forgiveness”:
The Non-Culpability Requirement
of Forgiveness
Corinne Painter
Introduction
Forgiveness is a topic of much historical, contemporary, crossdisciplinary scholarly and popular work. However, the literature
on Aristotle’s account of forgiveness (sungnomē)1 is not as significant as the treatment of other ethical, political, or psychological phenomena in his work, probably because his own treatment
of forgiveness is not given as much attention as other matters in
his thought.2 Although the existing scholarship dealing with Aristotle’s thought on forgiveness is extensive,3 this essay does not
1. For simplicity’s sake, I will use the English translation of this term
throughout the essay.
2. Gregory Sadler also acknowledges this in his article “Forgiveness,
Anger, and Virtue in an Aristotelian Perspective,” American Catholic
Philosophical Association, Proceedings of the ACPA 82 (2008): 229247, on 229-230.
3. For example, a recent general volume that includes a discussion of
forgiveness in Aristotle and other ancient authors is Ancient Forgiveness: Classical, Judaic, and Christian, ed. Charles L. Griswold and
David Konstan (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and another
still fairly recent monograph that examines forgiveness beginning with
ancients is Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration
(NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Both of these books are interested in situating their interpretations of Aristotle’s thought about
Corinne Painter is Professor of Philsophy at Washtenaw Community
College in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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intend to present an examination, critical or otherwise, of the literature. Much of the work that investigates Aristotle’s thought on
forgiveness tries to locate it in an historical account of forgiveness
or focuses narrowly on the question of whether forgiveness is itself
a virtue or whether it is merely associated with virtue in Aristotle’s
thought. Neither of these interesting questions is my concern in
this essay. Instead, without settling the question of whether forgiveness is a virtue or is merely associated with virtue,4 I will examine Aristotle’s claims5 about forgiveness that appear in Books
III, V, and VII of Nicomachean Ethics,6 within the framework of
his discussion of unwilling, willing, and chosen, deliberate actions.
forgiveness within a broader context of other historical and contemporary accounts of forgiveness. Additionally, Gregory Adler’s essay (see
fn. 2) is an instructive essay that focuses on the relationship between
forgiveness, anger and virtue, as is Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald, ”What
Should Forgiveness Mean?” The Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (2002):
483-498. Like Adler, Boleyn-Fitzgerald also examines the relationship
between forgiveness and anger—especially helpful since I will not consider the topic of anger here. Obviously this short list of references is
not meant to be exhaustive. Another subset of the literature focuses on
the role that forgiveness plays in Aristotle’s virtue ethics, typically in
the context of Aristotle’s views on the emotions, where the latter appears
to be of primary concern. In this connection, see Essays on Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, ed. Amelie Oskenburg Rorty (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996) and Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amelie Oskenburg
Rorty (Berkley: University of California Press, 1980).
4. Beyond being interesting in itself, this question is also difficult to answer, since Aristotle’s analysis of forgiveness seems to allow both interpretations. I will attempt to show that we can discover much of value
in Aristotle’s account of forgiveness without answering this question.
5. I point this out in order to emphasize that I will be focusing on Aristotle’s text rather than on interpretations of his text by other scholars,
since my aim is to offer a coherent account of Aristotle’s remarks on
forgiveness rather than a comparison of how other interpreters of Aristotle have understood him.
6. Abbreviated hereafter as NE. I use the translation by Joe Sachs, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: Translation, Glossary, and Introductory
Essay, (MA: Focus Publishing, 2002).
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First, I try to explain which actions Aristotle claims are forgivable, when forgiveness ought to be granted, and why. Second,
based on this explanation, I compare Aristotle’s unassumingly
rich account of forgiveness to the leading contemporary secular
view of forgiveness that is advanced by Jeffrie Murphy, whose
account I take to be representative of what may arguably be characterized as the “standard” contemporary secular account of forgiveness.7 By focusing on Aristotle’s claim that forgiveness is only
appropriate for those wrongdoers who are not morally responsible
for their actions, I show that unlike the leading account of forgiveness—and perhaps even against our intuitions—forgiveness is intimately connected both to excusing and to justifying wrongdoings,
and that resentment need not precede forgiveness. Third and finally,
I conclude with the claim that Aristotle’s account of forgiveness
is more coherent than the leading account, and I wonder whether
it is not also more compelling, given the importance Aristotle
places on compassion for wrongdoers as opposed to holding them
accountable and then foreswearing the resentment held against
them, which take center stage in the contemporary account of forgiveness.
§1. The Forgiveness of Unwilling and Willing Action
There is more than a little disagreement in the literature regarding
Aristotle’s ethics—which depends upon his conception of virtue,
its general nature, its various instantiations, and how one becomes virtuous— and about his complicated account of the emotions—which he ruminates about in many of his works. Still,
while Aristotle does not define forgiveness in the most straight7. I do not mean to suggest that there is only one contemporary account
of forgiveness, or that there is no disagreement amongst contemporary
thinkers who reflect on forgiveness. As a perusal of the contemporary
literature on forgiveness shows, however, there are fundamental elements of the contemporary secular accounts of forgiveness that are held
in common, even if some of the details are debated. In the second part
of the paper, I focus on what I take to be the key element of the leading
contemporary account of forgiveness, critically comparing it to Aristotle’s account.
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forward manner, a reasonable account may be constructed on the
basis of attending to relevant descriptive remarks about forgiveness that he offers in NE.8 For example, in Bk. III, Ch. 1 and Bk.
V, Ch. 8, where Aristotle distinguishes unwilling, willing, and chosen, deliberate actions, we find explicit remarks about forgiveness
suggesting that chosen, deliberate wrongful actions are not properly forgivable, whereas “for unwilling actions [that is, actions
whose source is external force or certain forms of ignorance
(1110a1-2)] there is forgiveness” (1109b33), and that “there is also
forgiveness” (1110a24) for some acts that could be construed (in
a qualified sense) as “willing” since their “source . . . is in oneself”
(1110a16), i.e., in the wrongdoer.
§1a. Forgiveness and Unwilling Action
Regarding unwilling actions, Aristotle says that in addition to externally forced actions,9 the ignorant actions that are candidates
for forgivability are actions about which the wrongdoer knows
that the action ought not to have been done. Aristotle identifies
these actions as actions done “on account of ignorance of the particulars . . . with which the action is concerned” (1110b351111a3), which cause the wrongdoer to suffer and about which
the wrongdoer expresses regret or repentance (1110b19;
1110b24, 1111a20-21).10 In Book V, however, Aristotle clarifies
8. To be sure, Aristotle also discusses forgiveness in other works, especially in his Rhetoric; however—although there is no room here to defend this claim in the confines of this paper—his remarks about
forgiveness in the Rhetoric and elsewhere, if attended to carefully, can
be seen as consistent with those made in NE, even though they arise
while he is attending to different guiding themes or questions.
9. Not incidentally, Aristotle notes the difficulty of determining when
actions have their cause in an external force (see Bk. III: Ch. 1).
10. Aristotle uses “suffering” (or pain) as a synonym for “remorse,”
which is an effect that the wrongful act has on the wrongdoer’s feelings,
whereas he uses “regret” as a synonym for “repentance,” which is not
an effect on the wrongdoer’s feelings but involves in the wrongdoer’s
thinking. Importantly, neither of these effects require the passage of
time; for Aristotle seems to view these “effects” as sometimes experi-
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that not all unwilling actions are forgivable (1136a5), distinguishing differing forms of ignorance as follows: “for those
things that people do in error not only while being ignorant
but as a result of ignorance are forgivable, but those that are
done not as a result of ignorance but while one is ignorant
and as a result of a passion that is unnatural and inhuman are
not forgivable” (1136a6-9, emphasis mine). Aristotle also
states that
what is done on account of ignorance is in every instance not a willing act, but it is unwilling by its
painfulness and by one’s regretting it, while someone
who does a thing on account of ignorance without
being in any way distressed by the action has not
acted willingly, since he did not even know what he
was doing, [but] he has not acted unwillingly either,
since he is not pained by it (1110b18-23).
Since there are actions that do not fit neatly into the willing
or unwilling classifications, Aristotle creates the category of
“non-willing action” (1110b24) to mark off those “unwilling”
wrongful actions about which the wrongdoer is unware of the
wrongness and thus is neither pained by nor regretful of. It might
seem difficult to discern whether the newly categorized actions
are forgivable in Aristotle’s view; however, directly after constructing this new category of action, and despite the fact that he
uses “on account of ignorance” in his remarks both about “unwilling actions” and about “non-willing actions,” he states that
“acting on account of ignorance seems different than acting while
being ignorant” (1110b26, emphasis mine), where the latter
enced while the wrongful act is being performed; and in any case, these
dispositions demonstrate the non-culpability of the wrongdoer at the
time at which forgiveness is to be granted. I do not defend this claim
here, as I am fairly certain that this is commonly agreed to by scholars
of Greek who work on Aristotle. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out
for those who are not familiar with Aristotle’s use of these terms and,
more importantly, because I will come back to this point in part two of
the paper.
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seems to mean that the person is ignorant in a robust sense. This
distinction appears to be determined on the basis of whether the
ignorance is associated with incomplete knowing or complete ignorance. Regarding incomplete knowing, this could be associated
with failing to know the particulars that frame the conditions for
the action when such knowledge is not expected, or with the
wrongdoer being innocently unaware of the wrongful nature of
the act, which occurs when there is no reasonable expectation for
the person to have known better. While the former acts are those
actions about which wrongdoers feel regret and pain and the latter
are acts about which wrongdoers do not feel pain or regret, both
kinds of actions seem to be unwilling actions of the sort for which
the ignorant wrongdoer is not to be blamed but should be forgiven, on Aristotle’s view (Bk. III, Ch. 1).
In contrast, the ignorance that is associated with complete ignorance appears, for Aristotle, to arise out of unnatural, inhuman passions, which, in turn, tends to result in not knowing about the
wrongness of the action in question even though one ought to know.
While these, too, are actions about which the wrongdoer does not
feel pain or regret, in this case, these actions appear to be non-willing
actions for which the wrongdoer is at least possibly blameworthy,
depending on other conditions or circumstances that characterize the
action or the disposition of the wrongdoer. As an example of this
kind of action, in Book V, Aristotle writes that “people apply punishment for ignorance itself if the one who is ignorant seems to be
responsible for it, as when . . . people are drunk, for the source is in
oneself, since one has the power not to get drunk, which is the cause
of the ignorance (1113b30-34). Although there are good reasons that
are known to us now that should move us to advance a more complex account of drunkenness that addresses its possible link to alcoholism, which is as an addiction over which those who suffer from
it have little to no control, this is a problem that goes beyond what
can be considered in this paper. In any event, it is reasonable to interpret this passage as suggesting that Aristotle appears to characterize (at least a certain kind of) drunkenness as the result of a
controllable passion that is unnatural and unsuitable for humans,
given that it causes us to act ignorantly in a blameworthy sense.
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However we interpret the distinction Aristotle makes between
the different kinds of actions based on ignorance—i.e., acts that are
performed on account of ignorance and acts that are performed while
one is ignorant—Aristotle’s remarks about unwilling and non-willing action reveal a long-debated tension in his thought that arises in
many contexts and is rooted in his teleological account of nature in
general and of human nature particularly. For the present consideration, the important question involves whether Aristotle claims that
wrongdoers should be held responsible for non-willing wrongful actions that are caused by what he calls “unnatural” and “inhuman”
passions, since the answer to this question determines whether such
an act is forgivable and, thus, whether the wrongdoer should be forgiven. This challenging question will be addressed shortly.
§1b. Forgiveness and Willing Action
Like unwilling actions, only some willing actions are forgivable,
namely, “when one does what one ought not to do on account of
motives” such as insufferable conditions that “strain human nature too far, that no one could endure them” (1110a25-26), or,
“when one endures something shameful or painful in return for
things that are great and beautiful” (1110a21-22). Here, one
might be motivated to argue that this last kind of action would
be better characterized as a chosen, deliberate action, given its
apparent utilitarian nature. But the appropriateness of this characterization depends upon whether all the conditions for an action’s having been intentionally chosen and deliberated upon are
met, which (amongst other things) include (in the case of vicious
action) whether the action is chosen from out of an unshakable
and firmly vicious character, and whether it is performed merely
for the sake of immoderate or otherwise excessive self-interest
or gain (see 1105a-27-35).11 Since the action that Aristotle describes here does not meet these conditions—for it is neither
11. I assume at least basic familiarity with Aristotle’s virtue ethics and
with his attendant account of virtuous and vicious action, and so I do
not offer a consideration of his Ethics here, especially as this would
take us too far afield from the focal concern of this paper.
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viciously performed nor done for self-interest of the sort described but for things that are “great and beautiful”—it is properly characterized as a willing, though unchosen, action. The
(complicated) distinction between these two classifications of
action and whether they are forgivable is discussed in what follows.
Notwithstanding this distinction, like unwilling actions for
which wrongdoers feel pain and regret, wrongdoers who perform these sorts of willing acts also feel pain and regret; however, unlike unwilling actors who are either externally forced
to perform wrongful actions or are ignorant of some necessary
information about the circumstances that would lead to a right
action, here, the actor is not forced by external causes to act,
since the source is in the actor and “anything for which the
source is in oneself is also up to oneself either to do or not”
(1110a17). Moreover, the (in a sense) “willing” wrongdoer
knows the wrongful nature of the action, including the “particular circumstances in which the action takes place” (1111a23),
but she cannot be expected to act differently, given the conditions that accompany the wrongful action, including its possible
consequences.
Given Aristotle’s complex consideration of the distinction
between willing and unwilling acts, which motivated him to
add non-willing acts as a new category of action, it seems clear
that what distinguishes forgivable unwilling actions from forgivable willing actions is (a) the source of the action—is the
cause external force or is it in oneself, at least in a qualified
sense?—as well as (b) whether there is ignorance involved and
if so, (c) what sort (1111a22-24). Additionally, in those cases
in which there is sufficient knowledge and ability to act in a
wrongful manner that either prevents a greater evil than the
wrongful action itself (1110a5) or “for the sake of something
beautiful” (1110a6)i.e., in order to bring about genuinely noble
ends – such actions are, indeed, forgivable, which is supported
by the distressed state in which this kind of wrongdoer finds
herself, which is characterized by suffering and regret.
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§1c. Forgiveness and Chosen, Deliberate Action and the
Double-Tiered Nature of Non-Willing Action
Careful reflection on his remarks in Book III and Book V suggests that Aristotle’s account of forgiveness does not allow
wrongdoers who perform chosen, deliberate actions, which are
those that are properly associated with virtue, or, in this case,
vice, and, thus, those that are in the fullest sense blameworthy,
to be forgiven. For it is clear that he speaks only of unwilling
(not non-willing) and some willing actions as those that are appropriately forgivable; indeed, chosen, deliberated upon wrongful actions are conspicuously absent from Aristotle’s account.
Hence, wrongful actions appear to be unforgivable if they are
committed (i) deliberately and intentionally (certainly not accidentally or in ignorance), (ii) with full knowledge of the
wrongful nature of the action, (iii) where there is a realistic possibility of choosing not to act wrongfully, (iv) on the basis of a
considered choice to gain pleasure or avoid pain (of the trivial,
self-interested sort), and (v) on the basis of the stable (virtually
immutable) disposition of the wrongdoer, which are the conditions that describe genuinely vicious action, insofar as it is performed viciously and not just in accordance with vice (see
1105a-27-35).12
It is important to acknowledge that for Aristotle, truly vicious action is not performed on the basis of losing a struggle
against a natural tendency to act in accord with a particular passion, such as being too quick to anger, for example, since the
vicious person no longer struggles to keep her unsuitable13 pas12. Again, I assume basic familiarity with Aristotle’s virtue ethics; but
for further elucidation of the conditions for virtue and vice and for the
genuinely virtuous and vicious action that is associated with these dispositions, see also: 1103b23-25; 1105b1-4; 1111b5-7; 1112a16; 1113b4-6;
and 1114b21-15.
13. In what follows, I use “unnatural” and “inhuman”—Aristotle’s
terms—and “unsuitable” and “unbefitting”—my terms—interchangeably, since I think Aristotle employs these terms as a way to describe
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sions in check but gladly takes pleasure in choosing to act in
accord with these “inhuman” passions while knowing that
doing so is inappropriate; for, this is a sign that a firm and unshakable character is at work, which is a condition of genuinely
vicious, and thus, fully blameworthy action (1103b23-25;
1105b1-4).14 However, in acknowledging this, we are moved to
re-consider the difficult question about non-willing action that
was posed earlier regarding whether Aristotle claims that
wrongdoers should be held responsible for non-willing wrongful actions that are caused by “unnatural” and “inhuman” passions, especially since the answer to this question provides the
key to determining whether these actions are forgivable. For,
simply put, if a wrongdoer is responsible for her wrongful act,
then her act is not forgivable, on Aristotle’s view, and, hence,
she ought not to be forgiven.
It was already acknowledged (in section 1a) that wrongful
actions that arise out of complete ignorance that is based in a person’s so-called “unnatural” passions and are therefore not accompanied by remorse or regret are neither willing nor unwilling
actions; however, these actions also do not appear to be chosen,
deliberated upon actions, given that they are performed in complete ignorance, i.e., while one “is ignorant.” Indeed, this is why
Aristotle created the new category of “non-willing” action. But
along with this, we noted the tension this newly created category
of action creates. For it seems that wrongdoers who perform nonwilling actions should not be held responsible for their actions
since they have no appreciation for the wrongness of their actions, given their basis in an apparent natural tendency to act in
passions that steer us away from achieving a virtuous character, which
is the means by which we can achieve our proper human telos, according to Aristotle. Again, it is not my aim to elucidate or examine Aristotle’s moral theory (or, for that matter, his teleology) in this paper.
However, in what follows, I discuss what I take to be Aristotle’s understanding of the meaning of “unnatural” and “inhuman” in the context
in which he uses these terms in this passage.
14. See fn. 12 for further textual evidence of this.
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accord with “unbefitting” passions over which such wrongdoers
do not seem to have control, at least not initially (and maybe
never). All human beings have passions and tendencies with
which they simply find themselves without having willed or chosen them. In fact, the attempt to develop a morally virtuous character involves our struggle to rid ourselves of the tendency to act
in accord with these “unsuitable” passions, which move us to act
in excess or deficiency of the mean that constitutes virtuous action, whatever this may be.15
This further clarification allows us to formulate the tension
at issue here more precisely: on the one hand, we neither will nor
choose to possess the natural passions and tendencies with which
we find ourselves but which present obstacles to the development
of a virtuous character. But, on the other hand, Aristotle’s further
consideration of non-willing actions that arise out of our natural
tendency to act in accord with these passions identifies these passions as “unnatural” and “inhuman” (1136a6-9), which appears
to motivate him to characterize these as actions for which the
wrongdoer may, ultimately, be responsible and for which, therefore, forgiveness ought not to be granted. I think this apparent
tension can be resolved, first, by noting that Aristotle characterizes these passions as “inhuman” and “unnatural” because they
present obstacles that must be overcome in the process of developing a virtuous character, and second, by acknowledging (a) that
this characterization is not only not inconsistent with the recognition that it is perfectly natural to possess tendencies to act in
accord with our passions, but (b) that it is necessary for us to possess such passions and tendencies in order for genuine virtue to
be possible. For the process of becoming virtuous requires us to
possess passions that we must attempt to reign in from the extremes of deficiency and excess to which they naturally tend until
15. What constitutes virtuous action and how one develops a virtuous
character is not discussed here; rather, the conditions for vicious action
are outlined only briefly in order to make sense of why Aristotle claims
that chosen, deliberate, wrongful action is not forgivable, unlike unwilling and most willing actions, which are forgivable.
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we are no longer struggling against this challenge, as was previously acknowledged.
Recognizing this prompts us to assign a “double-tiered” character to these sorts of actions. At first—and probably for much if
not all of our lives – these kinds of actions are non-willing actions
that arise out of entirely unwilled, unchosen “natural tendencies”
to follow passions with which we simply find ourselves, and
about which Aristotle remarks that “there is more forgiveness for
following natural tendencies . . . [particularly] for those that are
of a sort that is common to all people” (1149b4-5). Furthermore,
while Aristotle distinguishes between some natural tendencies that
appear to be common, such as “spiritedness and aggressiveness”
(1149b7) and those that appear to be less common, such as “desires that are for excess or desires that are for unnecessary things”
(1149b8), this is a difficult and nuanced distinction to understand,
not to mention one that does not allow us to easily identify the
specific actions that belong in each category. Nevertheless, he
clearly states that (at least) the former are forgivable, further elaborating on this in Book VII, Chapters 7—10, within which Aristotle initially distinguishes different forms of “unrestraint,”
claiming that persons who act in an unrestrained manner that is
associated with excessive desires are “more shameful” than persons whose unrestraint is associated with natural spiritedness
(1149b25-26). However, he subsequently identifies the former —
i.e., the more shameful—as “dissipated persons” who, “without
regret,” “choose” their actions typically for the sake of “gaining
pleasure for themselves,” not only characterizing them as “incurable” (1150a20-23), but distinguishing them from unrestrained
persons, who are “capable of regret . . . and curable” (1150b3234). He furthermore claims that acting in an unrestrained manner,
while certainly not admirable, is not vicious (1151a7):
the unrestrained person is not even like someone who
has knowledge and is actively paying attention to it,
but is like someone who is asleep or drunk. And
though he acts willingly (since he acts while knowing
in some manner what he is doing and for what end),
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he is not vicious, since his “choice”16 is that of a decent person (1152a15-18).
With this claim, Aristotle intimates that such persons are not (robustly) responsible for their actions and that they should therefore
be forgiven.
Importantly, even if we acknowledge that distinguishing dissipated from unrestrained actions is difficult and cannot be done
outside the concrete context within which actions are performed,
it seems clear that in order to determine when forgiveness ought
to be granted, we must be able to discern when a wrongdoer passively follows17 her natural tendencies or desires, for example, to
act aggressively (or to pursue unnecessary ends), or whether the
wrongdoer deliberately chooses to allow her natural tendencies
to act in accord with her immoderate, unsuitable passions to govern her actions, which can be accomplished by observing the
wrongdoer.18 For Aristotle argues that only if the latter occurs,
should persons be held responsible for the actions that arise out
of them, given that this demonstrates a deliberate, committed re16. Here Aristotle uses “choice” in a looser sense than when he uses it
while discussing actions that are richly and robustly deliberated upon,
the latter of which is a condition both for truly virtuous and for truly
vicious acts; but here, as the passage makes clear, he is attaching
“choice” to willing actions that do not rise to this level.
17. Joe Sachs offers an extremely helpful discussion of the passive nature of unrestraint, advancing that “Aristotle repeatedly refuses to call
unrestraint anything but a passive experience.” See footnote 201, Ch.
7, Bk. VII, p. 122; see also footnote 183, Ch. 3, Bk. VII, p. 122, which
provide evidence for how challenging it is to interpret Aristotle properly
with respect to how he conceives of unrestraint and the actions that flow
from it. For example, as Sachs points out, while Aristotle sometimes
speaks of unrestrained action as a “hexis,” namely when making indirect summary statements that include mention of unrestraint along with
other phenomena (e.g., 1151a27; 1151b29; 1152a35), whenever he
speaks about unrestraint on its own, he calls it a “pathos” (e.g., 1145b5,
29; 1147b 8, 16; 1148b6).
18. Probably for most of us, our actions will be motivated by a mix of
these “extremes” throughout out adult lives.
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fusal to attempt to overcome natural tendencies to act in accord
with unbefitting passions; indeed, despite knowing the wrongness
of our actions, in this case we allow our unsuitable passions to
rule us to such an extent that they become part of our very character, which we are unwilling to change. If this happens, we take
pleasure in intentionally and knowingly performing wrongful actions and we certainly don’t feel pain or regret over them. Consequently, these actions are unforgivable, and, thus, forgiveness
ought not to be extended to persons who perform them.
Having said this, it is imperative to underscore that for Aristotle, it is extremely difficult to develop the kind of character just
described, from out of which truly unforgivable actions arise,
which means that most wrongful actions are ultimately forgivable
in Aristotle’s view. For careful reflection on the reasons, conditions and circumstances that frame wrongdoings typically render
them excusable or justifiable rather than inexcusable or unjustifiable actions for which wrongdoers are morally responsible, and
when this is the case, forgiveness ought to be extended, according
to Aristotle. As we will now see, this is in contrast to the leading
contemporary account of forgiveness.
§2. A Closer Look at Forgiveness: Culpability,
Resentment, Excusing, and Justification
Aristotle’s account may strike one as strange, particularly if one
is familiar with the contemporary literature on forgiveness, since
in these accounts,19 in contrast with Aristotle, for whom it is the
non-culpability of the wrongdoer that makes the wrongdoer’s act
forgivable and the wrongdoer deserving of forgiveness, it is typically claimed that the question of forgiveness does not arise unless the wrongdoer is morally culpable for her wrongdoing. For
example, Jeffrie Murphy, a contemporary philosopher and legal
scholar whose work on forgiveness is amongst the most well19. As I mentioned in the Introduction, I take the work of Jeffrie Murphy on forgiveness as representative of the “standard” contemporary,
secular account.
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known, well-regarded, and frequently cited,20 appealing to the
account of forgiveness offered centuries ago by Bishop Butler,21
defines forgiveness as “the foreswearing of resentment, the resolute overcoming of the anger and hatred that are naturally directed toward a person who has done an unjustified and
non-excused moral injury” (504). Although Murphy (and others)22 may not agree with every aspect of Butler’s account of forgiveness, which I will not recount here, this definition highlights
that in addition to being preceded by the negative attitudes and
emotions of resentment, anger and, even, hatred, forgiveness requires the moral culpability of the wrongdoer. As Murphy states,
“we may forgive only what it is initially proper to resent; and, if
a person . . . is not responsible for what he did, there is nothing
20. For example, see Jeffrie Murphy, Getting Even: Forgiveness and its
Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and “Forgiveness and
Resentment,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 7, Social and Political
Philosophy, ed. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard
K. Wettstein (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 503516. Further references to Murphy refer to his 1982 article. But it is
worth noting that his more recent text takes an even stronger “anti-Aristotelian” position, in advancing the general thesis that forgiveness ought
to be more sparingly extended than it is and that resentment (and associated negative attitudes) ought to be more greatly valued and explicitly
cultivated as morally legitimate responses to wrongdoers.
21. Joseph Butler, “Sermon VII: Upon Resentment” and “Sermon IX:
Upon Forgiveness of Injuries,” in Fifteen Sermons (London, 1726). Not
incidentally, most contemporary scholars working on forgiveness appeal to Bishop Butler’s account of forgiveness in their analyses, and indeed, further references to Bishop Butler’s account refer to Murphy’s
analysis of it and are cited accordingly.
22. Two additional informative contemporary essays on forgiveness
include: Norvin Richards, “Forgiveness,” Ethics, 99.1 (1988): 7797 and Joanna North, “Wrongdoing and Forgiveness,” Philosophy,
62.242 (1987): 499-508, who, in agreement with Murphy, advances
that “one cannot forgive when no wrong has been done, for there is
no breach to be healed and no repentance is necessary or possible”
(502).
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to resent. . . . Resentment—and thus forgiveness—is directed toward responsible wrongdoing” (508).23
Indeed, Murphy goes to great lengths to distinguish forgiveness from several other concepts with which he claims it is often
confused (506), including the concepts of excuse and justification
(ibid.). According to Murphy, the essential role that resentment
plays in forgiveness gives rise, necessarily, to the distinction between these notions and forgiveness (ibid.), since these other dispositions are not defined by a foreswearing of resentment. In
elaborating on the distinction between forgiveness and excuse
and justification, Murphy maintains that
to excuse is to say that what was done was morally
wrong; but because of certain factors about the agent
. . . it would be unfair to hold the wrongdoer responsible or to blame him for the wrong action. [And] to
justify is to say that what was done was prima facie
wrong; but, because of other morally relevant factors,
the action was—all morally relevant factors considered—the right thing to do (ibid.).
Put plainly, neither excusing nor justifying actions of a wrongdoer are to be identified with granting forgiveness to a wrongdoer, on Murphy’s view, since it is only legitimate to raise the
question of forgiveness if the person who is wronged is justified
in resenting the wrongdoer, and resentment is only justified if the
wrongdoer is culpable for her action, which is a condition that
is not met when “wrong” actions may (or should) be excused or
justified.
In the context of forgiveness, Murphy sees the primary justification for and appropriateness of resentment as a tool that allows individuals to demonstrate proper self-respect, so that what
23. In the analysis that follows, I focus on Murphy’s consideration of
resentment, leaving aside a discussion of anger or hatred. This is both
because Murphy focuses his own analysis on resentment and because
resentment is the feature of his account that is most closely connected
to his claim that forgiveness requires the moral culpability of a wrongdoer, which is the point of disagreement that provides the primary
ground for my thesis that Aristotle’s account is more compelling.
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is at stake in the relationship between resentment and forgiveness
is a proper sense and celebration of one’s worth and the recognition of the significance of how intentional wrongdoings are a sign
of disrespect (505; 507). From this it follows that, on Murphy’s
view, the foreswearing of resentment that is a necessary element
of forgiveness is only appropriate in a moral sense24 if it is
granted under the condition that (a) forgiving the wrongdoer expresses rather than denies the autonomy and self-respect of the
person wronged, as well as (b) the moral agency—i.e., the culpability—of the wrongdoer is respected (ibid.; 508).25
24. I highlight the language of morality in order to reflect Murphy’s understanding that genuine forgiveness is to be identified with moral forgiveness, since it is granted for the “right” – i.e., for moral – reasons
(508). Additionally, although Murphy considers whether forgiveness
might be obligatory (511), ultimately, he claims that “we are not obligated to forgive… and no one has a right to be forgiven…. [though] we
can have good reasons for bestowing forgiveness” (ibid.). Dissimilarly,
Aristotle seems to articulate when and why a wrongdoer deserves – has
a right to – forgiveness, which suggests that he believes these cases may
be obligatory.
25. Murphy also lists a third condition that must be met in order for forgiveness to be appropriate, namely, that the generally accepted rules of
morality, whatever they are, must not be violated (505; 507; 508). In
addition, although I will not address this claim explicitly in this paper—
primarily because it seems both obvious to me and certainly not incompatible with Aristotle’s view of forgiveness—it deserves mention that
on Murphy’s view, genuine forgiveness should be identifiable neither
with forgetting a wrongdoing for the sake of therapeutic (e.g., emotional) reasons (507) or with letting a wrongdoer off the hook with the
hope of bringing about her repentance, the latter of which is a position
often argued for in religious contexts (512). Forgetting a wrongdoing
for therapeutic reasons would be motivated by a desire for self-preservation, whereas letting a wrongdoer off the hook in order to motivate
her repentance may be rooted in arrogance, neither of which is an explicitly moral motivation for action. Moreover, while these practices
may be personally or socially beneficial, they are not necessarily consistent with maintaining self-respect or autonomy, or, with respecting
the moral culpability of the wrongdoer; and in some cases, they may
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There are many reasons that Murphy analyzes as those typically offered as justifications that may be consistent with the conditions he lays out for appropriate (moral) forgiveness. However,
before briefly examining these, we would do well to note that
Murphy’s account of the distinction between forgiveness, excuse
and justification is perplexing. For in explaining why excusing
and justifying wrongdoings are not to be confused with forgiveness, he cites the fact that the wrongdoer is not responsible for
her wrongdoing due either (a) to the excusability of her action,
which is based on conditions about the wrongdoer (i.e., in Murphy’s terminology, the wrongdoer’s agency), or (b) to the justifiability of the action, which is based on conditions surrounding
the action in question (506). But isn’t this precisely why otherwise wrong actions are forgivable and why such “wrongdoers”
should be forgiven? As Murphy himself admits, these wrongdoers are clearly not responsible for their actions and thus they
should neither be resented nor be held accountable (ibid.). So,
why does Murphy (and many other scholars who agree with him)
refuse to claim, as Aristotle does, that these wrongdoers should
be forgiven? The reason appears to be his unwavering commitment to the idea that foreswearing resentment is a necessary element of the process of forgiveness and since there can be no
(proper) resentment in the case of wrong actions that are excusable or justifiable, forgiveness must be different than these (ibid.).
Sadly, the commitment to the existence of a necessary connection between resentment and forgiveness appears to be dogmatic, as I do not see any argument for the necessity of this
connection. For in Murphy’s analysis of the meaning and condibe incompatible with these values. Genuine, i.e., moral, forgiveness
should also be distinguished from letting a wrongdoer off the hook too
quickly (505), without engaging in proper reflection about whether the
wrongdoer deserves forgiveness, which is discussed in what follows.
It should be noted that there are other interesting aspects of Murphy’s
account of forgiveness that I do not consider in this paper, as I intimated previously, but this is only because I focus on what I take to be
the most glaring deficiency in his account, especially when compared
to Aristotle’s account.
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tions of forgiveness within which he discusses why resentment
is the precursor for forgiveness, he claims, as was acknowledged,
that the primary value defended by resentment is self-respect
(505; 507; 508). However, while it seems reasonable for a person
to resent moral injuries that are intentionally performed against
oneself, and that to fail to do so could signify (amongst other
things) a lack of self-respect, what does not seem reasonable is
(a) that wrongdoers who perform moral injuries intentionally are
the only appropriate candidates for forgiveness, as Murphy
claims, or, for that matter, (b) that such wrongdoers should be
forgiven, certainly not if they are pleased about the intentional
wrongdoing. Regarding (a), what seems to distinguish Aristotle’s
view from Murphy’s is whether it makes sense to consider an action “wrong” and the person who performs it a “wrongdoer”
when the action may legitimately be justified or excused (e.g.,
for one or more of the reasons Aristotle articulated). Given that
(in this context) the language of justification and excuse implies
that an action was performed that is taken to be wrong in some
sense—otherwise this language would not be used—we should
be compelled to acknowledge that wrongdoings may in principle
be justified or excused. It seems that Aristotle was aware of this,
given that his account of forgiveness relies on and promotes this
understanding of the way in which judging a questionable action
as justified or excused and, thus, as forgivable, ultimately presupposes its “wrongness” in some relevant sense.
Regarding (b), in order to determine whether wrongdoers
who perform their wrongful actions intentionally should be forgiven, it is helpful to consider the reasons that Murphy offers as
possible justifications for moral forgiveness and to compare them
with Aristotle’s view of when forgiveness should be extended
and when it should not. According to Murphy, the most promising justifications for forgiveness include: (i) the wrongdoer’s repentance or change of heart, (ii) the wrongdoer’s sincere apology,
(iii) the wrongdoer’s good or well-meaning intentions, and (iv)
the wrongdoer’s suffering being sufficient to demonstrate a relevant transformation of the wrongdoer (508). While Murphy goes
on to discuss each of these justifications separately (508 – 511),
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it is sufficient to note that they share in common that the wrongdoer may be separated from her wrongdoing (508; 509),26 since
only in these cases is forgiveness potentially appropriate, given
that this separation not only (1) allows respect for the worth and
autonomy of the one wronged as well as for the initial moral culpability of the wrongdoer (ibid.), but also, paradoxically, (2) recognizes the non-culpability of the wrongdoer at the time at which
forgiveness is granted (509).
Importantly, although, unlike Murphy, Aristotle does not
propose a necessary relationship between resentment, foreswearing resentment, and forgiveness, nor does he (explicitly) emphasize the importance of upholding self-respect and autonomy, and
although he outright rejects the notion that forgiveness requires
the culpability of the wrongdoer, arguing the opposite, Aristotle
nonetheless supposes the separability of the wrongdoer from her
wrongdoing, just as Murphy does. We need only recall the examples of unwilling and willing actions that Aristotle claims are
forgivable to see this, which were outlined in section one. In
fact, some version of each of the reasons listed, which Murphy
defends as potentially compatible with what he characterizes as
moral forgiveness, can be interpreted as present in Aristotle’s
account of forgiveness, given that they all imply the non-culpability of the wrongdoer at the time at which Murphy claims forgiveness is appropriate. Indeed, when Murphy’s reasons for
forgiveness are examined carefully, it appears that wrongdoings
are forgivable for him, too, only when wrongdoers are no longer
responsible for their actions, which suggests that although the
acts retain their “wrongness,” they are nevertheless either excusable or justified: they are still “wrong,” but because of conditions that are true about the actor or about the circumstances
framing the action, it would be unfair—i.e., wrong (pardon the
26. In this connection, taking cues from St. Augustine, Murphy writes:
“to the extent that the agent is separated from his evil act, forgiveness
of him is possible without a tacit approval of his evil act” (ibid. 508,
emphasis his) viz. the well-known religious proclamation to “hate the
sin but not the sinner.”
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pun)—to hold the wrongdoer responsible, as Murphy himself
admits (506; 511).
The main difference between Murphy and Aristotle on this
point was introduced in an endnote within which not only the
synonymous meaning of “suffering,” “pain,” and “remorse” as
well as the synonymous meaning of “regret” and “repentance”
was noted, but it was also noted that although these dispositions
refer to a “gap” in the wrongdoer’s feelings or thinking, this does
not necessarily imply a passage of time, as these dispositions
could be experienced simultaneously. For Aristotle, there is no
requirement that there be a point in time at which the wrongdoer
is inseparable from her action and thus should be resented but
then at some later time she is separable from her act because, for
example, she has repented, apologized or otherwise demonstrated
her regret and sorrow. Instead, Aristotle claims that if a wrongdoer is to be forgiven it is because either (i) her “wrong” act is
performed unwittingly (e.g., because she had incomplete knowledge), (ii) she regrets and is suffering from it, either while she
performs it or later, which, for him, means that her character is
not the (vicious) character of an intentional wrongdoer, which is
immutable,27 (iii) she means well insofar as she attempts to prevent a worse outcome than her action (e.g., she was well-intentioned), and/or (iv) she cannot reasonably be expected to act
otherwise, all of which make the wrongdoer non-culpable, and
hence the act justified or excused.
It seems to me that despite his appeal to the wrongdoer’s disposition at different points in time, Murphy ultimately agrees with
Aristotle, especially since he claims that the strongest case for forgiving a wrongdoer occurs when she has genuinely repented, apol27. Recall that for Aristotle, the transformation of a genuinely vicious
character is not possible, as was briefly discussed in section 1c of the
paper. To be sure, whether genuinely vicious (or virtuous) characters
are mutable is a feature of Aristotle’s virtue ethics that can (and continues to) be debated; however, with respect to the question of forgiveness,
as I will argue in the conclusion, his account is coherent and compelling
in a way that Murphy’s is not.
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ogized, or otherwise demonstrated remorse (509-511). For this
likely means that the wrongdoer is no longer culpable and thus
should no longer be resented, given that she has become a different person (511). Of course, Murphy would say that these kinds
of actions are only candidates for forgivability if their wrongdoers are initially culpable for their actions but later become no
longer culpable; for otherwise they were either never culpable
to begin with, since this is a requirement of forgiveness for Murphy, or they did not undergo a process that changes them from
an initially culpable wrongdoer to a person who is no longer that
same culpable wrongdoer. But beyond insisting on (a) the necessity that forgiveness requires the initial culpability of the wrongdoer and (b) foreswearing the resentment that appropriately
directs itself toward the culpable wrongdoer, Murphy does nothing to convince us of the connection between these. For, recall
(again) his attempt to distinguish forgiveness from excuse and
justification: when excuse is appropriate, something about the
wrongdoer’s ability to act makes it unfair to hold her responsible
for her action, thereby making her action excusable; and when
justification is appropriate, something about the conditions or circumstances framing the action also makes it unfair to hold the
wrongdoer responsible for her action, thereby, making her action
justified (506). As I think this (and related) passages in Murphy’s
analysis show, despite Murphy’s attempt to distinguish forgiveness, excuse, and justification, ultimately, even for him, proper
(moral) forgiveness cannot be granted to culpable, resentable
wrongdoers but should only be extended to wrongdoers whose
actions, at the time at which they are forgiven, are excusable or
justifiable, just as is the case for Aristotle.
§3. Concluding Remarks: On the Compelling Nature of
“Aristotelian Forgiveness”
On Aristotle’s account, resentment is not a necessary element of
forgiveness, not initially or in the form of needing to overcome
it, because from the outset, the kinds of wrongful actions that are
forgivable are not attached to wrongdoers who should be resented;
rather, their actions are excusable or justified, as was argued. I
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submit that Murphy (and others who agree with him)28 should give
up his reliance both on the moral culpability of the wrongdoer and
on the accompanying resentment and its eventual foreswearing as
essential ingredients of forgiveness for at least three related reasons. First, as I argued, even Murphy admits that at the time at
which forgiveness is appropriate, the wrongdoer is not culpable
because something about her or the conditions under which her
acts was or is performed—e.g., she repented or apologized or
meant well—result in the wrongdoing being justified or excused
without eliminating its “wrongness.” Again, Murphy himself admits this (506), betraying the incoherence of his position.
Second, holding onto resentment until the wrongdoer undergoes some sort of magically transformative process, which, with
Aristotle, we have good reason to believe is not possible if the
wrongdoer is someone who genuinely takes pleasure in intentionally acting wrongly, may be unreasonable to expect from a
person who is wronged, regardless of whether doing so upholds
autonomy or self-respect, which is by no means a foregone conclusion. This is especially true, given that there are many ways
that self-respect and autonomy can be maintained that do not require harboring dangerous, negative emotions that may easily
transform themselves into attitudes or actions, such as hatred and
vengeance, which (at least arguably) often fail to respect anyone,
and certainly speak against a sense of humility, not to mention
an appreciation for a shared sense of humanity (which is a point
to which I return in what directly follows). Furthermore, overcoming resentment requires some emotional gymnastics that it
is not clear could or should be cultivated, particularly given the
shaky foundation Murphy offers for why wrongdoers should be
resented, which Murphy does not support with much more than
his insistence that Bishop Butler is correct on this point. Again,
why should it be the case that forgiveness must involve the
foreswearing of resentment, since either it is unclear that the
wrongdoer should be resented in the first place, or, taking Aris28. Recall that Murphy’s account represents the mainstream, leading
contemporary secular account of forgiveness.
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totle’s lead, it is unclear that she should ever be forgiven? Put
plainly, why not understand forgiveness, as Aristotle did, namely,
as an attitude one takes with respect to a wrongdoer who deserves
it for one or more of the reasons outlined, none of which require
the one wronged to resent the wrongdoer, and all of which
demonstrate the non-culpability of the wrongdoer?
Third, given that there is no reason to believe that the absence
of resentment or its foreswearing in Aristotle’s account of forgiveness results in the one wronged failing to respect herself or
to exercise her autonomy, as I already hinted, Murphy would do
well to discard his insistence that forgiveness requires resentment
at all. Instead, he should offer an account of forgiveness that calls
for us to take on the perspective of the wrongdoer, as this is compassionate and respectful of the worth of all persons who deserve
it. I cannot help but wonder whether Aristotle’s account instructs
us to treat wrongdoers in an (appropriately) compassionate way,29
which allows us not only to exercise self-respect but also to respect the other and her circumstances more easily than Murphy’s
account permits. For the latter not only advances an arguably fictive distinction between forgiving and excusing and justifying
that fails to withstand philosophical scrutiny, but also fails to attend robustly to the reality that all persons are potential wrongdoers in the ways that both Aristotle and Murphy articulate. For
although Murphy acknowledges what he refers to as “moral humility” (513), he concludes from this only that we “should be
open to the possibility of forgiveness” (ibid.). In contrast, Aristotle suggests that relating to wrongdoers through compassion is
the goal, since this demonstrates human decency, which he intimately connects with compassion and thoughtfulness, which, in
turn, he claims should govern our relations with (most) others
(1143a20-22).
Thus despite what may remain unclear in Aristotle’s account
of forgiveness, “Aristotelian forgiveness” is (1) internally coher29. I take it that compassion—generally speaking, not within Aristotle’s
theoretical framework—can be inappropriate; however, I do not defend
this here, as to do so would take us too far afield from the paper’s focus.
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ent, (2) properly appreciative of the many reasons a wrongdoer
should not be held responsible for her act and should be forgiven,
which (3) is consistent with respect both for those who are
wronged and for those who perform wrongdoings, (4) calls for
compassion towards others and an appreciation for our shared
humanity, and finally, (5) does not fall prey to the emotional
quagmire that may threaten our attempts to forgive when we
ought and to refrain from forgiving when we ought not. Consequently, Aristotle’s account of forgiveness ought to be preferred
over the leading contemporary account.
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On Two Socratic Questions
Alex Priou
What pointless images come up on account of a
single word. Take the word something, for example. For me this is a dense cloud of steam that has
the color of smoke. When I hear the word nothing,
I also see a cloud, but one that is thinner, completely transparent. And when I try to seize a particle of this nothing, I get the most minute particles
of nothing.1
The most famous Socratic question—ti esti touto?—is often preceded by a far less famous, but more fundamental question—esti
touto ti? Thus we read, for example, in Plato’s Hippias Major:
Socrates: So, then, are not also all the beautiful things
beautiful by the beautiful?
Hippias: Yes, by the beautiful.
Soc.: By this thing that is something (tini)?
Hipp.: That is something, for what (ti) [else] is it going
[to be]?
Soc.: Say, then . . . what is this thing (ti esti touto), the
beautiful? (287c8-d3)2
Or, in the Symposium, where Socrates asks Agathon, “Is love love
of nothing or of something?” (199e6-7) Aristotle implicitly affirms the priority of this question to its more famous counterpart by only claiming that there is a science of being after
having confronted the “most difficult and necessary aporia of
all to look into,” namely, whether or not “there is something
1. Luria 1968, 132.
2. All citations are to Plato and his Euthyphro, unless otherwise noted.
All translations are my own.
Alex Priou is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown
University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. This paper was first delivered at
the Annual Meeting of the Association of Core Texts and Courses on
April 16, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia.
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(esti ti) aside from the particulars,” “something one and the
same (hen ti kai tauton)” that would make such knowledge
possible (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 999a24-9, 1003a21-2).
Though this question is posed in many dialogues with respect to myriad topics,3 in every instance it receives but one
answer: it is something, namely something that is. The dialogue devoted to why this question always meets with an affirmative answer would appear to be the Parmenides, for
there Parmenides throws into question whether the eidē are,
only to establish that, if we have opinions that there is some
unity in being, such unity must be. 4 Nevertheless, the dramatic setting of the Parmenides is the quarrelling of the PreSocratic schools, and the popular dismissal of philosophy
that their quarrelling engendered. For a dialogue that establishes that the object of inquiry is simply because we have
3. Some examples (by no means exhaustive): Charmides 161d1-5 and
168b2-4, Parmenides 132b7-c2, Phaedo 64c2-3, and Theaetetus 160a9b4 and 163e4-7. Of course, Socrates often doesn’t ask this preliminary
question, perhaps with some reason for his silence in mind, the most
obvious and necessary example being Minos 313a1.
4. This claim condenses the respective thrusts of the first and second
parts of the Parmenides. Let the following suffice to establish the above
claim. The second part’s inquiry into the one that is preserves the intelligibility of unity without addressing the skepticism raised at the peak
of the first part, i.e., the view that there is no access to the one that is or
that the one simply is not (cf. 133a ff.). Parmenides addresses that skepticism in the final five deductions, which function as a reductio ad absurdum. This reductio culminates in a denial of unity not just in
being—for being could nevertheless still always appear to be, without
being—but in appearance and opinion, as well. This conclusion proves
untenable, since as a matter of fact unity is opined to be—indeed, at
many points during that very conversation. Thus the dialogue pushes
us to the conclusion that is enough that unity is opined to be for it simply
to be, i.e. for the claim that one is to be true, at least so far as human
beings may recognize. It’s on this point that the Parmenides and Euthyphro converge.
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opinions about it, we must, as I hope to show, turn to the Euthyphro. 5
From the very beginning of the dialogue, Socrates’s whole
way of life is in question. For an indictment has brought him to
the stoa of the king, thus compelling him to leave his usual haunts
in the Lyceum, where we find him in dialogues as early in his career as in the Charmides and as late as in the Euthydemus and
Lysis.6 To some extent, then, we share in Euthyphro’s surprise at
finding Socrates in such a place. Euthyphro expresses his surprise
by asking Socrates, “Has something new (ti neōteron) come to
be?” (2a1) Euthyphro’s phrasing, quite unintentionally prescient,
shows that more than Socrates’s way of life is in question. For
when Euthyphro later asks Socrates what Meletus claims
Socrates does (ti poiounta), Socrates will respond that Meletus
claims that he makes new gods (kainous poiounta tous theous)
(2a8-b4). Socrates appears to have made a new ti, a new something or what, and so to have radically revised how we think
about nouns.7 Not (just) Socrates, but his question is on trial (cf.
Apology 22e6-3b4). Euthyphro, however, understands Meletus
to mean by these “new gods” Socrates’s daimonion, and thus
takes Socrates to be his fellow religious innovator, to be something of an ally.8 But they are in many ways quite different.
Whereas Euthyphro expresses the utmost pride in his wisdom,
5. “The theoretical or methodological assumption (that to ask about
piety is to ask about an idea or form), if it is to be something more than
an assumption, requires a non-methodological—a conversational or dialectical—justification” (Bruell 1999, 127).
6. Cf. Bruell 1999, 118.
7. Cf. Davis 2011, 217.
8. Religious innovators, of course, could hardly ever be allies.—Geach
1966, 369 follows Euthyphro’s interpretation of the accusation. Burger
2015, 25-7 and Strauss 1996, 15 suggest that these gods may be
Socrates’s eidē. Meletus’s use of the plural in every version of the accusation we have suffices to dismiss Geach’s proposal (cf. Apology
24b8-c1; Xenophon, Memorabilia, I.1.1; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of
the Eminent Philosophers, II.40). Cf. Bruell 1999, 118-20.
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Socrates expresses shock when he first hears about Euthyphro’s
unorthodoxy and closes by cautioning him against deviating from
orthodoxy.9 To be sure, Socrates seems unique in his (however
ironic) respect, if not reverence, for Euthyphro, even going so far
as to say he is a desirer of Euthyphro’s wisdom, though others
laugh at him (14d4, 3b9-c2). Nevertheless, the situation is not
one of two religious innovators, but of two men with some inclination toward unorthodoxy. The one succumbs; the other resists.
If Socrates is not so unorthodox as he initially appears, then to
what extent is his allegedly new “what,” his ti, in reality new?
To what extent is Socratic philosophy latent in orthodoxy itself?10
9. Euthyphro twice affirms his wisdom with an oath by Zeus (cf. 4a12b3, 5b8-c3). The first oath comes after Socrates expresses shock with
an oath of his own at Euthyphro’s innovation (4a11-12). A little later,
Euthyphro momentarily slides into the third person while speaking of
his precise knowledge. That is, he speaks of himself as spoken of by
others. Socrates exploits Euthyphro’s vanity in his response by imagining a conversation, in which he speaks of him as wise before another
(cf. 5a3-b7, esp. 5a9-b1). Socrates is successful, for upon hearing this
imagined conversation Euthyphro swears his second oath. Socrates’s
closing caution against innovation occurs at 15c11-e2.
10. In this way, the question of the Euthyphro is much broader than
much of the literature assumes. For what is at stake is not just “the relation between religion and ethical knowledge” (Hall 1968, 1 [emphasis
added]), with the dialogue presenting “a powerful argument against any
attempt to base moral judgments on religious foundations” (Mann 1998,
123), but the relation between religion and knowledge as such. (For a
helpful list of secondary literature on this question, see Mann 1998, 123
n. 1.) The principal difficulty with this view is that the argument in question has a much broader range than the ethical or moral. No form of
dikaion or its cognates occurs in the argument in question (cf. 9d111e1). The argument thus abstracts completely from what the basis of
the gods’ love is. Indeed, the whole purpose of the argument is to raise
the question of whether there even is such a basis. Thus the fundamental
dilemma of this crucial passage, and so of the dialogue as a whole, is
not between a knowledge-based and religion-based ethics, but between
passive obedience to divine whim or wisdom and the active search for
wisdom by human beings, between reason and revelation.
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It is necessary to begin from the position of orthodoxy, as
represented by the reaction Euthyphro’s father has to the murder
of one of his servants. Euthyphro relates that his “father, binding
together his”—i.e., the murderer’s—“feet and hands, sent to
here”—i.e., Athens—“to hear from an interpreter (exēgētēs) what
(hoti) it’s necessary to do (poiein)” (4c6-d1). In certain circumstances, the position of orthodoxy makes clear precisely what we
are to do. Suspected criminals are to be bound. But in those circumstances where we don’t know clearly and precisely what we
are to do, the position of orthodoxy compensates for this lack by
having us defer to an interpreter. Such interpreters answer our
questions about what is to be done—in this case, say, regarding
what punishment is fitting for a hired servant who has killed a
household slave. Within the position of orthodoxy, then, there is
some reason for questioning—of what sort, though, we are as yet
unclear. Despite his apparent orthodoxy, Euthyphro’s father
clearly believes the fitting punishment to be death, for, when the
hired servant dies in his bonds, he is untroubled.11 Indeed, everyone except Euthyphro seems to agree with his father—the rest of
his family, the Athenians generally, and even Socrates. And
though this gives Euthyphro’s decision to proceed against his father a foolish air, it at least minimally redeems his efforts at religious innovation, since everyone, as it turns out, has arrived at
what orthodoxy demands on their own.12 That is, everyone plays
the interpreter. The ubiquity of interpretation comes to the surface
11. Edwards 2000, 218, following Allen 1970, 21, points out that Euthyphro’s father assumes he has “a right of summary justice which dispensed him from any duties to the man accused of murder,” a right that,
Edwards adds, Euthyphro implicitly denies. Both Euthyphro and his father appear more ambivalent than Edwards’s characterization allows.
After all, his father does send for an exegete, and Euthyphro does wait
some time before bringing the accusation to court.
12. Though Euthyphro questions the justice of the punishment his father
inadvertently visited upon the hired servant, not even Euthyphro questions that such a punishment is what the interpreter would have advised.
Indeed, Euthyphro is speciously silent on what the messenger said the
interpreter proscribed.
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when Socrates, in an attempt to explain his line of questioning
about what piety is, mentions his confusion about the words of a
poet. In attempting to clarify his confusion, Socrates begins to
speak of parts (though not of wholes)—that is, to use the ontological language more familiar from the Parmenides.13 Accordingly, if Socrates’s apparently unorthodox question lies latent in
the position of orthodoxy, it is in the role of interpreters (whether
ourselves or officials) and the phenomena that make them necessary to the position of orthodoxy.14
It is clear that Euthyphro considers himself a sort of interpreter, inasmuch as he bases his religious innovations on the traditional stories told about the gods. Socrates is surprised to learn
that Euthyphro has such an orthodox view. He goes so far as to
have Euthyphro swear before Zeus that he truly holds these things
to have come to be thus (6b3-4: su hōs alēthōs hēgēi). Socrates’s
second invocation of a god suggests that he is perhaps as surprised here at Euthyphro’s extreme orthodoxy as he was earlier,
when he learned of the extent of his unorthodoxy. Indeed, so surprised is Socrates that he interrupts a particularly simple argument, familiar from the Meno and Theaetetus—about what
constitutes an adequate answer to the ti esti touto question—to
affirm Euthyphro’s orthodoxy. Socrates’s interest in Euthyphro
thus stems from the fact that his religious innovations have one
13. Once Euthyphro says Socrates speaks correctly in claiming that the
pious is a morion of the just (12d4), Socrates (with Euthyphro following
suit) only refers to it as a meros (cf. 12c6, d2, 5, 6, 8, e1, 7, 9). In so
doing, Socrates throws into question (immediately after Euthyphro has
deemed it beyond question) the agreement that the pious is a proper
part, in the sense of having a natural joint, rather than just a piece or
fragment of justice.
14. In other words, the basic issue of the dialogue is this: “How can
[Socrates] make his ignorance prevail . . . over [Euthyphro’s] knowledge?” (Bruell 1999, 125) In order to so prevail, we must understand
why Socrates’s ignorance “permitted or compelled him to draw positive
(or negative) conclusions about the most important matters” (Bruell
1999, 124).
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foot in orthodoxy and one foot out. His case shows how the orthodox requirement for interpreters allows for such unorthodoxy
as we see in Euthyphro, an unorthodoxy that Euthyphro, Meletus,
and many others identify—whether rightly or wrongly—with
Socrates’s peculiar mode of questioning. Additionally, by asking
Euthyphro to say what the pious is, Socrates draws on Euthyphro’s desire to play the interpreter (exēgētēs), thus exploiting
Euthyphro’s offer to explain (diēgeomai) many things concerning
the divine (6c5-d2). Euthyphro’s offer comes on the heels of
Socrates’s surprise that Euthyphro believes or holds (hēgeomai)
such an extremely orthodox view (6b2-c4). Socrates uses hēgeomai for believing or holding some view in place of Euthyphro’s
earlier use of nomizō (5e6). In this context, Euthyphro offers to
show how what “human beings themselves happen to believe
(nomizontes)” gives “a proof that the law (nomou) is such” as
Euthyphro interprets it (5e2-6a3). Socrates’s substitution of hēgeomai for nomizō thus aims to arrive at certain phenomena present within law, the phenomena of believing, interpreting, and
explaining. By posing his idiosyncratic question in this context,
Socrates tests the extent to which the ti of the ti esti touto lies latent
in such phenomena, and thus in the view of orthodoxy itself.15
Socrates touches on the relationship between the ti of ti esti
touto and the phenomena within law most pointedly during an
argument famous for articulating the so-called “Euthyphro
problem.”16 In this argument, Socrates attempts to show Euthyphro that the love of all the gods is not a sufficient criterion for
determining what particular acts are pious—that is, that the godloved is an inadequate definition of the pious. Toward this end,
Socrates distinguishes between active and passive participles,
between the loving and the loved (10a10-11). The passive participle, i.e., the verb reified as a substantivized verbal adjec15. After Euthyphro’s proof, no forms of nomos and nomizō occur, an
especially surprising fact in a dialogue concerned with the rules or opinions that guide correct action with respect to the gods.
16. See note 10.
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tive,17 is then argued to be the consequence of the finite, passive
verb form, rather than the other way around. That is, Socrates
intends to show that something is a loved thing because it is
loved, but not that something is loved because it is a loved thing
(10c10-12). When brought to bear on the claim that the pious is
the god-loved, the priority of the finite verb to the substantivized
form shows that the gods’ activity of loving is but an affect or
experience of the pious, and not what it is. Socrates thus argues
that the ti of ti esti touto is, independent of how anyone—god
or man—is disposed to it intentionally. What something is is not
dependent on our inclinations, then, but our inclinations on what
it is. Yet Socrates’s argument is flawed principally because there
are some who love something simply because it is a thing loved,
i.e., a thing loved by another or others. Certainly some such phenomenon is what makes the Athenians laugh at Euthyphro or
grow angry with Socrates, what makes the Athenians inclined
to view such acts of interpretation as unorthodoxy. The position
of orthodoxy thus seems to exclude the ti of Socrates’s ti esti
touto. For from the perspective of orthodoxy, the fact that something has been said provides sufficient justification that it has
been said well (7a11-b1).18 No appeal to being is necessary, just
to opinion.
Nevertheless, orthodoxy’s manner of justification is not so
exclusive as it first appears. In his presentation of the aforementioned “Euthyphro problem,” Socrates expresses this manner of
justification in rather confusing language. His language poses a
significant problem for understanding his argument, not simply
because the logic is unclear or the use of “because” (hoti) is
17. Because rendering the passive verb forms in Greek into English requires using the verb “to be” with the participial form, the distinction is
somewhat elusive, as many notice (see, for example, Geach 1966, 378).
The distinction turns, I maintain, on the reification of an experience or
affect as a quality—and an essential one, at that—of what they seek to
define. Thus I have chosen to render philoumenon as “a loved thing.”
18. Reading eirētai gar at b1 with all the manuscripts and against their
seclusion by Burnet and others.
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equivocal,19 but rather because it is difficult to know which sense
Socrates intends hoti to have in this or that clause. More than
once, Socrates uses hoti to mean both “because” and “that,” i.e.
to indicate a fact and a justification, in a single sentence. Further, in his summary of his argument, Socrates clarifies that Euthyphro has failed to say what (hoti) the pious is, using hoti in
the sense of ousia, i.e., in the sense familiar from ti esti touto
(11a6-8). Socrates thus uses hoti in its three primary senses—
what we could call its justificatory, factual, and essential
senses—and in a way that appears unnecessarily confusing.
Thus in an argument meant to delineate a causal relationship
between particulars and universals, Socrates uses a word that
mixes all three into one. As we read, then, we must determine
in each instance which sense Socrates means hoti to have. In
the process, however, we cannot help but note that, as separate
as these senses may be syntactically, they are also quite inextricably linked. In accordance with proper usage, Socrates uses
hoti in the justificatory sense interchangeably with dioti. But
dioti is itself a contracted form of another phrase Socrates uses,
dia touto hoti, which employs hoti in its factual sense. If hoti
in the justificatory sense is equivalent to dia touto hoti, then
hoti in the justificatory sense contains within it hoti in the factual sense.20 Reasons rely on facts. But this still excludes hoti
in the essential sense, the sense interchangeable with the ti of
Socrates’s question, ti esti touto. Is the factual sense of hoti
completely separable from its essential sense? How could essential hoti be excluded, but factual and justificatory hoti main19. On the difficulty of understanding the sense of “because,” see Geach
1966, 379; Hall 1968, 6-9; and Cohen 1971, 6-8.
20. In reality, the justificatory language is far more complex: hoti is used
at 10a2, 3, c2 (twice), 3 (twice), 10 (twice), e5; dioti at 10b1, 4, 5, 7, 8,
9 (twice), 10, 11, d6, 9, e3; dia at 10b2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, d4, 5; dia touto
hoti at 10d4, 6-7, e2-3, 6-7; and the substantivized infinitive as an instrumental dative at 10e5-6. Of the forty-three occurrences of dioti in
Plato, twelve are in the Euthyphro alone, i.e., just over a quarter of the
occurrences in just fifteen Stephanus pages—really, on one page alone.
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tained? Doesn’t the lexical intimacy of these three senses suggest
a necessary connection between them? And if so, what is it?
This question amounts to whether the particular acts piety
dictates we perform are wholly particular, or rather must be
viewed in light of some general understanding of what piety is.21
Euthyphro seems reluctant to venture beyond these particulars.
When knowledge of piety first comes up, Euthyphro seems interested in teaching Socrates the pious and impious things, and
not the pious as such (4e4-5a2). Likewise, when Socrates first
asks Euthyphro about the pious as such, Euthyphro understands
the neuter singular to hosion to indicate a single pious thing, and
not the idea common to all particular, pious things (5c8-e2). And
much later, when Euthyphro begins to pull away from Socrates,
he is clear that what he would have to teach Socrates is not some
one thing, but a number of things (14a11-b1). Nevertheless, even
in his first definition, Euthyphro does come up with a somewhat
general rule that applies not just to his case, but to many others.
Likewise, when Socrates gives voice to the objection he and the
Athenians raise against Euthyphro’s innovation, his formulation
is rightly general (cf. 4b4-6). Indeed, the disagreement between
Euthyphro and the Athenians regards which general rule (or example become rule, e.g., Zeus’s “prosecution” of his father) applies to the particular case of Euthyphro’s father, his hired
servant, and the household slave.22 Justificatory hoti thus entails
21. It is an old question as to whether the Euthyphro “is meant to imply a
full-blown theory of Forms” (Geach 1966, 371). For a thorough discussion,
see Allen 1970.
22. At one point, Socrates shows Euthyphro that those disputing in courts
don’t dispute whether one should pay the penalty for injustice, but whether an
injustice was committed (8b7-d3). Shortly after this, Socrates expresses the
general rule guiding Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father in as particular a
form as he can, indeed to quite comic effect (cf. 9a1-8). Euthyphro’s initial
(and nearly absurd) inability to put himself in the shoes of the accused amounts
to an inability to see the ambiguity of how this or that law applies to a particular
deed, i.e., it amounts to the mistake of restricting the general entirely to the
particular. As Euthyphro’s quick retreat shows, this mistake is untenable, even
to those most devoted to the precision of the laws. Cf. Benardete 2001, 201.
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not just factual hoti, but essential hoti, as well. For which particular act is pious depends on the general rules that collectively
constitute what piety is. Consequently, it is not the case, as earlier
surmised, that, from the perspective of orthodoxy, the fact that
something has been said provides sufficient justification that it
has been said well (7a11-b1). As Socrates observes, other things
are said that don’t quite jibe with what has been said, thus necessitating further interpretation or conversation from us (7b2-5).
Indeed, without the question of which rule to apply to this or that
particular situation, there would be no need for interpreters.23 At
least in the present circumstances, then, the altogether orthodox
question of which rule or law applies to these or those circumstances provides sufficient grounds for Socrates to ask his apparently unorthodox question, ti esti touto?
But are these grounds sufficient in all circumstances?
Socrates suggests so when he compares his question about the
relationship between piety and justice to an account of fear (deos)
and reverence or shame (aidōs) in a pair of epic verses (12a6b1). When introducing these verses, Socrates speaks of the poet
as making two things, one of these being the verses, the other
being something he wishes to compare to what he and Euthyphro
were just discussing (12a7-8: epoiēsen, poiēsas.) But what the
poet made that is comparable to what they were just discussing
lies on an entirely abstract level. Thus, the poets don’t just make
verses; they make ideas, or rather determine their relationship.24
Socrates thus compares his inquiry into the ti of ti esti touto to
his interpretation of the poet’s verses (cf. Republic 515d2-7). But
23. “Euthyphro,” and, I would add, everyone else, “is unwilling . . . to
leave matters at the merely factual relation of a pious deed to the approval the gods confer on it by loving it, to let the piety of the deed be
determined by that love alone” (Bruell 1999, 129).
24. Burger 2015, 83-5 points out that grammatically the object of poiēsas
is Zeus himself, an allusion back to Meletus’s charge that suggests that
not Socrates, but the city’s poets are the makers of (new) gods. On the
complex way in which the poet’s genetic account relies on an eidetic account, see Bruell 1999, 131-2 and Burger 2015, 83 ff. (esp. n. 44).
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in his interpretation, Socrates criticizes the poet on the basis of
his and Euthyphro’s experience of deos and aidōs (cf. 12b2-c9).
Though Euthyphro happily goes along with Socrates, Meletus
would be unlikely—to put it mildly—to take Socrates’s criticism
of a fellow poet so lightly (cf. Apology 23e5). Nevertheless, Meletus’s claim that Socrates is “a maker (poiētēn) of gods,” namely
“one who makes (poiounta) new gods while not believing (nomizonta) in the archaic or original ones” (3b1-3), seems at best a halftruth.25 In a certain respect, Meletus appears to be right. As Socrates
argues, action requires discerning (diakrinō) what is good or bad,
noble or shameful, and just or unjust, so as to reach a sufficient
judgment (krisis) about what to do (7c3-d7). But in his mode of
questioning, Socrates exposes the insufficiency of all judgments by
exposing his interlocutors’ inability to answer (apokrinō). Meletus
is therefore correct that Socrates doesn’t believe (hēgeomai, nomizō)
in the archaic or original gods, since his investigation of the phenomena within law (nomos) exposes that answers are not forthcoming. Meletus is wrong, however, to conclude from this that Socrates
seeks to replace the archaic or original gods with new ones. For at
the core of Socratic refutation is the same issue that plagued Euthyphro and his father, that makes interpreters necessary and court
cases unavoidable: the ambivalence or multivalence of particular
deeds as to which vomos they fall under, and thus whether the deed
is pious or impious, or, should the particular deed already be agreed
to be pious, which nomos makes it so or is implicit in it and thus
renders like deeds pious.26 These altogether pious questions invoke the factual, justificatory, and essential uses of hoti that pro25. It is only “at best” a half-truth because, as Burger 2015, 35 notes,
Socrates is the (perhaps inadvertent) cause of both the dangerous liberation from generally accepted opinion and the subsequent return to that
opinion.
26. Socrates gives two competing formulations of the subject of his question. The first—tou hosiou te peri kai tou anosiou (4e2-3)—suggests a clear
and precise separation of the pious from the impious, while the second—
peri . . . tōn hosiōn te kai anosiōn (e5-6)—suggests that the same things
can be both pious and impious. On the connection between this issue and
polytheism, see Bruell 1999, 130-1 and Burger 2015, 59-61.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PRIOU
89
vide the necessary and sufficient conditions for Socratic philosophy.
What is at bottom unorthodox about Socrates, then, is not the
introduction of new gods per se, but the willingness to confess
ignorance about which laws apply to which particulars, and the
attempt to articulate the recalcitrance of the opinions contained
in law to clear and easy application to particulars. For in his
mythical self-presentation, Socrates says that Daedalus is both
his and Euthyphro’s progenitor—that is, that the circular character of Socratic refutation is not exclusively Socrates’s, but human
(11b9-c6). Man is somehow fundamentally Socratic, and it is
Socrates’s exposure of this fact that arouses the Athenians’s ire
(cf. 3c9-d2). They simply kill the messenger. Under this interpretation, what Socrates does may be an unorthodox failure of
piety, but it is the humble failure to rise to piety, rather than an
attempt to go above and beyond it. What is missing from this interpretation, however, and unfortunately takes us beyond the Euthyphro, is Socrates’s anticipation in the Sophist that a stranger
from Elea may be a theos elenktikos (216a1-b6). This substantial
revision of Homeric theology appears to guide Socrates’s reaction
to the god’s assertion of his wisdom, which assertion Socrates attempts to refute as though that were unproblematically pious
(Apology 21b9-c2). In this revision, Socrates implicitly claims
that not just human beings are beholden to the above ambivalence
or multivalence of particulars with respect to generals, but gods
as well. Let it suffice to conclude that this deeper implication of
what Socrates uncovers in the Euthyphro amounts, paradoxically,
to an accusation against orthodoxy of impiety: not Socrates, but
the city has made new gods in place of the theoi archaioi.27 For
27. Compare the alternative of Strauss 1996, 16-17. The present understanding of Socratic piety falls outside of the debate that McPherran 1985, 283-4 frames as between the constructivists, who take there
to be a view of piety latent in what follows the “aporetic interlude”
of 11b-e, and the anticonstructivists, who deny the same. For that debate presupposes considerable agreement, namely that what is referred to as “Socratic piety” relies on a definition of what the pious
as such is, whose reconstruction they respectively claim to be possi-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
not just man is Socratic, but his god as well.28
ble and not. If there is anything like “Socratic piety,” it cannot be based
on a static definition, but rather only on the awareness that no sufficient
definition is forthcoming.
28. The deeper implication of Socrates’s substitution of hēgeomai for
nomizō lies in the former’s secondary, original sense of “to lead,”
which suggests that believing is the active attempt to guide oneself
(and others), and not the passive acceptance of laws (on Plato’s use of
voice—middle, active and passive—see Davis 2011, 205-21). That is,
the laws present themselves as the answer to some desire for guidance.
But that desire, in posing the question the laws purport to answer,
proves not just prior to (and thus of higher status than) the laws, but
more general than the laws, which are always these particular laws.
The primary or principal phenomenon within law would thus be man’s
longing for such wisdom as would allow him to live well. On this phenomenon as that of soul, see Burger 2015, 73-5 (with 69 n. 36), as well
as Davis 2011, 217-18 and passim.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PRIOU
91
Bibliography
Allen, R. E. 1970. Plato’s Euthyphro and the Earlier Theory of Forms.
London: Routledge.
Benardete, Seth. 2001. Plato’s “Laws”: The Discovery of Being. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Bruell, Christopher. 1999. On the Socratic Education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Burger, Ronna. 2015. On Plato’s Euthyphro. Munich: Carl Friedrich
von Siemens Stiftung.
Cohen, S. Marc. 1971. “Socrates on the Definition of Piety: Euthyphro
10a-11b,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 9: 1-13.
Davis, Michael. 2011. The Soul of The Greeks. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Edwards, M. J. 2000. “In Defense of Euthyphro,” American Journal of
Philology 121: 213-24.
Geach, Peter. 1966. “Plato’s Euthyphro: An Analysis and Comentary,”
The Monist 50: 369-82.
Hall, John. 1968. “Plato: Euthyphro 10a1-11a10,” Philosophical Quarterly 70: 1-11.
Luria, A. R. 1968. The Mind of a Mnemonist. New York: Basic Books.
McPherran, Mark. 1985. “Socratic Piety in the Euthyphro,” Journal of
the History of Philosophy 23: 283-309.
Mann, William. 1998. “Piety: Lending Euthyphro a Hand,” Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 58: 123-42.
Strauss, Leo. 1996. “An Untitled Lecture on Plato’s Euthyphron” (David
Bolotin, Christopher Bruell, and Thomas Pangle eds.), Interpretation 24:
3-23.
��POEM | PETRICH
93
Sabbatical
Louis Petrich
I would have thought the broad summer airs,
By amplitude of want, more friendly shared.
Life—no surprise—opportune in corners,
Echoes up the cry of fire and ashes:
Teach us to care and not to care,
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks.
Island mine, sit me still, hair to skin light,
Sun beaten by the whip of wind and salt spray,
Stomach fitted upon rocks and coral,
Mostly hidden, unseparated below,
Sharp and aspiring above,
Good to take counsel over cares hard gone,
These straight and crooked cravings of my sea soul
To pour each drop of time that remains
Into practice of present looking toward,
Looking after what I found fine in you—
Deep-eyed causes,
Welling up close to speak
Through summer lips—
Oh, stay a little, and kiss the strewed rocks
Forsaken of stars, but here my remaking.
How fine the faces of sea and sky at the horizon meet!
Their line of appointment never bent
To give up place and tell long secret looks.
Unmeasured goings, no reckoning of returns!
An hour’s breath is allowed this body
To go beneath and feel no heaviness:
Louis Petrich is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. He wrote
this poem while on sabbatical in Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean.
�94
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Quiet there, beauty there,
Vast riches, strange attachments,
Currents you would never guess,
Cold-eyed passers-by at ease
In the whirligig of Becoming.
Counting down to the last,
I follow with borrowed sufficiency
The beaded gleams of light
Up to the birth meeting,
And pour handfuls of new looks upon the awful leavings of Love.
Contend less much, eternal counselors—
A made man collects by the shore.
���
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 58.1 (Fall 2016)
Editor
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Frank Hunt
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John Van Doren
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Elliott Zuckerman
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Pre-Socratics or First Philosophers? ..........................................1
Eva Brann
Prefacing the Absolute in Hegel’s Phenomenology..........................19
Andrew Davis
Alcibiades’s Image of Socrates in the Symposium............................37
Alan Pichanick
The Night Watchmen; or, By the Dawn’s Early Light ....................47
Eric Salem
Poem
Kansas Articles from the
Ellis Review Centennial Edition ................................................69
Philip LeCuyer
Book Review
David Lawrence Levine, Profound Ignorance:
Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom ...........................72
Eva Brann
��Pre-Socratics or First Philosophers?
Eva Brann
Think how peculiar this appellation is: “Pre-Socratics.” A whole
slew of thinkers, poetical, aphoristic, prosaic—condemned to be
known as the precursors of a man who wrote nothing! Forerunners are, it seems, ipso facto inferior to the rightly anointed. Take
John the Baptist, the canonical precursor, who says of himself,
“he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not
worthy to bear” (Matthew 3:11). That holds not only for individuals but also for communities. Our forefathers, the writers of the
Federalist Papers, thought of those Greek city states, the poleis,
whose frame or politeia was a direct democracy, as the unstable
antecedents of the reliable representative republic they were proposing for America—not that the Greek democracies did not have
some representational features, but as Madison, remarkably, puts
it: “The true distinction between these and the American Government lies in the total exclusion of the people in their collective
capacity from any share in the latter” (Federalist 63). So the superiority of our successor republic lies in erasing direct popular
participation altogether—and here is my presumption: Just as the
founders as successors to the Greeks had a deeper understanding
than these did of the chief, philosophically opaque, element of
modern politics—namely, representationalism—so, on the contrary, John the Baptist as forerunner of the Christ lacked his revelatory power: John baptizes with water, but Jesus will baptize
with the Holy Ghost; what John is doing is significant but
opaquely primitive.
My point is that, as “pre-somebodies,” the Pre-Socratics may
be thought of as deficient, lacking something, primitive in the
Eva Brann is a tutor and former dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was the keynote address at the annual meeting of the
Metaphysical Society of America in Annapolis, Maryland on Friday
March 18, 2016, whose theme was “Thinking with the Pre-Socratics.”
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derogatory sense. But, of course, there is also the opposite perspective: These men were not primitive, without sophistication,
but primeval, deeper, more receptive to origins, to everything
for which the Germans have that awe-bestowing prefix ur, as
in Ursprung, the “original leap.” Of course, I am thinking of
Heidegger, for whom what professional philosophers like to regard as a progress is, in fact, a progressive occultation and a withdrawal of Being.
What did the man who devised the designation actually
mean? In 1815, Friedrich Schleiermacher, the philosopher-theologian (and the superb translator of Plato), in an address “On
the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher,” declared that Socrates
was pivotal in the history of philosophy. The reason seems a
little underwhelming; it was that before him there were different schools of philosophy pursuing different kinds of philosophy, but after him, although the kinds were still distinguished,
every school cultivated all kinds. Thus Schleiermacher is
kindly crediting Socrates with preventing an incipient academic specialization. This view must have seemed plausible,
because Schleiermacher’s label “Pre-Socratic” stuck and is
now used for collections of texts without further comment.
Of course, the notion that Socrates was epochal, not as the
human phenomenon of the Platonic dramas, but as a historical
event, appears in the first history of philosophy, Book I and II of
Aristotle’s Physics and again in Book I of the Metaphysics. In
the latter, Socrates is presented as “busying himself with moral
matters and not at all with the Whole of nature [as did the preceding so-called “physicists”], however seeking in those matters
the universal, and being first to fix his thinking on definitions”
(I.6)—a far more epochal distinction than Schleiermacher’s.
Here, too (I.5), he calls those who became “the Pre-Socratics”
the “first wise men.” This description seems to me significant in
two ways: First, it implies that they were not “lovers” of—here
meaning “not in secure possession of”—wisdom, but that they
were actually wise, and that delineates accurately the prevailing
one of the two modes I will single out in a moment. Second, it
raises a question. In calling them the “first wise men,” does he
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
3
just mean “earliest” or is there a hint that they studied “first
things,” and were concerned with what Aristotle calls “the first
[science]” or “first philosophy” (VI.1)?
Let me inject myself here, unhopefully, into this epoch-framing debate. Why don’t we give up “Pre-Socratics” and call these
folks “Pre-Professionals” and their successors “Post-Socratics,”
with Socrates as pivot between them? That would relocate the
disparagement away from the “wise men” to the professionals,
where Heidegger, at least, might agree it belongs.
That, however, isn’t going to happen, because nothing is
more sticky than historical epoch terms. Take, for example, our
grandest epoch-division, with which I grew up: B.C. and A.D.,
“Before Christ” and “In the year of our Lord,” Anno Domini. In
our era of offense-taking, some folks couldn’t bear to live in the
epoch of a young Jewish rabbi, so now we write B.C.E., “Before
the Common Era,” and C.E., “Common Era.” But the turning
point is still the birth date of Joshua or Jesus of Galilee, whenever
that actually was, except we’ve masked that fact. Concerning
Socrates, as an epochal figure, I have my own take on the respect
in which he is indeed a pivot: It is he who turns the wisdom
(sophia) of the divinely initiated into the longing for wisdom
(philo-sophia) of a mere mortal left to his own devices, so that
Pre-Socratic truth passes into Socratic inquiry; past this inflection, this cusp, which is the human singularity called Socrates,
his hypothetically held thoughts stiffen into doctrines maintained
by schools.
So back to the Pre-Socratic epoch of philosophy. Aristotle,
as I said, the first practitioner of history of philosophy—perhaps
as rousingly mystifying a notion about philosophy as ever arises
within it—refers to an early school he calls, as I said, the “physicists” (physikoi) or the “accountgivers of physis (physiologoi),”
among whom he places all the Pre-Socratics including Heraclitus
(III.5), but evidently not Parmenides (I.2), both of whom were
certainly older than Socrates. These so-called physicists were
surely philosophers—as Aristotle says of them, they were “the
ones who philosophized first” (Metaphysics I.3). And they were
not crude materialists, mere believers in stuff, in matter. They
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
“thought that the principle of all things was in certain kinds of
material,” which changed the qualities of matters while persisting
beneath them. So when I translate Aristotle’s term for the physicists’ focus, hyle, as “material” and not as “matter,” I mean that
they thought of the underlying principle, be it water, air, earth,
or fire, not as sensory stuff experienced by its own qualities, but
as bestowing sensible moistness, lightness, lumpishness on the
distinct matters that constitute nature in one of its aspects. To
these they added agencies of continuous or periodic change;
somewhat imaginatively or, if you will, mythically conceived,
such as Love-and-Strife.
When Aristotle calls these deep inquirers into the principles
of the palpable world “physicists,” he implies, I imagine, that
they are not yet what I might call “meta-physicists.” They give
an account of physis in terms which yet belong to the sensed
world; they ground nature in its own terms. (The Pythagoreans
are, perhaps, an early exception; their principles are numbers and
ratios, though these appear sensorily.)
We all know that the title of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the greatest
book in its line, is explained in two ways. First, mundanely: the composition that came “after,” meta, the Physics. And second, more
thoughtfully: The composition called The Metaphysics follows the
one called The Physics (a plural in English as in Greek), because the
many-faceted inquiry called “physics,” the search for the notions explaining bodies undergoing change, precedes “metaphysics,” the singular inquiry into the principles “beyond,” meta, those reached in
the book on moving beings, the Physics. You will all remember that
the Physics ends with a logic-driven proof that if the inquiry into
moving bodies is to find a resting place, then there must be a true
principle of motion, a real beginning, which must be such that it can
move others without itself being in want of an explanation of its motion—that is, an unmoved mover. And then the Metaphysics is the
subsequent inquiry which develops the terms that can be used to
transcend physics and delineate an unmoving but movement-causing
divinity: Nous, the god who is mind, an unloving beloved, the aboriginal unmoved mover, the self-sufficient “self-thinking” being,
Thought of thought (noesis noeseos).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
For the rest of my talk, I want to excise the physiologues who,
though on the brink of this step beyond, and thus philosophers,
are still not quite metaphysicians—except for these two: Heraclitus and Parmenides. By generation, they certainly belong to the
first philosophers, but I will claim that they are also “first philosophers” in Aristotle’s sense of the term “First Philosophy”: the
knowledge of the ultimate individual being (ousia), if there is one,
and of Being (to on) as Being (Metaphysics VI.1)—its ever pursued and ever perplexing subject (VII.1). “First” philosophers
they are—but not quite.
Heraclitus, the first of the first, needs more defense in this respect than Parmenides. Aristotle counts him among the physicists
because he makes fire a first principle. It is a misunderstanding:
Heraclitus does indeed bring in a physical fire, an analytic agent,
so to speak, of matter. But his primary fire is identical with his
world principle, the Logos. This fiery Logos is both a discerning,
dividing, analytic cosmic ruler and an intra-world arche or ruling
beginning. Arche is the word usually translated as “principle,” literally “what seizes first place.” Heraclitus is far more wonderful
than that; the Logos-Fire is not a mere cosmic captain.
While I’m at it, let me relieve him of a silly but tightly attached epithet: the “Philosopher of Flux,” who is said to have
said that “All is flux” (panta rhei, “everything flows”; nothing
stays), a notion which no one of his taut ingenuity, which made
him the first discoverer of physical transformations tightly controlled by numerical ratios, could have perpetrated. (I’ll come
back to those ratios, logoi in Greek.) As to “Everything flows”—
in fact, he didn’t say it. Plato reports “that those around him” attributed the notion that all things are in flux to him, and has
Socrates add “like leaky pots” (Cratylus 440 c.). I’ll add: Beware
of Heracliteans, the Heraclitus-followers; they make willful
mincemeat of him, including the propagation of his obscurity:
“Heraclitus the Obscure.” He isn’t obscure; he’s saying deep
things concisely. Heraclitus just isn’t disciple-friendly, congenial,
sociable—the pre-schooler of philosophy, you might say.
Heraclitus is generally believed to be somewhat Parmenides’s elder, perhaps by a “short” generation, a quarter cen-
�6
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tury. But though close in time, they lived apart in place. Heraclitus, the one generally thought of as the philosopher of flux, was
entirely sessile as far as we know, living all his life among his
despised Ephesians. Parmenides of Elea, on the other hand, the
defender of motionlessness, travelled as far as Athens, where he
got into a chronologically difficult, but intellectually entirely feasible, conversation with young Socrates (Plato, Parmenides).
I want to interject myself here again: I had the good fortune
to find myself on the site of his beloved city, Elea, where he functioned as statesman. I can tell you: I was suddenly seized with
awe, because here the most astounding thought of all occurred
to a human being capable of giving it utterance—that of all-pervasive Being.
My point is that nonetheless neither place nor time seem to
me of the slightest consequence to my project for the rest of this
talk: I want to put Heraclitus and Parmenides into conversation
with each other, and in doing so to transmute a problem in the
empirical history of philosophy—meaning an only circumstantially insoluble puzzle, into a reflective question within philosophy itself—meaning an abiding perplexity stemming from the
nature of things. That genuine question is: Which philosopher is
truly first? More precisely put: What is first, Logos or Being? Or
is that perhaps not the best way to put the question? Should it
perhaps be: Are the two Founding Fathers talking about different
things in somewhat the same way or about the same thing in different ways, or—may the god Apollo helps us—about different
things in different ways?
Let me right now exclude this last possibility. If it were actual, the history of philosophy would be as insignificant as the
dated list of English kings which their young subjects used to be
driven to learn by heart. For what animates philosophy’s history
is that it is dialectical, that is to say, conversationally antithetical:
It moves in oppositions that are congenial enough to be heard
and taken up in responsive talk. I think it can be shown that these
first two were—and I don’t know how else to put it—providentially fraternal in their opposition. Sometimes the heavens don’t
wait for the historians to bestow meaning on what is usually a
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
mere mess of happenstance, but actually arrange for significance
to eventuate.
What then are Heraclitus and Parmenides speaking about that
is the same—one writing appropriately in aphorisms, the other
fittingly in hexameters?
They both speak of the All. Heraclitus, as we would expect,
always says it in the plural: panta, “all things” (in fourteen relevant places). Parmenides always uses the singular, pan,
“everything” (D.-K. 8). This ambition to comprehend the
whole of what there is, not from within as a sensing being
among sensible things, but from without, as an apprehending
intelligence that can reach beyond the sensed world, puts these
two squarely among the “transcenders,” among Aristotle’s
meta-physicians.
They bear themselves, however, not as lovers of a wisdom
to be pursued, that is, as philo-sophers, but as knowers of a wisdom that has been imparted to them. Both speak as initiates, Heraclitus in an oracular style rivaling that of Apollo’s temple in
Delphi (D.-K. 93), Parmenides as an initiate, outdoing Homer,
the poet-pupil of the Olympian Muses, who could not claim to
have reached the inner heart of truth in a piping chariot, as did
the philosopher-poet (D.-K. 1).
What is the frame of mind of a human being who is the first
in his world to utter: “all things” or “everything”? It is scarcely
possible to recapture the wonder of it for the speaker who has
so leaped beyond the world that is home, to imagine his sense
of being set apart from the rest of humanity, which sees from
within and not from beyond. Evolutionists are committed to the
notion that intelligence developed in a continuum, in tiny increments. Yet insight does not seem to arrive that way, but rather
in a life-altering jolt: the world-principle speaks to a solitary
who can hear, or a youth’s chariot bursts through the welcoming
gates of the House of Truth—and their thinking veers into new
ways.
The Logos, Speech itself, speaks to solitary Heraclitus and
bids him see and hear and feel in what way “all things” cohere.
Aletheia, Truth itself, speaks to Parmenides, the future states-
�8
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
man, and orders him to forgo all speech but the one word that
conveys the way in which everything “is” seamlessly one.
What the Logos tells Heraclitus is that it—perhaps I should
say “he,” for it is a god we’re speaking of (D.-K. 32)—Speech
himself, discriminates and collects all things just as his subordinate words, his logoi, do: They distinguish all things by different
names, proper names, and they gather all things under the same
name, “Gathering,” for behind the word logos stands the verb legein, whose first meaning is “to gather” and only then “to speak.”
What Truth tells Parmenides is the one and only word that
tells the truth: “Is,” esti. Greek syntax permits esti to be a complete sentence, one word that comprehends the whole.—There is
no personal pronoun to divide “is” from itself, to make us ask
“what is?”: Issing is. All “not-is” is not to be spoken, and the diversity it spawns not to be regarded, says Parmenides’s Truth
while Heraclitus’s Logos enjoins both listening to his utterance
and looking into the teeming Cosmos (D.-K. 89). Truth demands
silence and withdrawal into Being. (I should remind you here that
Parmenides also enters a second way, the “Way of Seeming
[doxa]” which yields a fanciful cosmogony. I used to be in some
perplexity about why he spoiled his single-minded grandeur by
taking the previously proscribed way of the “double-pated” folk
[dikranoi, D.-K. 6], who dither distractedly. Then I read Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics [1935] in which he asserts that
even Parmenides’s solidly homogeneous Being requires a complementary “restriction” by Seeming [74 ff.]. Now I’m in total
perplexity: Isn’t that a nullifying intrusion into the unbreachable
uniformity of Being that is Parmenides’s great insight?)
Let me at this point recollect what I’ve laid out so far and
make clear where I’m going. These two have in common the
thought of a whole. This is a spectacularly new thought—the notion that the Whole is to be comprehended in its Wholeness, the
idea that Wholeness comes from outside the Whole, is imparted
from beyond. It is, as I would put it, a logical necessity that
wholeness should elicit the following duality: A whole might be
a “one-over-many,” a captained collection, an embattled unity of
co-existences. Or it might be a “one-is-one,” and all alone, a
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fused unity devoid of inner discrimination. The third case, a
whole of total multiplicity, is not thinkable, like that “all is flux”
falsely attributed to Heraclitus: If there is only multitude, sheer
diversity, then there is no whole and nothing to transcend, since
such a flux is subject neither to an inner organization nor to an
outer delimitation. For if there were limits, somewhere the fluxing would have to cease, double back on itself, develop vortices
or whatever—some structure.
For all their primeval grandeur, Heraclitus and Parmenides
were human, and so had temperaments. Perhaps some context of
their lives, respectively in Asia Minor and in Western Italy had some
effect on their thinking—who knows? In any case one of them, Heraclitus, chose to stay put and to behold the world as a heterogeneous
collection, while the other, Parmenides, decided to travel and to
view it as a homogenized unity. Having claimed that their first concern was the same, the Whole, I would now like to show how they
lay out these wholes in what I’ll call “antithetical complements.” I
mean that they don’t talk past each other but—almost—responsively, to each other. They don’t, however, argue; they announce.
One more preliminary: To do these Pre-Socratics justice as
being, both of them, “ontologists,” devotees of Being, it is, I
think, necessary to believe what you see in the transmitted texts.
For example, when Heraclitus utters paradoxes such as this one:
the cosmic wisdom does and does not want to be called by the
name of Zeus (D.-K. 32), we must not set it aside as high-handed
obscurantism but receive it as an exact enunciation of a significant thought: The Logos both appears and withdraws as a godhead, appears so when the initiate is in a mood of worship,
withdraws when he is in the mode of thinking. Or when Parmenides says that “to be and to think is the same” (D.-K. 3), we
must accept it as a remarkable possibility instead of diddling the
text into saying something flabby like: “The same thing is there
for thinking and being.” Both of these apostasies are committed
by willful scholars. Yet, in dealing with these early wise men,
“having it your way” is the same as “not getting it.”
So now to some specific comparisons, five particularly responsive appositions, some of which I have already broached.
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Take them, if you will, as testimonials to what seems to me, once
again, to be one of the few truths revealed by time: The Western
philosophical tradition is “dialectical,” I mean self-opposing,
from its very inception—and ever after, even when dialectic becomes quibbling.
The participants in this conference will recognize my source references, and they’re cited in my manuscript (by the fragment numbers in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker; “D.-K.” is
omitted hereafter). Heraclitus (b. circa 540 B.C.E.) always comes
first, because he is usually regarded, as I’ve said, as being Parmenides’s (b. circa 515) elder by a short generation. (A “generation”
that puts fewer than thirty years between the birth of the father and
the son is sometimes called a “short” generation by chronologists.)
So then, One: Heraclitus exhorts us to listen to Speech Itself,
to the Logos Himself and to “say the same,” homologein, as says
the Logos about his cosmic “collecting,” to agree with him.
(Again, I say “his,” because this Logos is Heraclitus’s divinity.)
The actual word for “collect,” syllegein, is not voiced but is, I
think, to be heard by the hearing listener (50). Parmenides, on
the other hand, is effectively consigned to silence by the goddess,
Truth Herself, when she proscribes negation and predication (8).
The fact that the goddess herself speaks and uses negation is an
overt self-contradiction that presages the downfall of this grandest of all thoughts (Plato, Sophist 237 ff.). Heraclitus’s paradoxes
speak his mind while Parmenides’s contradictions refute his. As
their enjoined missions differ, so do their means. Heraclitus
speaks in pithy paradoxical prose, often framed as “nominal” or
“gnomic” sentences, meaning sentences that lack the copula “is,”
and speak verbless, that is, timeless wisdom; such as hen: panta,
“everything [is] one” (50). For Parmenides this copula-word, esti,
becomes, as I’ve said, all by itself a sentence; it is the positive
proposition of his teaching (2), which is delivered in epic hexameters. The stylistic contrast mirrors their character, Heraclitus
is, as I said, a sessile solitary, a curmudgeonly despiser of his
unreceptive fellow-citizens (21), who speaks to them sparely
and brusquely of cosmic truths, and who devises his own aphoristic prose; Parmenides is a well-loved statesman in his city and
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a traveler in Greece, who came to Athens, where he instructed
an eager young Socrates in dialectic (Plato, Parmenides), and
who sings his teaching in Homeric resonances.
Two: The basic terms of their language (as distinct from their
style) also attest their antithetical fraternity. As I said, Heraclitus
always speaks severally of “panta,” “all things,” “everything” (8,
10, 50). Parmenides always speaks jointly of “pan,” “all, the
whole” (8). The antithesis itself is this: For Heraclitus the constituents of “everything” are alternately locked in mutually supported stasis, in inimical stability, hostile reliance, like stand-up
wrestlers who butt at and abut on each other in a temporary hold
(51), and then again are pulled apart by the referee, here the Logos.
Thus the collection of striving elements is transformed, not chaotically, but according to precise mathematical ratios, called logoi,
in Greek, the plural of logos. These ratios are the mini-agents of
the Logos at work in the world; they supervise transformations of
matter obeying the dictates of a very modern chemical law: the law
fixing the ratios of masses in the transformation of substances; for
instance, so much of water into so much of earth, in every case of
transformation (31). This Heraclitean cosmos is simultaneously
positive and negative, discontinuous and unbounded, with a ruling
Logos who at once governs from beyond the collection and is actively immanent (4, 108). Such a world is twice oppositional: Each
being opposes its other individually, and all elements collectively
dissolve and supersede one another; there is strife and stability, decomposition and reconstitution.
Parmenides’s “whole” is internally without differentiation
and so without negation, qualification, change, or locomotion—
a perfect, impenetrable, well-balanced sphere, continuous and
contained, homogeneous and bounded (8). This impenetrability
of Being to otherness is also its translucence to itself, as thought
is penetrable to thought—for Being is Thought (3). Parmenides
never asks about the features of its surround, since all that is, is
within. Nor does he ask about the name of its location, since that
would have to be the Is-not, the Nothing, the very term and
thought he has forsworn. I might remind you here that Heidegger
will, as it were, supplement Parmenides in his essay “What is
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Metaphysics” (1929). He surrounds the region of beings and
Being with “The Nothing” for which Dasein is the “place-holder”
amidst worldly beings, having been pulled into the Nothing by
means of an ontological feeling called “anxiety,” thence to view
beings as a whole.
Three: Heraclitus’s cosmos is a rational, that is, ratio-governed, collection of numerically related elementary stuff; the bodies shaped from it are in relations of tension, which is a force
governing matter that is at once attractive and repulsive and
everywhere the same in the tension-effecting connection, say a
bow-string (51).
Parmenides’s world is, on the contrary, a thought, as I’ve just
mentioned. He says unequivocally: “For it is the same to think
and to be”—to gar auto noein esti te kai einai (3, and he says it
again, 8). That’s the text, which Plotinus (Enneads V.1), who has
Pre-Socratic empathy, translates just as I have. I’ve already mentioned that some scholars can’t believe their eyes: Parmenides,
in the early fifth century B.C.E., is speaking like a German idealist—Fichte, Schelling—of early nineteenth century C.E.! To
me it makes sense: Utter simplicity is the inception of idealism.
The ratifying text here is Plato’s Parmenides, in which Parmenides seems to have travelled to Athens just to demonstrate in
young Socrates’ presence that contradicting conversation, the
kind called dialectic, is potent and necessary training for formulating perplexities but perfectly impotent and even stymieing in
attaining ultimate insight. For example, to settle the HeracliteanParmenidean question, “Many or One?”, which is also, not accidentally, the central issue of Plato’s dialogue, thought must
outstrip speech. Thus, incidentally and cunningly, Parmenides secures his goddess’s silence as ultimate: Dialectic must go silent
within sight of Truth, as Plato emphasizes in his Seventh Letter
(341c ff.).
Four: These antithetical brothers share the root of irreconcilability: extremism, but in opposing directions. Heraclitus is, to
my mind, sui generis, one of a kind, never repeated among his
successors, even those who actually quote him. Plato makes Eryximachus, the physician-banqueter of the Symposium (his name
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means “Belchbattler;” he cures Aristophanes’s hiccups), draft Heraclitus into the service of harmonizing Love (187a). Nietzsche
finds him—ludicrously—comforting (Ecce Homo, 3). Even
Schopenhauer, closest to Heraclitus in advancing strife as a
world-principle—though, to be sure, farthest away in the ultimate pessimism of his world-mood—ends by looking for an escape from conflict in disinterested esthetic contemplation and
renunciation of the trouble-making will (The World as Will and
Representation, Bk. VI). Heidegger, who, to be sure, understands Heraclitus’s cosmic war as both world-generating and
world-preserving, attributes to him not, indeed, an ultimate, but
an originary unity, a “collectedness of Being” (Introduction to
Metaphysics, 47, 130)—which is contradicted in a fragment that
says: “Out of all things, one and out of one, all things” (10)—
turn by turn: all things collected into a unity and the unity dispersed into all things.
Those mitigators are the Post-Socratics. Not so, never so,
Heraclitus. He finds kingliness in war (polemos, 53), justice in
strife (80), advantage in abrasiveness (8) and truth-telling in selfcontradiction. He even censures Homer for praying that battle
might disappear among gods and among men. I might inject now
that Heraclitus seems to me, in his feel for his tensely muscular
cosmos and his adoption of a brusquely handsome language,
closest of all to Hobbes—though Hobbes is, most peremptorily,
no metaphysician, but both a materialist and a mechanist, while
Heraclitus’s discerning Logos is both a meta-physical principle
and an immanent operator. Under him, stress and strain is thus
ultimate, neither in fact nor in wish resolvable; when the antagonists come apart, when their enlivening agon and their invigorating agony ceases, it is only to mark a world-transformation and
a new polemical array. There is, in my reading, nothing else like
this in ontology—this ultimate clash of joyfully irreconcilable,
vividly assertive beings, held in their controlled confrontation by
the World-speaker, a Referee, the divine Logos himself: articulate
thinking in the service of a pervasively tensed cosmos.
Parmenides’s holism too is never again equaled in the western ontological tradition, as far as I know—though perhaps it has
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its negative counterpart in the Nirvana of the East. His Being
commands total submersion and ultimate silence. These are not
conditions much to the taste of actively thinking human beings
and so, in Plato’s greatest ontological dialogue, the Sophist
(241d), a sort of “parricide” is committed: Father Parmenides is
dialectically killed so that the Unity of Being may be penetrated
by Otherness, diversity of kinds established, gradations of beings
grounded, speaking and its negations recovered, the capacity to
tell truths and falsehoods regained and with it the ability to distinguish thoughtful human beings from pretenders, philosophers
from sophists.
So much for their shared extremism at opposite ends of the
ontological spectrum, Heraclitus at the remote end of terminal
discord, Parmenides at the far terminus of ultimate union.
Five: In my title-question, “Pre-Socratics or First Philosophers?” I suggest that these two men might have been philosophers. Well, I must now draw back, as I’ve already intimated, and
say instead: They were actually pre-philosophers. For though the
word philosophy was said to have been coined by Pythagoras for
his attachment to his arithmetical principles (D.-K. I 454, 35), I
think of philosophy in the Socratic sense: wisdom loved, as distinct from wisdom possessed. Heraclitus himself, a younger man
than the Pythagoras he despised, uses the word—he often borrows where he denigrates (40)—as an adjective. He says: “Wisdom-loving (philosophous, 35) men must inquire into a pretty
large lot of things.” (For “inquire” he uses the verb of the term
historia with which Herodotus starts his History.) That seeking
of information, now called “research,” is not, at least to Socrates,
the way of philosophy, which goes inward by way of recollection
to recover congenital knowledge rather than outward in a roving
search to find facts. Heraclitus doesn’t even use “wise,” sophos,
much of human capacities (118); his words are phronesis and
nous, discretion and intelligence—for him gifts of discrimination,
befitting the Logos and his manifold cosmos.
Parmenides doesn’t, in what we have, speak of wise men or
wisdom-loving at all, but rather he calls himself “the man who
knows” (eidota phota, 1), whom Truth has chosen “to find out
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all things” (panta pythesthai, 1). The others are “double-pated
know-nothings” (dikranoi, eidotes ouden) who think, indiscriminately, that “ever-to-be and not to be” are the same—or just that
“nothing is” (6).
Heraclitus and Parmenides are both men who alike think of
themselves as in the know, not conceitedly, as self-sufficient
discoverers, but proudly, as recipients of gifts from their respective divinities. Yet what they know is nearly antithetical: The
Whole is Many/One.
I’ll conclude, first with an observation about these great
Greeks—but perhaps not only them. It could be that many thinking Greeks and their successors adopted this mode because it both
suited their dispositions and their experiences, the mode namely
of complementary antithesis, of reciprocally necessary opposition. The Latinate languages help; for example, ob-ponere and
cum-ponere, “to oppose” and “to compose,” to confront and to
reconcile, are etymologically and semantically abutting notions.
A prime philosophical product of this way of seeing the world is
the old Pythagorean Table of Opposites (Aristotle, Metaphysics
I.5), among whose pairs are One/Many and Men/Women. An even
earlier example, a poetic case of such complementing opposition,
is presented by the Iliad and the Odyssey, each of which is the
other’s specific other: Short-lived Achilles/long-lived Odysseus,
confining camps/rovable seas, warring males/seductive demigoddesses, stark reality/vivid fantasy. Or, in the hybrid realm of
fictional hero and real-life initiate, there is the elderly hero
Odysseus “of many turns,” who has sailed all over the sea and
has known the towns of many men and the young, inexperienced
sage-to-be, Parmenides, who drives his chariot overland, straight
into the heart of a single truth; both tell of their journey to realms
beyond in epic hexameter.
So these two, Heraclitus and Parmenides, incarnate the oppositional mode—as it were, providentially—at the very beginning of articulate thinking and published thought: Heraclitus is
the teller of Manyness, of ultimately unresolvable, paradoxically
unifying antagonisms, Parmenides the voice of Oneness, of primordially unbreachable, speech-defying, seamless unity.
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This might be a good moment to ask an intriguing but essentially idle question: Why does the proponent of multiplicity
precede the adherent of unity chronologically, even if it is by a
little? Let me try a conjecture: I’m persuaded that thinking and
speaking can occur separately—people can think without speaking and speak without thinking—but all I’ve read tells me that
they develop conjointly. Now “infants,” meaning “speechless”
babies, who, soon after birth, can see pretty perfectly, who can
distinguish depths, discern bodies, notice identities, are still
“non-speakers” and probably only potentially thinkers, “not-yetthinkers.” In other words, the discernment of the senses precedes
the reflection of the intellect: Seeing precedes listening. Perhaps
philosophy recapitulates ontogeny, and our tradition of inquiry
into Being tracks our development as human beings. We can see
and distinguish the Manyness before we can think and say its
Oneness. Who knows?!
Were these two fathers superseded by their progeny? Were
they left behind in the progress of thinking, in the course of which
seers turned, via one true amateur, Socrates, into professionals
and revealed wisdom pivoted, by way of question-asking into
problem-solving? Were they voices crying in an uncultivated
wilderness, foretelling the anointed proficients? Were they primitive beginners—or never-again-equaled originators?
Hegel and Nietzsche had deep respect for them as forerunners; Heidegger, more radically, regards them as the bearers of
Being, our existence’s only true preoccupation, whose illuminations were dispersed and vaporized by subsequent professors
of philosophy. Their wisdom is to be brought back in an act of
re-petition (Wieder-holung) which is accomplished by the “destruction” (Destruktion), or, in the accepted mitigating translation, the “deconstruction” of the ontological tradition between
us and them (Being and Time, §6).
To me, Socrates, the pivot-point between the few Pre-Socratics and all the subsequent philosophers, seems to be the incarnate
answer to this Heideggerian extremism. The first philosophers
speak awe-inspiring but riddling truths, which demand mulling
over and questioning—enough for two-and-a-half millennia and
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then some. Their own natural awe, which still elicits ours, is earliest. The latest is Heidegger’s explicitly willful, that is, forcibly
disruptive, questioning and his insistence that philosophical questioning is about “extra-ordinary things” and is done by extra-ordinary people (Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 16, 10, 133), by
rare “authentic” existences impelled by ontological anxiety.
Between awe and anxious aggression stands Socratic question-asking in its modestly receptive, ironically knowing, faithborne openness. That, to me, makes him the game-changing
pivot-point, and rightly the name-bestowing epoch-maker.
Though deeply indebted to both Heraclitus and Parmenides, he
serves, in the Platonic dialogues, particularly in the Sophist, as
the instigator of equally deep inquiry into these Pre-Socratics’
great terms: Logos, Being, Nonbeing. And he also—critically—
anticipates his latest and, for the time being, last successor, Heidegger, in respect to questions and instigations. For Socratic
questions are not driven by will but drawn by love (Symposium
204e, Phaedrus 234c; both play on the homonymic features in
Greek of “love” [eros, gen. erotos] and “question” [erotesis].)
His occasions are not the extraordinary but the ordinary, and his
philosophizing is carried on in that self-confidently self-deprecating mode called eironeia in Greek, for which the translation
“irony” is not quite adequate: It means a dissembling modesty
that claims ignorance but intimates knowledge. This Socratic
irony, it seems to me, is the precise counterpart to a question. For
a question also claims ignorance—else, why would it be
asked?—and intimates knowledge—else, how could it recognize
its answer? (Meno 80d).
Let me finish by putting the same thought in a different way.
What is it that put Socrates between “Pre-” and “Post-”? Why is
he, in truth, a hinge, a cusp, a point-of-inflexion between
primeval awe and anxious willing? To be sure, it is a very asymmetric “pre” and “post”—half a century before, two-and-a-half
millennia after. Nonetheless, the nineteenth century name for the
subjects of our conference does put him at the center and declares
him a turning point. Why, really? Because he turns wisdom into
the love of wisdom (sophia/philosophia), by putting a question
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mark to reverent awe; awe with a question mark is “wonder”
(thauma), and, as he says: “This passion especially belongs to
the philosopher—wondering; for there is no other origin of philosophy than this” (Theaetetus 155d). I think that Socrates is
epochal because he undergirds truth-seeking with the motivefeeling of wonder, which is not an excludingly arcane anxiety,
but an inclusively ordinary capacity—that for a non-rapacious
arousal of interest. From that vantage point the question of my
title, “Pre-Socratics or First Philosophers?”, can be answered like
this: If the wonder-inciting knowledge of his own ignorance be
the philosopher’s mark, then Heraclitus and Parmenides, the initiates, were pre-philosophers, Pre-Socratics, not yet knowing ignorance.
But if they did come within hearing and within sight of what
is now and ever will be the concern of philosophy, namely, telling
Speech and stable Truth, and if they confidently announced what
the one heard and the other saw, they were indeed doubly first—
the first men to engage in First Philosophy and to launch it with
their antithetical principles: an active, discerning, world-governing Logos and a steadfast, translucent, world-constituting Being.
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Prefacing the Absolute
in Hegel’s Phenomenology
Andrew Davis
The power of Spirit is only as great
as its expression, its depth only as
deep as it dares to spread out and
lose itself in its exposition.1
Hegel’s preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit begins by stressing that there can be no preface to a system of philosophy. A system must be an immanent, self-moving and self-contained whole
and so it cannot be brought to completion through a preface or
an appendix of any kind. This seems simple enough. But Hegel
goes on to write a substantial preface. At sixty pages it is three
times the length of Kant’s already lengthy preface to the Critique
of Pure Reason. How, then, is Hegel’s preface related to the Phenomenology that follows it?
Hegel’s preface seems to move on from the problem of prefaces after a few pages but, on closer inspection, the problem with
prefaces proves thematic throughout Hegel’s own preface. Prefacing books is a species of another problem that Hegel, at one
point, calls “anticipating” the absolute (Werke 3:27; Miller, 13).
In what follows, I look at two ways of anticipating the absolute
that Hegel addresses in his preface: one concerns explanations
and the other concerns propositions. By considering the problems
these anticipations stir up, we can deepen and enliven our symAndrew Davis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Belmont University. This lecture was first delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland on 2 October 2015.
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenologie des Geistes, in Werke, Band 3
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969), 18. (Further references to the
Werke will be abbreviated noting the volume number followed by the
page number. For example, this reference would appear as Hegel, Werke
3:18.) The translation appears in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,
trans. A. W. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 6.
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pathies for the idea that opposes mere anticipations of the absolute: the idea of a system of philosophy, an idea has fallen on
hard times and could use our energetic reconsideration.
Part 1: The Problem with Explanations
Here is a translation of the preface’s first sentence that preserves
much of the word order of the origianal German:
An explanation, as is advanced, according to custom, in
the preface of a written work—concerning the purpose
[Zweck] that the author has intended, as well as the
causes of and the relation in which he believes it to stand
to earlier or contemporary treatments of the same object—, [such an explanation] appears, for a philosophical
work, to be not only superfluous but, given the nature of
the subject-matter, even inappropriate or contrapurposive
[zweckwidrig] (My translation, Werke 3:11; Miller, 1).
Hegel opens with the word most at issue here: “explanation” (Erklärung). The intermediate words of the sentence then
all bear on what kind of explanation a preface gives us until we
get to the end, where Hegel announces that the sort of explanation we expect in a preface seems to work against to the very
purpose of a philosophical book. Prefatory explanations to
philosophical works purport to reveal the purpose of the work
and run counter to the purpose at the same time.
Hegel takes advantage of the way that the German language
can suspend a thought in a single long sentence to invite the
reader into the expectation of a prefatory explanation before he
tells us at the end of the sentence that such explanation seems
unphilosophical, even anti-philosophical. This first sentence of
the preface is our first contact with the inversion of expectation
that becomes the Phenomenology’s stock in trade. The first dialectical movement of this book is to grasp philosophy, the
broad subject of the book, not through a positive definition but
as a negation: whatever philosophy is, it is not explanation of
the kind that appears in prefaces. Hegel’s preface begins to reveal something about the purpose of his book not by stating that
purpose but by negating the customary purpose of a preface,
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which is to explain the book. What, then, does Hegel mean by
explanation?
Explanation plays a decisive role in a later stage of the Phenomenology named “Force and the Understanding.” By turning
to look at what Hegel says about explanation there, we can better
see what is at stake in this first sentence.
A word of warning: I’m about to summarize what many consider the most challenging section of Hegel’s book in a paragraph.
Let’s begin with the play of forces, the reciprocal interchange between an active and a reactive force (Werke 3:113; Miller, 84).
This play is troubling because consciousness can’t keep straight
which force is active and which is reactive. You punch the wall,
but the wall punches back. To deal with this causal confusion,
we articulate this reciprocity as governed by a fixed law which
describes the movement of force but does not move itself (Werke
3:120; Miller, 90). Newton’s third law is always the same and always true of the events for which it is a law. What Newton’s third
law describes may be disconcerting to us (that all force will be
met with equal and opposite force) but by codifying our confusion, we feign understanding. The restlessness of the force is not
so easily subdued, however, and a second inverse law appears as
an equally good candidate for describing our confusion. This is
what Hegel calls “the inverted world” (Werke 3:128; Miller, 96).
The resolution of these twinned worlds of law and anti-law occurs when both are grasped together as what Hegel calls, “infinity” by which he means self-relation.2 We now grasp movement
not as an effect of confusing forces of electrity or magnetism or
gravity, but as self-motion, as the self-unfolding of life.
Hegel reminds us at the moment he reveals infinity or selfrelation as the truth of forces and their laws (Werke 3:133; Miller,
101), that the play of force was translated not just into a fixed
2. Hegel calls the infinite “the absolute unrest of pure self-moving [Sichselbstbewegens]” (Werke 3:133; Miller, 101). The equivalence of the
true infinite and self-relation is made more explicit in the treatment of
infinity as the result of the self-negation of the finite in the Science of
Logic and Encyclopedia Logic (e.g., Encyclopedia Logic, §96A).
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law but into an explanation, which itself is a “movement of the
Understanding” (Werke 3:126; Miller, 95). When we explain
something, we translate the movements of the outer world into
the movements of our inner world. What is notable about the development toward explanation here is that movement will out;
all attempts to supress movement or fix terms in place fail. Fixed
laws require application in explanations because explanations
mirror the movement of force but allow consciousness to own
the movement and so not to feel alienated by it. We now replace
the inner motion within the thing observed (which proved unthinkable to the understanding) with the motion of desire within
ourselves. We discover self-motion not in the thing but in ourselves. Yet the transition from law to explanation reveals even
more. It indicates that the so-called objective world is not best
understood through wholly objective terms. Laws are constantly
in danger of becoming meaningless abstractions unless they are
taken up into explanations. But explanations prove tautological.
The explanation does not preserve a distinction between force
and law. An explanation of lightning explains it by saying it is
an instance of the law of electicity (Werke 3:124; Miller, 94), and
justifies the law of electricity by saying that it is what explains
lightning. Explanation does not provide satisfaction by deepening
our understanding of nature. Instead, Hegel says, it satisfies us
for another reason:
The reason why explaining affords so much self-satisfaction is just because in it consciosuness is, so to speak,
communing directly with itself, enjoying only itself; although it seems to be busy with something else, it is in
fact occupied only with itself (Werke 3:133; Miller, 101).
Explanation shows the understanding that its interest lies
more in itself than in the thing explained. After all, it is not for
the sake of the magnet that we explain magnetism. An explanation is a translation of immediate perception into reflective subjectivity. Subjective awareness, we later learn, is characterized
by desire: “Self-consciousness is desire in general” (Werke 3:139;
Miller, 105). While the objective consciousness believed itself to
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be standing back from and not influencing what it observed, in
the stage of self-consciousness, the object is actively pursued in
order to be consumed, enslaved, worked upon, intellectually nullified or otherwise transformed to fit into the world as desired by
the self-consciousness.
Explanation, it turns out, is the pivot between observation
and desire, between consciousness and self-consciousness. Hegel
writes: “The Understanding’s explanation is primarily only a description of what self-consciousness is” (Werke: 3:133; Miller,
101). If self-consciousness is desire, then an explanation is “primarily only” a description of desire. And this is why it satisfies
us, because in the explanation we remake the event of force in
our own image, in the image of desire. The explanation does not
take us deeper into nature’s secret self, but deeper into our own
plans. If we consider the scientific program outlined by Francis
Bacon, we can see that it is explicitly aimed at power, at utility,
at manifesting desires. Bacon writes in the New Organon:
“Human knowledge and human power come to the same thing,
because ignorance of cause frustrates effect. For Nature is conquered only by obedience; and that which in thought is a cause,
is like a rule in practice” (New Organon I.3).3 For Bacon, the scientist does not observe the world simply, but explains the world.
Bacon says we only give an account of cause for the sake of practice. We explain the natural world in relation to human desire.
We can now return to the preface to apply what we have discovered about the relationship between explanation and desire.
In the preface, explanation plays a different but complimentary
3. Francis Bacon, New Organon in Selected Philosophical Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). What Bacon calls “human knowledge” here
is what Hegel calls explanation. For Hegel, true Knowing, das Wissen,
and its production, die Wissenschaft, Science, is something more than
the manifestation of desire. To borrow a formulation from Hegel’s favorite philosopher, Aristotle, Science is “desire fused with thinking.”
(Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA:
Focus, 2002) 1139b7.) Hegelian Science aims at the education of desire
through systematic recollection.
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role, it is what a literate audience expects from a dutiful author.
Prefaces, Hegel tells us, should explain why the author “wrote
the book” and how the book relates to other books past or present
“on the same subject.” A preface should give us just what we
need to know in order to use the book. Scientific explanations instrumentalize nature. Prefaces instrumentalize books. Both outline their subject-matter in seemingly objective language that
runs cover for subjective purposes.
Philosophical prefaces take what might otherwise be ownerless arguments and explain them, that is, they translate them into
the language of self-consciousness, the language of desire. The
customary preface frames the book with a candid statement by the
author that should translate her thinking from the terms of the field
of inquiry into the more subjective terms of her own intellectual
biography and the particular historical circumstances surrounding
it. The generally accepted opinion is that a preface should appeal
to a broad audience and make philosophical thinking more accessible. But Hegel argues it does just the opposite. Hegel writes:
Demanding and supplying these explanations passes readily enough as a concern with what is essential. Where
could the inner meaning of a philosophical work find
fuller expression than in its purposes [Zwecken] and results and how could these be more exactly known than by
distinguishing them from everything else the age brings
forth in this sphere? Yet when this acivity is taken for
more than the beginnings of cognition, when it is allowed
to pass for actual cognition, then it should be reckoned as
no more than a device for evading the real issue [die
Sache selbst], a way of creating an impression of hard
work and serious commitment to the problem, while actually sparing oneself of both (Werke 3:12-13; Miller, 2).
Hegel’s complaint here might seem unfair. Who has ever suggested that a preface was more than a beginning of cognition
(erkennen)? The preface is supposed to ease us in to the book,
not replace it. Is Hegel arguing that providing an explanation of
the purpose and circumstances of the book at the start actually
makes any further philosophical thinking impossible?
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If he is arguing this, then it is yet more strange that Hegel remarks in paragraph 16 that he will now give us a sketch of the
purpose of his book and distinguish his method from other ways
of doing philosophy. After pages of polemics against prefaces
and the culture that prefers them to the hard work of reading
whole books, Hegel seems to have gotten the venom out of his
system. He seems to reconcile himself to writing something like
the traditional preface he is criticizing, but this is only an appearance.4 I decided to translate this passage myself to try to capture
just how tentative Hegel’s language here is:
Considering that pointing toward a general picture
[Vorstellung], before any attempt at an exposition, makes
the latter easier to grasp, it is useful to hint at an approximation of [the exposition], at the same time taking the
opportunity to distance [the exposition] from certain
forms [of thought] whose habitual [use] is a hindrance
for philosophical knowing (My translation, Werke 3:22;
Miller, 9).5
If we look closely, Hegel avoids, above all, describing his
endeavor as an “explanation” and chooses instead to call it
“pointing toward a general picture” and “hinting at an approximation.” He does not suggest that the preface is a clarification
or that it is more clear than the exposition it prefaces. He emphasizes instead that it is more general and more rough. Hegel
admits that some preliminary sketch of a project may serve the
reader, and that distancing his approach from some other ap4. Miller, by translating Vorstellung as idea and also interposing a second idea from das Ungefähre, loads this sentence with one of the most
important words in the Hegelian lexicon—idea—which Hegel himself
uses consciously and systematically.
5. In der Rücksicht, daß die allgemeine Vorstellung, wenn sie dem, was
ein Versuch ihrer Ausführung ist, vorangeht, das Auffassen der letzteren
erleichtert, ist es dienlich, das Ungefähre derselben hier anzudeuten, in
der Absicht zugleich, bei dieser Gelegenheit einige Formen zu entfernen,
deren Gewohnheit ein Hindernis für das philosophische Erkennen ist.
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proaches may also serve the reader. The former is what replaces
the customary account of the author’s aim and the latter is what
replaces a historical account of other works in the field. What
Hegel says he will give us is more tentative, less personal and
less historical than the usual preface author’s statement of aims,
results and contexts. We learn nothing determinate about what
other books, past and present, this book intersects with and we
learn nothing of Hegel’s own Aha! experience that led to the
writing of this book.
If paragraphs 1 through 15 compile a series of problems with
the culture of prefaces, then paragraphs 16 through 37 give us a
sketch of the aim of Hegel’s book.6 Hegel, with a nod to the typically subjective mode of the preface, even begins paragraph 17
with a clear, first person claim: “In my view which can be justified only by the exposition of the system itself, everything turns
on grasping and expressing the true not only as substance, but
equally as subject” (Werke 3:22-23; Miller, 9-10).
I know of no other place where Hegel uses this construction
“according to my view.” Hegel presents the system here as if it
were his system, not simply the system. Normally, Hegel avoids
this. Hegel’s own personal view is not the issue. In the Phenomenology, for example, the perspective shifts back and forth between how things look to the moment of consciousness under
consideration and then how they look from the point of view of
the so-called Phenomenological Observer who stands at the end
and looks back, recollecting the shapes of knowing in relation
6. The paragraphs from 38 to 67, describe the “formal” (mathematical
and logical) methods from which Hegel distances his own method.
Paragraphs 38 to 52 deal in large part with “mathematical cognition”
as a paradigm for philosophy and paragraphs 53 to 67 deal with the sort
of argumentation common to the analytic understanding as the paradigm
for philosophy. Throughout, Hegel reiterates that his method is the “selfmovement of the Concept.” In the end (from paragraph 68 to 72), Hegel
returns to a consideration of the common sense view that demands prefaces and contrasts it with the universality of knowledge made possible
by a true system of philosophy.
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to each other.7 Neither of these positions are supposed to be
Hegel’s own.
Yet here in the preface, Hegel gives us a strange double
speak: it is his view (the word is Einsicht—literally, “insight”) it
is his insight but it can only be justified by the presentation itself,
not his assurances. I take Hegel to make himself appear right at
this moment in order to more fully sublimate himself to the work.
His view is that his view isn’t important. His insight is that the
thinking of the book must stand on its own. There is good precedent for this position, of course, Heraclitus begins one of his fragments “Listening not to me but to the Logos,” (Hermann Diels
and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. [Zurich:
Weidmann, 1985] B50), and Socrates issues a similar reminder
regularly; for example, in the Phaedo he says, “give little thought
to Socrates and much more to the truth” (Phaedo 91C).
Hegel’s preface, just when it seems to drop its critique of
prefaces and offer its own summary of aims, actually deepens the
attack. Hegel begins to expose the conceptual problem to which
the prefacing of books belongs: the problem of anticipating the
absolute. Anticipating the absolute avoids an encounter with the
Sache selbst, the real issue. The real issue here is not appearances
or material underlying apperances or even fixed intellectual
essences or forms, but movement, development, the meaningful
movements that reveal the wholeness of things. Anticipations are
fixed images, not the live unfolding of the subject mattter itself
on its own terms.
Part 2: The Problem with Propositions
Hegel argues in paragraph 23 that just as truth cannot be presented in a preface, it cannot even be expressed in ordinary sentences and propositions. Hegel begins paragraph 23 remarking
7. It is worth noting that this widely-used term “Phenomenological Observer” is not Hegel’s own but derives (as far as I can tell) from Findlay’s
commentary on the Phenomenology (cf. Miller, 507). Hegel himself signals the shift in perspective throughout his book with the first person
plural pronoun “we” or prepositional phrase “to us.”
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that the need to represent the absolute as subject has found expression in the following sentences: “God is the eternal, God is
the moral world order, God is love, and so on” (Werke 3:26;
Miller, 12). Before we get the details of the argument, Hegel’s
tone communicates a great deal. He rehearses several potent theological propositions in quick succession followed by “and so
on.” Hegel draws our attention to the fact that these are merely
words, words and more words, however hallowed their supposed
referents. Soon he will remind us that without a predicate, the
word “God” is “just meaningless sound” (Werke 3:27, Miller, 13).
Even the word “God” must get content from a predicate like
“eternal” or “love.” But then, if God gets all content and meaning
from the predicate, why not simply give the predicates without the
name, the meaningless sound? Hegel says this is what ancient
philosophers did with claims like “Being is” or “The One is.” The
reason this is not preferable, Hegel argues, is because here we have
no subject, no element of the sentence that is “reflected into itself.”
“Being is” leaves open the question of how being is, because it
leaves open the question of how being is related to itself such that
it can be at all. The predicate gives the content of the judgment, it
tells us what the judgment is, but the subject gives the judgment
form, it tells us how or in what way the content is. The content
“red” may be said equally of an imaginary unicorn, or a sensible
rubber ball or a rationally grasped living animal. In each case, the
redness has a different sort of being, it is in a different way.
Here a subject is not an individual or person, but rather what
makes a person a person—that is, “subject” names a kind of selfrelation. To give only the substance “Being” without the subject
“God” leaves a subject implied but outside consideration. This is
effectively what statements in mathematical physics do when they
give accounts of substance without any account of subject. What
kind of subject is “the universe” such that it can relate itself to itself
according to electron charges or gravity? The universe is not considered to be a subject, it is not self-aware or self-relating, not reflected into self. Nor is “Being” just as such. In both cases we are
merely describing indifferent elements alongside one another with
no inner life. As a result, God still lurks as the unstated ultimate
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subject, the way that the content relates to itself, how the content
has being at all.
“God is eternal,” on the other hand, manages to make a statement that reflects content (eternal) into a subject (God). This
seems to be substance becoming subject. But it is not. Hegel reminds us:
The subject is assumed as a fixed point to which, as support, the predicates are affixed by a movement belonging
sto the knower of this subject, and which is not regarded
as belonging to the fixed point itself; yet it is only
through this movement that the content could be represented as subject (Werke 3:27; Miller, 13).
The named subject, God, has been assumed as a fixed point
and the movement by which it acquires its content (eternity) belongs to “the knower” of the name. That is, the movement belongs the person who utters the sentence. The problem with
sentences, taken singly, is that the words in them must have fixed
designations to function. “Bring me the hammer” only “works”
if “hammer” is fixed enough to mean the tool I need. We have
pragmatic reasons for fixing the meaning of subjects and predicates in sentences. Yet if “God” is taken as a fixed point, then in
what way am I attributing eternity to God? That is a question for
you to ask me, not God. “God is eternal”, when I say it, is a statement of mine, not God’s. You ask me, what do you mean by eternal and I say “uncreated” or “having endless duration” or
“perpetual presence.” At any rate, the movement of knowing described in my sentence is my imposition, not the self-movement
of the grammatical subject, God. Ordinary language and predicate logic reflect only the subjective movement of knowers making connections, not the inner connections within the things
known. Again, this is perfectly acceptable for sentences like
“bring me the hammer.” But not for “God is Eternal.” With that
sentence, we meant to do something different. We meant to describe truth, not just the way things appear to us.
In a similar fashion to how God seemed to be lurking as the
hidden subject of the sentence “The universe is fourteen billion
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years old,” we discover that the ego, the “I,” is the hidden subject
of the sentence “God is eternal.” Sentences, taken as assertions
or propositions, foreground not the subject as such, self-relation,
but the finite subjectivity of the speaker.
Hegel tells us at the end of paragraph 23 that the proposition
offers, at best, an “anticipation” of the absolute. This may be obvious. Who claims that single sentences express the nature of
God or Being or the Absolute? But the problem of sentences like
“God is eternal” goes deeper:
This mere anticipation that the Absolute is Subject is not
only not the actuality of this concept, it makes this [actuality] impossible; for it sets [the subject] as a fixed
point, when it is self-movement (Werke 3:27; Miller, 13).
Sentences not only fail to capture the self-relation of self-relating beings, they cover this actuality over with an illusion of
fixed categorial stability. Hearkening to the grammar of sentences
we would never catch sight of the absolute.
So we have a problem: the ordinary way language functions
is too fixed, too rigid, to mirror the self-moving soul, self-moving
nature or a self-moving God. We cannot fix this problem with
new names or new definitions or new observations about the
properties of matter. Philosophical analysis of language and research in the physical sciences, two popular models for discovering truth in the 20th century, are both barred from truth
methodologically, according to Hegel, because they have no
method by which to realize the self-movement of the Concept.
Both rely, in fact, on the now common ontological assumption
that everything remains at rest until something else moves it.8 As
a result, the terms and objects we describe lie indifferently along
side one another and lack the account of self-movement that
would link them together.
The point of these remarks on the subjectivity of propositions
becomes clear in the following paragraph. Hegel begins:
8. See Hobbes (Leviathan, Chap. ii) for a clear formulation of this position.
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Among the various consequences that follow from what
has just been said, this one in particular can be stressed,
that knowlege is only actual, and can only be expounded,
as Science or as system; and furthermore, that a so-called
basic proposition or principle of philosophy, if true is also
false, just because it is only a principle (Werke 3:27;
Miller, 13).
The remedy to the conceptual rigor mortis imposed by anticipations of the absolute in propositions is what Hegel calls “system.” In a system, the system itself becomes the subject instead
of the speaker or writer. I think we are familiar with this from
reading books. When one reads, the book as a whole is the measure of each sentence, the testing ground of each claim. Neither
our own personal preferences nor those of the author are to be
privileged over the work taken as a whole. This, we might say, is
systematic or scientific reading in Hegel’s sense of those terms.
Our trust is not in individual words, propositions, intentions, mental states, discourses or deep grammars, but rather in the method
that self-organizes into a whole, what Hegel, elsewhere in the
preface, calls “the self-moving Concept” or “the labor of the negative.” Truth is not an attribute of sentences but of method.
In paragraph 61 of the Preface, Hegel notes that philosophy
is so difficult to read because philosophical speech does not fix
the meaning of terms in place like ordinary, pragmatic speech
does. Some find this pretentious or intentionally obscure, but
Hegel insists that it is a necessary consequence of writing that
tries to reflect the movement of thinking itself. Thinking is much
more mobile than ordinary language conveys. Philosophical sentences (including what Hegel calls “speculative” propositions)
encourage a “floating center” of meaning that Hegel compares
to the rhythm that emerges from the conflict between accent and
meter found in reading lines of classical poetry.9
9. In paragraph 62, Hegel gives two examples of speculative propositions: “God is being” and “the actual is the universal.” In each of these,
the predicate is a self-relating subject in its own right. Predicates usually
give determinacy. A second subject in the predicate position produces
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To read Hegel we accustom ourselves to the rhythm of thinking instead of passing judgment on each and every statement in
isolation. We cannot make substance subject through a subjective
connection (as langauge and logic suggest). Substance must become subject through itself, not just for us. When we read a book,
the meaning of the whole emerges from the movement of the
book’s parts. We can assert a connection between any two parts,
but the whole might suggest another arrangement.
Prefatory explanations seem to introduce us to a work but
they actually hold us apart from it. Propositions seem to allow
us to describe the qualities and characteristics of the absolute but
actually obscure the absolute from view. Neither prefaces nor
sentences qualify as presentations of truth. This is why we need
a system. A system is not some rigid architectonic imposed from
outside, that is what Hegel calls “formalism” and argues against
throughout most of the preface. System in Hegel’s sense is nothing but self-relating method and this is perhaps best understood
as analogous to the growth and development of a living organism.
System is the complete self-elaboration of something as it runs
through the whole course of its own movement. For Hegel, the
System is self-completing, it is thinking thinking itself.
Conclusion: The Need for System
By the end of the preface, Hegel’s doubts about prefaces return.
In paragraph 70 he describes the average, common sense reader
who “in order to keep up with the times, and with advances in
philosophy” reads reviews and prefaces and first paragraphs of
new philosophical books. He follows this by insisting that
[t]rue thoughts and scientific insight are only to be won
through the labor of the Concept. Only the Concept can
an expansion of thinking and a dizzying effect. Instead of contending
with one subject in need of determinacy, we now have two reciprocally
mobile subjects, each orbiting around the other in turn. The two subjects
illuminate one another not by placing new determinate limits (as a predicate might) but rather by negating the conventional limits present in
normal usage of each subject. Thus philosophical writing has to “be read
over and over before it can be understood” (Werke 3:60; Miller, 39).
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produce the universality of knowledge [die Allgemenheit
des Wissens] which is neither common vagueness nor the
inadequacy of ordinary common sense but a fully developed, perfected knowing; not the uncommon universality
of a reason whose talents have been ruined by indolence
and the conceit of genius, but a truth ripened to its properly matured form so as to be capable of being the property of all self-conscious Reason (Werke 3:65; Miller, 43).
This passage reveals Hegel’s hope for his new work, the Phenomenology of Spirit. He hopes that this book, by introducing us
to thinking’s self-development, to the labor of the self-moving
Concept, will inaugurate the universality of knowledge. “Universality” here translates the German word Allgemeinheit, which literally means “all-togetherness” and calls to mind both the
all-togetherness of the things known and the all-togethernness of
the knowers that know them. This universal knoweldge to be
shared by all human beings is not the lowest common denominator, it is not a truth so vague and prosaic that everyone can
agree to it, nor is it the universality of an abstraction derived by
one person of genius and accepted on authority by others.
For Hegel, the turn toward science, system and philosophy
is a turn away from a private sort of thinking on offer in prefaces,
explanations and propositions. Philosophy turns away from these
and toward the act of thinking itself, the rhythm of thinking that
we all experience. Hegel argues that such a thinking held in common can only be the product of the self-elaboration of thinking,
thinking unfolding itself on its own terms. This amounts to losing
ourselves in thinking itself which will turn out to be our innermost self, though at first it feels like we are abandoning the self
we know. This means that to raise ourselves to the universality
of knowledge, we must, as Hegel says, “lose ourselves in the exposition” (Werke 3:18; Miller, 6).
Hegel contrasts this self-discovery through self-loss with the
prefatory explanation, which “grasps after an Other yet remains
much more preoccupied with itself” (My translation, Werke 3:13;
Miller, 3). Prefaces offer a poignant example of writing that
seems to make knowledge common or universal, but really does
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the opposite. Prefaces turn truth into a subjective possession of
the author. The truth of their work is recast in the contingent
terms of their personal aims and historical context. This is the
ironic reversal of explanation that recurs in “Force and the Understanding.” Explanations appear to be about something else,
but are really narcissistic affairs.
The view Hegel opposes here can be found in many of his
contemporaries. As Schelling puts it in the fifth of the Philosophical Letters,
Every system bears the stamp of individuality on the face
of it because no system can be completed otherwise than
practically, that is, subjectively. The more closely a philosophy approaches its system, the more essentially freedom and individuality partake of it and the less it can
claim universal validity [Allgemeingültigkeit].10
This, Schelling goes on to say, is why there will always be
conflict between multiple opposed systems of dogmatism and criticism and why no system of philosophy will ever be complete.
Hegel might agree that this assertion of subjectivity can indeed be seen in philosophical writings, but to attend to it over the
argument is to miss the common activity of thinking that brings
us together with each other and with the thinkers of the past.
In a lecture on Schelling’s philosophy given in 1826, Hegel
remarks that
[s]ince the presupposition of philosophy [for Schelling] is
that the subject has an immediate intuition of this identity
of the subjective and the objective, philosophy thus appears
as an artistic talent or genius in individuals that comes only
to “Sunday’s children.” By its very nature, however, philosophy can become universal, for its soil is thinking, the universal, and that is the very thing that makes us all human.11
10. F. W. J. Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, trans.
Fritz Marti (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980), 170-71, and
the statement in the following paragraph appears on page 172.
11. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. 3, trans.
Robert F. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 260-61.
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This recalls us to paragraph 70 in the preface to the Phenomenology where Hegel has opposed philosophy as genius
with philosophy as the universality of knowledge. For Hegel, a
properly immanent philosophical system does not, as Schelling
argues, “bear the stamp of individuality.” Isolated propositions
do, prefaces do, explanations do, but a system is precisely the
form of expression that no longer bears the stamp of individuality. A system turns us toward the activity of development itself,
not its intermittent results. As adults we differ in many ways but
we share a common developmental path of growth in body and
soul from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood that
points toward a single activity of self-unfolding human being.
For example, height may differ from person to person, but that
we grow taller and at some point stop, this is something we all
share. Hegel is not claiming that all opinions will be shared in
some utopia of same-mindedness, but rather that the philosophical system aims to make access to knowing universal, that is, it
makes access to speculative or philosophical thinking universal.
Because it begins with what is immediate and proceeds step by
step (or negation by negation), Hegel’s system demands not talent, not genius, but patience. By contrast, anticipations of the
absolute appeal to our laziness and keep philosophy proper as a
guarded activity for the few.
In Plato’s Meno, Meno gets frustrated. He accuses Socrates
of paralyzing him and then he tries to paralyze Socrates. He asserts that if we don’t know something already, we won’t recognize it even if we do stumble across it. Meno assumes, of course,
that the soul is not immortal and does not know all things already.
As a result, knowledge should become impossible. This impasse
contains the seed of recollection within it, but what Meno has in
mind is a kind of learning that, to use Schelling’s words, always
“bears the stamp of individuality.” What Meno has in mind is not
knowledge, but opinion.
In a similar fashion, Hegel indicates that a need for prefaces
casts doubt upon the possibility of knowledge as such, because
this need suggests that all learning requires personal and historical qualifiers. Accordingly, philosophy becomes “unconscious
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memoir” to use Nietzsche’s words.12 Hegel’s response is that we
need a self-unfolding system. While this may sound imposing
and abstract, what he has in mind is not far from what Socrates
proposes to Meno. Socrates even hints at the possiblity of the
universality of knowledge, just as Hegel does, when he says to
Meno:
For, nature as a whole being akin [syngenous] and the
soul having learned all things, nothing prevents someone,
once he has recollected just one thing—what human beings call “learning”—to discover all else if he is courageous and doesn’t grow weary in the search (Meno 81d).
According to Hegel, we need a system of philosophy because
without it our thinking falls on narcissistic habits, it becomes too
self-involved to be self-expressing. We need a system of philosophy because we need confidence in a whole that will gather up
all the movements of thinking so that we can engage thinking
courageously, even when we seem to be making mistakes. We
need a system of philosophy so that truth isn’t measured by each
proposition or by each person in a different way and so that each
of us has a fair shot at knowing something together in common.
Hegel’s preface exposes the tendancies that seem to advance universal knowledge but actually incline us against the common pursuit of truth.
12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman
(New York: Vintage, 1989), §6: “Gradually it has become clear to me
what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.”
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Alcibiades’s Image of Socrates
in the Symposium
Alan Pichanick
The problem of akrasia is manifested in a famously perplexing
report from Alcibiades, who in describing his conversations with
Socrates presents a phenomenon that we have difficulty accounting for: he claims that when he converses with Socrates he is persuaded that Socrates is right, but that once he leaves his presence
he returns to his old ways of life that Socrates had questioned.
Alcibiades exemplifies the weakness of will (or lack of control)
to listen to what one knows to be rationally defensible, to accept
what is true and good, and to follow it in one’s life. It is odd that
we see human beings do this, even (or especially?) when it is ourselves. In this essay, I would like to explore why Plato uses this
particular character, Alcibiades, to describe this phenomenon in
the Symposium. I would like to claim that an investigation into
the akrasia of Alcibiades is necessary in order to understand Socratic philosophy itself.
Alcibiades is first of all a disrupter. He drunkenly enters a
party where the participants had agreed not to drink while saying
their praises to the divine Eros. Nor does he end up giving a
speech glorifying Eros, as the other participants have done. It is
rumored that he comes to the party having just committed a great
act of profanation of what the city holds most sacred. This
should remind us that the party itself is taking place against the
background of the Peloponnesian War and Alcibiades had a less
than wholesome role as a leader of the Athenians. Alcibiades
changed sides, more than once, and was instrumental before that
Alan Pichanick teaches in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program
at Villanova University. This lecture was first delivered to the Society for
Ancient Greek Philosophy at Fordham University in October, 2010.
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in persuading the crowd of Athens to undertake the disastrous
venture to Sicily. Thucydides claims they had an overwhelming
eros for this expedition. One might go so far as to say that they
were drunk on their own ambition.
The drunk man thus enters and is led by those present to sit
between Socrates and Agathon. Earlier Socrates had said that
Dionysus, the god of wine, would be the judge “between” him
and Agathon. Perhaps it is this drunken man, sitting between
Socrates and Agathon, who stands in for Dionysus himself. Alcibiades is so drunk that he does not at first see Socrates. Then
when he does see him, he is surprised to see Socrates seated there.
Socrates should be sitting by Aristophanes, according to Alcibiades. All of this is strange, and yet it is not without a sense that
hopefully will become clear.
It is Socrates who claims to be a lover of Alcibiades first
(213c-d), prompting us, the readers, to ask who is the lover of
whom. But it is Alcibiades who is next in line in the speaking
order due to the newly disrupted seating arrangement. He claims
that he simply cannot give a speech in praise of Eros in the presence of Socrates, for Socrates would not tolerate any human
being or god being praised while he is around (214c-d). This of
course would be great hubris, which quickly becomes the theme
of Alcibiades’s ensuing remarks. But why does Alcibiades see
such hubris in Socrates? Doesn’t such a statement contradict what
we readers have seen in the dialogue prior to Alcibiades’s arrival?
Have we not seen Socrates listen to several other speeches before
Alcibiades showed up? So we must ask: where is Socrates’s
hubris manifested? Socrates doesn’t disagree, but tells Alcibiades
only to keep quiet about what he just said. Alcibiades claims, several times, that he will tell the truth and this is the very purpose
of his “images”, though he admits he is drunk. The drunken man
is at least one paradigmatic instance of the akratic man, in opposition to the moderate (sophron) man. So perhaps the truth we
should be interested in concerns what Alcibiades says and shows
about his own soul.
But with that, Alcibiades’s speech about Socrates begins,
making two comparisons between Socrates and the statues of
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Silenus and between Socrates and the satyr Marsyas. The first
one is as follows:
I say that he is very like a statue of Silenus you see sitting
in the statue shops, the ones the craftsmen make with
pipes or an aulos in their hands, and when you open them
up they are shown to have images of the gods inside
(215a-c).
This first image—the statue of Silenus—is very, very strange.
Of course it highlights the ugly outside of Socrates that hides
Socrates’s interior, an interior that Alcibiades has somehow
glimpsed. Silenus statues were odd—think of a balding man with
a snub nose and bulging eyes; now add ears, tails, and hooves of
horses, and give him an erection. (One can see why Alcibiades
might say that we think he is out for laughs rather than truth.)
But additionally, these strange creatures are supposedly lustful
and follow Dionysus around.
There is also something odd about Alcibiades’s very use of
an image of a statue. Statues are themselves images, not originals. So the image he is describing is about images that point to
something else. But on top of that, the exterior of this image—
the statue of Silenus—is not the end of the story. There is an interior to this statue—this image—which holds “Images (!) of
gods”. Alcibiades thus presents an image describing an image
containing images! Later on, Alcibiades will say that not only
Socrates, but Socrates’s speeches are like these statues of Silenus.
But by now we should be wondering if Alcibiades’s own speech
is similar to these statues of Silenus. What is the exterior of his
speech? What happens when we open it: what are the images
within? And, most importantly, does Alcibiades himself know
what his own images within point to?
The first image does not sit by itself, however. The second
image, a comparison to Marsyas, highlights three elements, a
comparison in form, flute playing, and hubris:
And I say that he is like the satyr Marsyas. Now I don’t
suppose, Socrates, that you yourself would dispute that
you are like them in form. As for how you are like them
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in other respects too, listen to what’s next. You are
hubristic. Or aren’t you? If you don’t agree, I will provide
witnesses. Well aren’t you an aulos player? And a far
more amazing one than Marsyas. For he enchants people
with an instrument, through the power of his mouth . . .
his music, whether a good aulos player plays it or some
no good-aulos girl, it alone makes the audience possessed, and makes clear which of them have need of the
gods and of initiation rites, for it is divine. But you so far
surpass him that you do the same thing without an instrument, with words alone (215b-d).
The element I would like to highlight in Alcibiades’s image
he presents here is the connection he must perceive between
Socrates’s hubris and Socrates’s aulos playing, the analogue for
Socrates’s words and the effect they have on listeners.
Socrates’s speeches have a powerful hold on Alcibiades. They
are enchanting, possessing, stunning, and divine. Not only that,
Socrates’s power is greater than the satyr’s. He needs no instrument to accomplish his divine enchantment of his listeners. His
is accomplished by his human power of speech alone. If this
was not hubristic enough, one might suppose, it is Socrates’s
speeches, to the exclusion of all other speeches—Alcibiades
claims—that informs one who is in need of the gods. Are the
claims in this speech not merely charges of hubris, but charges
of impiety, compatible with the charges that Socrates faces
when he is on trial for his life? Yet these very charges are being
launched against Socrates by a man whose guilt in the Apology
he shared by association. That is, it should strike us as odd that
in the Symposium we see Alcibiades—of all people—attack
Socrates for anything that resembles impiety. It is at this point
that we are compelled to ask how Socrates can be defended
against this charge. And how does Alcibiades’s future career
not implicate Socrates? What in the Symposium answers this
question?
I think it is no coincidence that it is this speech of Alcibiades, regarding the power of Socrates’s words, that leads finally
to his confession of his akrasia:
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Even now I know myself that if I were willing to listen,
I’d not be able to tough it out, but the same thing would
happen to me. For he forces me to agree that though I
am very much wanting I still do not take care of myself
but instead manage the affairs of the Athenians. So I
force myself to plug my ears and run away from him, as
from the Sirens, so I do net end up growing old sitting
there at his side.
And he’s the only person before whom I’ve experienced something one would think I didn’t have in me:
being at all ashamed. He is the only one who has ever
made me feel ashamed. For I admit that I am unable to
argue that it is not necessary to do what he bids me to do.
But whenever I leave him, I am overcome by the honor
which comes from the many. So I go on the run and flee
him, and when I see him, I am ashamed because of the
things I’d agreed with him. There have been many times
when I would have been glad to no longer see him among
the living, but if this were to happen, I know well that
I’d be far more upset. So I just don’t know what to do
with this man (216a-c).
Alcibiades cannot live up to what he “knows” is right. If
the popular conception of akrasia were correct, we would say
that when Alcibiades leaves Socrates’s presence he is overcome by pleasures. But this can’t be right, according to
Socrates in the Protagoras. Alcibiades himself doesn’t seem to
be couching the problem in pleasure language either. It is honor
that pulls him away from what he knows. And it is shame in
Socrates’s presence that brings him back to himself again. If
indeed we want to compare the pleasures associated with pursuing honor from others and pursuing sex, then we must ask
how to compare the desires associated with them—sexual desire and desire for recognition or desire for power, for example.
This attention to kinds of desires might necessitate a division
of the soul, similar to what is carried out in Book III of the Republic and in the Phaedrus. In the Symposium, the very first
speech given at the party, by Phaedrus, placed great emphasis
on feeling shame before one’s beloved. So perhaps we see Al-
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cibiades here enacting the very first insight that is given to us
by the very first speechmaker.
Although it is Socrates who claims to be the lover of Alcibiades first, if Phaedrus is right, it is clearly Alcibiades who is
madly, exclusively in love with Socrates. Notice how this fits
with the language of force and compulsion that Alcibiades uses
in his speech confessing his akrasia: “if I were willing,” “I’d not
be able,” “he forces me,” “I force myself,” and of course “I am
overcome.” Who else but Socrates has achieved this mastery over
Alcibiades? But notice—and this I think is what Phaedrus does
not see, among other things, in his account—how self-aware Alcibiades seems in his description of his own experience, his own
psychic conflict.
Alcibiades claims to know what the right course of action
is. But he also knows himself that he can’t stick to it, and knows
what the result will be emotionally when he talks with Socrates
again. Yet that doesn’t deter him from his old way of life: his
ambition is simply too strong. Alcibiades is thus interesting to
us because he has (some) self-knowledge and knowledge of others, but rather than being combined with a desire for pleasure, it
is combined with a desire for honor that brings about his akratic
state. The primary players that have now emerged are selfknowledge and ambition and their conjunction in the akrasia of
Alcibiades. If we continue with Alcibiades’s speech, we see that
Socrates himself—his self-knowledge and his hubris—conjoin
in a way that is not akratic, but in a way that is both erotic and
moderate, a conjunction that seems absurd for the rest of us—
only possible if we are divided against ourselves, in perpetual
conflict. But for Socrates this conflict vanishes because both his
erotic condition and his moderation turn out to be deeply connected to his pursuit of self-knowledge, oriented by knowledge
of the whole itself. It is the simultaneous search for the Good
and the nature of the soul that underlies both Socratic eros and
moderation.
Alcibiades describes Socrates’s interior condition as having
moderation (sophrosune), which hides underneath the exterior
hubris (216c-d). What then does Plato want us to think about
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what Alcibiades claims to have glimpsed inside of Socrates? Has
he obtained a genuine insight? How much of this insight speaks
the truth about Socrates, his claimed intention? Or—how much
of what Alcibiades sees on the inside describes Alcibiades himself—is it deeply rooted in his own psychic conflict?
Recall that Socrates is the only person in front of whom Alcibiades has ever felt ashamed. According to Phaedrus’ speech
about love this must arise from the lover-beloved relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates. But should we not also wonder
why Alcibiades never feels shame in front of anyone else? And
what about Socrates? Does he ever feel ashamed? I think not. If
he has moderation it seems not to do with shame. In the
Charmides, the dialogue about sophrosune, Socrates throws
Homer at young Charmides, reminding him that shame is no
companion for one who is needy. The most needful thing must
be eros. So for the Socratic, shame and eros get pulled apart.
This is why Socrates looks hubristic on the outside. He is
shamelessly beyond the view of others. He is, we might say, borrowing Plato’s favorite word, atopos (placeless, unlocated, disoriented). Or at least his topos is not the city in the same way that
it is for the rest of us. (It’s related here that Socrates is no fan of
crowds.) Alcibiades thus appears more and more like an alter-ego
to Socrates. Alcibiades is motivated by shame and honor, while
Socrates is not. Alcibiades desires to please the crowd, whereas
Socrates sees that as an impediment to desiring wisdom and healing the soul. In Alcibiades I, at the climax of the dialogue, Socrates
suggests to a much younger and sober Alcibiades that he needs to
stop looking outward to the things of the body, to his belongings
and to the city, and to look inward. In this conversation he not
only couples self-knowledge with moderation (131a), but also
claims that he himself—Socrates—is the only one who ever truly
loved Alcibiades, for he loved him for his soul and not his body,
his possessions, his power, or anything else external to him (131e132a). He fears Alcibiades’s corruption by the city (132a) and he
asks Alcibiades how the “self itself” (129b) could be discovered,
encouraging Alcibiades to compare the discovery of his own
thinking to an eye looking into a mirror, seeing itself (133a).
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So, my friend Alcibiades, if a soul is to know itself, it
must look into a soul, and particularly into that region of
it in which the excellence of the soul, wisdom, resides,
and to anything else that this is similar to? . . . It seems
so to me Socrates (133b).
The question for us is: does Alcibiades succeed in doing this?
We know he has described looking into Socrates, and seeing his
sophrosune within. He does not claim to see wisdom there. But
Socrates says that there might be something similar to wisdom in
the other person’s soul that can bring about self-knowledge in Alcibiades. I think this similar thing is moderation, which for
Socrates is tied up with his erotic nature. Because for Socrates,
moderation properly understood is knowledge of the whole.
Sophrosune is not just restraining desires or showing endurance—
two states that could accompany a completely unerotic individual.
Rather sophrosune is linked to understanding one’s place—one’s
topos. The erotic ascent Socrates describes, through Diotima, can
be seen actually as a description of Socrates orienting us. So on
this account, his place (topos) is not in reference to the city, but in
reference to the beautiful itself. We must understand where we are
in this ascent to the beautiful, and how it provides the context for
our desires, if we are to understand ourselves.
This would certainly look hubristic from the outside, especially to Alcibiades. For Socrates seems to be teaching an ascent
past the human constraints of the human. And this ascent might
even support his refusal to sleep with Alcibiades. What a horrible
offence! But what does Alcibiades see? Has he not shown selfawareness of his own disorientation? Alcibiades is really an amalgamation of two people: the one who exists in the presence of
Socrates and the one who exists in the presence of the crowd.
Both these identities center around Alcibiades’s desire for control.
He seeks to master and seduce the Athenians and he seeks to flee
from what he experiences as mastery and seduction by Socrates.
This, I would say, manifests in Alcibiades’s symptom: his akrasia. There is clearly a kernel of truth in his symptom. The occasion for Alcibiades’s accusations against Socrates are a discussion
of love, and he reports a failed seduction. Socrates can really
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come off looking like he has abused Alcibiades, and he might appear to be simply not that interested in sex.
But this kernel of truth is just a kernel. The bigger truth that
needs to come into view both for Alcibiades and for us—is that
Alcibiades sees Socrates in a certain way because of this rejection, and has not yet understood Socrates. In fact, the charges he
has launched against Socrates—Socrates as a hubristic seducer—
may indeed be accusations that are actually targeted at himself.
But he is unable to acknowledge these self-accusations, and so
he must repudiate Socrates, both by projecting the hubris, seducing power, and desire for control he sees in himself outward at
Socrates, and by placing Socrates in the superhuman, unattainable realm, which will prevent him ever coming into real contact
with Socrates, contact for which he showed potential as a
youth—the dialogue that takes place between two souls. Just as
Charmides was unable to strip his soul bare for Socrates, Alcibiades is unable to look at Socrates and see his real self reflected.
So the dialogue with Alcibiades in Alcibiades I failed. When the
young Alcibiades agreed not to follow his ambition and pursue
self-knowledge, this agreement only took place on the rational
plane. When the older, drunk, uninhibited Alcibiades “disrupts”
the party, it is the conflicted and corrupted Alcibiades we see who
has not incorporated Socrates’s teaching. He has described looking within Socrates, but he has not understood that the mirror has
shown himself, his projected image, back to him. He is thus still
disoriented.
The new orientation Socrates through Diotima is attempting
to teach here thus must take aim at the non-cognitive part of us,
in order to educate and heal the soul. If this were successful on
Alcibiades, he should come to have self-knowledge—in a more
complete sense of the term. This must begin, in Alcibiades’s case,
by getting past his desire for mastery. The desire to rule others
and to possess others, which is a vital element in his pursuit of
Socrates and his rejection from him, is what prevents him from
seeing others and thus seeing himself. Alcibiades’s words about
seeing images are right. But underneath his images are a lust for
power that must be broken. The model of acquisition, of posses-
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sion, is a potentially misleading and potentially disastrous image
for the desire for wisdom. Even the image of “knowledge ruling”,
the one that is used in the Protagoras, might not be the best
image. Rather, Alcibiades has to learn to “see” the other, and in
this way begin his ascent. If that happens he will see the hidden
moderation and self-knowledge inside. Of course we know that
this does not happen with Alcibiades. But his failure then should
instruct us to, as Socrates says “take care of ourselves” and pay
attention to our internal disruptions and conflicts. They are the
beginning points.
In closing, I would like to return to the seating arrangement.
Recall that when Alcibiades disrupts he is placed between
Socrates and Agathon, the tragic poet who is perhaps good in his
appearance only, in his name. If Alcibiades is indeed the judge
(as Dionysus) between these two, then perhaps the real enemy of
philosophy—represented by Socrates—is to be found in the
tragic poet’s speech. Agathon’s account of love can’t stand up to
Socrates’s questions, and its theme is human, all too human.
Agathon seems not to have paid attention to what Eryximachus
and Aristophanes introduced to the discussion—an orientation to
what is beyond my powers if I were a rational, purely cognitive
being. To think of myself this way is to lack self-knowledge. To
think the structure of the world, and my desires and wants, are
transparent to me (taking into account this purely rational picture
of what it is to be minded) might even be hubris. Hubris on the
outside and the inside! Alcibiades should thus be able to judge
from his own psychic conflict, his akrasia, that Agathon’s account of love is an incoherent, unsatisfactory story. But this takes
a new seeing. For there is no room for Dionysus in Agathon’s account. What Alcibiades does not see—what he never comes to
see—is a place for Dionysus in the speech he never hears from
Socrates. It is left to us to understand what this place is.
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The Night Watchmen; or,
By the Dawn’s Early Light
Eric Salem
The Laws is a very strange book—it is strange even by Platonic-dialogue standards. Its setting is strange: all the other
dialogues are set in and around Athens; this one takes place
on the distant island of Crete. Its cast of characters is also
strange: a mysterious, unnamed, elderly stranger from
Athens speaks with a Cretan (Kleinias) and a Spartan
(Megillus), two old men who have had almost no contact
with philosophy or its evil twin, sophistry. And though the
subject matter of the dialogue is in a certain sense familiar—as in the Republic, the talk is about a well-ordered city,
and after a certain point the old men set about constructing
a “city in speech”—the manner in which that subject is
treated is very strange indeed (702d).1 The Laws is not only
huge—longer by far than any other dialogue—but its structure is positively labyrinthine. The Republic may be hard to
follow in spots, but the attentive reader always knows
where he is; orientation is not an issue. The Laws, by contrast, is full of passages that cry out for the most basic sort
Eric Salem is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay
was first published in Ramify 5.1 (2015): 1-19, and is reprinted here
by permission.
1. All quotations from the Laws are from Thomas Pangle’s translation
of Plato, The Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); quotations from the Republic come from the Allan Bloom’s translation of
Plato, The Republic (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
of explication: sudden transitions and arguments cut off
in mid-development, unexpected turns and apparent dead
ends, are nearly the norm.2
One of the most surprising of these turns—and the one I
will focus on here—comes near the end of Book X. The immediate question is what to do with young men who are naturally
just but openly impious; the solution the stranger proposes is to
imprison them “for no less than five years” in a place called the
Moderation Tank and have them meet regularly with the members of the Nocturnal Council “for the purposes of admonition
and the salvation of the soul” (909a). What is strange here—to
begin with—is the sudden introduction of a new political institution. The Athenian has already treated the offices and institutions of the city at length in Book VI: there we get accounts of
the terms, duties and means of choosing the Guardians of the
Laws, the members of the Council, the Field, City and Market
Regulators, the Generals and Priests, and so on—but no mention
is made of a Nocturnal Council (753b-756e; 758a-766d). We
might at first be tempted to think that what the stranger is introducing in Book X is not a new institution or office but an ad hoc
solution to an occasional problem. Yet, by the end of Book XII,
the Nocturnal Council is being called the chief “safeguard of
our regime and laws” (960e); in fact it is now called “the Nocturnal Council of Rulers” (968a). By the end of the Laws, the
Council has become, in some sense and for some reason, the
chief institution, the ruling source (arche) of Magnesia, the city
that Kleinias is tasked with founding.
What are we to make of the stranger’s alteration or
emendation of his own act of founding, his engagement in
what one might call self-innovation? What in the argument
or action of the Laws in Books I-X has made the introduction
of the Nocturnal Council necessary? And what light does
2. The most glaring example comes between Books II and III. The subject
of Book II is education and music; we are led by the end of the book to
expect a discussion of gymnastic in Book III, but instead get a capsule history of the world. Is that history a stand-in for gymnastic? We are not told.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | SALEM
49
its introduction shed on the Laws as a whole? To address
these questions we will need to look closely at all the tasks
ultimately assigned to the Nocturnal Council; we will also
need to reflect on the way the Council changes shape over
the course of Books X and XII. But to get started we might
want to ask a more basic question. The Athenian stranger’s
introduction of the Nocturnal Council in Book X—and, for
that matter, Book X itself—presupposes the existence of impiety in some portion of the citizenry of Magnesia; it presupposes that impiety is a problem that must be reckoned with.
Yet piety seems to infuse the whole life of the city and to
give shape to its very topography. As the city in speech is
being founded in Book IV, the very first speeches addressed
to future citizens virtually identify goodness with reverence
for things divine; the Olympian gods top the list (716a717b). The preludes to the laws elaborated in Book V likewise underscore the importance of the gods, as does the
division there of city and countryside into twelve sectors,
each assigned to a different god (726a-727e; 738b-738e;
745b-e; also 771b-d). By the time we get to Book VIII, the
role of the gods and worship in civic life has grown even
larger. We learn that there will not only be twelve monthly
festivals, each dedicated to one of the Olympian gods; there
will also be daily sacrifices: “Let there be three hundred
sixty-five without any omissions, so that there will always
be at least one magistrate performing a sacrifice to some god
or demon, on behalf of the city, the people, and their possessions” (828a-d). If the whole city of Magnesia is engaged
in a daily worship of the gods, if every citizen leads a hallowed life, surrounded by altars and temples, how is it that
impiety becomes, how is it that it can become, a problem
large enough to need dealing with?
The answer, I think, must be that impiety arises naturally,
spontaneously, in the souls of some young men. In the case
of Magnesia, the disease seems unlikely to be of foreign origin, since great efforts have been made to isolate the city
from irregular external contact. The city itself is at a signif-
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icant remove from the sea, and its topography has been
arranged, not only to affirm the Olympian gods, but to seal
off the city: the artisan class (which consists exclusively of
foreigners) is forced to live in a kind of extra-urban ghetto,
and contact between it and the citizen body is kept to an absolute minimum (704a-705b; 848e; 850b-c). Apparently
rearing the young in a piety-infused atmosphere and keeping
them away from the sort of pre-Socratic materialism the
Athenian uses to shock and stir the Cretan Kleinias is not
enough to curb the insolent among them: impiety will out
(885e-887c; 888e-890e).
Nor, for that matter, is it clear that we are meant to condemn outright all kinds of impiety in the young. In fact, the
stranger draws a sharp distinction between two basic types.
In one case, the impious “in addition to not believing in the
gods or believing them to be careless, or appeasable, become like beasts”; they live without restraint, “hold human
beings in contempt,” and attempt to take advantage of their
supposed superiority to others by becoming diviners, magicians, tyrants, demagogues and sophists (905d-e; 909ab). The punishment for these men is unrelievedly harsh, at
least from the point of view of their fellow citizens: they
are condemned to live in total isolation, and after death their
bodies are to be cast out beyond the borders of the country,
unburied (909b-c).3 In the other case-the case mentioned
earlier-the impious are naturally just: they hate bad men, are
disgusted by injustice and seek the company of the just
(908b-c). Insofar as honesty and justice go together, their
chief fault seems to arise from their virtue: “full of frankness” and unable to believe in the gods themselves, they go
about the city making fun of gods, sacrifices, and oaths
(908d). The young man who belongs to this group must be
stopped because “if he didn’t get a judicial penalty” he
3. Whether a committed atheist would care what happens to his body
after death or mind living (at the city’s expense) in isolation from the
fellow citizens he regards with contempt is another question.
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51
“would perhaps make others like himself” (908d). Still, he
does not sound bad—in fact, to repeat, he hates the bad and
is “without bad anger and character” (908e).4
What will five years in the Moderation Tank do to him
and for him? What exactly is the task of the Nocturnal
Council in the case of such a young man? We are not told
much, only that moderation is the goal and admonition the
means. One possibility, of course, is that the proper work
of the Council is to browbeat the young atheist until he accepts the traditional or conventional view of the gods. But
five years is a long time and a lot of admonishing, and so
perhaps admonition (nouthetesis) should be taken literally
here: not as browbeating but as setting (tithemi) the intellect
or intelligence (nous) in order. After all, lack of intelligence
(a-noia) is the condition from which this type of young atheist is said to suffer (908e). In other words, perhaps we are
to imagine the young man being forced to spend five years
in the company of the Council reflecting on divine matters
until he either accepts some version of the natural theology
articulated in Book X or, recognizing his ignorance about
such matters, learns to keep quiet in the presence of conventional religious practices. To my mind, at any rate, this
young atheist sounds like a fairly decent, spirited young
man in the first throes of philosophic passion—impatient
with conventions of all sorts, including conventional views
of the gods, and eager to uncover the limitations of every4. It’s worth noting that, while the focus in the punishment section of
Book X is on atheists, the body of Book X treats three forms of impiety:
the belief that there are no gods, the belief that gods exist but are indifferent toward human affairs, and the belief that gods exist and care for
human things but are indifferent to justice. The stranger observes that
the second position has its roots in a concern for justice: rather than
admit that the gods tolerate or even support the flourishing of the unjust,
the impious youth of this type would rather believe that the gods are indifferent to human concerns (899d-900b). In this case, at least, a kind
of passion for cosmic justice leads to impiety. Might something similar
be at work in the other cases?
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one’s thinking but his own. The best thing to do with such
young people is to keep them away from the innocent and
set them wrestling with matters of fundamental importance
(909a). And that, I suspect, is the proper work of the Nocturnal Council.
*****
Or rather, that is the work of the Council described in Book
X. No mention is made of the Nocturnal Council in Book
XI, but in Book XII it turns up twice. I have just been suggesting that behind the talk of admonition and soul salvation in Book X, we catch a glimpse of something else—that
the Nocturnal Council is there to provide a place for citizens of a certain type and age to confront questions that fall
outside the purview of ordinary Magnesians. Do we see
anything akin to this in the second appearance of the Council? I think we do, but before we can properly absorb what
is said there, we need to take note of an extraordinary new
feature of the stranger’s city and the series of extraordinary
admissions that accompanies it.
The new feature is this. We have already noted the deliberate efforts described in earlier books to block the flow
of foreign opinions into Magnesia. We see more of this in
the passage from Book XII that we are about to consider.
The issue under discussion is what to do in general about
contact with other cities, and the worry, as one might expect, is that indiscriminate intermingling will corrupt the
city, “as strangers produce innovations” (950a). The first
solution proposed by the stranger is again one we might expect: select citizens will be allowed to attend and observe
foreign religious festivals, but “when they return home,
they will teach the young that the legal customs, pertaining
to the regimes, of the others are in second place” (951a). In
keeping with this policy we learn that commercial visitors
from other cities will be watched carefully “lest any of such
strangers introduce some innovation” (952e-953a). But then
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the stranger does something astonishing. He posits a second
class of observer (theoros): “If certain citizens desire to observe (theoresai) the affairs of other human beings at greater
leisure, no law is to prevent them” (951a). The language is
very strong here: should a desire arise in certain men to observe, that is, to contemplate, other ways of life, that desire
is not only to be tolerated—the regime is not permitted to
forbid it. (This is a regime given to forbidding a great many
things.) Of course, there are certain limits on who can travel
and what one can do with what one has seen. Observers
must be between fifty and sixty years old and men of good
character, they must receive permission to travel from the
Guardians of the Laws, and if they come back “corrupted,”
they must live as private men, and not claim to be wise; otherwise, like twice-convicted “good” atheists, they must die
(909a; 951c-d; 952c-d). Still, it is remarkable that men who
find in themselves an Odyssean appetite to see the cities and
learn the minds of men are to be given the leisure and
time—up to ten years if they wish—to satisfy it. The regime
that just a moment ago seemed closed off from what is foreign apparently has a well-defined hole at the top.
Still more remarkable are the reasons given for letting
such a hole develop. According to the stranger, even the best
city—presumably the one with the best citizens—needs to
have experience of bad as well as good human beings
(951a). Nor can it “guard its laws, unless it accepts them by
knowledge and not solely by habits” (951b). Moreover,
there are “certain divine human beings . . . who do not by
nature grow any more frequently in cities with good laws
than in cities without” and only with their help can good
laws be given “a firmer footing” and bad laws corrected
(951b-c). Earlier in the Laws it looked as if the whole task
of the lawgiver was to find a good set of laws and fix them
in place; even in cases where time and experience are
needed to determine the best laws, as soon as the time is up,
laws were to be fixed once and for all. The more Egyptian
a set of laws, the better—that seemed to be the earlier per-
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spective (656d-e). But now we learn that it is not enough
for a city to find and settle on good laws. Good laws are
simply not good enough. Somewhere in the city there needs
to be a knowledge, grounded in experience, of the whole
range of human possibility, good and bad. Likewise, somewhere in the city there needs to be a knowledge of the
grounds of law, that is, a more than habitual understanding
of the law. Perhaps, too, somewhere in the city there needs
to be a recognition that the very best human beings, the
ones who approach most closely to the divine, arise by nature, not by convention—not even by the best conventions.
At any rate it is precisely such men that the second sort of
observer, the theoretical theoros, is to seek out and such men
who are best able to aid him to see what’s lacking in problematic laws and what grounds the better sort. In sum, we
are now to see that a comprehensive understanding of
human affairs, ongoing reflection on one’s own laws and
an openness to change are absolutely essential to the wellbeing of a well-founded city, and that contemplation of
other cities as well as contact with the best natures are conditions for all three.
Where does the Nocturnal Council fit within this new
picture of what Magnesia needs? Right at the center, as it
turns out. For the Nocturnal Council is the body to whom
this second sort of observer is to report—immediately after
arriving back in the city—and the Council is the body
charged with reflecting on what he has brought back and
what to do with him (952b). In fact, the broader work of
the Council that emerges here for the first time strongly
suggests that it is precisely this body that is intended to be
the proper home in Magnesia for the kind of comprehensive reflection on political matters I have just described.
For we are told that the Council will meet every day, just
before dawn, and that “the intercourse and speeches of the
men are always to be about laws and their own city, and
anything they may have learned elsewhere that is different
and pertains to such matters” (951d-952a). “[A]nything
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they may have learned elsewhere” is a pretty clear reference to the reports of Magnesian observers, and this is confirmed just a little later, when we are told that, upon his
return, the observer must tell the Council “if he’s found
some persons capable of explaining some utterance concerning the laying down of laws, or education, or upbringing, or if he himself should return having thought some
things up” (952b). The more one thinks about it, the more
sense it makes that the Nocturnal Council is later called
the safeguard (soterion) of the city, and the more it seems
appropriate the name Moderation Tank (so-phronisterion)
seems for the place where the Nocturnal Council does its
work. On the one hand, the Council attempts to save (sozein)
the souls (and lives) of the impious young by persuading
them to be moderate, that is, sound-minded, so-phron, with
respect to the gods; in so doing, it keeps the city and its religious practices safe, soos, from a kind of internal corruption. On the other, the Council keeps the city safe and sound,
soos, by collecting thoughts about “the laying down of laws,
or education, or upbringing,” by engaging in its own soundminded (so-phron) deliberations about the city’s laws, and by
remaining mindful, phronimos, of the possibility of a healthy
kind of innovation. In both cases, reflection on fundamental
matters is the chief means and medium of the Council’s
work—reflection on the divine, in the one case, and on
“regime and laws,” on the other.5
Let us see if we can take this one step further. It makes
a certain sense that the word “philosophy” never appears in
the Laws.6 The natural home of philosophy is Athens, not
5. It is surely no accident that these are also the two themes enunciated
at the opening of the Laws: here we have the first of several indications
that the work of the Council mirrors the conversation between the
stranger from Athens and his Dorian companions.
6. Though the noun philosophia never appears in the Laws, the verb
philosophein turns up twice, once in Book IX to characterize the “free doctor” and again in Book X to characterize pre-Socratic atheism (857d; 967d).
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Crete. In Magnesia, the gymnasia and agora are strictly for
business—no idle chatter allowed. And of course there’s no
Peiraeus—no local harbor where a young Magnesian could,
say, get stirred up by the sight of local and foreign religious
ceremonies and then spend the night in the company of
friends and foreigners pondering radical political possibilities
and asking whether justice is a good thing. On the other hand,
given what we have seen, it is worth wondering whether,
with the institution of the Nocturnal Council, the stranger
hasn’t quietly made a small but significant place for philosophy right in the middle of the city. The word philosophy is
not used—but perhaps the thing itself is right there in front
of us.
Is this further step warranted by the text of the Laws? Two
features of the Nocturnal Council would seem to speak
against it. In the first place, the orientation of the Council appears to be decidedly practical. It is initially instituted to fix
a problem—the intransigent impiety of the young; at any
rate, this problem forms the context within which we first
hear about it. Likewise, in the first appearance of the Council in Book XII, the whole emphasis is on the study of law
and what to do to ground it and otherwise safeguard the
city. True, the stranger mentions other “branches of learning” in addition to the study of law, and true, too, the work
of grounding the law and safeguarding the city may require
reflection and deliberation of a very high order (952a). But
as the stranger presents it, these other branches of learning
are clearly subordinated to the study of law, while the reflections and deliberations of the Council have as their aim,
not knowledge or wisdom, but the safety and preservation
of the city. If anyone in Magnesia looks like a philosopher—that is, a man who loves and desires wisdom simply
for its own sake—it is the man who “desire[s] to observe
the affairs of other human beings at greater leisure,” but,
again, the Council’s interest in such men seems to be
largely limited to knowing whether they have information
useful to the city or pose a danger to it (951a).
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The second feature of the Council that might make us
hesitate to call it a place in which philosophy would be at
home is its composition. The dominant figures in the Council are all drawn from the ranks of the highest offices in
Magnesia, and the stranger makes a point of emphasizing
their ages: the ten oldest Guardians of the Law, the present
and past Supervisors of Education, and the Auditors (assuming that “priests [of Apollo] who have obtained the prizes
for excellence” is a reference to this group) (951d-e).7 Now
it makes some sense that an institution tasked with reflecting on laws should include men of deep and broad experience, especially men who have spent their lives
(respectively) keeping guard over the laws, keeping an eye
on the virtue of young, and keeping magistrates honest. It
is less obvious that such men would be willing and able to
engage in genuine philosophic inquiry—we might even
wonder how open such men would be to reflecting on laws
with a view to grounding and improving them. After all, as
the stranger observes in Book II, old men tend to be stiff in
soul, and these men, heavily invested as they are in the laws
of Magnesia, might be stiffer than most (666b-c). Perhaps,
then, it is a good thing that younger men also form part of
the Council, in equal numbers with the old—though here,
too, we might ask what sort of men the elderly Guardians,
Supervisors, and Auditors would be likely to pick as their
Council mates and what sorts of conversations they are likely
to have. Who knows—perhaps the most lively and most
searching conversations in the Moderation Tank would be
those between the members of the Council and the impious
young? In any case, if the stranger were genuinely interested
in making the Council a place for philosophic inquiry, one
would think he would make the second type of observer, the
7. Guardians of the Law, Supervisors of Education, and Auditors must
all be at least fifty; Guardians leave office at seventy and Auditors at
seventy-five; Supervisors (who come from the ranks of the Guardians)
have a five-year term.
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theoretical theoros, a regular part of the mix. Here, after all, is
a man of a certain age who combines impeccable credentials,
including experience in war, with a tremendous breadth of
experience and a philosophic appetite.
*****
We are now prepared to turn our attention to the third and
final discussion of the Nocturnal Council. For it turns out
that in this account the theoretical theoros has become a regular
member of the Council; those observers who pass the test
“are to be considered worthy attendants of [or “sharers in,”
axiokoinonetos] the Council” (961a). But this is just the beginning of a whole series of revelations about the work and
composition of the Council that point in the direction of philosophy. In its initial appearance in Book X, the Council
looked a little like a re-education camp; in its first appearance in Book XII, it looked like a cross between a debriefing
center and a think tank. Now, as we will see in a moment,
the Council looks more and more like an ongoing study
group or seminar.
This is not to say that practical aims of the Council have
been abandoned. On the contrary, when the stranger revives
the discussion of the Council near the end of Book XII, the
issue at hand is finding a safeguard for the city they have just
finished founding; that concern is never left entirely behind
in what remains of Book XII. (The word soteria, sometimes
translated by Pangle as “salvation,” sometimes as “safeguard,” turns up several times in this section, along with a
number of other “soos” words.) What we see instead is a
broadening and deepening of what it means to be a safeguard—an enlargement so comprehensive that it now includes questions that we normally associate with philosophy,
or at least political philosophy.
Let me start by sketching out the first stages of this
movement. The whole discussion begins with an elaborate
series of serious jokes about ends (tele). With the treatment
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of burial rites for citizens who have “met their end
(teleutesantas),” the stranger notes that their work of “legislation would be just about at an end (telos).” But first they
must discover and discuss a “perfect (teleos) and permanent
safeguard” for the city, to keep it from meeting a premature
end (960b). The first topic broached in the account of this
safeguard—which proves to be the Nocturnal Council—is
that it must have intelligence (nous) of the end, telos, of the
city, where telos is now understood in the sense of aim or
goal (skopos). But to have a coherent aim is to have—in contrast to other cities, which are all subject to “wandering”—
one aim (962d). Kleinias reminds the stranger that their city
in speech has such an aim: virtue (963a). But is virtue
one—or four? The stranger argues that it is at least two—
courage and prudence are very different from one another—and presses Kleinias to explain how they are one
(963c-964a).
And so it goes. The argument is off and running, and it
is not difficult to see where it is headed. Already with the
first step the stranger has, as it were, upped the ante of the
argument. The question is no longer simply what to do here
and now or what laws to lay down to address this or that
problem or infraction. If the statesman is to safeguard his
city, he must know what he is doing, and nothing less than
a comprehensive understanding of the end of politics and
political life will do: “What about the city? If someone
should be evidently ignorant of the goal at which the statesman should aim, would he, in the first place, be justly called
a ruler, and then, would he be able to save this thing—
whose goal he didn’t know at all” (962b)? The same kind
of comprehensive approach is required in the case of virtue.
It is not just Kleinias who must understand in what sense
the virtues are one and many—and especially the sense in
which they are one—the guardians of the city must as well:
“Then it’s necessary to compel, as is likely, even the
guardians of our divine regime to see with precision, whatever is the same in all four: what it is that we assert is one
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in courage, moderation, justice, and prudence, and is justly
called by one name, virtue” (965c-d). If nothing else were
to convince us that something like Socratic philosophy has
now become the business of the Nocturnal Council, the
stranger’s sudden introduction into this context of the familiar Socratic terms eidos and idea should: “Is there any way
in which there would be a more precise vision and seeing
of anything than that which is the capacity to look to one
idea from the many and dissimilar things?” (963c; 965c).
But the one aim of politics and the one meaning of
virtue are not the only ideai to which the council must look.
The stranger also insists—and Kleinias agrees—that it is
not enough for the guardians of the city to know that the
beautiful and the good are each many; they must also know
“how and in what sense” they are one—presumably an
enormous task, especially because the stranger emphasizes
that they must be able to “demonstrate” these matters
“through argument” (966a-b). And even this is not the end
of its intellectual tasks. Not only must the members of the
Nocturnal Council grasp the sense in which intelligence,
nous, is the leader of and core of the virtues, and not only
must they themselves become the intelligence of the city—
they must make every effort to discern the intelligence at
work in the whole of things (965a; 966e-967b; 967e). That
is, the Council must take up in its own right and as its own proper
task the very questions and arguments that formed the subject matter of Book X and which were there addressed to
the impious young—questions about the existence and character of the gods and, even more, questions about whether
life or soul is prior to body and whether intelligence can be
ascribed to the motions and order of the cosmos (966c-e).
Here in Book XII, however, there is no suggestion that
such subjects must be taken up primarily to address a practical
problem, i.e., impiety in the young. As usual, practice is not
out of the picture: the person who grasps these things “as
well as the subjects of learning that presumably precede
these matters . . . should see what is common to these things
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and the things that concern the Muse, and should apply this
understanding, in a harmonious way, to the practices and
customs that pertain to the habitual dispositions” (967e968a). But the study of the whole and the foundations of the
whole—a study which would surely include wrestling with
the materialistic claims of pre-Socratic philosophy outlined
here and in Book X—is also called “one of the noblest
things,” that is, something worth pursuing for its own sake,
and we are told twice that no one will be admitted to the
Council who has not labored over these questions before joining the Council, that is, independently of any use that might
be made of the results of that study (886d-e; 889b-c; 966c
d; 967b-c). “[M]ost of those in the city . . . only go along
with what the laws proclaim” about the gods or the divine,
and the Council member must “make allowance” for this
passivity or indifference to fundamental matters—perhaps
by practicing a kind of moderation or perhaps, to follow the
suggestion above, by fashioning, through music, practices
and customs that accord with his discoveries (966c). But
the man worthy to be a member of the Nocturnal Council
must himself be alive to the urgency of those questions—
that is, he must be philosophic.
***
And here the attentive reader of the Laws runs into a major
difficulty. I earlier asked whether—given the age and probable orientation of its dominant members—the Nocturnal
Council would be up to the demands of philosophic reflection. It might now seem as if that question had been misguided from the start. For, as we have just learned, a proven
thoughtfulness about fundamental matters is a prerequisite for
membership in the Council. No doubt we are to picture the
seasoned older members of the Council, long steeped themselves in the intricacies of dialectical inquiry, carefully picking like-minded young men who would in their turn
contribute energy to an ongoing conversation—a conversa-
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tion leavened by the suggestions of the those who have seen
the larger world and whom we now know are to be regular
participants in the Council’s reflections. But here’s the rub.
Have we seen anything in the account of civic education in
Magnesia to suggest that that education would prepare the
citizens of Magnesia for such a life of thought and inquiry?
Perhaps there have been hints—more on this in a moment—
but the bulk of the education in Magnesia lies in weapons
training and the practice of conventional piety, and it is hard
to see how either could constitute a serious preparation for
the life of the mind.8
In fact, the Athenian himself seems to take pains to underscore the difficulty we have just run into. A few pages
from the end of Book XII he suddenly admits that the young
and old among the members of the Council, who are to
function, respectively, as the eyes and intelligence (nous) of
the city, must not only have “the best natures,” but also
enjoy a different sort of education, one marked by precision.9 “Are we to have them all the same and not have some
who are brought up and educated with greater precision?”
(965a). This “more precise education” of the men he now
calls simply “guardians” is indeed under discussion as the
8. The serious study of serious poetry can of course raise all sorts of
fundamental questions. But apparently Homer and Hesiod are not features of the Cretan landscape (680b-c; 886c-d). And there is no place
for tragedy in Magnesian education (817a-d).
9. Between 964d and 965d there are five occurrences of precision
words. Another one turns up a bit later in the discussion of astronomy
and cosmic intelligence (967d). I believe the only place in the Laws
where we get a similar flurry is the first discussion of mathematics and
astronomy, in Book VII (818a). The discussion of the education of the
“free” man here should probably be connected to the two discussions
of the “free doctor,” who “investigates [maladies] from their beginning”
and who uses “arguments that come close to philosophizing, grasping
the disease from its source, and going back up to the whole nature of
bodies” (720d; 857d).
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dialogue ends. But this leaves us, the readers of the dialogue, in something of a quandary. We are in something like
the position of Polemarchus, Adeimantus, and the rest at the
beginning of Book V of the Republic, metaphorically tugging
on Socrates’ sleeve and asking for more of what will prove
to be a lengthy account of the education of the philosopher.
Or rather, that is our situation and condition—wanting
more—but we are at the end of the book, not less than
halfway through. What is a reader to do?
One thing we can do is to look back over the Laws to see
if there are hints about the character of the “more precise
education” of the guardians. We can begin by reminding
ourselves that the regime of the Laws is not simply hostile
to reflection on the laws: the laws of Magnesia, or at least
some of them, have preludes. Might these quasi-philosophic
defenses of the laws not encourage and even provoke a kind
of thoughtfulness about the laws, at least on the part of some
men? Again, the mathematical and astronomical education
described at the end of Book VII resembles in some respects
the preliminary education of the philosopher-kings in Republic VII (817e-822c).10 It is easy to imagine that the primary
10. It also differs from it in two important ways. In the Republic, arithmetic and geometry are treated separately; as a consequence, incommensurability, the remarkable discovery that some pairs of geometrical
magnitudes do not share a common measure and so cannot be described
in terms of ratios of integers, cannot arise. In the Laws, by contrast, the
study of mathematics proper seems to culminate in the study of incommensurability. Again, in the Republic, astronomy is treated as the study
of the pure motions of pure mathematical solids. In the Laws, by contrast, it is the study of the actual motions of actual heavenly bodies, primarily with a view to “saving the appearances,” that is, to showing that
what look like wandering motions nevertheless make sense. What are
we to make of these differences? To begin with, we might note that the
treatment of the city and its human inhabitants in each book is analogous to its treatment of the stars: just as actual starry motions in the
Laws replace possible mathematical motions in the Republic, so human
bodies and their actual motions, especially their erotic motions, loom
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targets of this education are potential members of the
Council. At any rate, the passage points explicitly to the
end of the dialogue, and we are told twice that a precise education in these matters is reserved for “the few,” not “the
many” (818a). And then there is the curious matter of the
composition of the Council: in the very passage in which
we first learn that approved observers of foreign ways will
be invited to become part of the Council, Supervisors of
Education suddenly drop off the list (951e; 961a). It is hard
to know what to make of the apparent omission, but it is at
least thinkable that these former observers will be the Supervisors—that arrangements are quietly being made to ensure that the most philosophic among the Magnesians, and
larger in the Laws than they do in the Republic. But I think this analogy
points to a deeper issue, an issue also signaled by the problem of incommensurability. There is a kind of intractability, a resistance to being
ordered and accounted for, present in the very being of things, including
human things. Incommensurability is one sign of this intractability; the
study of incommensurability is an attempt to come to grips with it, to,
as it were, account for the uncountable by counting up the kinds of incommensurables and discovering their order. The wandering of the stars
is another sign, and astronomy as it is presented in the Laws is an attempt to discover—or confer—intelligibility on their wandering, especially, apparently, the wandering of Venus or Aphrodite (821c). The
wandering of regimes is yet another—and perhaps the most important—
sign of this intractability in things (962d). Now the wandering of most
regimes is the subject of books VII and IX of the Republic, but the wandering of every regime, even the best one, is only alluded to there, in
the elusive discussion of the marriage number, where of course the intractability of Aphrodite or eros is the issue. The Republic, then, quite
deliberately avoids or abstracts from any sustained treatment of the intractability issue. The Laws, on the other hand, comes as close to confronting it as one can. In this sense, the Republic is a kind of comedy
and the Laws a kind of tragedy; indeed, “the tragedy that is the most
beautiful and the best . . . the truest tragedy” (8l7b). And in this sense,
Plato is the man who “knows how to make comedy and tragedy” because, like his teacher, he knows about “erotic matters” (Symposium
177e; 223d).
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therefore the most likely to see to it that “the best natures”
are properly nurtured, will be in charge of education.
This, then, is one possibility: although we are never
given a full account of the “more precise education” that
members of the Council will receive, much less an account
of the way that education will be integrated with the normal civic education and other institutions in Magnesia, nevertheless, if we look closely, we can see the beginnings of a
sketch. And since the stranger offers to continue working
out the details of that education with Kleinias, we can perhaps have some confidence that, within the imagined world
of the dialogue, the sketch will be filled in and the fit between it and other Magnesian institutions will be a good one.
Still, I think that even the most generous reader of the Laws
is bound to feel some dissatisfaction with this “solution.”
The reader is left, not only wanting a fuller picture of the
Nocturnal Council and the education that supports it, but
wondering whether a full picture is possible—whether the
more philosophic the Council is, the less likely it is to fit
neatly within the civic structures of Magnesia. Is the soil of
Magnesia or of Crete generally one in which the Council—
that is, philosophy—can take root? The concluding paragraphs of the Laws leave that question unanswered—but then
again, those paragraphs may not be the right place to look
for an answer.
Where should we look instead? Until now our attention
has been focused, for the most part, on the argument of the Laws,
that is, on the account the stranger gives of the Council and
related matters. But suppose we shift our attention away from
the argument of the dialogue to its action, its dramatic features:
a different picture of the situation then comes into view. Notice, first, that Kleinias manages to remain involved in a very
long and often difficult to follow conversation.11 Think of
Cephalus and his quick surrender of the argument and withdrawal from the conversation in Book I of the Republic: the
11. Megillus is much harder to read; he is so, well, laconic.
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contrast is striking. Then notice the way that Kleinias becomes
involved in the closing books of the Laws, especially Books
X and XII. In Book X, he is clearly disturbed and intrigued
by the stranger’s account of the various claims of philosophic
impiety and manifestly eager to hear what arguments the
stranger can marshal against them (886e; 887b-c; 890d-e).
In Book XII, we see more of the same. Kleinias recollects
claims that were made back in Book I, urges the stranger to
address important questions, and is ready, as the book draws
to a close, to press forward with the inquiry into who should
become a guardian, what they should study, and when and
for how long they should study it (968b-d). In other words,
over the course of the dialogue, Kleinias becomes increasingly engaged by the stranger’s claims and arguments—especially when they touch on subjects that fall within the
purview of the Council—and by the end of the book is
worlds away from the polite, overly confident, somewhat
dismissive Kleinias that we see at the beginning. In
Kleinias we see a kind of demonstration in deed of what it
might be possible to accomplish in Crete—with the right
sort of hands-on education aimed with “precision” at a certain sort of soul.
Does this mean that Kleinias has become a philosopher
by the end of the Laws? I think not; he is too old, too dependent on the stranger, and probably still too attached to
his own city and its laws. But it seems clear that something
of the stranger’s way of seeing and talking has taken root
in Kleinias; he has become a friend to philosophy, and he
is bound to take that friendship with him into the founding
of Magnesia. (No doubt the stranger’s influence over him
will be greater if the Athenian chooses to help out, but the
very enthusiasm with which Kleinias—and Megillus—urge
him to stay is already evidence of his staying power [969cd].) We cannot know what form that friendship will take,
how it will show itself in his activity as founder. The Magnesia Kleinias founds in deed may not resemble in every
particular the Magnesia they have founded in speech; it
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | SALEM
67
may not even contain a Nocturnal Council. But the city is
likely to be, in its own way, much more friendly to philosophy than it would have been otherwise; certainly one of
its prominent citizens will be. One might put it this way:
near the end of the Republic, Socrates notes that “the man
who has intelligence”—the philosopher—will live while
“tending and looking “fixedly at the regime within him”;
he will “mind the things of this city,” the city in speech,
whatever the shape of the political landscape around him
(591e-592b). Move down one rung and you get Kleinias:
guided and shaped by the lingering image of his conversation with the stranger, he will live—and act—taking his
bearings, not by the Kallipolis of the Republic, but by its second sailing, the Magnesia of the Laws (527c; 739a-e).
As for the Nocturnal Council: as it appears within the
city in speech, it is not quite a Council and not quite Nocturnal. It is not quite a Council because it is not a Boulē (the
word used to characterize the institution we learn about in
Book VI) but a syllogos, a word that can refer to assemblies
but is literally a gathering, or better yet, a gathering in
speech; the word can also mean “collectedness” or “presence of mind.”12 It is not quite Nocturnal because it meets,
not at night, but at dawn or perhaps just before dawn. And
yet there is indeed a nykterinos syllogos “in” the Laws: it takes
as its starting point “regime and laws”; it includes a
Guardian of the Laws, a priest of Apollo, and an observer
of foreign lands who doubles as the Supervisor of Educa12. For Boulē see 755e, 756b and 758d. Syllogos in fact appears at 755e;
it is used of the gathering of citizens that chooses military leaders in the
absence of a Boulē. Pangle there translates it as “public meeting.” In
syllogos we get the intersection of two of the basic meanings of legein:
gather/select and speak. Of the two meanings “gather” is the more basic:
all speaking is a kind of selective gathering, of subject and predicate in
the most elementary form of logos, in the case of a syllogismos, thought
and thought. For the notion of “collectedness” or “presence of mind,”
see Phaedo 83a, where philosophy is said to urge the soul “to gather
(syllegesthai) and collect itself into itself.”
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tion; it begins before dawn, remains in session throughout
the day and lasts far into the night; the last quarter of it certainly takes place under the star-studded Cretan sky, the
proper object of the Council’s highest inquiries.13 The true
Nocturnal Council, a gathering in speech that emerges from
the collected presence of mind—the syllogos—of the stranger
and the stranger’s author, is the Laws itself.
13. Near the end of Book IV we learn that the discussion of “regime and
laws” began “about dawn” and that it is now “high noon.” Even though
the conversation takes place on or around the longest day of the year, it
must, at this rate, end long after sunset; in fact, if the conversation moves
uniformly, at the rate of four books per six hours, it should end around
midnight. My guess is that the stars become visible in the middle of Book
X, just as the subject of astronomy comes back on the scene.
�POEM
Kansas Articles from the
Ellis Review Centennial Edition
Philip LeCuyer
Her intimate things, her tapestry of care
and soft concerns were now as literal
as table flowers in the window light.
And there were rooms adjoining where I am,
rooms and labyrinthine ways which lead
each to its own peculiar quietness.
My father William T. Perry was born
in Vigo County, Indiana, September 23rd, 1843,
and my mother Julia Gross was born
in the same county in 1848.
Father was a union soldier in the civil war
and once he was captured by the confederates
and confined for a time in the Libby prison.
My parents were married at a big celebration
on July 4th, 1866 near Middletown, Indiana.
I was born September 7th, 1867.
We left there in covered wagons.
It was a hard trip for mother
with the baby Aldora. Clarence Vigo 3 years,
Sabina 6, John Cameron 5
and myself only 8 years old.
At Hays father traded a horse
for shoes for us children.
In 1878 my mother succumbed to the hardships
and privations of that life and died,
leaving six children, the youngest only 10 months old.
69
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Our seed is formed an austere taut design
burnt in the earth, and being in the earth
the inert law lay consummate with all
the sudden vastness which is prairie . . .
bluestem grass across the flat dry dirt
speckled through with smaller summer flowers
stretching equidistant every way
to the enormous sky. The meadowlark
is motionless, her songform being filled
with this immensity.
A strange little man dressed in homespun
John knelt to pray three times every day
on the open prairie, regardless of the weather . . .
near cemetery hill at sunrise,
along the railroad right-of-way at midday,
and past the westend of town at dusk.
Horrigan appeared in Ellis in 1870
having no known ties, his exact age undetermined.
In the civil war he was a teamster
for General Logan. Though he never enlisted
the corded hat he wore was part
of a soldier’s uniform. As he prayed
John would place the hat in front of him.
Those who saw noticed he would drop something in
and take it out during this time,
but no one ever got close enough
to see what it was.
Many were curious why
he lived his life of solitary prayer.
Faced with occasional questions as to his reason
John maintained a fragile indifference.
His crudely made clothing seemed too large for him.
�POEM | LECUYER
71
A leaf of faded newsprint now detached
from the day of its delivery,
and strayed along the fences and the streets
past rooms and parks and silent public buildings
might stay somewhile in a vacant space.
Mingled there with weeds and old boards
our cipher speech. our diagrams
brush near the pinburst of a thistle flower.
Thought softness and chill precision
of lines from the stem to form a sphere
can dissolve the grammar of the mind.
Our voice in darkness not explicable . . .
Or again, as a windseed parted
from its root, his age set him adrift
about the city. The spirit of this man
surrounded by commercial signs and held
in traffic lights, deranged a memory
of loveliness where once he had been lost
like a wild rabbit caught, transfixed
by headlights on a lonely section road
can hear in her paralysis the daybreak.
Philip LeCuyer is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
David Lawrence Levine, Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of
Wisdom. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2016. 372 pp.
Eva Brann
Plato’s Charmides is not one of the more famous dialogues or
one often thought of as central, and it is not on the St. John’s reading list. The latter fact is probably irremediable; the former opinion is now, once and for all, remedied by Profound Ignorance.1
I’ve long had a fleeting intuition, which David Levine has
now worked out deeply and extensively, that the Charmides is of
all the Platonic dialogues the one that most immediately bears on
our own contemporary political condition, the one that most directly illuminates the root problems of modernity. The Table of
Contents in fact signals his understanding of this dialogue as peculiarly future-fraught. There are ten chapters, all but the first of
which are devoted to a lively and careful exegesis of successive
sections of the text. The first chapter, however, is a retrospective
of ancient tyranny from the viewpoint of the “mega-phenomenon”
that is modern totalitarianism. It seems to me that, whereas in the
Republic we are invited to analyze the full soul as writ large in an
imagined city, in the Charmides we are bidden to focus on the
shrunk soul of an actual tyrant-to-be in a real city. The tyrant’s actions are infinitesimal in murderous effect compared to those of
recent totalitarian leaders, but by that very smallness possibly
David Levine, tutor at St. John’s College on the Santa Fe campus, was
dean there from 2001 to 2006. Eva Brann, tutor on the Annapolis campus, was dean there from 1990 to 1997.
1. It is an informal rule that a tutor proposing an addition to our seminar list should also suggest the reading to be eliminated. Since every
book is loved to an over-my-dead-body point by somebody, changes
are hard to achieve—as they ought to be.
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more comprehensible in their badness than is the all but incomprehensible evil of the last and this century. David Levine works
out these comparative realities in the initial chapter. The surface
differences between old tyranny and new totalitarianism are, in
brief, “lawlessness and terror,” expressed in an untrammeled appetite, as against “criminal rationality” expressed in a brute ideology. But there is a root similarity: “profound ignorance.” It is
most perfectly exemplified in Critias, the eventual main figure of
the Charmides, as Charmides, the externally beautiful boy without
a mind of his own, recedes—only to return at the end with ominous threats, boyishly delivered.
This first chapter further sets out the way of understanding
the dialogue that is pursued in this book. We are asked to “remember” certain Socratic truths now mostly displaced, which
will show, as the author puts it, not that antiquity prefigured
modernity but that modern life “might not be so distinctively
modern after all.” The central question of the dialogue is: What
is sophrosyne?, which is here translated literally: “saving [sozein]
thoughtfulness [phronesis].”2 This excellence, this goodness, is
one of Socrates’s four cardinal virtues, the one most expressive
of Socrates’s unsettling claim that all genuine goodness is, rightly
understood, not ethical but intellectual, that virtue is knowledge.
This “saving-thougthfulness” is, of all the virtues, including wisdom, the deepest and most complex, the most humanly revealing
and politically consequential of all the standard virtues or excellences in Socrates’s and his conversational partners’ lexicon. The
Charmides is devoted to revealing what this virtue is, but beyond
that what it means for human beings to lack it.
This is the moment to say that the book is copiously and interestingly annotated, and that the opinion of scholars is given its
due in the notes. The Charmides exposes Socrates to the charge
that he was party to the education of two of the most evil men
known to Athenian history. Critias was the de facto leader of the
“Thirty Tyrants,” an oligarchy that instituted a reign of terror in
2. Or “sound [sos]-mindedness.” The author’s etymology promotes, as
is perfectly permissible, his interpretation of the dialogue.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Athens, which, as I think of it, was not matched in history until
the Nazi occupation of the city during the Second World War.
There appears to be no relief here for admirers of Socrates, who
agrees, under pressure, to “chant” over Charmides, Critias’s ward
and cousin, that is, to accept him as a patient and companion.3
—Socrates is either naïve as a psychoanalyst or dubious as a
teacher. David Levine, however, will show that Socrates understands, both in bold strokes and in subtle elaborations, what is
the matter with these two; Socrates does his best.4
Readers may have shaken their heads at my use of the modern, Freudian term “psychoanalyst.” It is, however, justified by
a heading in the second chapter, where “psychoanalysis” is qualified by “philosophical.” I cite this rubric of “philosophical analysis,” the soul-stripping of a boy whose bared body is irresistible,
because a consultation of its supporting footnote shows how independent of conventional categories David Levine’s inquiry is.
It turns out that this philosophical depth-analysis is conducted
more through the surface phenomena than is the modern Freudian
kind, which is indeed “skeptical of appearances.” Thus “Doctor
Socrates” (the title of the third chapter) shows Socrates presented
with a boy who complains of a certain somatic heaviness or
“weakness” of the head which, it is pretended, Socrates knows
how to cure.
Once again the situation is unprofessional by our standards.
Not only is Socrates merely a pretend-member of the physicians’
guild, but after Charmides’s cloak falls open—or is thrown open,
Socrates is enflamed—or pretends to be. Socrates the soldier, just
returned from a brutal campaign, immerses himself in his city
with a whirl of protective pretense that signifies his non-naivety,
3. Socrates’s inner forfender, his daimonion, would sometimes intervene
to prevent unsuitable associations. Here’s a question: Why not this time,
since pedagogic failure is, on the basis of this conversation, a foregone
conclusion?
4. He fails with these ambitious, politically involved “followers,” but
of his narrower inner circle, according to Xenophon, not one ever incurred censure for immorality.
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75
his circumspection, in dealing with this future-burdened lot. He
prescribes a thoroughly “alternative” cure, a talking cure (hence
the Freudian analogy), which shifts the diagnosis from body to
soul and readies it for remediation by engendering the virtue of
thoughtfulness-saving sophrosyne.
The fourth chapter presents a crucial soul-physician’s
dilemma. Charmides, questioned about this virtue in himself, gets
tied up in embarrassment; he blushes. For he can’t attribute
sophrosyne, a kind of modesty, to himself in public without appearing immodest. That self-consciousness in turn presents his
doctor with this dilemma, the “paradox of sickness”: If he confronts his patient with his defect he will seem offensive; if he desists he will seem irresponsible. Socrates finds a device. He levers
the inquiry from a personal into a general inquiry: What is
sophrosyne? The result is to display the boy as obtuse and otherdependent in his opinions. The yet implicit truth is that true
sophrosyne is most particularly not a virtue you can have unawarely.
In the next chapter, Charmides’s “shamefacedness” (aidos,
usually and less revealingly translated as “modesty”) undergoes
examination. His final opinion, which he’s heard somewhere,
is that sophrosyne is “doing one’s own affairs.” Johnnies will
recall that this is the understanding of justice in the Republic,
of which the boy is apt to have heard from his guardian, an occasional early associate of Socrates. The latter here exposes the
selfish, anti-social meaning of Charmides’s version as compared to his own, political cohesion-producing intention in the
Republic.
Charmides concedes that he just doesn’t know the meaning
of his own putative virtue—but he snickers and looks to his
cousin, his guardian. This elicits from Socrates the address “o
miare,” an address as double-tongued as the mode he’s in. It is
on occasion jokingly used, but literally it means “O Bloodstained One,” and that is how the author translates it. The occasion is a revelation about the boy; it displays his “profound
ignorance” about himself, probably incurable. The “unreflective
adoration” of such a potential leader by his followers, in youth
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
or adulthood, is a devastating mistake to which a popular
democracy is vulnerable, then and now.5
In Chapter Six, Critias, who has been growing increasingly
antsy, lashes out, incited by his ward’s poor showing, not in behalf of the cousin he had earlier so extravagantly praised, but to
shame this boy who has shamed his guardianship. Socrates now
faces a much cleverer controversialist. What his ward is totally
without, autonomy, his guardian has in terrifying excess. Doctor
Socrates identifies it as “the principle of exclusive self-interest.”
He is “a law onto himself,” self-legislating.6 Here Critias reveals
his future, as, in Xenophon’s words, “the most greedy, the most
violent, and the most murderous” of the Thirty Tyrants. Here
“philosophy becomes ‘prophetic.’”
Clever Critias’s opinions are not logically fallacious; they are
ethically pernicious. In other words, Socrates opens up a distance
between intelligence and goodness, without compromising his
faith that, as virtue is knowledge, so vice is ignorance, and, of
course, such “Ignorance is not simply erroneous, it is dangerous.”
Acknowledged ignorance or ineptitude, however, such as
Socrates deliberately displays before the two, is the very opposite—because it is self-knowledge.
Socrates incites Critias, as he did Charmides, to successive
self-revelations—not to Critias himself but to us. Among them
is the separation in Critias’s mind of a “knowledge that” from a
5. I can’t resist a comment, seriously meant. One difference between
the tyrannical natures of antiquity and totalitarian types of our times is
that the former were beautiful. To wit, Charmides and Alcibiades versus
Hitler and Stalin. I ask myself whether it is to be considered as a deep
or a superficial distinction between antiquity and modernity, that moderns are more ready to adore physically unattractive demagogues—a
problem worth reflection.
6. David Levine refers, without naming him, to Kant’s morally opposite
notion of autonomy: Our will is to free itself from all passivity, all passion, to be fully active in accordance with its own nature as “practical
reason”—meaning that it makes only universalizable decisions, that it
subjects itself to its own law-giving, without self-indulgence.
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“knowledge what.” The Critian man of sophrosyne knows that
he is pursuing his own affairs, but he doesn’t know what he is
doing. His is an ultimately insubstantial, all-subjective knowledge. Moreover, Critias has his own “liberation theology”: a godlike freedom for unrestrained self-expression. All this
self-assertion makes Socrates, in contrast, now withdraw for a
while to inquire within himself.7
What follows is an inquiry into Critias’s “proto-tyrannical”
consciousness. Its main characteristic is an “extraordinary selfawareness” which is, at bottom, an empty self-involvement with
its attendant “conceptual thicket . . . , the problem of reflexivity,”
that is, self-attention unmediated by an intentional object.8 For
Socrates, genuine knowing has an object, it is “of” something,
namely the forms.
Critias has concocted a unique understanding of sophrosyne
as a second-order knowledge that is practical in the sense of being
utilitarian, universal in the sense of ruling over all other kinds of
knowledge without being “of” them, and self-certified—the wisdom of self-interest, of political calculation, and of irresponsible
domination.9
Chapter Seven and Eight are both devoted to working out the
“Lesson of Ignorance.” It begins with Critias accusing Socrates
of sophistry, because after all, every search, even if it has a real
object, is self-interested—we want to be engaged.10 Socrates’s
nobility of inquiry is here delineated in terms of his personal
7. As he does on other occasions, e.g., Phaedo 95e7.
8. An “intentional object” is what cognition intends, what thinking is
“of” or “about.”
9. To me these passages, to the exegesis of which in Profound Ignorance
I’ve not done justice, are the high point of the dialogue, since they throw
a lurid light on philosophy’s main preoccupation in modern times, epistemology, the knowledge of knowledge.
10. Every teacher knows that this is an honest problem peculiar to adolescents: Every way of being unselfish is selfish because we take pleasure in self-denial. In older people it’s contentious, since it muddies
commitment before completing the analysis.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
qualities. But then a deeper difference, the central subject of the
book, is broached: The emptily barren, assertively dominating,
totalitarian knowledge that one knows takes over when what one
knows lacks wholeness. This is the missing element in Critian
self-knowledge: the knowledge of ignorance, in oneself and in itself. The exposition of the extendedly paradoxical nature of the
knowledge of ignorance—a deeply subjective, yet impersonal,
interpersonal, world-engaged kind of cognition—is, I think, not
only the center but also the high point of Profound Ignorance.
So Socrates opposes to Critian sophrosyne a more complete
virtue in the service of the self, a second sophrosyne, now a virtue
in the service of self-knowledge. This is then the dual enigma: Is
“the knowing of what one knows and what one does not know
that one does not know” ever possible? And what is the benefit
of that knowledge? Charmides, who is, after all, the patient here,
is to be involved in the inquiry.
The nature of psychological reflexivity and logical privation,
deep features of thought and of things, is now at issue. Here
David Levine injects two digressions. One recounts Hegel’s history of self-consciousness, in which Socrates is given the crucial
role of rescuing the suspect subjectivity of the sophists by insisting on the “‘inherent independence of thought’ from private and
particular determinations.” The other digression recounts some
extreme scholarly opinions reluctant to credit ancient Socrates
with making full self-awareness thematic.11 And if he is born too
soon for fully reflexive self-knowledge, then, too, he cannot
know his ignorance. —But, Profound Ignorance proves, the dialogue says otherwise: Socrates achieves a profound self-knowledge which includes the knowledge of his ignorance.
The profoundest perplexity is that of reflexivity, the soul’s
power of self-relation, of which self-knowledge is a complexly
perplexed part: Socrates cannot “confidently affirm” whether a
11. To me these digressions are the more interesting for touching on a
question that ought to be everyone’s preoccupation: Can chronology
preclude some thoughts from being thought by those caught in its
frame?
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79
knowledge of knowledge—and of ignorance—can come about.
That disaffirmation itself is knowledge of ignorance. The profound enigma behind the latter is the above-mentioned notion of
privation (that is, the deprivation of all positive qualities) and the
consequent unspeakability of the “not” in ignorance; its knowledge would be the knowledge of a no-thing, a nothing. Such
knowledge would then be described as the knowing of not-knowing, which, if it isn’t straight self-contradiction, comes close to
it. All this ontological logic is way above the pair’s heads, but
that need not preclude admission of one’s own ignorance—the
doctor’s prescription for Charmides. Moreover, ontological perplexities aside, there is a brutely practical problem with this crucial kind of self-knowledge: Some soul types just lack the “prior
Socratic reflective reflexivity” that is needed.
Having set out this discouraging preliminary, the author now
reports Socrates’s challenge to Critias, which is to show that his
second “Socratic” sophrosyne, which he has so easily adopted,
is beneficial. Socrates reports that it throws Critias into “incapacitating confusion,” rather than into an enabling perplexity. This
could be a moment of self-discovery; Critias’s defective soul,
however, is not turned upward but forced “back on itself in
shame.” He is, to be sure, self-oriented (reflexive), but not selfknowing (reflective); he lacks that “prior Socratic reflexivity.”
Critias has not “reflected on the nature of beings” enough to be
thinking about sophrosyne. His thinking is an empty totalism. He
is stuck in his incapability, but we, listening, have indeed had actualized in us the knowledge of another’s ignorance. So that
much is possible.
We now come to the two concluding chapters. Critias’s reflexivity did not lead him to the knowledge of his own ignorance, but now Socrates wants him to recognize that his
self-cognition, which does not include knowing what, is overgeneralized, “abstract,” to the point of vacancy: vacant self-assertion. Particularly as a political virtue, substantial knowledge
of content-imbued expertise is necessary. A reference to the hitherto unsatisfactorily settled question “What is the benefit of
sophrosyne?” is implied. Socrates begins to dream, a dream of
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the—political—benefits of his sophrosyne. It is but a dream,
since for these two rulers-to-be complete self-knowledge is not
possible.
What is Critias really after, since the knowledge delineated
by him has proved empty? Critias says, out of the blue: The
knowledge that makes one happy is that of good and bad. For the
second time Socrates addresses one of this pair, now Critias, as
“O Bloodstained One.” What is so terrible here? Critias is shown
by Socrates to have implied that sophrosyne is a ruler’s peculiar
virtue, entitling one to rule who knows nothing substantial but
has this master-knowledge: How to get his own good out of what
people know how to do. He has claimed a “primordial ruling
knowledge that would subordinate the good to some yet more
primordial sense of ownness.” It is indeed the notion of a man
who will be bloodstained.
In this last dialectic passage with Critias, Socrates comes off
almost deflatingly aporetic, perplexed, about knowledge in general and goodness in particular. Critias, in contrast, is self-confidently without doubt. Though he has some beginnings in
common with Socrates, such as the primary importance of the
good life and the centrality of self-knowledge,12 finally, in this
dialogue, Socrates is, in contrast to Critias, profoundly ambiguous about “human intentionality and intelligence.” Moreover, he
is overtly deflating about his own dialectical participation in the
search, which was indeed, as David Levine says, both “over-involved to the point of being opaque” and forgetfully simpleminded. But that was intentional; the purpose was to let Critias
reveal his profound ignorance.
In the ultimate chapter, Doctor Socrates turns back to
Charmides, his reluctant patient, who declares that he—still—
doesn’t know whether he has sophrosyne and—still—depends
on the grown-ups to tell him. However, he now enrolls himself
as Socrates’s willing patient. Indeed, the two incipient evil-doers
verbally coerce a by now reluctant Socrates to take the boy on.
Charmides’s external beauty cloaks an internal violence.
12. And, I would add, the identification of virtue with a knowledge.
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Socrates’s very last words are: “I will not oppose,” and this
apparently willing submission to a future of blood has troubled
interpreters; is it craven? However, not only has Socrates’s conduct of the conversation been the opposite of complicit, but
David Levine shows that “sophrosyne is the better part of
valor”—that is, real sophrosyne: discretion, circumspection. Accordingly, Socrates has conducted a complex, ad hominem conversation receptive to two principles of interpretation: “integrated
wholeness” (nested, sometimes circular development) and “dramatic argumentation” (implicit deeds, sometimes countermanding the words). In this conversation he has disjoined the assumed
virtue of the boy from its ordinary meaning: control of appetites,
moderation, temperance, and continence. He has instead attached
it to self-knowledge thoughtfully understood. To be sure, Socrates’s
“therapeutic thinking in the service of higher ends is transmogrified
[by Critias] into calculative thinking serving baser ones.” But he
has tried. This is the answer to the troubled interpreters: Socrates
has “circumspect courage.” On campaign he is a staunch warrior
saving his comrades; in the city he is a canny lover of wisdom,
protecting the truth-effort.
Some postscripts articulate David Levine’s deepest intentions: To recall to use a generally unremembered dialogue, the
Charmides, that itself memorializes a great event; to recommend
to us a guide, Socrates, who can take the measure of a human
soul; and, of course, to reveal behind both dialogue and character
an author, Plato, who writes inexhaustibly interpretable texts.
The book ends with David Levine’s own brief interpretative
synopsis of his book.
I want to emphasize once more what a curtailed report my chapter-by-chapter sketch is. Moreover I’ve not engaged the author
in critical debate. The reasons are the same for both deficiencies:
The devil (meaning the subversions of the book) is, as they say,
in the details, which are wittingly and intricately worked out. To
take issue with them would be more the matter of a conversation
than of a written report. Moreover, David Levine is alive and well
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and lives in Santa Fe; go and talk to him. For my part, it seems
to me that what he says is profoundly right: Socrates has a close
and knowing relation to his own ignorance and that is his most
telling virtue, his sophrosyne, his deep discretion, while the future
tyrant is profoundly ignorant of his ignorance. Here is my own
ultimate question: Is profound ignorance morally imputable badness or psychologically hopeless insanity? –To me, it’s the question concerning evil.
I also want to say a word of the uses to which this book might
be put: A senior might find it inciting to an unusual senior essay;
a tutor would find it encouraging to a rarely offered preceptorial;
any reader will find it illuminating in thinking about all sorts of
totalitarianisms.
In sum, Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the
Saving of Wisdom is a book that shows what a Platonic dialogue
is and what a reading of it can be.
�
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The St. John's Review
Volume 50, number 3 (2008)
Editor
C. Nathan Dugan
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Bramt
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Thomas Browning
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John's College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson,
President; Michael Dink, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $10 for one year. Unsolicited
essays, reviews, and reasoned letters are welcome. All
manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5
per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©2008 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction
in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. Jolm's Public Relations Office and the St. fohn's College Pri11t Shop
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�3
Contents
Is There Great Jazz? ...................................................... 5
Andre Barbera
Preformationism In Biology: From Homunculi To
Genetic Programs ........................................................ 33
jorge H. Aigla, M.D
The Persians and the Parthenon: Yoke and Weave
Part Two: The Parthenon............................................. 53
Mera ]. Flaumenhaft
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�5
-.:f Is There Great Jazz?
fj:-- Andre Barbera
Ten years ago I began a lecture with an excerpt from "Split
Kick." [Musical example 1] 1 That lecture was ostensibly
devoted to one evening's recorded performance by Art
Blakey's quintet in 1954. My barely hidden agenda was to
ask, 'is there great jazz?', to answer 'yes', and to consider the
implications for St. John's College. Now I ask the question
explicitly, although my confidence in an affirmative answer
has waned. Addressing the practical problems associated with
an affirmative answer is not the main thrust of my remarks.
Rather, I want to consider whether jazz really is worthy of
our attention.
What is 'great' and what is 'jazz'? I shall not attempt to
define greatness. As we consider jazz and its possible merit,
however, we may uncover some of the aspects of greatness
that we attribute to the works already on St. John's program,
or at least think about some of our prejudices on behalf of
those works.
Let us get straight about what kind of music jazz issomething we all know already. Jazz is primarily instrumental
music, emphasizing brass and reed instruments, based on
dance, popular song forms, and the blues, and is of distinctly
African-American character in its origin, development, and
soul. Jazz entails swing, the blue tonality, and improvisation.
Jazz musicians employ idiosyncratic timbres or tone colors. In
jazz, instruments are treated like voices and voices like instruments. Ultimately, one might find in jazz expressions of
Andre Barbera is a tutor at the Annapolis campus of St. John's College.
This lecture was delivered at AnnapOlis on September 8, 2006. }.,.{usical
examples arc listed in Appendix 1 and can be heard online by visiting the
St. John's Review webpage (www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml)
and clicking the link "Jazz Examples to Accompany 'Is there Great Jazz?' by
Andre Barbera".
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
individuality, autonomy, freedom. Many examples of jazz
lack some of these characteristics and perhaps a few lack
them all, but this rough definition should suffice. Of these
various characteristics, some are more important than others,
for example the African-American natnre of the musical
idiom. Jazz is race music, by which I do not mean that one
need be overtly cognizant of race to appreciate it, nor that
jazz musicians need to be African Americans. Nonetheless,
the nature of jazz, its soul, is African-American. Other
important characteristics of jazz include swing, the blues, and
expression of the individual. I shall speak about swing now,
and comment on the others later.
Swing is good, out of place in much music, but
undeniably a good musical characteristic. Swing is difficult to
define. It requires that the music neither speed up nor slow
down, thus betraying its origin in dance. Fifty years ago, in a
famous albeit imperfect treatment of the phenomenon, Andre
Hodeir noted: "In jazz, the feeling of relaxation does not
follow a feeling of tension but is present at the same
moment." And, "Swing is possible ... only when the beat,
though it seems perfectly regular, gives the impression of
moving inexorably ahead .... " 2
A well-known example of swing can occur in consecutive
eighth notes that are played such that the note on the beat
lasts longer than the note off the beat. [Musical example 2;
Appendix 2, Swing Eighths] How much longer one note lasts
than another varies and presents a notational challenge that is
usually and wisely ignored. One does not learn about swing
from written examples, and besides, this depiction is very
narrow, pertaining only to consecutive notes of equal
notational value. We shall consider a more subtle and
complex example of swing later.
Now that we have skirted the question of greatness and
provided a loose description of jazz, we might reasonably
wonder: why even ask if there is any great jazz? Empirically,
one can discern the influence of African-American music all
�BARBERA
7
over the globe, from the blues revival in 1960s England to the
second-hand influence of the Beatles throughout the Western
world, India, and the Far East, from the popular music of subSaharan Africa to the internet-transported pop music of
today. There are a handful of exceptions: the Nazis banned
this kind of music, and it is prohibited in some strict Muslim
societies. But by and large, blues, jazz, and African-American
music in general can be heard all over the world, in its
original forms as well as in myriad adaptations and dilutions.
Of the various sub-types of African-American music, jazz
is clearly the most sophisticated, the highest, by which I mean
the most developed and complex. Thus I maintain with little
or no reservation that jazz is the great music of the \Xlestern
world over the past one hundred years; but here I am using
'great' to mean hegemonic. Pervasive influence is insufficient
for us to canonize the music as great in our terms, as worthy
of our study, but it is sufficient reason for us to consider it.
Our aim here is to begin to evaluate the musical merit of jazz.
What are the qualities of jazz that might make it great in
the sense of The Republic or Euclid's Elements of Geometry
or The Brothers Karamazov? Here the long list of what is
ordinary about jazz intrudes, the reasons why jazz for all of
its charms is not great, but in fact rather common. I shall
address five aspects: setting, structi1re, boredom, recording,
and individuality.
Setting
We can go right back to our opening example to start
working on our list. The object of scrutiny is a performance,
a live recording. (Let us just agree to use the common if
somewhat nonsensical terminology of "live recording" to
distinguish recordings made in front of an audience from
recordings made in a studio.) The piece, "Split Kick" by
Horace Silver, is not written down in the traditional sense.
The performance is an isolated event occurring on a Sunday
night in February 1954, in a nightclub. People drink in nightclubs and talk and eat while the musicians are playing. Jazz
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
has made it into the concert hall, but most often its setting is
one of entertainment and amusement. The use of 'noble' in
such a context seems overdressed and proud.
Blakey's quintet had been playing at Birdland for the
entire week, two sets a night. But these musicians were not a
working group, having been pulled together for the specific
purpose of that week's performances leading up to a live
recording. 3
Let us not ignore the spoken introduction. William
Clayton "Pee Wee" Marquette was the short-statured m.c.
who worked also as doorman at Birdland. He lived upstairs,
took his meals there, and "touch[ed] the guys in the band for
money. "4 Pee Wee reasoned that his promotion of the
musicians entitled him to a commission. Pee Wee also carried
with him an adjustable butane cigarette lighter set at the
maximum: apparently the sight of a two-foot flame shooting
up in the dark, basement nightclub provided a thrill to
patrons. 5 Does great music need a pitchman with a flamethrower?
At nightclubs, jazz musicians usually give two performances per night, and sometimes three on weekends. The
Village Vanguard, an old-style, cash-only jazz club in New
York, books groups Tuesday through Sunday, with performances at 9 and 11 on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and
Sunday; 9, 11, and 1 on Friday and Saturday. That's not art;
that's work!
Therefore, the setting for jazz is common.
Structure
"Split Kick" is a contrafact that relies on the standard, 32measure structure and harmony of a popular song, that is, on
a small, narrow, and fragile framework. 6 A structure like this
is central to almost all improvisation-this is in part why free
jazz blew itself up and did so fairly quickly. What did Mozart
do with this structure? There are his variations on themes,
usually for keyboard, which doubtless are close to transcriptions of improvisations. They show Mozart not at his best-
�BARBERA
9
one might even say 'worst' except that worst and Mozart's
music don't really go together. The variations are boring and
lack intensity, just one elaboration after another. The
structure of theme and variations imposes in most cases
limitations of harmony, meter, and phrase. There are a few
instances of jazz that break out of this mold, generally
ambitious and pretentious endeavors. If jazz were to be great,
it seems to me it must work within and simultaneously
transcend by some means the limitation of theme-andvariation structure.
Boredom
Structural limitations lead to the indisputable fact that vast
stretches of jazz performances are boring/ One might make
the same remark about other works of art, literature,
philosophy, and so forth. I shall not mention those works on
the program that I find most tedious, with the exception of
Tristan tmd Isolde. The conclusion of that opera is glorious by
any measure and stands perfectly well as good music, severed
from what comes before it. But part of its true glory rests in
relief, or release, the sense that the bad trip of the past four
hours is about to end.
We do not read all ancient geometers, do not study all
Viennese classical composers, do not read all enlightenment
philosophers. There is a fair amount of material attributed to
Euclid that we never look at, and for that matter we read only
about half of The Elements of Geometry. We have time to do
only so much, and besides, much of what we skip is boring.
With jazz, in a misguided sense of fairness-everyone gets
a turn-we have drum solos and bass solos, most of the
former and virtually all of the latter being boring to listen to.
This is not to question in the least the nearly indispensable
roles played by drums and bass in making good jazz. But all
sorts of solos by melodic or chording instruments are also
boring. My friend Stevie Curtin, a guitarist, says that there is
a lot of killing time in jazz. Such a notion is related to the
labor of the entertainer, and is of a lower order artistically
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
than the boredom that is composed into works with an
intention of ultimate release or exhilaration.
Recording Industry
Since the 1920s, jazz has been disseminated not only to its
audience but also to its future practitioners largely by means
of recordings. To cite just one sequence: Lester Young listened
to the recordings of Frankie Trumbauer, Charlie Parker to
those of Lester Young, Lou Donaldson. and just about
everyone else to those of Charlie Parker. The recording
industry is a business, and most decisions regarding what gets
recorded and who hears it are made with an eye toward
turning a profit. All art and literature might be constrained to
some degree by the practicalities of life, but the short-term
demands of the free market hardly allow for the unfettered
and ennobling expression of the human spirit.
Worse still, the idiom of jazz, which depends upon
spontaneous invention, is disseminated in recordings that are
hardly products of spontaneity. Records are made by
acoustical engineers and then marketed. No doubt the live
recording is an attempt to mitigate this apparently contradictory relationship. Michael MacDonald, an audio
technician, producer of jazz records, and graduate of St.
John's College, mentioned to me that his goal as producer of
a "Live at ... " recording "was to place the listener in the
second row of tables, in from the stage." 8 To some extent, I
believe such recordings are effective. Think of our opening
example: it is as if we really are at Birdland; we can visualize
Pee Wee Marquette on the stage; we can see the musicians
taking their places; we imagine that the music is produced
spontaneously before us.
Alas, in this case there is some deception. From the Blue
Note documents sent to me by Michael Cuscuna, I conclude
that "Split Kick" was recorded in the middle of the third set
of five sets of recordings made that evening. Marquette says,
"We're bringing back to tl1e bandstand at this time, ladies and
�BARBERA
II
gentlemen, the great Art Blakey and his wonderful group .... "
Were they really coming back to the bandstand, or were they
just sitting there, waiting for the audio technicians to record
an introduction ?9
The Individual
In a list of the hallmarks of jazz, Gunther Schuller has placed
primary emphasis on the development by the performer of a
unique tone or tone color. 10 Schuller argues that the more
resistant the instrument, trumpet versus alto saxophone for
example, the more important it is to develop such a tone.
This idea characterizes jazz no differently than one might
describe pop singing-it all comes down to some captivating
tone color. In thinking especially about Miles Davis, a master
of various tones, I thought that Schuller might be right.
[Musical Example 3]
How to characterize Davis's tone? Variety: brassy notes,
bent notes, dirty notes, decaying notes, breathy notes. One
trumpet sound, in fact, seems to be pitchless, or composed of
many pitches, all breath. Writers have used various terms to
describe the color of Davis's tone. To me it seems first and
foremost to be fragile but inherently contradictory, both
harsh and delicate at the same time. An intended accolade
given to some popular and jazz musicians and singers is that
they could have played classical music, or they could have
sung opera. I am thinking of Sarah Vaughan in this regard. It
is safe to say, with that tone Miles never could have played
classical music.
In review, jazz is common, not great, because:
1. It is performed primarily in nightclubs;
2. It relies on the structure of theme and
variations;
3. In many instances it is boring, exuding a
workman-like or laborious quality;
4. It is controlled by the recording industry;
5. It is obsessed with tone color.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
12
From these remarks, one might think that I was called in to
help put down an insurrection of jazz rebels seeking to
contaminate the St. John's program with their music. To
generalize, the issue that I am placing before you is one of
entertainment versus ennoblement, that is to say, refreshing
versus new and improved. Thus far, I have been making the
case for jazz as entertainment, and as I attempt to show some
ennobling qualities of jazz, you will see that we never leave
entertainment and its limitations far behind.
*
*
*
There are many great jazz musicians about whom I have to
say only that they deserve lectures of their own. In addition,
strong, fruitful influences, like Latin music, important issues
regarding the composition of the jazz audience, and widely
celebrated and influential recordings do not figure in my
remarks. Thus my remarks are not broadly representative of
jazz, although I hope that they touch on its character. Most of
early jazz and all recent developments are also absent, which
betrays my prejudices and age.
Rather than great jazz musicians, let us ask if there is
simply a great jazz recording, or more narrowly, a great jazz
solo. We turn first of all to the great man of jazz, Louis
Armstrong, who almost single-handedly transformed his
work into one that revolves around the exceptional
individual.
Here is an excerpt from "Hotter Than That" recorded by
Armstrong and his Hot Five in 1927. The excerpt includes a
polyphonic, eight-measure introduction, then three choruses
of 32 measures each, followed by a call-and-response passage
between voice and guitar. I direct your attention especially to
the first and third choruses where we hear Armstrong first as
cornetist and then as vocalist. Despite the relatively primitive
recording conditions, it is abundantly clear to me why this
jazz was called 'hot'. I also call your attention, although it is
hardly necessary, to the latter half of the third chorus where
�BARBERA
13
Armstrong sings in 3/4 meter against the prevailing 4/4 meter.
[Musical example 4]
What I find truly remarkable about this vocal passage is
how Armstrong extricates himself from the 3/4-meter
pattern. He does not do so abruptly, but rather before
returning to 4/4 he follows the ten measures of 3/4 with a
measure of 12/8, whose off beats do not jibe with either the
4/4 or the 3/4 pattern. Jazz writers comment on the interchange between Armstrong and guitarist Lonnie Johnson that
follows this passage, although I sense a letdown at this point
after the brilliance of Armstrong's cornet playing and his
stunning scat singing.
"Hotter Than That" is a very important piece in the
history of jazz, but I feel the need to make some excuses for
it-primitive recording, no drums, a time-killing piano vamp.
Let us consider a somewhat more modern piece. A quick
search on the internet produced the following testimonials: 11
1. Terell Stafford, who has been hailed as "one of
the great players of our time, a fabulous trumpet
player" by piano legend McCoy Tyner, cites as one
of his most profound musical influences Clifford
Brown's rendition of "Cherokee."
2. On bandleader Bob January's website My
Favorite Things, under "My favorite recordings,"
there is a short list that contains Clifford Brown's
"Cherokee."
3. Trumpeter Woody Shaw, in an interview for
Down Beat [Aug. 1978], said: "I'll never forget
[Brown's "Cherokee"]. It just haunted me. Such a
beautiful dark tone. Clifford more or less shaped
my conception of what I wanted to sound like."
4. On a site that seemed to be connected to
Springfield Public School District 186, Springfield,
Illinois, in a section entitled "Entertainment:
Rediscovering classic jazz," Justin Shields cites
"one of the greatest jazz recordings in history, the
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
classic 'Cherokee' [by Clifford Brown]."
5. And on a blog entitled Corn Chips and Pie:
Chunky nuggets, Millicent posted the following
[May 3, 2006]. "Let me tell you something: if I
played the trumpet (well, I did once, in the sixth
grade), I would transcribe every single note of
Clifford Brown's solo ... of 'Cherokee,' and I would
work on it every day of my life. Finally, at age 97,
I would master it, and every single resident of my
nursing home on Mars would shit himself in
wonder and awe. Then I would die."
Perhaps we should take a listen. We hear the introduction,
the tune or head, and then two choruses of improvisation by
Clifford Brown. A word about the introduction: it is a
pejorative cliche about the music of native Americans, but it
functions well in setting up the rapid, soaring, pentatonic
melody. [Musical example 5]
Clifford Brown's solo is truly exhilarating, especially the
last quarter of his first chorus with its breathless overflowing
of notes. The remaining solos on this performance by other
musicians are good, but certainly not in a league with
Brown's. So one experiences a let-down of sorts in the latter
half of the piece. Indeed, the same thing happens in Brown's
solo itself: the second chorus, as fine as it is, cannot match the
first. The bar has been set too high, too soon, having the
effect of a denouement that lasts too long.
Now I would like to turn to a jazz solo that I think is
great, on Frank Wess's "Segue In C,'' performed by Count
Basie and his orchestra at Birdland in 1961. The arrangement
of the piece is masterful, but I want to home in on the first
solo after Basie's introduction, Budd Johnson playing tenor
saxophone. Johnson was a highly regarded and widely
traveled musician, but it is safe to say that his is not a
household name, not even in some jazz circles. We shall hear
the last introductory chorus by Basie, followed by Johnson's
solo.
�BARBERA
15
Johnson's solo lacks the dazzling virtuosity that is heard
on "Cherokee." Rather it comprises six beautifully designed,
integrated blues choruses. Here we have a successful attempt
to overcome the inherent limitation of the theme-andvariation structure. Johnson has fashioned each chorus as a
melodic and emotional succession to the previous one, and
with a musical sense for the shape of the entire set of six. The
first is restrained, sweet-toned, and bubbles over with swing,
in part owing to the entrancing rhythm section. Indeed, much
of the music produced by Basie's orchestra can be taken as
exemplars of swing. The second chorus expands the register,
emphasizing tone 5, and ends with repeated tone 6 as a
springboard to a further expansion of the register to tone 8
in the third chorus. In the third and fourth choruses, the wind
instruments from the orchestra accompany the soloist with
riffs. The fourth chorus is marked at the beginning by a
quotation of "I Dream Of Jeannie With The Light Brown
Hair," which I note solely to orient the listener. The fifth
chorus is the emotional high point of the solo, containing
loud, long, high blue thirds leading into the first and fifth
measures. The sixth chorus, the denouement, is as subtle and
effective as the first. It begins with repeated C's, tone 1, and
ends with an almost self-effacing descent down to low tone 3.
[Musical example 6]
I have also attempted to notate the first three-plus
measures of the sixth chorus to emphasize an aspect of swing.
[Appendix 2, Triplets] Excluding subtleties of intonation, and
even assuming that the rhythmic designation of the individual
notes is approximately correct, where does one place the last
note, B-flat, of the example? In other words, is it the third
part of a triply divided half measure that falls late (indicated
by the arrow pointing right), or is it an anticipation of the
downbeat of the next measure (indicated by the arrow
pointing left)? Probably neither. [Musical example 7]
What we hear is the soloist fall behind the beat. Triplets
can produce the effect of speeding up or slowing down
depending upon the durational value to which the ear hears
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
them as an alternative. In this case, the triplets in and of
themselves produce a drag on the beat, and Budd Johnson is
playing the triplets progressively slower. The passage is made
even more effective by the early appearance of the B-flat. This
is the note that transforms the tonic harmony of C major into
a secondary dominant chord pointing to the subdominant
harmony of measure 5 in the chorus. The secondary
dominant has occurred throughout the piece in measure four,
but in this case the phrase is truncated, at least theoretically,
by the omission of a second occurrence of the note C.
Therefore, the transformational B-flat arrives just a little bit
early even though the triplets are gradually slowing down.
The ear and the heart make sense of this.
Why don't we stop here and canonize "Segue In C"? I
have already mentioned that the piece is well orchestrated
and unfolds beautifully. There are a couple of written-out
ensemble passages to come as well as a trombone solo. The
latter is the problem. The trombone solo is not bad, and the
audience at Birdland that night seemed to like it, but in fact it
is no match for Johnson's solo, and at times seems downright
crude. It effectively diminishes the work.
With the examples by Louis Armstrong, Clifford Brown,
and Budd Johnson, we have encountered the problems or
dangers of seeking greatness: (1) in a recording; (2) in an
improvisation; (3) in a whole that consists of a series of
contributions by different individuals. I shall return to this
example by Budd Johnson at the end, but let us move on.
What is the work? In most cases we have books, writings
assembled and organized at some time and place into what
are now books with titles like the Elements of Geometry or
the Critique of Pure Reason. In some cases our works are the
realized performances of musical scores, for example Bach's
St. Matthew Passion. In other cases, somewhat more
problematic for us at St. John's, but not really for our
conception of the work, the object resides in a museum,
Leonardo's Mona Lisa or Picasso's Guernica, for example.
�17
BARBERA
With jazz, the nature of improvisation turns the work into
an action. Certainly there are instances of improvisations
becoming fixed compositions.' 2 Nevertheless, the very
essence of jazz seems to entail spontaneous music making,
real-time poiesis. Charlie Parker's legendary status in the
world of jazz rests in part on his unmatched ability to
produce unique improvisations repeatedly, even on multiple,
consecutive takes of the same tune in the recording studio.
Ted Gioia addresses this problem in The Imperfect Art:
Reflections 011 jazz and Modem Culture. He proposes to
develop an "aesthetics of imperfection." Gioia writes, " ... the
virtues we search for in other art forms-premeditated
design, balance between form and content, an overall
symmetry-are largely absent in jazz." And later, "our
interest in jazz, it would seem, is less a matter of our interest
in the perfection of the music, and more a result of our
interest in the expressiveness of the musician ... [whose
performances) are judged ... not by comparison with some
Platonic ideal of perfection but by comparison with what
other musicians can do under similar conditions. Our interest
lies primarily in the artist and only secondarily in the art." 13
On first reading, such a suggestion seems to imply a kind
of hagiography of individuals, in short, a study of great men
and their deeds. The achievements of Alexander the Great are
indeed great, and conceivably we might sit around and
discuss how he did it. In that discussion, the contributions of
some participants would be more valuable than others, but
likely so because of experience or at least outside reading. I
presume that an appreciation of jazz does not entail an
interest in this man or that, in Louis Armstrong or Charlie
Parker, but rather in the artist. We might be amazed at the
man who can play the fastest, or the highest, or the loudest
on a given instrument, but certainly this amazement differs
from our enchantment with Clifford Brown's solo on
"Cherokee."
As listeners to jazz, we marvel not at the highest or
loudest or strangest note, but at that consecution of notes
- -----------
---~
--------------
--
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
aptly fitted to the tune, at a specific time and place, on a
specific instrument or instruments. If in so doing we are
studying great men, we are doing so only while they are
actually performing the deeds that make them great.
This brings us to a reconsideration of individuality, which
previously I had listed among those characteristics that make
jazz common. There the subject was tone color, that quality
of sound that might be uniquely identified with a performer.
A unique sound is of some interest owing to the originality
and skill needed to produce it, but it is hardly a principle of
great music. It is, at best, an ingredient.
There may be in jazz, however, a sense of the individual
far more significant than unique tone color. Part of Louis
Armstrong's great achievement during the 1920s was to make
jazz a soloist's music in place of the quasi-egalitarian ethos of
collective improvisation. His effect on jazz was analogous to
what Babe Ruth did for baseball, making it a slugger's game.
Since Armstrong, nearly all jazz has been concerto music,
music that requires an ensemble, but only to throw into relief
and to support the music of the individual.
The jazz soloist, the individual, goes about his work in
connection with the blues. The connection is in fact threefold. First, there is the structure, usually tripartite, built on
strong harmonic pillars. Second, there is the blue tonality
with its characteristic tone 3, its subtonic, and its embellishment of tone 5. Third, there is the sentiment, the lament
that conveys the soul of jazz. It is this third meaning of the
blues that is of paramount importance in defining the role of
the jazz soloist.
Lament underpins much jazz, but not in such a way that
hearing jazz (or blues) is a sad experience for the listener.
Quite the opposite. The listener, through the music, has his
cares-not necessarily woes-articulated in a way that
surpasses his own ability to express them. Blues guitarist
Brownie McGhee went so far as to reverse the relationship
ordinarily expressed by "having the blues." He said, "The
�BARBERA
19
blues was in the cradle with me rockin'. I never had the blues.
The blues had me. My cradle would rock without anybody
rockin' it. " 14 For the listener, something like catharsis takes
place, but not in the sense that the listener pities or fears a
representation of truly pitiable beings or frightful conditions.
The listener's condition or lament, rather, is transformed in
the musical expression and, if not lifted from her shoulders,
is at least lifted up before the community and to God. The
jazz soloist is a priest.
As is the case with most works of art, the expression is
individual, particular. The sentiment is not ''Abandonment
and infidelity are evil" but rather "My baby done left me."
Blues musician Bill Broonzy said, "It's a natural thing that no
two human beings had blues the same way." 15 Expressions by
and of the individual are hardly unique to music or to the
United States, but in this country there has existed over the
past two centuries a remarkably and perhaps uniquely fertile
ground for the sprouting up and growth of a musical idiom
that so expresses the soul. The setting is, of course, a special
case of the melting pot, a fertile ground that includes the
contradiction of enslavement of Africans sanctioned by a
government that in spirit may be the best attempt so far to
secure individual liberty in the context of society and its
responsibilities. The contradiction is enslavement coupled
with insult and irony.
One need not know about the enslavement of Africans in
the United States in order to appreciate jazz, but the existence
of jazz is, in my opinion, unthinkable without the
enslavement. This notion might cause mathematical minds
with a taste for justice to worry about or question the
goodness of the world: the price for a great artistic development being cruelty and dehumanizing social structure.
Such a thought-if there were not any cruelty, there would
not be any jazz-puts emphasis in the wrong place. The
world is a wonder, aspects of which may be considered in
terms of equations. (For those of you familiar with The
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Brothers Karamazov, one might think of the difference
between Ivan and Zosima.)
A brief review: after considering an argument for jazz as
common, jazz as entertainment, we have been considering the
possibility of something greater. We have heard excerpts from
legendary solos by Louis Armstrong and Clifford Brown, and
a solo by Budd Johnson that overcomes the limitation of
theme and variations and in so doing achieves integrity. From
these examples we were required to consider what is the jazz
work, and this in tnrn led us to think about the jazz soloist as
an individual who, in the context of the blues, makes a
connection with the individual listener.
I have proposed an image of the priest for the jazz soloist,
but I want to emphasize the limited, thoroughly Western
notion that I have in mind. I do not see the soloist as a kind
of African tribal leader, or even as a Levite. In other words,
although the soloist serves as an intermediary, taking upon his
shoulders the burden of articulation, and thus in a way
performs a sacrifice, he does not do it primarily for the good
of the community. That good may be a by-product of his
action. Rather, he does it for you, or for me. He acts for the
individual. His entire musical being is that of the individual,
the autonomous one, cast in relief against the communal
background.
Before concluding with remarks on how the connection is
made, I would like to consider one more musical example, a
candidate for a great work, albeit a miniature. In fact, we
shall hear three versions. The piece is not much more than a
riff, composed by Charlie Parker and set in the 12-measure
blues sequence. Entitled "Now's The Time," it has a
moderate tempo in between the slow lament and the fast
instrumental blues. I call it a dance blues. 16
Parker recorded "Now's the Time" more than once, and
although his solos are almost always interesting, I know of
nothing special about those recordings to recommend them
as great. Here is the beginning of one from 1953-Parker's
solo on this recording is very good-so that we can hear the
�BARBERA
21
basic plan. In lieu of trying to write out the head or theme
based on a single performance by Parker, I have provided the
version published in The Real Book, with a copyright of
1945,17 [Musical example 8; Appendix 2, "Now's The Time"]
Now let us listen to the beginning of a recording by tenor
saxophonist Sonny Rollins from February, 1964. We shall
hear the head, just one blues chorus in this case rather that
two in Parker's, and then four choruses of improvisation.
[Musical example 9]
In my opinion, there are many factors that contribute to
the greatness of this performance: the busy drums; the highly
propulsive bass-clear evidence that you do not need to allot
a solo to the bassist as long as you let him really blow during
the performance; the tone of the sax-narrow or with
minimal vibrato at times, but chock full of pitch variation;
omitted notes, for example measure six of the head; thematic
choruses, the first built around ghost tones in approach to the
tonic, the second and third emphasizing tone 6 in both the
upper and lower registers, the fourth emphasizing tone 2. A
comprehensive analysis would tie together these tones of
emphasis, which function like the recitation tones of improvised psalmody." But here my analytical goal is much smaller
and narrower.
I call your attention to one very brief passage in measure
8 of the second chorus, although I shall gloss over the details.
I have transposed Rollins's solo to F for purposes of
comparison. 19 [Musical example 10; Appendix 2, Rollins,
2:5-8]
Rollins has centered initially on D, tone 6, for this middle
phrase of the blues, measures 5-8, but then there is a startling
flourish, the beginning of which is presented in the last
measure of the example. Assuming that D-flat and C-sharp
are the same notes, you can see that the sixteenth-note run is
a whole-tone scale. The whole-tone passage ruptures the
music; it breaks the groove. But this rupture makes musical
sense. Three or four of the tones comprising the scale are part
of the tonality, a blues in F. The B-natural and the C-sharp
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
however are definitely outside, and these are the notes that
startle us, that give us the tension that accompanies relaxation. I believe that the inspiration for this rupture, and what
makes it work so well, can be found in the accompaniment to
the head.
We hear Ron Carter, the bassist, play a chromatic ascent
in the head in measures 5-8, in a rhythm only approximated
in the written musical example. [Appendix 2, Rollins, head 58] The B-flat and arguably the B-natural and C are also part
of the theme, but what about the C-sharp? The latter note
does not appear in the two recorded versions by Parker that
I am familiar with nor in the written version. [Musical
example 11]
From whom did the chromatic ascent come? Horace
Silver, perhaps? During A Night at Bird/and in 1954, Blakey's
group played "Now's The Time," and the chromatic ascent is
clearly presented by the pianist, Silver. Note that while the Bflat, B-natural, C-natural and their harmonization are played
by the entire ensemble, only Silver plays the C-sharp.
[Musical example 12; Appendix 2, Blakey and Silver, head 58]
Rollins must have heard this recording, and perhaps the
chromatic ascent had been making the rounds for some time
in the performance of "Now's The Time." Ten years separate
the two recordings. 20 When the chromatic ascent is carried to
an extreme of four notes, then we arrive at C-sharp, which
along with B-natural provides the missing tones for a
complete whole-tone scale. It is precisely in this connection
that Rollins is able to push or break the tonality, albeit for a
moment, and to do so with inherent musical logic.
I am not suggesting that Rollins came to his performance
in a fashion as pedantic as my presentation, although in jazz
circles he is famous for his introspection. A close look,
however, at an admittedly very short passage provides an
insight into and possible understanding of the musical
thinking of a jazz genius. Rollins apparently liked the result,
�BARBERA
23
because he plays a very similar passage in measure 7 of the
third chorus. [Musical example 13]
Let us now move from small to large, from consideration
of chromatic passing tones to the general question posed by
the title of the lecture. Have we found a great work of jazz?
Undoubtedly, provided that we stay within the realm of jazz.
The rest of the performance is also very good, with solos by
Herbie Hancock and again by Rollins, with further references
to the whole-tone phrase. But is the work really great? I see
two related reasons for saying "No." First, it is a recording,
and second, the recording took place in a recording studio.
There is no way around the first problem, one that is shared
by virtually all music that we study and to some degree by just
about every work on the St. John's program insofar as the
books are translations made from texts established by editors.
I feel that the problem is more serious with jazz, with that
musical idiom in which, as I have claimed, we are entertained
and perhaps ennobled by the individual in the very act of
individuation.
Attempting to solve the second problem, the studio
recording, is a temptation that I find irresistible. The solution
is a temptation because we know that in most cases the "live
recording" is also somewhat of a fabrication, a piecing
together by recording engineers of recorded excerpts. This is
the case with A Night at Bird/and. The reason why the
temptation is irresistible is because the engineers often do a
good job.
By a good job, I mean that the recording approximates
the real thing, and I make this claim from experience. I know,
I have experienced the real thing, an ennobling performance
by a jaz.z musician. At one point I considered apologizing for
what amounts to a dressed-up version of "jazz in my life."
Further reflection on the subject inclines me to think that the
personal aspect of the subject is in fact central. Jazz is about
individuals, it is music by the individual and for the
individual. It is not only concerto music, but concerto music
best heard in its actual, spontaneous development, and best
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
heard up close, that is, as chamber music, in a setting where
the listener relates intimately and personally to the
performer. Our chambers are nightclubs.
The Blakey performance at Birdland is about as good a
recorded live performance as any that I know of. It is a
recording and thus artificial, or doubly artificial, but it
captures a sense of spontaneity and improvisation. The music
and the musicians are of high caliber. And they were cookin'
that night. Nevertheless, there may be no individual piece,
not even an individual solo that we could call great, not on a
par with the performances that we heard by Louis Armstrong,
Clifford Brown, Budd Johnson, and Sonny Rollins.
Where does this leave us? Even if we were to decide that
there are great performances of jazz that could be revisited
repeatedly, those performances would be relatively brief: five,
ten, fifteen minutes. There are a few examples in jazz of
extended compositions and performances, but by and large,
the great performances of jazz are miniatures. Such being the
case hardly excludes jazz from our consideration. We might
approach a performance like Sonny Rollins's "Now's The
Time" in a way similar to our approach to a motet by Josquin
des Prez or a sonnet by Shakespeare. Were we to try for
something larger, longer, my inclination would be toward the
Live at ... genre rather than the extended work-A Love
Supreme-or the thematic collection of recordings, for
example Out of Time. The problem with my preference, A
Night at Bird/and, is that we know it is an artifice, a collection
of miniatures pieced together to give the impression of a
whole. Its advantage, on the other hand, is the success of the
ruse, the conveyance of a sense of spontaneity spread out
over an evening's work, and this is crucial. For a great work
of jazz must convey the sense of the artist at work, that work
being a priestly lament that strives for, that longs for, that
articulates ... and here words fail me. I cannot say what jazz
articulates. Jazz, I believe, really is about something, albeit
ineffable. Furthermore, jazz has meaning, not just musical
meaning, but meaning as jazz. It exudes the spirit of America,
�BARBERA
25
especially North America. Freedom of the individual is
perhaps the characteristic most commonly associated with
jazz, and although this seems to be generally true, the peculiar
qualities of lament, sacrifice, and beauty are missing in this
characterization.
Let us narrow our scope by returning to the example of
Budd Johnson's solo in "Segue in C." The structure of theme
and variations is a limitation that hinders musical development, but at the same time it provides the channel through
which improvisation, individuation can take place. 21 Unlike
with literature and the non-temporal arts, with jazz the clock
is ticking. Unlike with the music of Mozart, with jazz the
clock is ticking now. Jazz is urgent, and so we feel it when
Budd Johnson falls behind the beat. We feel it not because we
fear that Johnson is going to lose the beat, but rather because
we can feel his control, his autonomy. [Musical example 14;
Appendix 2, Triplets] The blues and song form provide the
foundations of phrase and harmony that allow for such free
elaboration, that allow for elaborations about the
autonomous individual.
Time flows. Music forms time. Improvised music forms
time in time, perhaps self-referentially. Jazz, if it is great,
forms time in time in history: this individual, this place and
time, your lament, but made beautiful, transcendent.
I do not know if there is great recorded jazz. The portion
of this account that has sought such a work, that has
attempted to determine its characteristics, and that has
argued diffidently in behalf of a few cases, is shamelessly
based on personal testimony. In the final analysis, no amount
of explanation on my part will make jazz or any individual
performance great for you, just as I am powerless to persuade
you, ultimately, that the Mozart-da Ponte operas are great.
Knowledgeable and sensitive human beings point to these
works and tell us they are great. Personally I am certain in one
case, Mozart, and favorably inclined but uncertain in the
other.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
26
Appendix 1: Recorded Music Examples
Musical examples can be heard online by visiting the St. John's Review
webpage (www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml) and clicking
the link "Jazz Examples to Accompany 'Is there Great Jazz?' by Andre
Barbera".
1. Split Kick
2. Now's The Time
Art Blakey Quintet, A Night at Bird/and, val. 1
Clifford Brown (tp), Lou Donaldson (as),
Horace Silver (p), Curly Russell (h), Art
Blakey (d), February 21, 1954, Birdland, New
York City
0:00- 0:58 (Marquette's introduction) and
0:00- 1:05 (Blakey, "Split Kick")
Sonny Rollins Quartet, The Essential Sonny
Rollins: The RCA Years
Sonny Rollins (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron
Carter (b), Roy McCurdy (d), February 14,
1964, New York City
0:00-0:09
3. I Thought About You
Miles [)avis Quintet, The Complete Concert:
1964
Miles Davis (tp), George Coleman (ts),
Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (h), Tony
Williams (p), February 12, 1964,
Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center, New York
City
0:00-1:13
4. Hotter Than That
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, The Hot
Fiues and Hot Sevens, vol. 3
Louis Armstrong (cor, voc), Kid Ory (tb),
Johnny Dodds (d), Lil Armstong (p), Johnny
St. Cyr (bj), Lonnie Johnson (gt), December
13, 1927, Chicago
0:00-2:16
5. Cherokee
Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, Clifford
Brown's Fittest Hour
Clifford Brown (tp), Harold Land (ts), Richie
Powell (p), George Morrow (h), Max Roach
(d), February 25, 1955, New York City
0:00-2:48
�BARBERA
6. Segue In C (Alternate)
7. Segue in C (Alternate)
27
Count Basie Orchestra, Basie at Bird/and
Thad Jones, Sonny Cohn, Lennie Johnson,
Snooky Young (tp), Quentin Jackson, Henry
Coker, Benny Powell (tb), Marshall Royal (cl,
as), Frank \Vess (as, ts, fl, arr), Frank Foster,
Budd Johnson (ts), Count Basie (p), Freddie
Green (gt), Eddie Jones (b), Sonny Payne (d),
June 27, 1961, Bird land, New York City
1:04-3:28
Count Basie Orchestra
3:02-3:12
8. Now's The Time
Charlie Parker Quartet, The Essential Charlie
Parker
Charlie Parker (as), AI Haig (p), Percy Heath
(b), Max Roach (d), July 28, 1953, Fulton
Recording Studio, New York City
0:00-0:37
9. Now's The Time
Sonny Rollins Quartet
0:00 -1:40
10. Now's The Time
Sonny Rollins Quartet
0:36-0:52
11. Now's The Time
Sonny Rollins Quartet
0:00-0:15
12. Now's The Time
Art Blakey Quintet, A Night at Bird/and, vol. 2
0:00- 1:39
13. Now's The Time
Sonny Rollins Quartet
0:36-1:10
14. Segue inC (Alternate) Count Basic Orchestra
3:02-3:12
Play List
To locate the music examples on www.rhapsody.com, search by album
title, then by song title.
Album Title
Song Title
Basie At Birdland
Segue In C (Alternate Take)
Clifford Brown's Finest Hour
Cherokee
The Complete Concert: 1964
I Thought About You
The Essential Charlie Parker
Now's The Time
The Essential Sonny Rollins: The RCA Years Now's The Time
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The Hot Fives And Hot Sevens, Vol. 3
Hotter Than That
A Night At Birdland, Vol. 1
Announcement
Marquette
A Night At Birdland, Vol. 1
Split Kick
A Night At Birdland, Vol. 2
Now's The Time
Appendix 2
Swing Eighths
Triplets
Now's The Time
by Pee Wee
�BARBERA
29
Rollins, 2:5-8
Rollins, head 5-8
Blakey and Silver, head 5-8
Notes
1
Here is Pee \Y/ee Marquette's introduction:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, as you know, we have something special down
here at Birdland this evening, a recording for Blue Note Records. \Vhcn
you applaud for the different passages, your hands goes right over the
records there, so when they play 'em over and over, throughout the
country, you may be some place, and uh say: 'Well, that's my hands on
one of those records that I dug down at Birdland.'
We're bringing back to the bandstand at this time, ladies and gentlemen,
the great Art Blakey and his wonderful group, featuring the new trumpet
sensation, Clifford Brown; Horace Silver on piano; Lou Donaldson on
alto, Curly Russell is on bass.
And let's get together and bring Art Blakey to the bandstand with a great
big round of applause.
How 'bout a big hand, there, for Art Blakey.
Thank y' all."
�30
2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence (1956; rev. ed., New York: Grove Press,
1979), 195 and 198.
3
I presume that the recording was made over the course of the last night
of the engagement because this specific collection of five musicians was
not a working group. Horace Silver recalls the recording lasting for two
nights over the weekend rather than one (HS 12/20/96). [This format
indicates the date of conversations between the author and Lou
Donaldson (LD) and Horace Silver (HS).] Other sources indicate one
night's recording. In 1975, Michael Cuscuna discovered four takes previously ignored or unknown. These were issued on a separate record as
Volume 3 (BNJ 61002). In addition there are according to Cuscuna four
"rejected takes, some not even complete on tape-never to come out."
(Personal correspondence, 1996) The current two-volume set of CDs
contains all preserved material except for the rejected takes (Blue Note
CDP 7 46519 2, DIDX 1130 and CDP 7 46520 2, DIDX 1131).
4
(HS 12/20/96). Lou Donaldson remembers Marquette serving the
function of 'policeman', who had his hands full keeping the often-rowdy
audience in check (LD 12/18/96).
5
Bill Crow, From Bird/and to Broadway (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 88.
6
The harmonic sequence underlying the piece is 'borrowed' from
another song, "There Will Never Be Another You" by Harry \Varren and
Mack Gordon. It is quite common among jazz musicians to compose a
piece by adding a new theme or melody to the harmonies of a popular
song, and this procedure in itself would not seem to disqualify a work
from greatness.
7
Ted Gioia, The Imperfect Art: Reflections 011 Jazz and Modem Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 108-109. Gioia quotes Andy
Warhol: "I like to be bored." The author adds: "That much-if not
most-jazz is boring seems scarcely undeniable; given its extreme
dependence on improvisation, jazz is more likely than other arts to
ramble, to repeat, to bore."
8
Personal correspondence, June 26, 2005.
9
The same holds for "\Vee-Dot" on A Night at Bird/and. Marquette says,
"How 'bout a big hand, for Art Blakey, Art Blakey and his wonderful allstar[s]." But the recording documents show that this version of "\VeeDot" was recorded in the middle of a set.
10
"What Makes Jazz Jazz?" Musings: The Musical \Vorlds of Gunther
Schuller: A Collection of His Writings (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986), 27. This is a talk given by Schuller at Carnegie Hall on
Dec. 3, 1983. " ... jazz is, unlike many other musical traditions both
�BARBERA
31
European and ethnic/non·Western, a music based on the free unfettered
expression of the individual. This last is perhaps the most radical and
most important aspect of jazz, and that which differentiates it so dramatically from most other forms of music-making on the face of the
globe ... so typically American and democratic .. .I would like particularly
to dwell on one dear way in which jazz distinguishes itself from almost
all other musical expressions ... and that is the way jazz musicians play
their instruments, with particular regard to the aspect of sonority, timbre,
and tone color.,
1l The internet addresses for (1)- (3) and (5) are given here; (4) is no
longer available.
www.terellstafford.com/main.html
www.bobjanuary.com/favorite.httn
www. woodyshaw.com/downbeat 1_cberg. pdf#search =%22Woody%20Sha
w%20DownBeat%22
http://cornchipsandpie.blogspot.com/2006/05/chunky-nuggets.html
12 Portions of the Rite of Spring apparently came from Stravinsky playing
around on the piano. Conversely, jazz musicians repeat solos, a famous
example being Coleman Hawkins's "Body and Soul," the thinking being
that if you have come up with a good solo, why mess with it. Lou
Donaldson admitted to engaging in an activity nearly the opposite to
learning one's solos (LD 7/8/96). In response to my question regarding
whether he practiced his instrument any longer, he said "No." Rather, he
has worked out a way of practicing on stage, at gigs. He plays songs in a
variety of keys and tempos, which amounts to practice.
13
Gioia, The Imperfect Art, 55 and 101.
14
Interview by Studs Terkel of Big Bill Broonzy (vocal), Sonny Terry
(harmonica), and Brownie McGhee (guitar), "Keys to the Highway," May
7, 1957, Chicago, WFMT.
15
Ibid.
16
Indeed another composer, Andy Gibson, combined the riff with a
simple melody to make "The Hucklebuck/' a popular dance and
recording of the late 1940s.
17
The Real Book, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation,
no date), 293. The written example includes only the melody and not the
indicated harmonization.
18 Tone 6 substitutes for tone 5, a slight extension of normal movement.
Tone 2 does not substitute for tone 1 but rather points to it. Tone 2
specifies the end while at the same time leaving open the possibility of
additional choruses, a possibility that is realized by the piano choruses
and two subsequent choruses on saxophone.
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
19 The head appears on the upper staff and Rollins's solo on the lower
staff.
20 Rollins had been working on "Now's the Time." Three weeks earlier,
Jan. 24, 1964, he recorded the piece with the same musicians. That
recording lasts sixteen minutes, four times longer than the one under
consideration. In some ways, it sounds like practice for the real thing. My
version of the Jan. 24 recording seems to be pitched in the key of B! And
even if it is in B-flat, the range for Rollins is a fifth above the range for
the Feb. 14 recording. Note also that Hancock only camps in the Jan. 24
recording, and does very little of that, in the course of the sixteen
minutes, perhaps another indication that this is an experiment in the key
of B major.
21
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Random House, 1966), 213. Necessity and "freedom of the
will" become one in artists.
�33
Preformationism In Biology:
From Homunculi To Genetic
Programs
1-
Jorge H. Aigla, M.D.
I. Introduction
Organic beings come to be. The way in which they do so has
been subject to much speculation and debate. In this paper I
shall review some of the ideas put forth regarding generation,
and argue that ways of thinking and seeing in the study of
development have had weighty influence on other areas of
biology.
II. Development
I should begin with what is perhaps the most notorious image
in all of biology: that of a human sperm containing a
miniature organism (Figure 1). I use the word "image"
advisedly, as this is not a drawing of what is seen, nor a
schematic diagram of an object, simplified in order to aid
understanding. Nicolas Hartsoeker produced it in his 1694
Essay de Dioptrique. 1
We would do well to study it attentively: it has detail,
definition, there is no blurriness, and it depicts a familiar
form. It wishes to suggest that a preformed microscopic
human individual is already present, complete, in the male
Jorge H. Aigla, M.D., has been a Tutor at St. John's College in Santa Fe since
1985. This essay is a modified version of a Friday Night Lecture originally
delivered in Santa Fe on December 6, 2002. The lecture was dedicated to
two friends and retiring coileagues: Hans Von Briesen, Director of
Laboratories, and to the late Ralph Swentzell, Tutor. I again dedicate this
essay to them. The author acknowledges his indebtedness to Professor
Richard Lewontin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard
University for his close reading of the essay followed by his helpful and
insightful comments and suggestions.
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sex cell. This type of what would come
to be known as "preformationism" is
really a 111<Jrphological pre-existence of
a miniaturized adult homunculus. It
rests folded, patiently, apparently
peacefully, and it is already developed.
Once presumably created, this future
being is simply "awaiting the hour of
its birth." 2 All that needs to happen is
growth of its parts by accretion. This
living being will be engendered, but
was not, strictly speaking, reproduced.
The image's beauty and suggestiveness (and cuteness) are nonetheless
plagued by its unreality: Hartsoeker
never saw it, could never have seen it
(given the state of microscopical
science at his time with absence of
corrected objectives for aberration and
astigmatism, without oil immersion for
increased resolution, and lacking
staining techniques for enhanced
contrast and visibility), and lastly, no
one shall ever be able to see it. It
simply does not exist. Hartsoeker
himself explicitly says only that
perhaps one would see this, if there FIGURE 1
were better instruments. 3
In order to expect to see this, or to be able to claim to
have "seen" this cased figurine, several observations and
mental conceptions have to come together. We shall take a
brief detour in our attempt to understand their confluence.
There are two, and only two, options for understanding
development: either the future being and its parts exist in
smaller form from the very beginning, or the adult parts come
�AIGLA
35
to be as products of development from structures that do not
originally resemble them in the least.
For the former "preformationist" possibility, a miniature
form of the future organism is already present, and development is merely unfolding (what was termed in early days
"evolution"), with growth of pre-existing morphological
entities.
Marcelo Malpighi (who had discovered with the aid of
the microscope the capillaries in the lung just four years after
William Harvey's death-1661) was the earliest proponent of
this view, and gave us several drawings in 1673,4 where the
baby chick is all there, from the start. One may be tempted to
disregard this view as nonsensical, but consider: how is one
to explain an apparent gelatinous blob of unformed matter in
the egg, giving rise to and becoming a chick (or a
salamander)? The puzzle of development was solved (in a
way) with the preformationist hypothesis, and it was
explained in purely mechanical terms: unfolding and
enlargement of pre-existing components. The alternative, so
it seemed to Malpighi and his followers, would have to
postulate a mysterious directiveness to the process of development, a vital and, to them, non-material force.
Two thousand years earlier Aristotle clearly understood
the two possibilities, and perspicuously argued against preformationism: "How will the foetus become greater by addition
of something else if that which is added remain unchanged?
But if that which is added can change, then why not say that
the semen from the very first is of such a kind that blood and
flesh can be made out of it, instead of saying that it itself is
blood and flesh?" 5 And wondering how parts of the embryo
get made, he asserts:
Either all the parts, as heart, lung, liver, eye, and
all the rest, come into being together, or in
succession, as is said in the verse ascribed to
Orpheus, for there he says that an animal comes
into being in the same way as the knitting of a net.
That the former (parts coming into being simulta-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
neously) is not the fact is plain even to the senses,
for some parts are clearly visible already existing
in the embryo, while others are not. 6
This argument of his is one of temporal succession in what
one observes. He concludes: "If the whole animal or plant is
formed from seed or semen, it is impossible that any part of
it should exist ready made in the semen or seed .... " 7 In
addition, his logical division of bodies into matter with form
inseparable from it, makes possible the whole doctrine of
epigenesis: the possibility of pattern emergent as a process,
like plaiting a net or painting a picture. Aristotle does not
address the further impossible consequence of the preformationists: not only is the organism pre-existent, but in this
already formed being, all of its descendants have to be present
-the so-called theory of encasement or fitting.
Trying to make clear the way in which matter and form
jointly come to be in the embryo, Aristotle wrote that "the
female contributes the material for the semen to work upon"'
and that the semen communicates to the material body of that
embryo the power of movement and form.' In this formulation Aristotle is simply being consistent with his notion that
"the mover or agent will always be the vehicle of the form," 10
and also with his conception that "that which produces the
form is always something that possesses it." 11 So the male
provides "the form," what seems to be at once formal,
efficient, and final cause, and the female contributes the
material cause.
Malpighi and Hartsoeker seem to be have clung to these
latter statements of Aristotle, but appear to have disregarded
the same author's foregoing arguments against preformationism. For Aristotle the semen provides the form for the
embryo, not the formed embryo.
Another factor that must have helped Hartsoeker believe
one should eventually be able to see what he delineated is the
observation by Anton van Leeuwenhoek of spermatozoa in
semen in 1680 {which he likened to "animalcules") through
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AIGLA
his microscope (Figure 2), which apparently was able to
magnify specimens 270 timesY It should not be forgotten
that a cell theory (of which I shall speak presently) did not yet
exist for Hartsoeker-it would take 150 years for spermatozoa to be identified as cells by Kolliker in 1841.
In any preparation of human semen, seen with the very
best available optics, the folded foetus cannot be seen; it can
only be imagined. In critical microscopy work, it is difficult
for the eye to see what the mind does not know, and the eyes
may well be blinded by what the mind knows. Further, the
eyes, at times, may see what the mind desires. Hartsoeker's
homunculus is a beautiful example of what I would call
wishful proleptic observation being fitted to preconceived
theoretical commitments. Malebrauche has described this
mode of operation: "The mind should not stop at what the
eye sees, for the vision of the mind is far more penetrating
than the vision of the eye." 13 I beg to differ, and would
venture to say, by contrast, that seeiug with the eye of reasou
may not be the best way of looking. Seeing is a complicated
8
FIGURE 2
1
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
matter. Observation is colored by expectation and theory
(preconception). It may not be possible to encounter scientific
"facts" as data, objectively discovered. The wish to see
something may often well determine what is "discovered."
One could hardly blame Hartsoeker for providing us with his
famous image, notwithstanding the fact that he was not
adhering to the dictum our students are repeatedly urged to
follow: "Make sure you do not merely find what you are
looking for!"
Preformationism does not have to deal with the formidable problem of development as such, and Hartsoeker sided
with the "spermist" sub-school in wishing to find the
miniature organism in the male seed (the other school being
the "ovist").
Another microscopist, Wolff, in 17 64, described
"globules" in animal tissues, and when he aimed his good
instrument (by the day's standards) at the developing chick
egg, he saw no minuscule baby chick; and in cross section, he
discerned layers of spherical structures that eventually gave
rise (or differentiated) to an embryonic organism. He
opposed the preformationists, and his "epigenesis!" school
taught that development started from an entirely homogeneous and unformed mass, acted on by an extraneous forcea "vis essentialis" (a force related to being alive). The camps
had been set, and preformationism with its purely mechanistic tendencies, seemed to have been forever discredited, in
favor of an epigenetic process of differentiation, that in its
inception embraced a form of vitalism, and left us with the
gargantuan problem of true development.
III. Cell Theory
That the development of the cell theory itself was influenced
by other theories in biology is not widely recognized. Of
course atomistic speculations from the physical sciences
played a role; but there is more.
�AlGLA
39
c
In 1665 Robert Hooke had observed pores and box-like
structures in cork, which he christened "cells," but he said
nothing of their possible biological meaning.
Schleiden, studying plant tissues, attempted to explain
what he saw in strictly physico-chemical terms. A good
biologist, he knew of Wolff's publications and eliminated
preformationism altogether from anatomy and embryology.
He applied what must have seemed to him "epigenetic"
considerations to cell formation and development, and in
1838 summarized his work 14 (see Figure 3 15 ). He could illafford to think that cells came from cells (which sounded too
much like preformationism), so cells had themselves to
develop. He made the cell nucleus (discovered by Robert
Brown five years earlier) the center of cell formation, calling
it the "cytoblast." The nucleus itself (or the nucleolus, as his
writings are unclear on this point) separated out of the
formative fluid (the "cytoblastema") by a sort of precipitation
in a "mother liquor," and only then, about it condensed the
rest of the cell (the cytoplasm) and its membrane. He emphasized that plants consist exclusively and entirely of cells and
their products, and an early version of the cell theory was
born.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Notice that for Schleiden cells are mostly structural
elements and without physiological import, nor is there a
continuity of cells or of life in a precise sense. Also, we must
remark, this epigenetic cellular thinking fits well with spontaneous generation.
Schwann, a colleague of Schleiden, accepted this theory
of cell formation, and he deserves credit for extending it to
animals in 1839. 16 He also added some thoughts about
function and metabolism to this intermediate cell theory.
Schwann described the formation of blood corpuscles in
excruciating detail, ascribing also to the precipitated or
crystallized nucleus the power of cell formation de novo.
Let us pause and regard the engraving of Figure 3. After
much consideration I have come to the conclusion that cells
just do not look like this, and I say so after carefully studying
many different plant tissues, and having studied for over
three decades animal tissues nuder the microscope. The only
thing that resembles to any degree this illustration are figures
of the special form of cell death called apoptosis. Apoptosis is
programmed cell death, was characterized by the pathologist
Kerr in 1972, 17 and is now one of the most widely studied
genetic molecular phenomena. Cells that die due to a genetically programmed mechanism in apoptosis show nuclear
shrinkage, condensation, fragmentation, and in contrast to
other forms of cell death (necrosis), exhibit no inflammatory
response. Could Schleiden and Schwann have seen apoptosis
and interpreted it with the eye of their cellular epigenetic
framework? That is, did they take dying cells for cells
forming? It is impossible to tell, as this type of cell death
apparently plays a minor role, if at all, in plant tissues. Or
could perhaps their preparations have had bad fixation and
poor staining, and they be describing artifacts? This is
unlikely. What is possible for me to tell in reference to
Schwann's writings on blood cell formation, is that he was
imposing a chronological order on what he saw statically,
thinking the nucleus of red cells came before their membrane
and cytoplasm, whereas the order of development is precisely
�AIGLA
41
the opposite: the nucleus of red cells becoming smaller and
eventually being extruded, Schwann inferred, with the aid of
the imagination, a dynamic sequence of events in fixed
tissues, and he erred. He wished what he saw to depict and
imply what he wanted.
It is intriguing that the conceptual frame of epigenesis,
and the disproval of preformationism by Wolff in embryology, carried over into cell theory, retarding it and giving it
an originally erroneous mechanism for cell genesis.
This mistake was brilliantly dispelled by the pathologist
Virchow. In 1860, twelve years after Schleiden and Schwann,
he defined the cell as "the ultimate morphological and
functional element in which there is any manifestation of
life. " 18 For Virchow all cells (including abnormal ones like
those found in cancer growths) do come from pre-existing
cells, and he rightly saw Schleiden and Schwann's theory of
free cell formation as nothing but an avatar of de novo
spontaneous generation; and this, before Pasteur's work of
1860 and 1864, disproving once and for all the discontinuity
of life. At last the cell theory developed into its mature form,
and a unity underlying the diversity of living organisms was
established. The word "Biology" (coined by Lamarck and
Treviranus) now, finally, became meaningful.
The capping of the cell theory comes with Walter
Flemming, 19 who in 1879 described cell division or mitosis:
not only did cells come from cells, as Virchow showed, but
now all nuclei come from pre-existing nuclei.
rv: Modern Embryology
Once the sperm and the egg were also recognized to be cells,
investigators turned their eyes to the process of fertilization.
Hertwig20 in 1876 and 1885 determined that this event is due
to the joining of the male and female nuclei. Heredity must
then be due to the transmission of a material substance, and
the male contributes to the new organism some matter as well
as the female (contrary to Aristotle's teachings), and it is the
nucleus that is embodying this matter.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Van Beneden21 in 1883 saw that the colored stubby bodies
discovered by Flemming in cell division (and now named
chromosomes) played a role in fertilization. Studying the
round worm Ascaris megalocepha/us bivalens, which has four
chromosomes in each adult cell, he observed that two
chromosomes came from the father's sperm and two from the
mother's egg, before the new zygote formed and divided.
Although he does not say so explicitly, the hereditary
substance now seemed to be confined to these nuclear bodies.
The chromosomes then, are equally contributed by the
parents, and are constant in number for the species.
With the recognition that all cells arise from cell division
in adults as well as during embryonic development starting
with the zygote, the next question tackled was: How do cells
become different and give rise to a complex organism?
Let us turn to the experimental embryological work of
Roux, Driesch, and Spemann and Mangold. Roux 22 destroyed
one of the two blastomeres at the two-cell stage in the frog,
and got a half-embryo. Notice his experiment constitutes a
defect study. He concluded that the potency of a cell equals
its fate, and that each cell is self-differentiating, the whole
organism being simply the sum of independently developed
parts. In a sense, he advocated a preformation of limited,
fated, and pre-assigned potentialities, and established embryology as an experimental science of proximate causations and
mechanisms.
Roux's experimental results ran into difficulties with the
work of Driesch. 23 When this investigator separated (not
destroyed) one of the blastomeres of the sea urchin at the
same two-cell stage, he got a half-sized full embryo. Notice
his experiments are isolation studies. These results induced
Driesch to embrace an extreme vitalism, postulating a
nonmechanical entelechy (Factor E). 24 For what machine, if
cut in half, could still function normally? The potency of an
early cell is not preformed, and turns out to be much greater
than its fate. The resulting half-sized embryo strongly
suggests that cells at very early stages of development are
�AIGLA
43
pluripotent. Eventually Driesch's thinking, without a mysterious non-material "entelechy," became known as holistic
organicism: the organism is more than a mere summation of
individual parts added together.
The climax of this part of the story comes with Spemann
and Mangold25 who in 1924 showed that a portion of tissue
from a newt embryo could induce the formation and
production of other tissues, even of an incomplete new newt,
in a recipient. Developmental possibilities, then, are not
totally preformed, and many events in morphogenesis must
be the result of cell-to-cell interactions.
It must be emphasized that in Roux's experiments the
killed cell remained attached to the viable one, and the developing embryo did not "sense" this cell was dead. If the killed
cell had been separated, as in the work of Dreisch, the
embryo would then have compensated (regulated) its development into a (smaller) whole embryo. Driesch's work
reveals that a developing organism is a whole, and that its
plan for differentiation at any time and stage of its embryology lies in the totality of its being. This does not mean that
any and every alteration in a part of an organism will
interfere with the normal development of the rest of the
complete organism-this would be a claim of an extreme
form of wholism. The developmental process is a regulative
one, where the embryo has the ability to grow normally even
when some portions are removed or rearranged. The embryo
is a "harmonious equipotential system"26 because all the
potentially independent parts function together to form an
organism. Driesch's concept of "regulation" implies that cells
must interact with each other in complex ways, and the work
of Spemann and Mangold demonstrates that one tissue can
direct the development of another neighboring tissue. The
small grafted region in their experiments was called "The
Organizer" since it controls the organization of the complete
embryonic body. The organizer is a piece of tissue; tissues are
made up of cells; cells contain nuclei with chromosomes
within.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
V. Chromosomes
Mendel's work was published in 1865, and only
unearthed in 1900, after much embryological and cytological
work had been performed. Shortly after the re-discovery, in
1902 Boveri 27 united the sciences of embryology and
cytology. In his experiments he demonstrated that normal
development depends not on the number of chromosomes
per se, but in the normal combination of a complete set of
these structures. He managed to fertilize a sea urchin egg with
two sperms, so three sets of chromosomes became apportioned to four cells after the second zygotic division. The
chromosomes were distributed asymmetrically, by chance, to
the daughter cells. When these cells were gently separated
and allowed to develop, only those with at least one whole set
of chromosomes gave rise to a normal individual.
Furthermore, the abnormal embryos were abnormal in
different ways. His conclusion was seminal: chromosomes are
functional individuals, that is, each chromosome must possess
(and give rise to) different qualities.
The same year brought the work of the American Walter
Sutton, 28 who painstakingly documented the continuity and,
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45
more importantly, the distinct individuality and physiological
singularity of chromosomes in the Giant grasshopper. Figure
4 shows his most elegant camera Iucida drawings (not
diagrams or photographs) of chromosome groups. They are
unprecedented and unequaled, even when compared to
modern ones, in resolution and accuracy. Chromosomes are
then continuous in a given species from one generation to
another, from one cell to its descendants, and are also
morphological individuals one from another. They are the
preformed material substrate for heredity and development
in living organisms.
In truth, the chromosomal theory of inheritance, meaning
that chromosomes are the bearers of hereditary factors or
traits, had been established by Boveri and Sutton. But some
biologists wanted stronger, unequivocal evidence or proof.
Thomas Hunt Morgan, a senior colleague of Sutton at
Columbia University, was originally trained as an embryologist, and of course, detested any suggestion of preformationism. He was "an experimentalist at heart" (his own
words) and very much disliked inferences in biology. 29 From
the start he opposed the chromosomal theory of heredity,
since to ascribe to chromosomes the ability to confer
character traits must have carried the vice of preformationism
for him. We must add that the controversy over what had
exclusive responsibility for hereditary development, either
the nucleus itself or the cytoplasm instead, was not yet totally
settled. Furthermore, Morgan's opposition stood despite the
fact that sex determination seemed by then to be caused,
quite clearly, by chromosomes.
When he turned to genetics, studying the fruit fly
Drosophila, Morgan was unconvinced that a strict association
between specific characters and specific chromosomes
existed. He read in the work of Boveri and of Sutton only a
parallel behavior, during cell division and fertilization, of
chromosomes and Mendelian traits. His apprehensions may
strike us as peculiar but are not altogether awkward: it is
indeed strange to suggest that the shape or color of an organ
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in a living being was preformed in some as yet mysterious
way, in these stubby colored structures known as chromosomes. Although we do not have now, as with Hartsoeker,
any preexistence of a complete homunculus, our eye meets
preformed materials that are passed on and could determine
form and function.
Morgan's paper of 1910 30 is extraordinary in many ways.
In no other does one see the struggle an author is undergoing
in arriving at an inevitable conclusion that contradicts his
previous beliefs. He prevents himself throughout from even
using the word "chromosome"; he establishes that the traits
for sex and white eye color are "combined," but avoids
calling them physically linked. He refutes his own distrust
and establishes the chromosomal theory of inheritance by
demonstrating that one specific character corresponds to the
behavior of one specific "factor" (later shown to be a
chromosome, visible under the microscope).
Fortunately in this case, and unlike in the history of cell
theory, the suspicion against preformationism did not retard
progress in genetics. Morgan himself was soon converted,
becoming one of the staunch advocates for ascribing to
chromosomes their genetic role through his further work and
that of his students, particularly Sturtevant and Bridges (who
provided direct proof of the chromosomal theory of inheritance in a most difficult paper).
VI. The Genetic Program
Chromosomes were found to be constituted largely of
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA was shown to be the
material responsible for conferring visible (phenotypic)
traits. 31 The molecular structure of DNA was determined in
1953,32 and soon after the language of the genetic code. DNA
is the preformed element in natural living beings, and it
controls development-to a degree. In other words, development could be said to be preformational as regards genes
and their hereditary influences, but rigorously epigenetic in
actual constructional activities from undifferentiated begin-
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47
nings. And this leads us to the concept of the so-called
"genetic program," and to new problems and questions.
There are really two problems that both genetics and
embryology must address in order to get an adult organism
from a fertilized egg: cells becoming different (differentiation) and cells producing shapes (morphogenesis). Both
processes appear to be directed, and with the rise of information theory and the knowledge of the molecular biology of
instructions and mechanisms for protein coding by the DNA
base triplets, the notion of a genetic program is quite
reasonable. What exactly do biologists mean by a genetic
program? Where is it coded? And if it is coded in DNA, how
so?
First, the program is one of combinations of three
molecules (bases) determining an amino acid, and about three
hundred of these amino acids specifying an average protein.
If the genetic program has a language, the alphabet is made
up of single bases. It must be noted that a protein is not even
completely specified by its amino acid sequence, originally
coded by the DNA. The intracellular environment plays a
role in the final folded stable state of proteins, and every
protein has alternate stable states. The future shape of a string
of amino acids is "open," and the actual final configuration
only "closes" through environmental conditions."
Secondly, the genetic program must be an open one.
Evidence for this was provided one hundred years ago by
Harrison, 34 who observed independent differentiation in
nerve fiber outgrowth from single cells. Frog protoplasmic
fibers extended from nerve cell bodies into any region where
frog lymph was present in a Petri dish (in vitro)-a result not
consistent with a rigidly preordained genetic program. That
the program is modifiable and plastic is obvious from the
experimental results of Spemann and Mangold, and from
recent work with stem cells. Also, the phenomena of regeneration of limbs in some animals, of memory and of learning,
imply that the program is not rigid, yet has some specificity. 35
It is worth emphasizing that both-cell differentiation and
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
morphogenesis-are the result not only of a genetic program,
but also of what some have appropriately designated as a
"somatic program," consisting of the whole embryo at any
particular time and stage. 36 Neighboring cells and their
respective positions cause and induce changes in cell shape,
adhesion, motility, migration and function, and in the shape
of organs and of the organism as a whole. The program is not
a "recipe" for the final product; environmental information
and random developmental noise enter into a notcompletely-determined process."
Lastly, it is essential that the program turned out to be not
a descriptive program, as was thought previously (specifying
what the cell or the whole organism will look like), but
instead a program of instructions describing how to make an
organism. 38 Consider a structure in origami. A set of data
completely specifying its final configuration would be
extremely difficult to collect, and would not at all explain
how to achieve the end form. It is much easier to formulate
instructions on how to fold a piece of paper; simple instructions about folding have complex spatial consequences. In the
same way during development, gene action sets in motion
sequences of events that can bring about profound changes in
the embryo. If the program were the full description of the
organism, modern molecular biologists could rail again, this
time with an ultramicroscopic intonation, against preformationism. This generative program of instructions is carried
out on an epigenetic basis, and the road from DNA to
proteins to phenotype is extremely complicated and
tortuous." It is also the case that the environment can
influence, to a great degree, the variable expression of the
genetic program. 40 The embryo not so much develops as
emerges from the fertilized egg; it reveals itself, and one may
be tempted to say that it is almost evoked.
For some modern molecular biologists like Changeaux (a
famous collaborator with Jacob and Monod), any talk of a
developmental program is pointless, 41 and he wishes to
dispense with the term altogether, placing exclusive emphasis
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49
on epigenetic processes. He arrives at this (to me) extreme
view from his work on the development of neural connections in the nervous system (a sophisticated extension of
Harrison's work), where much plasticity occurs. This
malleability is only to be expected, so why is Changeaux so
much against the concept of a program? I am afraid that a
specter is haunting him: the specter of preformationism.
Rightly understood, a genetic program need not totally
determine and predict exactly what the precise shape of a
given nerve cell or of a nervous system with its billions of
synaptic connections, or of a whole vertebrate, will be. No
animal or plant is fully shaped and entirely determined by its
DNA. In this sense, living beings are not absolutely
predictable and may never be "computable. "42 Speaking of a
genetic program does make sense, especially if one considers
that this program is an historically evolved one, 43 and does
not provide an unalterable architectural blueprint, but only a
set of instructions for·the construction of a living being, and
at the same time, the means to carry it out.
Prominent developmental and molecular biologists have
recently wondered whether we "understand" development at
all. 44 The implications for a philosophy of biology are deep;
what seems to be at stake is our understanding of the concept
of "understanding" itself. It has become nearly impossible to
discern or even expect any broad general principles in embryology,45 and there may be not mnch more to explain than
what is observed. 46 We have an alphabet (nucleotide bases)
and words for development (triplets coding for amino acids
that make up proteins). What appears to be wanting, and has
so far remained elusive, is a "grammar of development." 47 My
guess is that this will not be forthcoming merely from the
completed human genome project that ascribes to portions of
DNA in different chromosomes the coding for the various
proteins that help constitute a living organism.
The foregoing discussion should result in a change in
conceptualization in the posing of the problem of differentiation and development. The old "classical" question was:
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"How does an apparently homogenous, small ball of yolkladen cytoplasm with a nucleus, turn into a large, complicated, highly organized adult with fully functioning organs?"
Now we had better ask: "How does the encoded structure,
compressed into the specialized maternal organ-the eggbecome transformed into the realized structure of an adult
organism?"48
VII. Epilogue
I have attempted to investigate the role of an idea, preformationism, in several areas of biology: developmental
anatomy, cell theory, the chromosomal theory of inheritance,
and the concept of a genetic program. Beholding an egg
should remind us that it embodies, for Aristotle, a world of
explanation. It should be apparent that for us, one of the
greatest mysteries lies hidden within, and what is more,
comes out of it.
Notes
1
Nicolas Hartsoekcr, Essay de Dioptrique (Paris, 1694), 230.
2
F. Jacob, The Logic of Life (Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press,
1993), 20.
3
Hartsoeker, Essay de Dioptrique, 229.
4
L. \'V'olpert et alia, Principles of Development (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 3.
5
Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, Bk. I, Ch. 8, 723a15-20, A.
Platt, trans., in The Complete \Vorks of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
6
Ibid., Bk. II, Ch. 1, 734a16-22.
7
Ibid., 734a33-35.
8
Ibid., 729a29-32.
9
Ibid., 729b5-8.
10
Aristotle, Physics, Bk. Ill, Ch. 2, 202a9. R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gayc,
trans., in The Complete \Vorks of Aristotle, ed.
Princeton University Press, 1984).
11
Ibid., Bk. VIJJ, Ch. 5, 257b10.
J. Barnes
(Princeton, NJ:
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12 E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982), 138.
13
Nicholas Malcbranche, De fa recherche de Ia
1700), 48.
verite, Vol. I, (Paris,
14
M.J. Schleidcn, Contributions to Phytogenesis, H. Smith, trans.
(London: for the Sydenham Society, 1847 [orig. 1838]).
15
R. Virchow, Cellular Pathology (London: John Churchill, 1860), 10
(Figure 4).
16 T. Schwarm, Microscopical Researches into the Structure and Growth of
Animals and Plants, H. Smith, trans. (London: for the Sydenham Society,
1847 [orig. 1839]).
17
]. F. R. Kerr ct alia, "Apoptosis: A Basic Biological Phenomenon with
long-ranging Implications in Tissue Kinetics," British Journal of Cancer,
26 (1972): 239.
18
Virchow, Cellular Pathology, 3.
19
In B.P. Voeller, The Chromosome Theory of Iuheritance (New York:
Appleton Century Crofts, 1968), 43-47.
20
In Voeller, The Chromosome Theory of Inheritance, 4-8; 26-33.
21
Ibid., 54-59.
22
In B.H. \Villier and J.M. Oppenheimer, Foundations of Experimental
Embryology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964), 2-28.
23
In \Villier and Oppenheimer, Foundations of Experimental
Embryology, 38-50.
24
Hans Dreisch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, vol. I
(London: Adam and C. Black, 1907).
25
In \Vrllier and Oppenheimer, Foundations of Experimental
Embryology, 144-184.
26
Hans Dreisch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism.
27
In \'\i'iliier and Oppenheimer, Foundations of Experimental
Embryology, 74-90.
28
W. Sutton, "On the Morphology of the Chromosome Group in
Brachystola Magna," Biological Bulletin IV, no. 1 (1902): 24-39.
29
S.F. Gilbert, "In Friendly Disagreement: Wilson, Morgan and the
Embryological Origins of the Gene Theory," American Zoologist 27
(1987): 797-806; S.F. Gilbert, "The Embryological Origins of the Gene
Theory," Journal of the History of Biology II, no. 2 (1978): 307-351.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
52
30
T.H. Morgan, "Sex Limited Inheritance in Drosophilia, '' Science
XXXII, no. 812 (1910): 120-122.
31
O.T. Avery, CJv1 Macleod, and M. McCarty, journal of Experimental
Medicine 79 (1944): 137-158.
31
J.D. \Vatson and F.H.C. Crick, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids,"
Nature 171 (1953): 737-738.
33
D. Whitford, "Protein folding in vivo and in vitro," in Proteins:
Structure and Function (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2005).
34
R.G. Harrison, "Observations on the Living Developing Nerve Fiber,"
Anatomical Record 1 (1907): 116-118.
35
E. Mayr, "Cause and Effect in Biology," Science 134 (1961): 15011506.
36
E. :Niayr, This is Biology (Cambridge, lvlA: Harvard University Press,
1997), 21, 171.
37
R. Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment
(Cambridge, .MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
38
\X'olpert, Principles of Development, 21.
39
Science 295 (1 March 2002): 1661-1682, see complete issue.
40
Lewontin, The Triple Helix.
41
J.P. Changeaux, Neuronal Man (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1997), 195.
41 L. \Vol pert, "Development: Is the egg computable or could we generate
an angel or a dinosaur?" in M.P. Murphy and L.A.J. O'Neill, What is
Life? The Next Fifty Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 57-66.
43
.Mayr, "Cause and Effect in Biology"; Mayr, This is Biology.
44
L.Wolpert, "Do We Understand Development?" Science 266 (1994):
571-572.
45
Ibid.
46
R. Lewin, "Why is Development so Illogical?" Science 224 (1984):
1327-1329.
47
Ibid.
48
E. Mayr, "Comments on Theories and Hypotheses in Biology," Boston
Studies in Philosophy of Science 5 (1968): 450-456.
�53
The Persians and the Parthenon:
Yoke and Weave
Part Two: The Parthenon
1
Mera J. Flaumenhaft
"Who are you and what is your family? .. .How old were you
when the Medes came?"
Xenophanes
1. The Building and the Polis
There are no words on the Parthenon (Figure 1). So in one
sense it is true that, unlike Aeschylus's Persians, the building
offered Athens a "visual, non verbal" education. 37 But, like
every other feature of this logos-loving city, this silent marvel
in marble invites all who see it to articulate in words the
story-or multiple stories-it too tells about Athens and
Persia.
The first is the story of the building itself, the story of its
building. Like Aeschylus's play, it has its origin in the Persian
wars. But its site far predates these events, reminding us of
ancient times when Athens was a fortified community
centered around a palace monarchy. From its earliest days,
Athens, like Persia, shaped and rearranged the natural
features of the environment to serve the demands of its
communal life. In the early Bronze Age (1300-1200 B.C.), the
Mera Flaumenhaft is a tutor at the Annapolis campus of St. John1s College.
This essay is in two parts. Part One of this essay appeared in the previous
issue of The St. Jolm's Review, volume 50, number 2. Notes are continuous.
The photos included in the text are courtesy of Ann M. Nicgorski,
Willamette University, 1998. Dr. Nicgorski's excellent collection of images of
all the parts of the Parthenon discussed in this essay is available and easy to
use at www.willamette.edu/cla/Ytrvicws/parthenon/. For websites and books
with a fuller selection of photos, see the Bibliography before the Endnotes.
�54
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE l (Courtesy of A. Nicgors.ki)
Acropolis, "high city," was artificially terraced and shored up
by a wall of cut rocks. So old and huge was this rampart that
it was called the "Cyclopean" wall; it was said to be the work
of a barely-civilized pre-human people, or of the legendary
Giants under the direction of Athena, who had defeated them
in an early war between the Gods and the Giants. 38
Eventually, the Acropolis above it became the site of a
fortified citadel from which the Athenian royal family ruled
the surrounding population.
Legend also told how Poseidon and Athena long ago vied
for primacy in this land. The sea was Poseidon's claim to
power; he caused a pool of salt water to appear on the rock.
Athena brought forth an olive tree as evidence of her power.
The judges ruled that the olive was the more valuable gift and
the goddess became the patroness of the city whose name she
shared. The incident was memorialized in the pool and the
olive that remained in the Erechtheion, one of the earliest
temples on the Acropolis. There is a story that, in 480 B.C.,
on the day after the Persians burned the Acropolis, the men
whom Xerxes sent to sacrifice in the shrine fonnd that "the
�FLAUMENHAFT
55
olive had put forth from its stump a shoot of about a cubit's
length" (Hdt., 8.55). By the early sixth century, the hill was
no longer dominated by a royal palace, but had become a
major sanctuary, accessible to all by a wide ceremonial ramp
that led visitors to a temple with an altar to a small olivewood
statue of Athena Polias, that is, "of the city." This carved
figure, xoanon, wrapped in her pep/as (robe), remained a
focus of civic religious life for centuries.
The statue had such close relations with Athens that, like
the supposedly autochthonous human population, it was
associated with no other earthly place. Its origins were
unknown; it was said to have fallen on this spot from the
sky, 39 the home of Athena's father, Zeus, on whose unlimited
empire Xerxes wished to model his own. Unlike the shadowy
legend of the statue's beginnings, the story of the birth of the
goddess herself was well known. So, indeed, are those of the
other Greek gods. Anthropomorphic in looks and character,
these gods are immortal, but not eternal; each came into
being, and each is associated with partial aspects of nature or
human experience. The story of a god's genesis often points
to the characteristic nature of that god. The full divinity of
each is most fully expressed when all are considered together.
But, unlike Persian multiplication, pantheon does not mean
mere aggregate or multiplied strength. Rather, it means a
defined plurality in which the elements are related, but differ
from, and are even in tension with, each other, and so
compose a viable and complete whole. Once again, as we saw
in Part One of this essay, the metaphor of well-woven fabric
comes to mind.
It was predicted that Athena's mother, Metis, whose
name means "cunning," "craft," or "counsel," would give
birth to a child excelling in these same qualities, one who
might rule the world. So Zeus, the child's father, swallowed
the pregnant Metis. When the time came, Hephaestus, also
crafty and cunning, split Zeus's head with an axe and
delivered the baby. And so Athena appeared in the world:
full-grown, fully armed, with an extraordinary intelligence,
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the very personification of immediacy, wily craft, and
resourcefulness. Not born from a mother, never to be one
herself, the maiden, parthenos, became the patron goddess of
a city of extraordinary masculine activity, one that excelled
not only in physical strength, as evidenced in war, but also in
the political arts of public speech and commerce and the
technological arts of agriculture, horse chariots, and ships.
But this child of her father was patron to women as well. Her
craft was manifest in the spinning and weaving of wool, as
well as of words. The image of her owl appeared on loom
weights that remained indoors, at home, with the women, as
well as on the currency exchanged in the open-air Agora
below the Acropolis, where men congregated to conduct the
commercial affairs of the city. Pallas Athena stood behind the
pep/as-weaving women and the spear-carrying warriors
whose lives together made a complete human city. The civic
fabric of Athens was woven from her arts, equally at work in
men and women ..
The annual Persian feast to celebrate the Great King's
birthday was called "tuktu," that is, "perfection" (teleion,
Hdt., 9.11 0). Athens' greatest festival celebrated not the birth
of a divinized despot who claimed that he was different from
all other men, but that of a civic deity who really was. The
meaning of her pep/as, in contrast to Xerxes' in Aeschylus's
play, reveals much about the two regimes. 40 There were two
related summer festivals devoted to Athena, one involving
part of the city and one all of it, both focused on the
olivewood image and what she wore. In May, the women
celebrated the Plynteria, the "washing rites." Gently
undressing and veiling the olivewood Polias, they carried her
pep/as to a spring, or perhaps as far as the sea, to launder it.
In the meantime, in the Kallynteria, the "adorning rites," the
crude and featureless image was prepared to receive the clean
garment. She was bathed and oiled and decorated with
jewelry. Robed again, she was replaced near her altar in the
old temple to await the most important festival of the year,
which took place in the following month, and bore her name.
�FLAUMENHAFT
57
From as early as the seventh century B.C., the June
Panathenaia, the festival of "all Athenians," culminated in a
citywide procession in which Athena's people presented her
with her annual birthday gift, a new peplos. By the next
century the festival included musical and rhapsodic performances, athletic and equestrian contests, and the awarding of
tripods, figurines, and large vessels of olive oil to those who
excelled in honor of the goddess who brought the olive.
The weaving of the peplos for the olivewood statue was
begun, appropriately, nine months before the goddess's
birthday celebration during a festival of crafts, when the
loom's warp-the upright cords-was set up by nine women
"workers," ergastinai, from designated aristocratic Athenian
families and several seven to nine year old girls dedicated to
the service of Athena. These children lived on the Acropolis
for the nine months and helped weave the pep/os. This bright
purple and yellow, woolen "story-doth" was decorated with
a tapestry-like depiction of Athena's exploits in the victory of
the Gods over the Giants. As we shall see, the Parthenon, like
other Athenian works, repeatedly associates this mythical
victory with Athens' historical victory over Persia. In the early
celebrations of the Panathenaia, the peplos was a rectangle of
about five by six feet and would have fit the human-sized
wooden image. Later, it may have been as big as a ship's sail
and, like real sails, would have been made by sewing several
loom weavings together. 41 The larger peplos was probably
made by professional male weavers for the Greater
Panathenaia every fourth year 42 and may have been exhibited
in the old temple of Athena Polias after the festival. Before
that, however, the pep/os was transported, perhaps on a
wheeled ship-cart, from the northwest city gate near the
Kerameikos district along a processional route to the Agora,
to the base of the Acropolis, and then carried up to the top
for presentation to the goddess. The ship "float" may have
been made from a Persian trireme captured at Salamis. Like
the wooden benches in the theater, and the roof and internal
decorations of the Odeion, which were made of Persian masts
�58
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and spars,43 it would have been an explicit reminder of the
Persian defeat. Again, the analogy of the Spanish Armada
makes vivid the attempt to keep an averted disaster literally
before one's eyes. In the hall of Gray's Inn in London, a
carved wooden screen thought to have come from a flagship
in the Spanish Armada has served a similar function for
centuries. It was rescued by firemen when the building was
badly damaged during the London Blitz and survives today to
remind the small island nation of its unlikely survival of both
Spanish and Nazi attempts to invade and conquer it. 44
How can we understand the festival fabrication rituals on
which this ancient city and its citizens spent so much time and
effort and money? Both the weaving and the civic procession
are prime examples of the ways in which the democratic polis
produced and maintained itself as a civic community.
Representatives from all parts of the population-old and
young, men and women, citizens and resident aliens, slaves,
and workers in many different crafts-participated in the
preparations that were overseen by a large number of administrative officials. The weaving at the center of the
Panathenaia was thus the occasion for weaving together not
only the pep/os, but also the different elements of the
Athenian city. The prescribed rituals and legal instructions
concerning the workers, places, times, materials, patterns,
colors, and the delivery of the woolen cloth occupied the
attention of much of the population. One can observe the farreaching effects of such "material" rituals in the building of
the ark and tabernacle by the wandering Israelites; it kept
them busy and made them obedient, law-abiding, and
devoted to what they had worked so hard on. The same
effects are aimed at in the annual festival that removes and
replaces the K'aaba cover in Mecca, and in Christian processions of a beautifully dressed image of a patron saint, like the
annual fiesta for La Conquistadora in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In their outlook and technology, Athenians looked to the
new, the future, and change. At the same time these rituals
held them to the old, the past, and the recurring. Festival
�FLAUMENHAFT
59
preparations and participation compelled these self-sufficient
and resourceful citizens to recognize their dependence on
what was beyond their control. Free and self-governing, the
Athenians on such occasions devoted their powers and
resources to obedience to laws and the service of old traditions and gods. If, in celebrating Athena, they were simultaneously celebrating their own achievements and character,
the rituals in honor of the goddess seem designed to remind
them also of their limitations. By the middle of the fifth
century, the birth of Athena Parthenos, her victories over
Poseidon and the Giants, her procession, and her peplos
would all be pictured on the most outstanding building on the
Acropolis. For that fabrication and its effects on the city we
must return to the events memorialized in Aeschylus's
tragedy.
At the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. a small Athenian
army and their allies defeated a massive Persian force that had
traveled vast distances by land and sea, transforming even the
shape of the lands they traversed, to conquer resisting cities
in Greece. 6,400 subjects of the great king died at Marathon.
The Athenians lost 192 citizen hoplites. In the aftermath of
this unlikely victory, Athens began to build a new temple on
the south side of the Acropolis in honor of her patron
goddess. This required extending the south platform of the
Acropolis, which dropped too steeply to accommodate the
planned temple. Although much work had been done, the
Marathon Hekatompedon ("hundred-footer" temple) was
still unfinished when the Persians returned under Xerxes in
480. This time they reached Athens itself and burned the
entire city, including the unfinished temple. Before the
Persians arrived, almost the entire population of Athens had
been evacuated to Troezen and to the nearby islands of
Aegina and Salamis, to which they probably brought the
olivewood image of their goddess. 45 As Aeschylus reminds his
Athenian audience, the religious and political life of the polis
lay not in its streets and buildings, but in the characteristic
activities and attitudes of its citizens. The boule (council)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
continued to meet at Salamis, even as those it governed saw
smoke rising from the burning buildings and their contents,
including the peploi of former years, 46 on the Acropolis. A
year after Xerxes' defeat at Salamis, the force that had
remained in Greece with the Persian general Mardonins was
decisively smashed by the Athenians and their allies at the
battle of Plataea.
Here the story of the Parthenon almost ended, for after
the victory the Greek allies took an oath:
I will not set life before freedom ... having
conquered the barbarians in the war .. .I will not
rebuild any of the temples that have been burnt
and destroyed by the barbarian, but I will let them
be left as a memorial to those who come after of
the sacrilege of the barbarian. 47
This way of remembering through preserving ruins is seen in
the preserved parts of the cathedral the Nazis destroyed at
Coventry and was urged in recent deliberations about what,
if anything, should replace New York skyscrapers destroyed
by twenty-first century barbarians. The rubble in Athens was
left to lie or was used haphazardly in the hasty fortification
and reconstruction of the city. But in the repaired north wall
of the Acropolis some of the column drums from the
unfinished temple to Athena were deliberately placed so that
they could be seen from the restored Agora, the marketplace,
below. These pillars remain on view today.
Thucydides tells the story of the recovery of the victorious, but destroyed, city of Athens (1.89-108). Domestic and
civic buildings were rebuilt, and the port at Piraeus was laid
out and fortified. Despite Lacedaemonian objections, long
walls were built to the sea, and the Athenian naval force was
expanded. Most of the Aegean and coastal cities became allies
of Athens in the Delian League to keep the seas open and to
discourage future Persian invasions. Before long, the allies
preferred, and were encouraged, to give money to Athens and
let it build the ships necessary to protect them all. These cities
�FLAUMENHAFT
61
soon found themselves members of an alliance that was
rapidly coming to be dominated by its strongest city. In 454
B.C. the League's treasury was moved from Delos to Athens.
When peace was concluded with Persia in 449 B.C., the
Athenians summoned all the Greeks to a general assembly to
discuss future safety and to reconsider the Plataean oath not
to rebuild sacred places. One consideration was to be that the
Greek allies had failed to sacrifice to the gods who had saved
them from the Persians. Pressured by the Lacedamonians,
who declined to attend, and resenting the growing power of
Athens, no other League members showed up, and Athens
decided unilaterally to continue policing the seas and
collecting tribute.
At this point Pericles proposed rebuilding and enlarging
Athena's temple on the Acropolis. His oligarchic enemies in
the assembly objected to spending the money of the Delian
League for an Athenian project, charging that they would be
"gilding and bedizening our city .. .like a wanton woman
[who] adds to her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues
and temples worth their millions" (Plut. Pericles, Xll}. 48
Pericles countered that the allies were "owed no account of
their moneys" as long as Athens effectively "carried on the
war for them and kept off the Barbarians" (Plut. Pericles,
XII). Plutarch describes the enthusiasm with which the
populace then embraced this vast public works project. It
would call many arts into play and involve long
periods of time, in order that the stay-at-homes,
no whit less than the sailors and sentinels and
soldiers, might have a pretext for getting a
beneficial share of the public wealth ... So then the
works arose, no less towering in their grandeur
than inimitable in the grace of their outlines, since
the workmen eagerly strove to surpass themselves
in the beauty of their handicraft. And yet the most
wonderful thing about them was the speed with
which they arose. (Plut. Pericles, XII-XIII)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Here Plutarch emphasizes the competitive spirit and the
speed that, like the swift victory at Salamis, characterized all
things Athenian. When the oligarchs continued to complain
about the great expense of the Parthenon, Pericles offered to
fund the undertaking himself, as years before, he had funded
the production of the Persians, and as, more recently, other
wealthy individuals had underwritten other buildings and
beautification projects in the ciry. In this way, he said, Athens
would be saved the cost and "I will make the inscription of
dedication in my own name" (Pint. Pericles, XIV). At this
dramatic gesture, the wary assembly quickly voted in favor of
public funding and sparing no cost. For the next few decades,
a great deal of the assembly's time was spent deliberating on
the features and expenses of the new temple. Even as it took
shape, it was supervised and discussed by the democratic
population for which it was being built. These discussions are
recorded in civic records and in the narrative accounts of the
extraordinary writers Athens also produced. Thus the aristocratic Pericles maneuvered his oligarchic enemies into
supporting polis-sponsored projects that would increase the
power of his radically democratic supporters. The Parthenon
was the centerpiece of the building program. The man whom
Plutarch calls "that political athlete" (Pint., Pericles, III) was
among the most interesting competitors ever to exhibit
himself upon the Athenian stage. The Panathenaic trophies
and the names of the athletes who won them are lost in the
anonymity of time, like those of the Persians who died at
Salamis. The name of the young aristocrat who made his
"brilliant debut"49 as the choregos of Aeschylus's Persians, was
not inscribed on the temple, but it was known forever after as
Pericles' Parthenon. 5•
Before looking at the Parthenon, let us glance briefly at
some Persian buildings where, as in Athens and Sparta,
physical constructions reflect the political structure and
principles of the regime. As Aeschylus describes it, the everexpanding Persian Empire is centered on the royal palace and
nearby tomb of the divinized monarch, the only godlike
�FLAUMENHAFT
63
figure who appears on stage. Although the play is set in Susa,
it is clear that the king's palaces, like everything else in
Persia-except the monarch himself-are multiple; in
addition to Susa, Ekbatana and Persepolis are mentioned
repeatedly as the king's headquarters. But, unlike the civic
and political activities of Athens, which took place in one
bounded, permanent location, the Persian court was also
always on the move. 51 Super-civilized in some respects, it
retained nomadic aspects more characteristic of lessdeveloped peoples. The King sat upon a movable throne. The
portable royal tent, as elaborate as the palaces, was an object
of wonder to the Athenians, who may have copied its shape
in the roof of the new Odeion. 52 Herodotus says that
Ekbatana, the palace fortress built by Deioces, the first king
of the Medes, was built for himself and his bodyguards on a
hill and was reinforced artificially with seven strong walls; the
rest of the people lived outside the stronghold. Deioces
arranged that all business "should be contracted through
messengers and that the king should be seen by none" (Hdt.,
1.99). The structure of the hierarchical Persian regime
insured that each level-subjects, local officials, and regional
satraps-had dealings only with the ones immediately above
and below it. At Persepolis, the huge compound was not far
above the plain below and may have been surrounded by a
mud wall. This too was a closed site, open only at the king's
pleasure. An ancient commentator remarks that, "at Susa or
Ekbatana, the king was invisible to all," but everything was
arranged so that he "might see everything and hear everything. " 53 His viceroys, "the Great King's eyes/' 54 as
Aeschylus's Persians refers to them, were ever vigilant.
Even in the public audience hall, the Apadana, at
Persepolis, vision seems to have been obstructed by the many
columns and the distant ruler in the large, dark chamber
would not have been easily observed by his subjects. 55
Directions came from an unseen center from which attention
was also turned by the king's desire for unlimited expansion.
A long inscription describes "the palace which I [Darius] built
�64
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
at Susa" 56 of timber, gold, stone, ebony, and brick transported
from the far reaches of the empire. Unlike the Athenian
political records with their public accounts of the expenses
and inventories of Periclean buildings, there is no Persian
record of the architects, organization, or political context of
Persian building. In Persia, as in Egypt, the King's massive
construction projects, like his military campaigns, were facilitated by the unlimited, enslaved manpower at his command.
The eastern monarchy did not discuss its "public" buildings
any more than it discussed its foreign and military policy. It is
not surprising that Persia produced no narrative history or
drama and that among the extant ruins of its great buildings
there is no evidence of either assembly places or theaters.
Herodotus's observations about the buildings and
monuments of "barbarian" nations other than Persia are also
instructive about what was different about Athens' greatest
monument. Not surprisingly, the nomadic and under-civilized
Scythians had no temples or cities; residing in movable tents,
their only significant permanent places were their fathers'
gravesites (Hdt., 4.127). These itinerant non-builders were
also not producers of cloth. They made no linen or woolen
fabrics, both of which require a stationary economy, but
dressed themselves mostly in animal skins. Early Persians,
before the eras of the great buildings, also wore leather.
Croesus and the Lydian conquest softened tl1em into the
lovers of luxurious fabrics, robes, and slippers with which,
along with enormous palaces, the Greeks associated them. In
Lydia, the greatest building was a royal tomb constructed by
craftsmen and by prostitutes who worked on it to earn their
dowries (Hdt., 1.93). The walled city of Babylon had two
walled compounds within it, one for the royal palace, the
other for a stack of multiple towers, ziggurats. The latter
contained a huge temple for Zeus with a great gold statue of
the god and altars for sacrifice to him. Herodotus says Xerxes
took the statue and killed the priest who had forbidden him
to do so (Hdt., 1.181-2).
�FLAUMENHAFT
65
The most impressive buildings of the Egyptians were not
temples for gods, but massive memorials to the godlike kings
who built them. Thus, Moeris built a propylaia (gateway) to
the temple of Hephaestus as a memorial to himself (Hdt.,
2.101), and Cheops built pyramids, intending to preserve his
memory as a divinized ruler. Cheops used slave labor,
ordering all Egyptians to work only "for himself" (Hdt.,
2.124). Amasis, the last of the Egyptian kings described by
Herodotus, considered himself a "great lover of the Greeks"
(Hdt., 2.178). But Herodotus emphasizes how different
Egypt was: the sheer size of his propylaia and temple to
Athena at Sa'is, the "supernatural" (hyperphueas) size of its
stones, how long it took for two thousand men to transport
its building materials from great distances, and the many
colossal statues and hybrid man-headed sphinxes around the
temple. Herodotus was "amazed" at the huge shrine, made
from a single stone, outside the temple. It was said that one
of the workmen had been killed while trying, unsuccessfully,
to lever it into place (2.175). The story strikes an odd note,
given the thousands of anonymous slaves who lost their lives
to Egyptian projects. In Memphis, the statue of Hephaestus
measured seventy-five feet; it was so large that it had to lie flat
on its back in front of its admirably large temple (Hdt.,
2.176). Again and again, Herodotus associates the size and
character of the buildings of non-Greek peoples with their
political and religious character.
Now behold the Acropolis again, this time with the
completed Parthenon and surrounding buildings in place
upon it. From the top, all of Athens, including its boundaries,
would have been visible. The ancient city itself was walled,
and contiguous lands were contained between mountains and
the sea. Herodotus observes that the longest wall of the Great
King's private domain in Ekbatana was "about the length of
the wall that surrounds the city of Athens" (Hdt., 1.98,
emphasis added). Unlike the eastern empire that recognized
no natural boundary, Athens was open on the inside and
bounded-though accessible to outsiders-on the outside,
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
both physically and politically. Political life was not contained
in a closed palace, garden paradise, or tomb, where all
communication with the royal family was mediated by
officials or bodyguards. The sacred precinct upon the
Acropolis was articulated from its surroundings by its
elevation and by the grand gateway, the Propylaia, through
which it was entered. But, like the Agora, which was no more
than a ten or fifteen minute walk from any place in the city, 57
the Acropolis was accessible to all Athenians, to resident
aliens, metics who "dwelled among" (met-oikeo) them, and
to foreigners (xenoi) who visited from elsewhere. In festival
processions and athletic competitions, in battle, assembly, and
the theater, Athenians were on view to each other and direct
speech was the preferred medium of exchange. Unlike the
staircase to the Apadana, the stairs to the Propylaia invited
those who climbed them to enter and to look.
The new temple could be seen from everywhere in
Athens: from the lower hill on the Pnyx where the assembly
met, from the theater on the south slope of the Acropolis, and
even from the sea. Most other buildings in Athens were made
of dark wood and baked brown mudbricks. Rebuilt quickly
after the Persians went away, they were not made to be
looked at or to be visible from afar. Even the public buildings
in the Agora, including marble stoas, temples, and fountains,
would have had, at least from their location, a lower status
than the temple on the Acropolis. Various architectural
"refinements" that will not concern us here make the
Parthenon appear to be "springy" or to float skywards,
increasing its high status in the physical city. Because it is
located on the highest spot on the hill and near the edge of
the southern side where less traffic was possible, most views
of it from elsewhere on the Acropolis would not have
included other large structures. 58 Unlike the Agora, which
was planted with shade trees, the rocky hill above it did not
support trees or other vegetation-except Athena's olive.
There were, however, numerous smaller buildings,
monuments, and billboards, so that the ancient visitor's view
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67
would have been far more cluttered than what we see today.
As we have seen, some of this "clutter" functioned as a
"public archive in bronze and stone," 59 providing information, to those who could read, about the building projects
themselves.
The temple to Athena was not used for child sacrifices,
prostitution, or royal burials. Visitors to the Parthenon came
to deliver the birthday peplos to the goddess-and to look.
What they saw was themselves, both in the flesh and represented in local marble. The temple was not used for
worship of the goddess. Rather, like Aeschylus's play, it was a
"monument" or "reminder" of the city's collective defeat of
a different way of life, a house for a goddess who exemplified
what they regarded as a superior life for human beings. As we
shall see, the pictures of the Parthenon clearly distinguish
men and gods, humans and beasts, as well as male and female
human beings. Deified kings, as well as sphinxes, Centaurs,
and Amazons, are all rejected as hybrid; each in its own way
undermines human nature. Unlike the unlimited, enslaved,
yoked manpower that worked and died on Persian palaces
and Pharaohs' pyramids, the Parthenon work force, although
it certainly included slaves, consisted of citizens, resident
aliens, and foreigners as well, all paid for their labor. In
addition to the myths depicted on the temple, there are myths
about it. An old story tells how a mule that was resting from
its task of dragging heavy marble up to the building site came
back, of his own free will, to encourage his yokefellows in
their work. 60 Athenian civic propaganda, spread easily among
a small population whose politics consisted of constant talk,
insisted that even beasts of burden were enthusiastic participants in this project. Self-yoking in a noble cause is the theme
of the story that Athenian Solon tells Croesus about the
blessed brothers, Cleobis and Biton, who put themselves
"under the yoke" of a carriage to pull their mother to
worship at the temple of Hera (Hdt., 1.31). Another story
contrasts with that of the Egyptian laborer crushed in the
temple of Athena at Sa'is, where the goddess is present only in
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the huge, inert statue (Hdt., 2.175). In Athens, in contrast,
Plutarch reports that, when the most zealous workman at the
construction site of the Propylaia entrance to the Acropolis
fell off the building, mortally injuring himself, Pericles was so
dispirited that the Goddess appeared to him in a dream and
told him how to heal the man (Piut. Pericles, XIII). The
popular myths repeatedly assert that Athena watched over
and took an active interest in the building of her city.
The dimensions of the new Parthenon were larger than
those of its predecessor so that it could accommodate the
statue that Phidias planned for it. But, like the city that
withstood the mixed and disproportionate Persian force, the
Parthenon is a monument to unity and proportion. In what
follows I shall not discuss the architecture itself, but concentrate on selected parts of the temple, in which "narrative"
depictions shape the viewers' collective memory of their
victory over the Persians. On the stage Aeschylus depicts
Persians who, although different from Athenians, are recognizable human beings like themselves. On the Parthenon, the
actors on the "stages" of the pediments and metopes on the
outer temple resemble the humans who view them, but are
super or sub-human in size or form. The inner walls of the
temple are the "stage" on which Athenians view themselves
engaged in the paradigmatic Athenian festival, the celebration
of Athena's birthday. As in Aeschylus's tragedy, the civic
clothing and dynamic "weaving" of Athenian democratic
politics is meant to look superior to the luxurious fabrics and
strong yoke of the Persian Empire. The most important ritual
fabric in Athens was woven to clothe the wooden image of
the goddess who watched over this city. Just as Aeschylus's
play represents the power and failure of Persia in the Queen's
robes and Xerxes' peplos, so the Parthenon's pediments,
metopes, and frieze, and the celebrated statue of the goddess
herself, make Athena's pep/as a politically significant artifact.
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2. Pediments: Before and Above the Polis
Although the Parthenon stands at the center of polis life, the
citizens who come to see it are made to look again, to re-view
their city in the light of what is outside it, both spatially and
temporally. Thus, the pediments, the triangular gables facing
outward east and west on the short sides of the temple, depict
the outermost context of the city, the cosmos in which the
bounded polis takes shape and flourishes. Unlike the
divinized Darius and Xerxes, who aspired to a realm as
extensive as Zeus's sky, the Parthenon assumes a realm that
transcends the limited human world. In two dramatic scenes
depicting well-known stories, the pediments exhibit divine
beings who have their primary location outside the city, above
the mortals whose affairs they are both spectators of and
participants in. These representations of the gods depict the
continual adjustment and balancing of different and complementary human qualities. They show how Athens became
Athena's city through the careful interweaving of all the other
gods-including those who seem antithetical to her waysinto a heterogeneous but viable whole. Although it depicts
opposition and strife among the gods, the "polytheism" of
the Parthenon is informed by a principle of a coherent,
unified cosmos. The "dramas" staged on the pediments do
not conclude in the mere defeat of one of the contesting
sides; the gods don't die. The victor wins by assimilating the
vanquished and adjusting the order of the world. We know
about the pediments from a few remarks of the traveler
Pausanias who saw them in the second century A.D., from
Jacques Carrey, who made drawings of them in 1674 before
they were largely destroyed in a gunpowder explosion in
1687, and from the damaged yet remarkable figures in
Athens, Paris, and the British Museum in London. Classicists
and archaeologists have put together a variety of plausible
scenarios for the two pediments. The non-expert can follow
their lead and think through, in a general way, what the intent
and effect of these scenes might have been.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The pediments are populated with three-dimensional
sculptured figures. These are positioned at different angles,
some facing forward, others seen in profile. Some appear to
be moving towards the front triangular plane of the scene,
and some actually do penetrate it. The originals had attachments, some of which mnst also have projected outside the
plane. The triangular frame and the rounded character of the
sculptures remind one of theatrical tableaux; viewed more
closely, the sculptures might even have appeared to be
"rounder" than would distant actors who might appear flat in
a very large theater. The pediment figures are unusual in that
their backs, unseen after the sculptures were mounted, are
finished; like actors on a stage, they appear as "real"
personages, not just building ornaments. The "backdrop"
wall was originally painted bright red or blue, and the
colorful patterns painted on the sculpted clothing of the
figures would have stood out against it as costumed actors did
onstage. Tragic actors, like those in the Persians, are intelligible to the spectators, the "audience," primarily through
their heard speech. How do the silent pediment actors
"speak" to Athenians about the Persian wars of recent
memory and about the community that survived them?
The west pediment faces the spectator as he approaches
the Parthenon from the great (unfinished) entrance gate, the
Propylaia. His first view of the highest part of the "back" of
the temple (as it appears in descriptions and drawings) would
be a tableau of the contest between Athena and Poseidon,
who take center stage. The scene is set on the Acropolis.
Pausanias says their strife was for the "land," suggesting a
very early, almost proto-Athenian time. They are symmetrically flanked by horse-drawn chariots and gods. In the
narrowed corners are reclining river gods (and perhaps the
autochthonous king Kekrops), snakes, a sea monster, and
other figures associated with early legends of king Erechtheus
and his family: "The figures in the angles represent the royal
population of Athens before it was Athens. " 61 The contest
between Poseidon and Athena pits the natural abundance of
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71
surging fluidity against the artful prosperity of rooted solidity.
Fruit and oil, wooden boats and oars, will characterize
Athena's city, where speech and artful skill, techne, will shape
the sheer power and fertility of Poseidon. Thus, the victory of
Athena in this pre-political agon results not in the elimination
of the immortal god of the sea, bnt in his assimilation. On the
north side of the Acropolis both the olive tree and the salt
spring remained as reminders of the outcome. Travelers by
sea leaving or arriving at Athena's city would always see the
great temple of Poseidon on the cliff at Sounion. Equilibrium
rather than mere defeat is suggested by the position of the
contenders, both of whom remain upright in a "great
'Pheidian V'," 62 and by the way Poseidon's leg overlaps
Athena's, placing him in the foremost position. The pediment
suggests that balance in Athena's city involves harnessing
Poseidon for the city's benefit. But harnessing does not mean
simply yoking. Every visitor to the Parthenon remembered
that the Persians were defeated at sea, and that Athens'
greatness, in contrast to that of landlocked Persia, was the
result of her close and comfortable relation with Poseidon.
Unlike Xerxes and the Persians, Themistocles and the
Athenians knew that one doesn't "beat" or shackle the sea,
but collaborates with it by sailing and swimming. In the 4 70s,
after the maritime victory at Salamis, Athens may have
developed a Poseidon cult around the salt spring and the sign
of the trident,63 which, like the olive tree depicted in the
center of the pediment, remained visible on the Acropolis.
The west pediment memorializes the victory over Persia by
asserting that Athens succeeds under the supervision of gods
who transcend the city in time and place, but that, in Athens,
there is a time and place for all the gods.
The "front" east pediment also pictures a cosmic event,
"in the manner of classical drama ... played out in the course
of a single day." 64 The scene is Olympus. In the center, the
viewer would have seen a tableau that included Zeus, perhaps
seated on his throne, Athena, newly emerged from his head,
and Hephaestus holding the axe that liberated-and
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
delivered-her. With a mother named Metis, "craft" or
"wisdom," and gestation in the head of Zens, she comes into
the world as a manifestation of rational, self-reliant thought.
Just as the symmetry of Athena and Poseidon on the west
pediment conveys their simultaneous existence in Athens,
here the symmetry of Athena and Hephaestus around Zens
indicates that these two must be thought of together. "In
Athens, the birth of Athena makes a new god of Hephaestus,
for they share between them the patronage of all things made
by the hands. " 65 He is her midwife, but also the "working
partner to the newborn goddess of work. "66 Like the central
figures on the west pediment, the central group here is
flanked by an array of divinities, some individuals, and some
in groups carved from common blocks of marble. Tied
together, they suggest again that Athenian mortals look up to
a pantheon of complementary divinities. The east pediment's
location, Olympus, is a loftier mountain than the Acropolis of
the west pediment. It is far removed from the city around the
Acropolis, but the "explosion of power"" from the head of
Zeus affects not only the gods who have homes on Olympus.
"The event taking place between" Helios, the sun, in the
south angle and Selene, the moon, in the north "is ... an event
of cosmic significance. It is dawn. There is a new order on
Olympus. The coming of Athena has changed the world." 68
As we have seen, Athens commemorated Athena's birth
with a new dress, whose weaving and presentation provided
the city with an elaborate protocol for holding itself together.
The fast-moving, quick-thinking city of rationality and
progress here tied itself to tradition and repetition, to time.
The east pediment, like the festival and the Parthenon itself,
made the Athenians look backward as well as forward and
recognize their mortal limits. Thus, although the gods who
live forever have an endless future, time as it is depicted on
the east pediment is cyclical, not linear. Just as Athena's
victory on the west pediment does not simply banish
Poseidon, here on the east "Light does not banish darkness
from the world, for neither can exist without the other." 69
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73
Dawn, like Athena's birthday, always comes round again. But
although the gods do not die, even they tire and retire when
the sun goes down. Nothing captures this quite so well as the
immortal but weary horse of Selene's chariot, about to sink
under the night horizon in the northern angle of the
pediment. The horse breaks the plane and thus the distancing
frame of the pediment, and seems to reach into our world.
Viewers have always loved him, for although his days are not
numbered like ours, he expresses weariness as we too know
it.
Like the Persians, the Parthenon suggests "weaving" as an
image for the holding together of a human community. One
of the most astonishing things about the pediments is the
sculptured clothing, a trademark of Pheidias's style
throughout the Parthenon. Unlike the stiff Persian costumes
and royal gear that obscure nature with conventional wealth
in Aeschylus's dramatic depiction, the fabrics pictured here
reveal the bodies they cover. Iris's clinging, blowing dress,
Hestia's light, crinkly crepe under heavier woolen folds, and
Amphytrite's belted peplos amaze the viewer with the art of
the sculptor, who imitates soft fabrics in stone, but also with
the art that weaves real soft fabrics of cloth, the art of Athena
herself. Through the draperies, and probably through the
"embroidered" patterns that were painted upon them, the
groups of sculptures could unify "motifs involving a complex
dramatic action and including many interlocking
figures ... Pheidias invented a plastic means by which a scene
composed of many parts could be transformed into a single
powerful image." 70 Their flowing garments and the variety of
angled positions make the three goddesses on the east
pediment (perhaps Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite) seem to
"weave" in and out among each other (Figure 2). We shall see
something similar in the low relief frieze inside the
Parthenon. Like the Athenian pantheon and Pheidias's sculptured tableaux of these gods, the weaver's art combines many
elements into a coherent whole. The politics of the city that
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE 2 (Courtesy of A. Nicgorski)
fabricated the Parthenon sculptures and Athena's woven
peplos did something similar: it fabricated its way of life by
weaving together free speech in the political deliberation of
free individuals. Entirely different are the lined up, repetitious figures on the Persepolis Apadana staircase. Unlike the
lovely, varied, and flexible materials of the Parthenon, their
stiff, identical robes do not convey the famed beauty of
Persian weaving. In contrast to the dramatic tableaux vivants
of the Olympians on the pediments and the Athenians and
gods on the frieze (to be discussed below), even in Persia's
most accomplished works of art, the Persians remain
arbitrarily and stiffly yoked together, just as they are said to
be in Aeschylus's play.
3. Metopes: Outside the Polis
The outer sides of the temple display what's outside: earthly
alternatives that threaten to invade and destroy Athena's
polis. Wrapping around the outermost upper wall of the
Parthenon, below the pediments, is a horizontal band of
ninety-two squares, thirty-two on the long sides and fourteen
on the short. These metopes, seen "between the holes" or
"between the eyes," are separated from each other by slabs of
three vertical bars called "triglyphs," which frame each scene.
Originally painted in bright, contrasting colors, the figures on
the metopes were far more distinct than they appear today.
Each square presents a framed static scene, a snapshot, to the
�FLAUMENHAFT
75
spectator who can view one whole side at the same time, or
each picture in the band, as he circles the temple. The
metopes are carved in high relief and most do not appear in
the round as the theatrical pediment statues do. Here, too,
the effect is sometimes compared to the changing scenes in a
drama, but now the scenes remain in place while the
spectator moves. Another difference is that in the theater the
scenes follow one another in time, suggesting causal relations
between them, while the metopes are freestanding or paired
images that do not depict a sequential narrative in time. The
central scene of Aeschylus's play is central in time; the center
of a band of metopes is central in space, although, as we shall
see, on the south side, it may represent a different time, but
one related in theme, to those around it. Like the play, the
metopes can be seen as four sets or "acts," each depicting a
particular conflict between Greeks (or their champions) and a
particular enemy: on the east, gods and Giants; on the north,
Greeks and Trojans, on the west, Greeks and Amazons, and
on the south, Lapiths and Centaurs. These subjects appear
repeatedly in the Parthenon and in other fifth-century
buildings. The threats depicted are all analogues to the
Persian invasion depicted by Aeschylus. The play uses words
to depict the unseen Greek alternative to the Persians seen on
stage. But the metopes depict the Greeks as well as their
would-be destroyers. Each set can also be "read," like
Herodotus's inquiries, as the struggle between the civilized
Greek city and a particular deficient alternative to the life it
regards as human.
All four sets depict battles with mythological enemies. On
three sides, mortal victors defeat mortal enemies. But on the
east wall, the final destination of visitors to the Parthenon, the
viewer would have faced the early cosmic conflict in which
the Giants, sons of Gaia, the Earth, arose to challenge the
hegemony of the heavenly Olympian gods. As we have seen,
the great "Cyclopean" foundations of the Acropolis were
reminders of Athena's victory and harnessing of Giant power
in the service of her city. In some versions of the legend the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Giants are defeated and imprisoned in the locations of
volcanoes. The primitive Giants are the first depiction on the
metopes of an attempt of massive force to overcome divine or
human civilization. Their eruptions are associated more with
the powers of nature than with intentional evil. They cannot
be simply destroyed, but are containable and even usable.
Little remains of the eastern metopes, but their theme
appeared repeatedly on the Parthenon, most notably on the
great statue's shield and on the peplos itself." Thus, every
element of the east side of the Parthenon refers the ultimate
prosperity of Athenian civilization to the divine. Beneath the
birth of Athena on the east pediment and behind the Giant
metopes, the viewer would see the culminating panels of the
interior frieze, picturing the Olympian gods towards whom
the procession of Athenians moves. And through the east
doorway, beneath the pediment, frieze, and metopes, in the
innermost part of the temple, he would view the statue of the
Goddess herself. Nowhere on the Parthenon does any
historical human being become an immortal, as did the
mythical Heracles, who probably was depicted helping
Athena overcome the Giants. And unlike the giant representations of Darius and Xerxes in Persia, there are no enlarged
portraits of identifiable individual human beings.
Themistocles, not named but clearly referred to in
Aeschylus's play, is not identifiable on the Parthenon, and
Pericles, as we have seen, is present only in the spirit of the
project. 71 Nowhere is it suggested that human rule might
extend indefinitely, like that of Zeus or the Great King's
dreams. In the stories depicted on the Parthenon and in the
contained inward focus of the building itself, Athens differentiates itself from its recent Persian enemy. As we shall see,
the story of the Parthenon itself and of the politics of its
construction under Pericles suggests an Athens that will need
to expand its own aims, even as it remembers its defeat of
unlimited expansion. As the articulated and delimited city
moved towards its own version of empire, its relationship
with the goddess and gods of the eastern "front" of the
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77
Parthenon would shift radically from that celebrated in its
memorial monument in the decades immediately following
the Persian War.
For the conflict between mortal human beings, the
designers of the Parthenon's north metopes (the ones facing
the Athenian Agora) selected the war with the Trojans, a
people who are the same as their Greek enemies in their
nature, physis, but whose conventions, nomoi, like those of
the Persians, represent a different way of life. Although the
Trojan War was a Greek invasion, it was viewed as a response
to a previous "invasion" on the part of the Trojans since
Paris's violation was thought to undermine all civilized
custom. Thus, some of the surviving slabs show Menelaus,
Helen, and Paris. The historical and mythological Trojans
were an eastern patriarchal monarchy that, in some respects,
resembled Persia. Homer depicts the "Trojans" as a mixed,
polyglot, loosely combined force from many different places.
In contrast, the Greeks, although from many cities, are ethnically coherent; they speak the same language, function as a
political community, and coordinate their military efforts. 73
Like Aeschylus's Persians and Herodotus's Inquiries, the
Parthenon's north metopes depict an alternative human
culture in order to think about the customs most appropriate
to human nature.
The anthropology of the remaining metopes, the
Amazons of the west and Centaurs of the south sides, depicts
mythical beings that resemble, but are not quite, human
beings. Unlike the Trojans and Persians, they represent a
difference in kind-in nature-rather than in custom. The
first are entirely human, but entirely female, rejecting life
with males of their own kind. The second are entirely male,
but are hybrids of human and beast. Athenian civic
mythology had long depicted Amazons and Centaurs as
enemy invaders and threats to Athens and to Theseus, its
founding king. The metopes, like the tragic dramas, assume
familiarity with these stories, but they do not dramatize
incidents involving particular heroes. Little remains of the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Amazon metopes, but a brief consideration of what they
represent will help to understand the unified thought of the
Parthenon and to set the stage for the better preserved
Centaurs.
The Amazons are liberated women. In contrast to the
typical Athenian confinement of women and their children
within the home, these untamed, unmarried horsewomen
hunt, fight, and even mate in the open air, rejecting the
confinements of the polis, of buildings generally, of conventional female clothing, and even of their own bodies. Their
name seems to refer to their custom of removing the right
breast; the breast-less (a-mastos) woman could more easily
pull a bow or throw a javelin, typically Persian weapons, as
opposed to Athenian hoplite spears. The voluntary mastectomies are reminiscent of Persian castrations described by
Herodotus; the exclusion of males and the isolation of the
Amazons also require denaturing and mutilation. Some depictions of Amazons show two breasts, exposed in a way
unthinkable for ordinary Athenian women. In others, they
appear in pants, short belted jackets, and pointed caps, and
have pale skin as opposed to the outdoors tans of Athenian
men.74 Athenian artists often pictured Amazons in Persian
dress and hats in order to mock the latter as effeminate.
Athenian mythology credited the defeat of the Amazon
invasion of Athens to Theseus, and located his victory on the
hill of the quintessentially masculine war god Ares, the rocky
platform just below the Acropolis. In the Oresteia Aeschylus
depicts the establishment of the Athenian court on the
Areopagus and makes clear that its supersession of the female
Furies is a critical step in the development of civic justice in
the Athenian polis. The defeat of the Amazons by the male
founder of Athens invites two questions.
The first concerns the truth of the common claim that
Athens simply assumed male superiority and that women
were regarded as inferior human beings. There is no doubt
that Athens was a male hoplite culture; men fought its wars,
spoke in its assembly, met in its markets, socialized in its
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79
gymnasia and symposia, wrote for and performed in its
theater, and designed and built its temples. Women, in
contrast, spent their time at home, indoors, among other
women and female and young male children. They had no
property rights, did not take part in public deliberation, and
were certainly less articulate and less visible than their fathers
and brothers, husbands and sons. The myths about au
Amazonian alternative to such a life are not surprising. But it
is misleading to claim that Athens aims to exclude women as
it does the half-humans and barbarians on the outside of the
temple. There is a difference between differentiation and
exclusion. Athens and its myths distinguish appropriate
realms for male and female human beings, but they do not
attempt to eradicate the female. Amazons are excluded
because they attempt to exclude the male from human life.
Their defeat by Theseus resulted not in the elimination of
women, but in their integration into a human life that
includes both sexes. In the carefully revised civic legends that
replaced the hyper-masculine, godlike Heracles with Theseus,
the unequivocally human founder marries the Amazon queen.
She and her comrades live on in what, from the perspective
of egalitarian modernity, looks like a subordinate position.
But Athenian drama and religion make clear that women are
necessary, not just as producers of children, the only role for
which the Amazons reluctantly acknowledged their need for
men, but for civilized life as the Athenians saw it.
Once again, women's work offers an appropriate
metaphor. The communal fabric is woven from warp and
weft: each requires the other; they have different jobs to do.
One is upright, stiff, a visible support; the other is horizontal,
more pliant, weaves in and out, sometimes behind the scenes,
sometimes visible. Modern technology has gone a long way
to liberate the sexes from their strictly differentiated natures;
how far is yet to be seen. But in fifth-century Athens, where
Persians had to be repelled by hand-to-hand combat, and
where birth control, frozen foods, and mass-produced textiles
were not available, division of labor follows from natural
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
differences bet\veen the sexes. Differentiation may require
hierarchy. But we shonld also note that refusing to medize
included rejecting polygamy, as well as effeminate dress and
luxury. This snggests that polis life inclnded a developed
sense of the individnal worth of women as well as of men,
however constricted the lives of the former now appear. As
we have seen, the Panathenaic festival included, and even
featured, women. Only they could perform certain civic
fnnctions, including the most intimate ministering to the
patron goddess. The peplos had to be made, not by slaves, but
by female "citizens with known ancestry" who performed
this rite, "not for themselves, bnt for the city. It is the ritnal
that distinguishes the women of Athens from the women of
other states ... it is a ritual in which women and men both play
important roles." 75 However dominant the males of Pericles'
city were, its women were present and visible. The Amazons,
we must conclude, are on the outside, partly because they are
women who relocate themselves from inside to outside, but
also because they are women who attempt to remove
themselves from the full hnman condition, that is, from a
civic life that interweaves, however hierarchically, men and
women.
A second question about these warrior women is that of
their relation to Athens' patron, the warrior goddess, Pallas
Athena. Is she to be considered the paradigmatic Amazon? A
complicated answer is suggested by the different, but
overlapping, aspects of her presence on the Acropolis. In the
early days, worship of Athena Polias seems to have taken
place in the old Erechtheion temple where the olivewood
statue resided, and where Athenians brought multitudes of
little statuettes as offerings to her, seeking, perhaps,
protection, like that sought by later generations when the
Parthenon was sanctified as "Our Lady of Athens." During
her great annual festival, the women bathed her, applied
cosmetics, and dressed her in traditional female garb and
jewelry. She was human-sized or smaller and was associated
with female fertility, agriculture, and domestic prosperity in
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81
peacetime. She may have been seated and she carried no
shield or weapons. There is nothing of the Amazon about her.
Another Athena, called the Promachos, "foremost
fighter," was a large bronze statue made by Pheidias perhaps
as a thank-offering for the Greek victory at Marathon. This
one stood outdoors on the western side of the Acropolis. Her
armed figure, the Centauromachy pictured on her shield, and
the Persian spoils displayed around her base, 76 suggest the
more masculine task of defending Athens. Although she is
more a symbol of public military strength than an object of
worship and private protector like the Polias, here she seems
relaxed, a secure victor over Persian invaders rather than an
aggressor in her own right. Her shining spear and helmet
were visible to ships sailing towards the city as they passed
Cape Sunium. 77 This Athena is no more suggestive of the
Amazons than the Polias is. In action, Athena as battle god
differed from her brother, the bowman Apollo. Walter Otto
long ago suggested "immediacy" as the feminine element of
her fighting spirit. 78 Unlike the "far-shooting" god, and unlike
Amazons and Persians, both of whom fought with bows and
arrows, Athena shows up near at hand among those she
champions, both women and men, as she does at Homer's
Troy and Aeschylus's Salamis.
The temple Pericles built in the decades after Salamis
housed the third Athena on the Acropolis, Pheidias's most
famous statue of Athena, the Parthenos, "maiden"; unlike the
Amazons, she is comfortable with a roof over her head. We
shall consider the colossal image when we arrive at the
innermost chamber of the Parthenon. For now, let us merely
raise the question: is she the divine image of the ordinarily
reclusive, fierce but shy, race of women warriors of Athenian
legend? Or is she something new, an Athenian god on the
march, ready to leave her home and city, the Promachos of
the post-Parthenon empire that Pericles sees as the natural
successor of the Persian one that failed in Athens?
The south metopes, which depict women merely as the
occasion for masculine conflict, have survived in good
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
enough condition to convey some idea of what they once had
to say. The thirty-two tableaux depict a well-known legend,
the battle between the Lapiths and their half-brothers, the
Centaurs, who, like Theseus's friend, the Lapith king
Pirithous, were fathered by Ixion. 79 Demanding a share in the
kingdom, they made war on the more civilized branch of the
family until an uneasy truce was established. In a foolish
gesture of reconciliation, Pirithous invited the estranged
relatives to his wedding, but the unruly Centaurs got drunk,
wrecked the party, and attempted to carry off Pirithous's
bride and the other Lapith women. Although the panels do
not present a continuous linear narrative of this event or its
outcome in the defeat of the Centaurs, they are arranged in
pairs, triplets, and groups by their composition and subjects.
All but one contain only two opposed figures, and that one,
east 21 (moving to the right, facing the south side of the
temple), concludes a central set of nine panels in which the
Centauromachy is not the subject. We reserve this mysterious
center for the end of our discussion.
As we have seen in Aeschylus's play and on the
Parthenon, Athenians associated their Persian enemies with
the fully human Amazons. Like Persian Xerxes, Trojan Paris,
and Amazon women, the male Centaurs disrupt marriage and
hospitality as the foundations of the human city. 80 But, for
several reasons, they seem even more alien. However
lopsided the Amazon attempt to avoid the limitations of
ordinary mature female lives, they are recognizably human in
form, belong to a coherent community, and make arrangements for its continuity. The Centaur seems more a member
of a herd than of a community. His hybrid body combines a
mature human nature with a mature beastly one. The result,
as pictured in the metopes, undermines rather than enhances
human wholeness. The Amazon isolates herself from the male
half of humanity; the Centaur combines male halves of two
different kinds. Aeschylus's play and the Persian Queen's
dream raise the question of whether different nations of
human beings can be viably yoked together to form a
�FLAUMENHAFT
83
coherent human regime. The Parthenon Centaurs depict a
"yoking" of two different kinds that is incapable of coherent
human life. Egyptian and Assyrian art often represent hybrids
of different animals and of animals and humans in the service
of humans. Persian monsters of this kind are found in eaglefaced lions and human-headed bulls in Pasargadae and
Persepolis. But on the Parthenon such a combination is the
enemy and would-be destroyer of civilized human life.
In contrast to the bodies of the Lapiths, who are beautiful
even in their painful twisting, the bodies of the Centaurs lack
unity and proportion. Combining the upright and horizontal
forms of its progenitors, the Centaur lacks the full powers of
either orientation. Like snapshots or scenes in a dramatic
pageant, the metopes freeze moments of violent action,
exhibiting the peculiarity of Centaur posture: they cannot
stand or kneel like men; they can rear like horses. Although
all Centaurs are man above and horse below, there are early
depictions (not on the Parthenon) with human forelegs. From
the front, these might look more human, but from the side,
they appear even less unified, since their nether parts are also
dual. Both combinations viewed from the side or rear present
not one whole, natural being, but a beast with two backs.
The most human parts of the Parthenon Centaurs are the
faces. Although some are grotesque and mask-like, while
others are said to be "sensitive" or "grandfatherly," several
features emphasize their un-emerged humanity, or their
reversion to bestiality. Their heads are set low on their
shoulders and are less visibly articulated from their bodies by
necks than those of the humans (south 26, 29, 31). Unlike the
dean-shaven faces of the young Lapiths, the Centaurs are
bearded; they look older and shaggy and the beards further
obscure the articulation of their heads. 81 In south 31 the
bearded head of the Centaur is hard to grasp, but the Centaur
has the Lapith by the throat (Figure 3). Rationality seems
pulled down or sunken into their violent, marauding Centaur
bodies. A recent interpreter claims that the more "human"
faces among the mask-like, ferocious ones are evidence that
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the sculptors did not
view these problematic
beings as uniformly alien
and hostile, or offer an
"easy apology for human
superiority," and asks
"whether they [centaurs]
should be construed as
other at all." 82 It seems
more correct to say that
the occasionally human
expressions underline
the grotesqueness of FIGURE 3 (Courtesy of A. Nicgorski)
their bestial behavior,
just as Xerxes' pain at his disastrous failure intensifies the
audience's understanding of what is wrong with his grotesque
project. Persian violations are the result of human nature
aspiring to the super-human; Centaur violations are the result
of human nature sunk into the subhuman. In both cases,
hybris characterizes the hybrid.
The sunken heads are emphasized even more by the
prominent rear ends of the Centaurs. Their upright human
torsos are short and the heavy bulk of their horizontal horse
bodies pulls them groundward. Even when rearing or
bucking, they are not taller than their human opponents.
Many originally had carved hairy tails that protruded out of
the frames of the deeply carved reliefs. Some interpreters
associate the tails with the supposed phallic character of the
Centaurs, deriving their name from the Greek word for
"goad" or "prick" (kentros), and relating it to obscene phallic
jokes that play on their name and sexually aggressive
character. 83 But interestingly, many of the Centaurs do not
have prominent or even visible genitals, as do most of the
Lapiths, who are often pictured in full frontal nudity. \Vhen
the Centaur organs of generation are visible, they are in
equine location. The early Centaurs with human front legs
raise the odd possibility of two different sets of genitals. One
�FLAUMENHAFT
85
would expect that these organs would be of great interest,
given the virile potency of the horse component, as well as
the hybrid nature of the combination. The relative lack of
attention to the genitalia of the Parthenon Centaurs reminds
the viewer that there are no accounts, as there are for
Amazons, of communities of Centaurs. After the first mating
of Ixion, references to females or to reproduction are rare.
The human torsos of the Parthenon Centaurs have navels
indicating their generation. But whatever their own
genealogy is, it seems that Centaurs, like mules and other
hybrids, are themselves sterile dead ends. Amazons do not
marry, but they generate and raise children; Centaurs do
neither: they rape.
Finally, the Parthenon Centaurs seem remarkably
unsexual in their attack on the Lapith women. The
impression the metopes give is more of disrupted communal
festivity, marauding violence, and theft than of lust; more
unfamiliarity with the celebratory social use of wine by a
civilized community, than a coordinated attempt to provide
themselves with women. This is not the rape of Sabines taken
for marriage to perpetuate a community. The two slabs that
do depict Centaurs with women (south 25, 29) show only the
attempted abduction and call attention to the awkwardness of
any actual coupling. Viewed as a whole, these metopes
suggest that the sculptors are more interested in depicting the
opposition of male bodies than the violation of female ones.
Like the pediment sculptures, the metopes are extraordinary in their representation of drapery, the fabric that
indicates the presence of differentiated but coordinated activities of men and women in a well-fabricated human
community. The nude bodies of the Lapiths are repeatedly
displayed against the fabric of woven capes made by the
mothers and wives they are fighting to protect. Kenneth
Clark's distinction between nudity and nakedness 84 reminds
us that the visible bodies of the Lapiths are not merely
exposed as those of animals would be. Rather, they suggest
the freedom and equality of citizen soldiers on view to each
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
other. Like the Athenian youths who performed a nude
armed dance at the Pauathenaia, they exhibit their readiness
to protect their threatened community. 85 In contrast to the
"nude" Lapiths, the half-animal bodies of the Centaurs, with
their lifelike muscles, hairs, and veins, would look strikingly
"naked." They are unfettered by the yokes, reins, and bridles
with which, elsewhere on the temple, human masters have
"clothed" their animals. On the frieze, these signs of human
domination were made more visible through the use of paint
or real reins or bridles attached to the stone with bronze
rivets. Two of the best-executed and best-preserved metopes
demonstrate some of the themes sketched above. Both focus
our attention on woven cloth as a sign of civilized humanity.
The composition of south 27, the sixth slab from the eastern
corner, positions the Lapith and Centanr combatants so that
their bodies pull away from rather than turn upon each other
as Poseidon and Athena do in the West Pediment (Figure 4).
The Centaur appears to be trying to remove a spear from his
back, and the Lapith is about to strike him again. All the
features described above-the upright posture of the man,
supported by his two sturdy legs, the exposed human genitals,
the unusually low horizontality of the beast, the sunken
Centaur head-are present here as in other panels. But the
remarkable pulling
apart of the two
bodies allows the
sculptor to concentrate attention on
the full folds of the
long cape worn by
the youth; the eye
falls especially on
the curved vertical
folds between the
figures. The cloth,
as well as the fact
that the nude man
FIGURE 4 (Courtesy of A. Nicgorski)
�FLAUMENHAFT
87
is carved in much
higher relief than the
Centaur behind him,
separates and makes
him stand forth from
his surroundings as the
naked beasts never do.
In his almost threedimensional
roundness, this man
resembles pediment
gods or human stage
actors. The open cape
FIGURE 5 (Courte-sy of A. Nicgorski)
reveals his articulated
human body and its dominating and generative powers, but
attests also to human shame and the recognition that, for the
human, cover and exposure are appropriate in different
circumstances. Finally, the sculptor's craft has represented in
its own medium the product of the weaver's craft: soft,
folded, perishable cloth is captured in hard, rigid, permanent
marble. In their drunken rampage, the Centaurs have
scattered weapons and jugs about the wedding feast turned
war. Techne, in the form of weapons, wine, and weavings, is
the trademark of the human; mere force characterizes the
non-human.
South 28 (Figure 5) functions as a partner to 27. Stunned
or dead, a Lapith youth lies flat on the ground, legs useless,
arms pinned under him, genitals flaccid, head tipped back.
Under him is his crumpled cloak, likely to be his burial
shroud when the battle is over. A bucking Centaur, naked
chest erect and arm stretched out like the Lapith's in 27,
towers above the youth. His carved tail, miraculously intact
over the centuries, stands out in triumph, and he grasps a
bowl from the wedding feast, perhaps the domestic "weapon"
with which he felled the Lapith. Unlike some depictions of
Centaurs, the ones on the Parthenon are not shaggy. 86 For the
most part, they are naked and unprotected. Therefore, the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
most striking feature of this panel is the extraordinary wild
panther skin that hangs upside down from the Centaur's
outstretched arm. Part shield, part cloak, it is the complete
antithesis of the fabricated cloth that signals the human, even
more so since parts of it hang in folds reminiscent of the cloth
in other metopes. Here a wild hybrid carries the barely transformed skin of a wild beast, another violently killed victim
who never self-consciously faced his killer as human
combatants do. The open-fanged jaws and outstretched claws
of the dead panther hang directly over the face of the dead
Lapith, emphasizing the confrontation of the wild and the
civilized. Finally, the combination of man and beast in the
triumphant Centaur appears even more monstrous by the
additional limbs and tail provided by the draped panther skin.
Moving one more slab to the right, the spectator would
have faced, in south 29, another frozen moment. An elderly
Centaur with short, flabby torso and bald, bearded head low
on his chest abducts a struggling young Lapith woman. Her
vulnerability and violation are indicated by her torn peplos
and exposed naked shoulder and breast. Greek art often
displays the kalokagathos-the "noble and good" mannude, as he would have displayed himself in the gymnasium.
Respectable women, the wives, mothers, and daughters
whose lives were more secluded than those of the men,
usually appear clothed, only partly visible to observers. The
Lapith girl's crinkly dress reveals her spread legs, although, as
we have suggested, the Centaur seems more intent on robbery
than on sexual assault. All his strength is concentrated in his
left arm and the hand that restrains her powerless hand and
holds up her body as he attempts to gallop away. On this
Centaur's back, balancing the crinkly dress pressed against his
chest, is one of those capes that appear on some of the other
metope Centaurs. The garment does not fall naturally on the
Centaur's back; rather, this beast with two backs is cloaked
only on its human shoulders. Unlike the capes that "frame"
the vertical bodies of the nude humans, this one grotesquely
emphasizes the monster's hybrid nature; the naked horseflesh
�FLAUMENHAFT
89
of its nether part interrupts its downward flow. The
"piecrust" edging on the cape will be seen as the characteristic decoration of the cloaks of the young Athenian
horsemen of the frieze. Once recognized as a mark of the
civilized city and its citizens, it appears even more anomalous
on the horse-men that threaten civilized life.
The greatest mystery about the south metopes concerns
the apparent intrusion of seemingly unrelated material in
south 13 through 21. Unfortunately, these scenes are known
only through the Carrey drawings, which reveal that the
center panels of the Centauromachy contain no Centaurs.
Jeffrey Hurwit reviews suggestions that these panels are
dramatically (or cinematographically) coherent as a "mythological 'flashback"' in the manner of "similar debriefings in
the choral odes of tragedies," and that they may have
presented the background story of Ixion and his descendents,
or of "early Athenian kings and heroes."87 He suggests that
the central panels are not intrusive at all, but relevant to the
central purpose of the Parthenon: the celebration of Athena
and her city is itself a paradigmatic civic activity. Thus, these
carvings may depict Athena and her cult statues. South 19-21
may "have represented the spinning of cloth, the removal of
a robe or pep/as in a roll from a loom" and the "disrobing of
a stiff, old-fashioned cult-statue (the Athena Polias) in anticipation of the presentation of a new dress: the central events
of the Plynteria and Panathenaia come to mind. " 88 As we shall
see, these events are represented also at the final destination
of the Athenian procession on the east end of the frieze. If, as
I have suggested, the Parthenon repeatedly uses woven fabric
and the women who weave it as images of the interwoven
elements of a coherent enduring community, female woolworkers and dressers at the center of the male
Centauromachy make sense. From both ends and at the
center of the south side of the Parthenon, the violent
Centaurs undermine the foundations of human society:
hospitality, marriage, weaving, and civic religion.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
4. Frieze: Within the Polis
At the outermost and highest position of the temple's short
east and west ends, the pediments and their sculptures in-theround point to what is beyond and above the city. The
external band of "framed" metopes carved in high relief
below them on all four sides of the temple depict the
struggles of the civilized polis to maintain itself against terrestrial threats in the shape of fully and partially human aliens.
Within the columns on the inner structure a three-foot-high
ribbon of pictures carved in low relief also wraps around the
temple. The frieze is continuous, broken visually only at the
four corners of the building. But since it is viewed from
outside and below, through the columns, it is also seen as a
series of separate scenes like the metopes and like the articulated episodes of Aeschylus's play. Like the Persians, which
differs from most tragedies by depicting a contemporary
historical rather than a distant mythical event, the frieze
differs from other Greek friezes in depicting a contemporary
subject; it is a "documentary"" in real place and time: "For
the first time in Greek history, it shows mortal human
beings." 90 On the inside of the temple we view the city from
the inside, at home, at peace: a terrestrial, civilized
community attached to and defined by a particular locale.
In the play Athens views Persians and examines itself
indirectly by looking at them. On the Parthenon frieze Athens
looks directly at itself. The Parthenon frieze shows victorious
Athenians rather than defeated Persians. The Persians are now
remembered, not by preserving ruins and abstaining from
civic rituals, but by restoring these rituals at-and even onthe temple. The setting is, once again, the Acropolis. The
festival procession that had to be abandoned "when the
Persians came" now makes its way through all the important
public places in the city, serving once more, but with special
meaning, "as a symbolic reappropriation of the city's space by
the community." 91 Mourning memory has given way to
festive memory. The frieze replaces the flight of the people
and Athena from the city to Salamis with the procession of
�FLAUMENHAFT
91
the reestablished populace to the new home of the goddess at
the center of the city.
Like Pericles' funeral oration, the city on the frieze does
not emphasize individuality; unlike those of the Centaurs and
even the horses, the Athenian faces on the frieze are indistinguishable from each other. 92 Also, unlike the metopes with
their opposed pairs, the frieze contains all the elements of a
coherent population organized into groups. In characteristic
clothing, young and old, male and female, magistrates and
citizens, warriors and weavers, and even resident aliens who
call this city home, make their way to the east front of the
temple. The frieze resembles a story·cloth, wrapped around
an enclosed form. Like the city and the building itself, it
emphasizes the boundedness of the city. The observer circumnavigates the sides, looking inward towards the center. 93 As
we have seen, the final pomp€, "procession," of Aeschylus's
tragedy depicts the disintegration of the Persian regime and
the shamed ruler's retreat in his tattered pep/as into the
private confines of his palace, out of the view of those he has
ruined. In contrast, the Panathenaia pomp€ on the frieze
depicts an integrated regime in the act of delivering a new
pep/as to the goddess and openly displaying the "ruler"-the
demos, "people," itself-to the public view.
In the Persians, the dramatic action moves forward; the
scenes change, while the spectator remains stationary. On the
Parthenon, the procession is frozen into stationary stone. But
as the spectators move forward towards the front of the
temple, the frieze procession itself seems to advance. 94 The
spectators in the theater are simultaneously in their own time
and that of the play. Likewise the viewers at the temple are in
both the time of their own procession and the time of the
procession on the frieze. Like the play and the east pediment,
the frieze respects the unity of time, and its action too has a
beginning (at the southwest corner), middle (on the north
and south sides), and end (on the east where the two sides
meet). Unlike the framed metopes, which depict separate
episodes, the Ionic frieze is a "seamless whole" that can
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
present a narrative in "a continuous spatial and temporal
flow." 95 "Everything here is ongoing; everything is process.""
Various participants turn in different directions, adjust their
clothing, and wait, like actors, for their cues. Marshals
motion them forward, cavalry and chariot horses wait
patiently or rear restlessly, trained acrobats jump on and off
chariots, and a sacrificial ox digs in its heels.
A selective discussion will once more highlight the way
the frieze "remembers" the Persians and defines Athens in the
same "vocabulary"-this time pictorial-of yokes, woven
fabric, and speech. Again, comparisons with Persian visual art
prove instructive. The designers of the Parthenon and many
other Athenians were familiar with the great buildings of the
eastern empire, and it is likely that some of those who carved
its marbles had earlier worked on Persian buildings. Was the
Parthenon frieze "an ideological reply to the creation of their
old enemy," 97 or, after Athens had avoided the Persian yoke,
was "Persian imperial propaganda ... appropriated and
adapted by nco-imperialist Athens for the purposes of
promoting her own self-image"? 98 On the peripheral
pediments, metopes, and frieze of the great democratic
temple, the differences from Persian buildings are more
striking than the suggested "appropriations." But, as we shall
see, in the innermost chamber of the temple, the viewer is
sharply aware that Athens, too, "required an empire, but an
empire different from any that had ever existed." 99
Let us look again at the relief on the Apadana (throne
room) staircase at Persepolis. It depicts foreigners in
procession, bearing gifts to the Persian king. Their clothing is
repetitive, stiff, and stylized; no animated human body is
revealed or enhanced by the heavy robes of the Persians or
the simple tunics of their subjects. The foreign groups are
distinguished from each other in dress, gifts, and the animals
that accompany them but, like Xerxes' army of soldiers, they
are all alike in the most important respect, their enslavement.
They march stiffly, in single file, all in the same position, at
the same distance from each other. 100 The individuals are
�FLAUMENHAFT
93
isolated even as they form a unit. The loss or addition of a
few figures would have little effect for, like Xerxes' armies,
they are not woven together into a coherent whole. Their
sameness suggests that the army of craftsmen who made them
were also "under the yoke." The figures are clearly carved,
with beards, hands, and feet making pleasing decorative
patterns like those in interior tiling or wallpaper. But they
lack animation and will of their own, neither gesturing to nor
speaking with one another. Individual figures or groups are
regularly tepeated so there is no narrative in time, no illusion
of motion. The effect is mesmerizing and intimidating, and
reduces the viewer to "gaze in something like awe-from
prostration level." 101 Another Persepolis relief shows Persian
subjects carrying the king on his throne. They too are all the
same; he is unique, above, and much larger than they. They
serve as the patterned architectural support on which his
weight presses.1 02
The difference in size is also seen in a rock relief at
Bisutun on which captured rebel kings approach Darius.l 03
The location of this impressive carving is itself interesting. It
sits high on a cliff overlooking a mountain, inaccessible, like
the Persepolis Apadana, to the sight of Persians as if it were
meant for the realm to which the King aspired-the whole
world. Unlike the Parthenon in the middle of Athens, this
monument in the middle of nowhere-or everywhere-bears
an inscription, the same words that begin all public utterances
of the King: "Proclaims Darius the king ... " The picture of the
diminished and yoked human beings before him conveys the
same political principle as the words: absolute despotism. On
the Persepolis staircase the camels, mules, and horses are
reined and bitted. On the Bisutun monument the hands of the
captured kings are tied behind their backs. Forced to face
their conquering master, they cannot look at or speak with
each other. The metaphor of Aeschylus's choruses and the
Queen's dream is depicted on the cliff at Bisitun: the captive
kings are literally yoked together by the cord around their
necks.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In contrast to the Persian unity of repetition, the long and
varied Parthenon frieze conveys the dynamic unity of the city
it celebrates. Among the Greek cities, the Athenians alone
celebrated their unification in a public festival. 104 Civic
mythology told how, long before the building of the
Parthenon, Theseus united a number of independent communities to "live together," szmoikeo, in a single city. No longer
held together by a single monarch, the democratic citizens on
the frieze walk in pairs or groups that articulate them into
sub-classes of the city. Unlike the mass pictures on Persian
palaces and rock reliefs, the Athenian participants are neither
unconnected individuals nor yoked teams, but autonomous
and willing parts of an organized whole. The frieze conveys
their freedom-the same freedom Pericles describes in the
funeral oration-in several ways. The people are local
citizens, not foreign subject peoples of other nations. They
are self-organized. Marshals resembling their fellow citizens
in size and dress are stationed at various points to keep an eye
on the parts of the procession and to direct them to move at
the right times. There is no all-seeing agent of an unseen
monarch supervising the action. Other city magistrates at the
east end take part in the central ceremony of the festival, the
folding of the goddess's festal robe.
The figures on the frieze differ in size, but not as in the
Persian murals. In order to fit the frieze horses into the
confines of the three-foot band, the sculptors made them the
size of ponies, and the bulls being led to the sacrifice are no
taller than their human masters. There is no colossal Great
King or Pharaoh towering above his subjects. In the selfgoverning democratic city, only the gods are larger than the
citizens; seated, they are the same height as the standing
humans who deliver offerings to the only beings they
recognize as above them. The rest of the frieze figures are
distinguished into ranks of horses, lines of chariots, pedestrians, bearers of various implements and, on the east side,
the only mortal women depicted on the temple. Unlike the
figures in Persian frieze processions, the Athenian participants
�FLAUMENHAFT
95
take different positions, and look in different directions.
Unlike yoked non-Persian processors, here even nonAthenian metics, who carry trays and parasols, willingly
weave their way in the procession to the front of the temple.
Only animals are reined or yoked together. The beautiful
horses on the frieze are separated from their human handlers
who coordinate animal strength with human needs in finely
wrought chariots. Unlike the diminished Persian subjects,
these zeugei pompikoi,' 05 "yoked processionals," seem to have
their nature enhanced by their participation in the civic
festival. They might remind us of the story of that mule who
returned of his own will, unyoked, to further the work on the
temple. Elsewhere on the frieze, graceful young riders recall
that Athena was also the "horse-taming goddess." Hers is the
power that enables men to train and work with horses, rather
than merely to subjugate them by force. The bulls and sheep,
as objects of sacrifice, are more mere instruments of their
human masters. But, like that of the weary pediment horse
described above, the depiction of the resisting "heifer lowing
at the skies" 106 reveals an extraordinary sensitivity to the
psychic dimension even of mastered animals. Persian bulls
and horses seem stiff and unanimated in comparison.
The frieze unfurls in a horizontal band, but there are no
prostrate subjects, dying La piths or half-horizontal Centaurs.
The posture of free citizens is upright. As if to underline the
free character of the event, the frieze includes among the
chariots, acrobatic contestants, apobatai, about whom little is
known, but who seem to have shown their agility by jumping
on and off moving chariots in competitions. It is sometimes
suggested that they represent the freedom and flexibility of
the Athenian hoplite warriors who, to the perplexity of historians, are not represented on the frieze. Most importantly like
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aeschylus, who all point to free
speech as the key distinction between Persians and Athenians,
the Parthenon frieze depicts Athens' citizens communicating
with each other. Marshals beckon, horsemen and pairs of
girls chat, magistrates converse in groups, and the chief
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
archon instructs the child who helps him fold the pep/as. In
their freedom to speak-to describe, deliberate, and
disagree-the human members of this city resemble their
gods, who, on the frieze, are also depicted in conversation.
The procession begins at the southwest corner of the
temple. The first figure on the west side-the one farthest
from the front-is a nude young man who is arranging his
large cloth mantle as the procession is about to begin. Most
of the figures are clothed. The Parthenon frieze, like the
metopes and like the peplos ceremony of the Panathenaic
festival itself, repeatedly draws our attention to the ways in
which human beings cover their bodies.l 07 Along three sides,
the moving spectator sees at intervals marchers who are
adjusting their clothing, belts, or footwear as they progress
forward. The clothing of the figures on all sides of the temple
articulates them into groups, identifiable by cloaks, tunics,
hats, and footwear. The fabrics also indicate motion, speed,
and the direction of the procession and contribute to our
sense of real live activity on the frieze. The frieze also depicts
many objects-chariots, bridles, pots, trays, and stoolsfabricated by this technologically sophisticated people.
Interestingly, it shows no buildings, agreeing perhaps with
those who evacuated to Salamis, that the Athenian polis could
survive even if its buildings were destroyed, as long as its
political and ritual activities were maintained.
The long north and south sides of the frieze exhibit the
male warriors of Athens, unarmed, at peace. Modern viewers
have puzzled over the depiction of archaic chariot warriors
rather than fifth century hoplites. Some explain it as
supporting Pericles' expansion of the Athenian cavalry.
Others claim that the 192 figures (if you count right) on the
frieze were meant to represent the 192 hoplite soldiers who
fell at Marathon as they participated in the last Panathenaia
before the battle. 108 The depiction of young men guiding
spirited yet orderly horses suggests the character of the city
Pericles describes in the Funeral Oration. It is a stark contrast
to the dream that the Persian Queen describes in Aeschylus's
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play. As we saw in Part One, the submissive and the spirited
women pull against each other when Xerxes yokes them to
pull his chariot. The chariot horses on the frieze have more
in common with the horses that pull the chariots of the gods
in the corners of the west pediment. These horses and
humans who, unlike centaur horse-men, are fully distinguished from each other, are nevertheless a masterpiece of
intertwining elements. Here the technical art of perspectival
carving in extremely shallow bas-relief produces a stone
picture that looks almost like a flat woven mat. Once again,
the interweaving of the figures suggests the way in which this
city is bound together. A computer video in the British
Museum turns the chariot horses to show how they would
look if they faced the viewer. As the figures turn, the frieze
resembles a weaving that, stretched in different directions,
reveals but does not unravel the separate strands of which it
is fabricated. The horses and humans in the frieze procession
"hold together" as individuals do in the Athenian polis, but
not in Persia.
As the procession weaves its way forward, slowing as it
approaches its destination, the culminating scene takes center
stage and is "framed" by the
two central columns of the
eastern front. The frame is
structural and therefore
more prominent than the
changing "frames" the
viewer makes for himself as
he progresses towards the
pep/as scene (Figure 6); this
makes this scene "static
and eternalized." 1' ' Many
viewers feel that the
procession also becomes
"hushed" or "silenf' at this
point, as all senses focus on
the most important human
FIGURE 6 (Courtesy of A. Nicgorski)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
fabrication on the frieze. It is literally a woven fabric. Below
the pediment depicting the birth of Athena are pictured the
city's chief ceremonial magistrate, the archon basileus ("king
archon"), his young assistant, and the goddess's birthday
pep/as. That they are folding, and not just holding, the pep/as
points to the integrity and continuity of the city, for they are
preparing to put it away, according to the custom of the past,
for the dressing of the image in the future.uo The confidence
about continuity and the future is also suggested by the
participation of children in the ritual. It is a stark contrast to
the dead-end feel of the Persians, where Aeschylus's young
and childless king withdraws in pathetic pompe in his tattered
pep/as. The ritually woven story-doth, which may have been
painted on the marble in bright yellow and purple, depicted
the victory of gods over Giants, the subject of the east
metopes. Its making and its part in Athena's festival symbolize
the way in which Athens itself is "woven" together. Evelyn
Harrison observes that, like the one on Keats's Grecian Urn,
"this is a picture of a folk." 111 By "brede/ of marble men and
maidens," Keats means both "breed" and "braid." Like the
urn pictures, the chiseled Parthenon "folk" resembles a
"braided" tapestry. Horizontal lines are still visible "to serve
as a sort of warp for the design." 112 Like the gods who
overcame the Giants, these citizens were able to overcome the
Persians because they were politically "well-woven." This is
what Athenians meant when they said they were "worthy of
the pep/os." 113
The web of state, or fabric of society, is the product of the
interweaving of warp and weft: male and female, public and
private, and, as the Eleatic Stranger explains in the
Statesman, of courage and moderation. In his description of
the ruling art, the true statesman, like the master weaver,
supervises and interweaves all the subordinate activities of the
city. After preparing a multiplicity of single strands of wool,
he combines them in a tightly woven, but freely flexible,
unity. Unlike autocratic tyrannies like Persia, where difference
is regarded as rebellion, and ropes, bridges, and fetters bind
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unrelated parts into a rigid, unnatural "whole," the Greek
city thrives on the "tension" between its different elements.l 14
It holds together from within, like a well-woven fabric or, as
we have seen, like the pantheon of the gods. The designers of
the Parthenon suggest that a "smooth web," which is smooth
not despite, but because of its tension, can be achieved in a
law-abiding democracy as well as in the virtuous monarchy
described by the Stranger. Here, too, statesmanship has interwoven raw materials, tools, vessels, servants, laborers,
merchants, ship owners, clerks, heralds, soothsayers, and
priests into a working whole. Plutarch's description of
Athens, coordinated and collaboratively at work on Pericles'
building projects comes to mind. But the statesmanship is that
of citizen magistrates, not monarch.
The eastern side of the frieze depicts women, not as
objects in the hands of Centaurs, but as active members of a
flourishing society, the producers of the city's swaddling
cloths, everyday garments, and ceremonial fabrics for the
living, as well as shrouds for the dead. Again, we should
emphasize that the weaving pictured here is not private but
civic work. The loom for weaving, like the plough for
planting and the press for making olive oil, is a domestic
peacetime contrivance of the armed goddess who, at other
times, champions the warriors who defend her city. Near the
end of the procession, Athena appears without her helmet
and weapons with the aegis in her lap. Here we see the
worker goddess, Athena Ergane, the patroness of
shipbuilders, woodworkers, and weavers like the ergastinai
who wove the peplos, seated, appropriately, with the metalworking smith, Hephaestus, who split Zeus's skull with his
ax, enabling Athena to be "born."
Like the gods on the pediments, the gods seated together
at the head of the frieze procession are multiple strands that
together make up a unified whole. They too are a "folk." Like
the rest of the frieze figures, they present a silent story to be
articulated by the viewer. Each divinity is identifiable by
distinctive looks or by conventional tags, some in the form of
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
objects that were once attached to or painted on the marble
reliefs: Apollo's headband (drill holes remain), Poseidon's
trident (now missing from his left hand), Hermes' hat, Ares'
club, Athena's aegis, Hera's veil, and Zeus's throne (the
others are on simpler, backless, stools). Each god has a special
position with respect to the others, either by genealogy and
history or by what each personifies. But not even a god is
autonomous or self-sufficient. None can even be himself until
woven into the pantheon in the context of the others. In
some places, the perspective of the low relief carving makes
their limbs look entwined or interwoven. They lean against
each other (Hermes-Dionysus, Poseidon-Apollo, ErosAphrodite), and refiect each other in their arm gestures
(Dionysus, Hera, Apollo) and veils (Hera-Aphrodite). Jenifer
Neils suggests that those in the right hand group, which
includes Poseidon, are associated with ports, the sea, and
naval battle. They are balanced by those of the left hand
group, which includes Demeter; these are associated with the
countryside, agriculture, and land battle. All together, she
claims, the gods remind the viewer of the completeness of the
recent Athenian victory over the Persians. 115
Their overlapping draped garments also unify them in an
integrated group. Like the garments everywhere on the
Parthenon, where there is little nudity,'" these are
remarkable. Except for the child Eros, the gods, like the frieze
Athenians, are all clothed in rippling, crinkly, folding, fiexible
material that conforms to the lifelike bodies beneath it.
Athena's peplos is carefully pinned at the shoulder and tucked
under her legs; Artemis wears a head cloth and modestly
adjusts her gown to cover her shoulder, and her skirted robe
falls about her differently positioned legs in a different way
from Athena's. The Athenian people, "worthy of the pep/os,"
worship gods whose clothing is tailored for anthropomorphic
bodies.
How are the frieze Olympians related to the frieze
Athenians? Some claim that the gods turn away and show
little interest in the procession in honor of the goddess. 117 But
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101
Neils revives a view that they are sitting in a semicircle and
thus are attending to the central pep/as scene "before"
them. us Viewers of the frieze who think of the "row" of gods
this way visually deepen the low-relief carving and bring out
its "texture." Like the flattened ranks of horses, the gods and
humans appear as they might in a woven tapestry. So the gods
are both interested and not interested in the mortals who
honor them. As at Troy, they can turn away to pursue their
amours, quarrels, and conversations. But, as Homer shows,
the most serious and interesting activities of the gods who live
on Olympus are the ones that are interwoven with those of
mortals on earth. Athena is as interesting as a strand in
Homer's stories of Achilles and Odysseus and in Aeschylus's
accounts of the founding of the Athenian court and defeat of
the Persians as she is in her own story. The Parthenon gives us
the gods both on their own and woven into our mortal
stories.
The frieze offers the Athenians a picture of themselves
that is also worthy of the gods' attention. The human festival
is, after all, the reason they have gathered together in Athens.
The only other place where they assemble in this fashion is at
home on Olympus. Now they have accepted seats of honor
and look relaxed, keeping their distance from the mortals yet
prepared to stay and grace the holiday with their presence.
There is time to be passed before the animals are sacrificed
and the meat is distributed in the Keramikos at some distance
from the temple. The Gods, who dine on nectar and
ambrosia, do not appear eager for the festival feast. Mortal
fighting, yoking, and weaving require mortal eating. But the
gods who live forever have leisure just to look and to talk.
Some of them view the approaching procession. Aphrodite
points out something to young Eros, who perhaps has seen
fewer of these events than the others have. And others, Zeus
and Hera, Athena and Hephaestus, and Poseidon and Apollo,
turn to each other and converse, just like the rwo groups of
five magistrates fianking them. If the pep/as has already been
displayed and is now being folded away, the culminating
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
scene of the frieze illustrates the purpose of the temple as a
memorial of the Persian attempt to destroy Athens. The
Persians have come and gone. In Athens, the gods who live
forever participate in the Athenian Panathenaia; Athena's
pep/as-and the people "worthy of the peplos"-endure.
5. Statue: Parthenos, Polis, Empire
As they arrived at the front side of the Parthenon the
spectators would first see the eastern pediment depicting the
birth of Athena. Beneath it the eastern metopes showed the
goddess's battle with the Giants. From between the central
columns her birthday pep/as on the frieze would be visible.
But the extraordinary visual displays we have discussed so far
were all only wrappings, the decorative coverings of the
house of the goddess herself. Ancient visitors to the temple do
not even mention the frieze, but all marvel at the statue. Deep
within, in her own private chamber, Athena Parthenos stood
alone, visible and awesome in
looks and size, to the "folk"
that came to her birthday
party. Unlike the Great King in
his Persepolis throne room,
this divinity was made to be
seen. But Pheidias's masterpiece can no longer be seen.
Pausanias's descriptions, some
ancient souvenir statuettes, a
small Roman copy, the
Varvakeion Athena (Figure 7)
and other statues of the type,
are all that's left to shape our
understanding of the famous
statue and what it could have
meant when the Parthenon
was the highpoint of the
Athenian polis. The full-size,
concrete reproduction in the
FIGURE 7 (Courtesy of A. Nicgors.ki)
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unlikely setting of Nashville, Tennessee has attracted much
popular and scholarly attention, but it is hard to believe that
the Parthenos could have looked like that.
The size of the little korai statues presented with
petitionary prayers of individual Athenians to the familiar
wooden image of Athena Polias 119 suggests the personal
attachment and affection that those who brought them felt
for their domestic goddess. The bronze Athena Promachos is
larger than the human warriors she would lead in warding off
a threat to their city; outdoors and approachable, she stands
"foremost" but at ease among them. We have seen how the
Parthenon, unlike the colossal buildings of other places, is
large, but somehow commensurate with human size aud the
capacity to take it in. This is true, despite the fact that
Pheidias deliberately made it larger than the earlier
"Parthenon" on its site so that it could contain the statue he
intended to put in it. Similarly, the large size of Athena on the
east frieze is subtly suggested by her seated position, but does
not overwhelm either the mortals depicted near her or the
mortal viewers of the frieze. But the standing 120 Parthenos
statue, although of human shape, was colossal, almost forty
feet tall, far beyond human scale. She was the power behind
the most powerful city in the world. Full-breasted and
clothed in an Athenian pep/as, she would not have resembled
the human-sized Amazons at the edges of the city. She held iu
her extended right hand a much smaller statue of Nike, the
goddess of victory, that was almost six feet tall. Athena
Parthenos stood ready and armed, with the Gorgon aegis not
resting on her lap as in the frieze, but as visible armor over
her pep/as. Her helmet, crowned with sphinx and griffins,
had its earfiaps up to indicate peacetime, but it was on her
head, and she held her spear. Her shield was engraved with
the familiar subjects of fighting Amazons and Giants, and her
sandals depicted, once again, the Centauromachy. Here, as
elsewhere in the building, Athena's defense of Athens in
contemporary times is associated with her defeat of these
earlier threats. But now the victor over the Giants is herself a
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giant. The folds of her giant pep/as recall the stiff, fiuted
columns of her giant temple more than they resemble the soft
and folding fabrics we have been observing elsewhere in the
Parthenon.
Like the Zeus at Olympia, the Parthenos was marveled at
for its size and for the materials it was made of: the bright
white ivory of her face and arms, the gemstones of her eyes,
and the gold of her clothing and equipment. Unlike the
olivewood Polias that fell from the sky, perhaps as a gift from
Zeus, the Parthenos was admired as the fabrication of an
extraordinary Athenian artist. Just as the later, world-famous
statue at Olympia was Pheidias's Zeus, this masterpiece was
Pheidias's Athena, the product of human imagination and
technical prowess at their peak. In contrast to the smaller,
worn, wooden slab, this Athena was huge, hard, and very
heavy. The plates of gold that formed her dress weighed
almost a ton.
The atmosphere inside the temple was mysterious and
unsettling, illuminated by window light reflected from a pool
at the statue's base. The shimmering water and light must
have suggested a sort of animation in the immense and
immovable stone figure. The beauty of the Parthenos was
reportedly breathtaking. She must have been deinos, simultaneously "terrifying" and "terrific," "awful" and "a\vesotne."
Unlike the (probably) seated wooden doll that received
female ministrations and petitions, and unlike the seated and
sociable Athena of the east frieze, Pheidias's goddess was
upright and alone. Unlike the statuesque Persian Queen, who
is humanized by what she says, the Parthenos was silent. She
did not communicate with the mortals who came to see her.
Gifts were not presented to her or animals sacrificed at her
altar, and no priestess interpreted messages from her. Since
the huge, flat, ivory face was fastened to the surface and
removable-like the theater mask of Xerxes' mother-it must
have been less realistic and human than some of the more
expressive marble faces elsewhere on the temple. The size of
the immense, white hands, one holding a man-sized statue
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and the other balancing an enormous spear and shield, must
have appeared proportionally larger than the neck and face,
because they were closer to the viewer. Could one still see in
this colossus the goddess of handiwork, Athena Ergane, the
"worker," with hands on a woodcarving, pot, or loom? Or
would her hands suggest those of great Achilles, whose great
man-slaying hands ruthlessly killed Priam's son?
As we have seen, the Persians and Egyptians made such
statues, sometimes so large that they had to lie prone on the
ground. They were usually the images of Kings and Pharaohs,
who represented themselves as all-powerful, even divine, in
their homelands and as entitled to the universal empires they
aspired to outside. Does the colossal Athena still celebrate, as
the outer parts of the temple do, the bounded, self-governing
city and its victory over the despotic juggernaut that sought
to yoke it and deprive it of speech? Or is she, deep within the
temple, the embryo of the imperial Athens destined to emerge
in the fifty years following the Persian Wars? Paradoxically, in
preserving what it viewed as its fully free way of life, Athena's
city, democratic within, was becoming despotic without. The
rule (arche) that began in self-defense against an everexpanding despot soon became the ever-expanding means for
maintaining the extraordinary expense of its extraordinary
achievements. But necessity-for defense or for maintenance-was just the prologue to full-scale empire (arche) in
the Athenian mode.
The necessary means soon became an end in itself as
empire became the full expression of Athenian glory.
Thucydides' account of the war between Athens and its
erstwhile ally Sparta alludes frequently to Athens' erstwhile
imperial enemy Persia. The Persians had always exhibited the
King's valuable possessions as a means of displaying his
power. After the Persian wars, Athens, contrary to its earlier
customs, began to exhibit the valuable trophies left by the
fleeing Persian army. In 454 B.C., the year the Delian treasury
was moved to Athens, each of her colonies and "allies"
marched in the Panathenaic procession with an offering of a
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
cow and a full suit of armor. Some of these "allies" must
uneasily have remembered the Great King's demands for
earth and water several decades before. The Parthenon frieze
does not picture tribute-bearing allies, armed Athenians, or
alien slaves. But as Athens grew rich and powerful she began
to display herself, not only as the producer of dramas, games,
festivals, and art, but as a city worthy of power, as well as the
pep/as. The empire itself soon became part of the display.
Pericles' three speeches in Thucydides make clear that the
internal glory of Athens required external support, often at
the expense of those who did not participate in the
democratic life that Pericles describes. In contrast to the
Persian yoke, weaving has been the appropriate metaphor for
Athenian democratic politics. But Athens' appropriation of
the resources of the unraveling Delian League was destined to
conclude with the unraveling of Athens itself. Pericles does
not use the word "yoke" in his tough arguments for Athenian
rule over the former allies; nor do the Athenians who later
present Melos with their ultimatum. But the Melians know
they must choose between subjugation and death. Just as
Athens had become the only independent city in the Delian
League, its nominal democracy had become the rule of one
citizen (Thuc., 2.65). And Athena, comfortably interwoven
with her fellow gods on the Parthenon frieze, had reappeared
like Darius, in the depths of her temple, huge and
shimmering, overpowering and alone.
As an expensive war with Sparta became increasingly
likely, Pericles assured the Athenians that they had at their
disposal tribute from the allies, public and private dedications, sacred vessels, Persian spoils, and temple treasures.
Several decades before, Aeschylus had vividly contrasted the
private gold of the Great King with the communally owned
silver of the city that defeated him. Xerxes' stage-mother
asserts that he is accountable to no one. Now Pericles
reminded the Athenians that the pep/as of Pheidias's statue
was not a soft woolen fabric like that of Athena Polias, but
one of solid gold. But it, too, could be removed. For, when
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Pheidias began his masterpiece, Pericles had advised him to
make the pep los detachable (Plut. Pericles., XXXI). 121 Pericles
now reminded the assembly that the goddess was there not
only to be looked at, but also to finance their "safety," and
that no ally need be consulted. As long as they replaced the
loan, they could make use of "the gold plates with which the
goddess herself was overlaid" (Thuc., 2.13). By this time, the
storeroom of the Parthenon was the depository of the Delian
League treasury that had been moved to Athens. Within the
lifetime of the men who had survived Salamis, the building
that began as a memorial of free Athens' defeat of imperial
Persia metamorphosed into a monument to imperial Athens.
In truth, the building was less a "temple" in which to worship
a goddess than the city's icon of its own power and a secure
storehouse for its usable resources; it had become "the central
bank of Athens." 122
Reversing Themistocles' pre-Salamis strategy of evacuating the population from Athens and depending on a
"wooden wall" of ships, Pericles' first speech advised outdwelling Athenians to "bring in their property from the
fields" and "come into the city" (Thnc., 1.143; 2.113) behind
the walls Themistocles had hurriedly built in anticipation of
war with Sparta. Donald Kagan points out that Pericles recognized this strategy as an attempt to overcome "problems
presented by natnre" by turning mainland Athens into a more
defensible "island" (Time., 1.143).123 One is reminded, not
only of Salamis, but also of the "unnatural" projects of
Persian and other barbarian overreachers to "yoke" the
Hellespont, turn peninsulas into islands, and reroute rivers by
digging channels. Thucydides says it was hard for a rural
Athenian to leave behind his town (polis) and the ancient
form of government (po/iteia) of his father (Time., 2.14).
When these suburban Athenians had come into the city-here
he says astu (Thuc., 2.17), the physical surroundings-they
had nowhere to go, so they camped in deserted places, and in
sanctuaries and shrines. The Acropolis and Parthenon were
off-limits. But many crowded into land at the foot of the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Acropolis-land that an oracle had warned against inhabiting-and in areas between the Long Walls, and in the
Piraeus (Thuc., 2.17).
Just before Pericles' second speech, the funeral oration,
Thucydides says that the Athenian army that invaded Megaris
with Pericles as its general was "the largest army of Athenians
that had ever been assembled in one body" (Thuc., 2.31). His
enumeration of the different parts of this force reminds one
of Aeschylus's descriptions of the Great King's army in the
earlier war. His Persian Queen would have been satisfied with
this numerical account of Athenian strength. The funeral
oration is the more subtle account of the source of Athenian
strength, the one the Queen could not appreciate. The free
city that defeated the Persians is to be celebrated and loved
for the character of its life: its political institutions, laws,
physical beauty, wisdom, and the character of its citizens.
Athens is open to all the world; no one is prevented "from
learning or seeing" (mathematos e theamatos, Time., 2.39);
the city is an exhibit, a school, from which all Hellas can learn
(Thuc., 2.41). But as Pericles continues, it becomes clear that
Athens is not a large enough stage on which to exhibit its own
excellence, and that he is thinking of a wider audience than
even Hellas. The delimited city that once remembered the
Persians is now offered the prospect of being honored and
remembered forever by the whole civilized world. Its citizens
can win glory by fixing their gaze, not only on the city but on
the "power [dzmamin] of the city" (Thuc., 2.43). Athens'
power must be displayed in the great theater of war and only
colonies or defeated enemies will serve as "everlasting
memorials" (mnemeia ... aidia, Thuc., 2.41) of her greatness.
Immediately after Pericles' celebration of Athens in the
funeral oration (2.34-46), Thucydides describes the plague,
making it clear that it was exacerbated by the crowding of the
country people into the city (again called astu): now even
temples were filled with corpses and "No fear of gods or law
of men restrained" (Thuc., 1.53). It is unlikely that Athena's
temple on the Acropolis remained unviolated. Plutarch says
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that Pericles' enemies blamed him for the plague, attributing
it not only to the crowding, but also to the idleness of the
multitudes of men who were "pent up like cattle with no
employ or service" (Plut., Pericles. XXXIV). We might
remember his earlier enthusiastic description of the opportunities for employment and prosperity that Pericles' building
projects had provided.
Pericles' third and last speech is a sober acknowledgement
of the Athenians' sufferings and an exhortation not to allow
these private ills to jeopardize the "common safety" (Thnc.,
2.61). But "freedom" no longer means defying the Great
King's demands for "earth and water" and halting the
expansion of the Persian Empire. Athens and Sparta, as
different as they were, could willingly "yoke" themselves
together to avoid subjugation by Persia. Here Pericles speaks
again of the relationship between Athens' expanding
"empire," her drive to supersede her own limits, and the
necessary subjugation of her erstwhile ally:
... of two divisions of the world which lie open to
man's use, the land and the sea, you hold the
absolute mastery over the whole of one ... to
whatever fuller extent you may choose; and there
is no one, either the Great King or any
nation ... who will block your path as you sail the
seas ... Nor must you think that you are fighting for
the simple issue of slavery or freedom; on the
contrary, loss of empire is also involved and
danger from the hatred incurred in your sway.
From this empire, however, it is too late for you
even to withdraw ... for by this time the empire you
hold is a tyranny, which may seem unjust to have
taken, but which certainly it is dangerous to let go.
(Time., 2.62-63)
Pericles reminds his discontented fellow citizens that their
fathers acquired, preserved, and bequeathed the empire to
them, giving Athens a "great name" (Thuc., 2.64),
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
presumably one far greater than the "Athens" that Darius
wanted to be reminded of, and than the Persian names which
had frightened all Greeks until Athens defeated Xerxes.
Pericles' last words are again about how, even as all things
decay, the memory (mneme) of the glorious Athenian enterprise will endure; the "splendour of the moment and the
after-glory are left in everlasting remembrance" (aeimnestos,
Time., 2.64).
The ivory skin and golden pep/as of Pheidias's Athena
seem to have remained on the statue through the end of the
Peloponnesian War. But she must have provided a kind of
political and psychological support for the empire that was
incubating as Pericles beautified and glorified the city.
Thucydides recounts how internally democratic Athens
became as brutal and denatured to its external subordinatesand eventually to itself-as the internally despotic tyranny of
Persia had been in its expansion. But the silent Parthenon tells
a much more tragic story than the one Aeschylus dramatized
for his fellow citizens. For Athens at her peak exemplified a
human way of life more noble and more natural than overextended Persian despotism, despite the latter's impressive
multiplication of territory, people, buildings, and gold. The
story of Athens is tragic, rather than merely sad or repellent,
for the same reason the story of Oedipus is tragic: the terrible
collapse comes about not, as in Persia, because of grotesque
suppressions and distortions of the human soul, but precisely
as a result of the full exercise of human capacities: selfgovernment, mastery of the sea, poetry, mathematics,
philosophy, art, and architecture, and the free human speech
that makes it all possible. It is difficult simply to say that we'd
prefer for Oedipus or Athens to have been more "moderate."
Pericles urged restraint, even as he cultivated an Athenian
love for Athens that was bound to end up as an eros for Sicily
(Time., 6.24). His ward, Alcibiades, the man most in love
with the Sicilian expedition, was disastrously recalled to
Athens in a ship called the "Salaminia." In the first half of the
century, Phrynichus and Aeschylus made it possible in the
�FLAUMENHAFT
111
theater for the surviving Athenians to weep for Miletus and
even for the Mede. As Athens completed the building
intended to remember its own razing and restoration, the city
hurtled forward to the events described in Thucydides'
terrible account. The colossal Athena within that building was
the terrible image of power that Pericles said would insure the
survival of Athens' name. The shining, bright monument to
Marathon and Salamis could not deter the dark, bloody
massacres at Mytilene, Melos, and Mycalessus. In some
terrible way, it contributed to them.
6. Pandora
We come at last to our last Athenian pep/os. The pedestal of
the statue of Athena depicted another carved gathering of the
gods at another birthday celebration of yet another
parthenos, the maiden Pandora. Hesiod gives two accounts of
the world's first human woman; in both, she and the gods are
the source of all of mankind's troubles. 124 After Prometheus
defied Zeus by giving fire to human beings, Zeus ordered
Hephaestus and Athena to produce a counter-gift, a
"beautiful evil" (kalon kako11), in response to Prometheus's
empowering gift. Hephaestus mixed earth and water and
fashioned a lovely maiden, Pandora, "all-gifts." Athena taught
her to do needlework and to weave the "skillfully embroidered" (po/udaidaloll) web. She dressed and veiled her, and
the other goddesses adorned her with finery. A surviving cup
shows Athena in her own shawl and aegis, pinning the peplos
on the new-made girl. 125 Everyone knows the end of the
story: Pandora opened the jar of "all gifts," releasing them
upon previously free and unburdened man, forcing him to
"bow his neck to the yoke of hard necessity." 126 Along with
the blessings of fire, agriculture, and weaving, man now
possessed the curses of disease, war, and slavery. The source
of human ills, of course, is human nature itself, and Athens
understood itself as the paradigmatically human city. The
tragic account of Athens' glory that we read in Thucydides'
long discursive book can also be "read" in the emerging
�112
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
empire's most impressive building. Like Pandora, the
"beautiful evil" made by Hephaestus, and like the terrible
events depicted in the tragedy that Aeschylus and Pericles
made beautiful for the theater, the monument that Pheidias
and Pericles made beautiful on the Acropolis is a kalon kakon:
the story of the Parthenon and the stories that it tells show
Athens in full flower, and also show the seeds of her selfdestruction.
This story began with an account of Aeschylus's Persians,
a humane view of the tragedy of an empire that attempted to
subjugate free Greek cities under the yoke and mantle of
worldwide tyranny. As different as they were, the defensive
alliance that voluntarily yoked Athens and Sparta together
succeeded in preserving them-and their differences.
Decades later, having torn each other and themselves apart in
the war that Thucydides attributes to Athens' own pursuit of
empire, Alcibiades, who had spent the war bouncing from
Athens to Sparta, to Thrace, to Persia, suggested that the two
former allies might achieve true glory if they once again
yoked themselves together to oppose Persia. This time the
alliance would not be defensive, but aggressive, with the aim
of establishing a Pan-Hellenic empire. The project could
never work since, as we observed above, the yoking of nnlike
partners, even under Darius or Xerxes, is bound to be
temporary. Athens and Sparta were too different to ally for
joint conquest, in contrast to defense, and Alcibiades was
nurtured in Pericles' Athens, not in the palace at Persepolis.
His last wild scheme collapsed completely as the Spartans
entered Athens, unopposed, seventy-six years after the battle
of Salamis. There is no play describing that event.
�FLAUMENHAFT
113
Bibliography
All the images discussed are available online at many websites. Any
reliable search engine will locate a large selection. They can also be found
in the following, easily available, books:
Athens:
Bruno, Vincent J. The Parthenon. New York: \'7.\V. Norton, 1974.
Connolly, Peter and Hazel Dodge. The Ancient City: Life in Classical
Athens and Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Hurwit, Jeffrey .M. The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and
Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Jenkins, Ian. The Parthenon Frieze. Oakville: British Museum Press, 1994.
Neils, Jenifer. The Parthenon Frieze. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2001.
~~-~-·
YVorshipping Athena: Panatheuaia and Parthenon. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Neils, Jenifer, ed. Goddess and Polis. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992.
\Voodford, Susan. The Parthenon. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981.
Persia:
Allen, Lindsay. The Persian Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2005.
WiesehOfer, Josef. Ancient Persia. London: LB. Tauris & Co., 2001.
Notes
37
Donald Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (New
York, 1991), p. 161-62.
38
Jeffrey M. Hurwit, The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and
Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present (Cambridge, 1999), p.
74.
39
40
Pausanias, I.xxvi, declines to comment on the truth of this story.
Peploi were given to Athena in the rituals of other Greek cities; Athens
seems to have been the only place where the "garment was actually
placed upon the statue." E. J. W. Barber "The Peplos of Athena," in
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
114
Jenifer Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1992),
p. 106. Perhaps the earliest description of such a presentation is described
in Book Six of the Iliad, when the desperate women of Troy under siege
make such an offering in hope of her aid. \Vhen she prepares to go to the
aid of the Greeks, she takes off her "soft peplos, that she herself had
made and her hands had fashioned" (VIII.385-86) and dons the tunic of
Zeus and her armor.
41
Barber, in Neils (1992), p.llO.
42
The festival and evidence for its changes over time are described in
detail by Hurwit (1999) and H.\V. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians
(Ithaca, New York, 1977), pp. 29-50. See also Jenifer Neils, "The
Panathenaia: An Introduction," in Neils (1992), pp. 13-27. H. A. Shapiro,
"Democracy and Imperialism: the Panathenaia in the Age of Perikles," in
Jenifer Neils, ed., \Vorshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon
(Madison, Wisconsin, 1996), 215-25.
43
Kagan, p. 168.
44 Jan
Collie, Hidden London (London, 2002).
· 45
Brunilde Sismondo Ridgeway, "Images of Athena on the Akropolis,, in
Neils (1992), 122-42, p. 122; Peter Connolly and Hazel Dodge, The
Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome (New York, 2000), p. 12.
46
Hurwit, p.136.
47
Russell Meigs, "The Political Implications of the Parthenon,, in The
Parthenon, ed. Vincent J. Bruno (New York, 1975), p. 103, citing the
orator Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 81.
48 Plutarch's
Lives, Pericles, XII, Vol. III, trans. Bernadotte Perrin
(Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 37. Subsequent references will be given in
the text.
49
Kagan, p. 37
50 Meigs,
51
p. 111.
Allen, pp. 93-4.
52 Pausanias,
I.xx.
53
Joseph Wieseh6fer, Ancient Persia (New York, 2001), p. 34.
54
Persians, 979, and Hall, n. 979, p. 172.
55
Donald N. Wilber, Persepolis: The Archaeology of Parsa, Seat of Persian
Kings (New York, 1969), p. 57.
56
Wieseh6fcr, p. 26.
�FLAUMENHAFT
115
57
Christian Meier, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age, trans.
Robert and Rita Kimber (New York, 1998), p. 381.
58
The setting of the full-scale reproduction of the temple in a flat, treefilled park in Nashville, Tennessee makes the building itself feel very
different. The ancient view \vas probably more restricted than it is now;
the view from the west side was best. Ian Jenkins, The Parthenon Frieze
(London, 1994), p. 18.
59
Hurwit, p. 54.
60 Susan Woodford, The Parthenon (Cambridge, 1981), p. 20. Montaigne
says that "The Athenians ordained that the mules which had served in
building the temple called Hccatompedon [the earlier Parthenon] should
be set free, and that they should be allowed to graze anywhere without
hindrance." "Of Cruelty," in The Complete Essays ofMontaigne, trans.
Donald M. Frame (Stanford, 1975), p. 103.
61
Hurwit, p. 176.
62
Hurwit, p. 176.
63
Hurwit, p. 32.
Vincent J. Bruno, "The Parthenon and the Theory of Classical Form,"
in The Parthenon (New York, 1974), p. 91.
64
65
Evelyn B. Harrison (1974), "The Sculptures of the Parthenon," in
Bruno, 225-311, p. 248.
66
Harrison (1974), p. 249.
67
Harrison (1974), p. 233.
68
Hurwit, p. 179.
69
Harrison, p. 278.
70
Bruno, p. 94.
71
This may suggest that the primary aim of the building was to celebrate
this victory, rather than Athena's birthday. See Hurwit, p. 30.
72
An enemy of Pheidias claimed that the sculptor had made likenesses of
himself and Pericles in the Amazon metopes. Pheidias died while in prison
on these charges. Plutarch affirms the resemblance to Pericles (Pint.,
Pericles, XXXI).
73
Mera ]. Flaumenhaft, "Priam the Patriarch, His City, and His Sons,"
Interpretation, 32.1 (Winter, 2004): 3·31.
74 Page duBois, Centaurs and Amazons: W!omen and the Pre~History of the
Great Chain of Being. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1991), p. 54, citing Bernard
Ash mole, Architect and Sculptor itt Classical Greece (London, 1972),
�116
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pp.165ff. Sec also Larissa Bonfante, "Nudity as a Costume in Classical
Art," American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 93, No.4, (October,
1989), p. 555.
75
Mary R. Lefkowitz, "Women in the Panathcnaic and Other Festivals,"
in Neils, ed., \Vorsbipping Athena, 1996, 78-91, p. 81.
76
Hurwit, p. 24.
77
Pausanias, I.xxviii.
78
\'\falter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek
Religion (Boston, 1954), p. 53.
79 The
myths about their ancestry are confused: they are the products of
the mating of Ixion and a marc, or of Ixion's offspring and a mare, or of
Zeus in the shape of a horse and Ixion's wife.
80
duBois, pp. 27-8.
81
In the frieze behind the mctopes, only older men, officials, and some of
the gods are bearded, but all have articulated necks.
82
Robin Osborne, "Framing the Centaur: "Reading 5th Century
Architectural Sculpture," in Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture, Simon
Goldhill and Robin Osborne, eds. (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 71, 75-76.
Osborne ends by suggesting that "treating others as beasts" may "itself
constitute a lapse in propriety," p. 83.
83
duBois, p. 31.
84
Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (New York, 1956).
85
Bonfante, p. 554.
86
duBois, p. 30.
87
Hurwit, p. 173 and Note 62.
88
Hurwit, pp. 173-74.
89
Neils (2001), p. 196.
9
°Kagan, p. 160.
91
Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, Religion in the
Ancient Greek City (Cambridge, 1992), p. 106.
92
Peter von Blanckenhagen, Unpublished lecture, St. John's College,
Annapolis, date unknown.
93
The British lvluseum's Duveen Gallery reverses the direction of the
viewing, enclosing the viewer rather than the pictures.
94 The
CD that accompanies jenifer Neils's The Parthenon Frieze
(Cambridge, 2001) attempts to approximate the experience of walking
�FLAUMENHAFT
117
alongside the frieze by moving the frieze before the stationary viewer.
The corners of the temple are indicated by four red lines.
95Ncils (2001), pp. 33,37-8.
96
Evelyn B. Harrison, ''The Web of History: A Conservative Reading of
the Parthenon Frieze," in Neils (1996), 198-214, p. 211.
97 Woodford, p. 33.
98 Jenkins,
99
p. 26. Jenkins rejects the latter view.
Kagan, p. 111.
100 Woodford,
101
p. 36.
Green, p. 5.
102 \Vieseh6fer,
Plate V.
103 WiesehOfcr,
Plate I.
104
Robert Parker, Athenian Religiou: A History (Oxford, 1996), p. 14.
105
Neils (1992), p. 93.
10 6 John
Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 1820.
10 7 This
theme has been fully explored by Jennifer Neils in \'(!orshipping
Athena (1996), Goddess and Polis (1992), and The Parthenon Frieze
(2001). On Greek weaving, the pep/as, and cloth fabrication in general,
see also Barber, in Neils (1992) and Barber (1994).
lOS
Harrison (1996) is critical of John Boardman's speculation, 199-200.
109 Neils (2001 ), p. 70.
110
Harrison (1996), p. 203; Neils (2001), p. 68.
111
Harrison (1996), p. 210.
11 2 Neils
(2001), p. 80.
113
Harrison (1996), p. 200.
ll 4
Plato, Statesman, 303b-311c.
11 5
Neils (2001), pp. 188 ff.
11 6
Neils (2001), p. 186.
117 Phillip
Fehl has argued that the rocks in the frieze locate the gods, also
emotionally distanced from the humans, on distant Olympus. "Gods and
Men in the Parthenon Frieze" (1961), quoted in Bruno (1996), 311-21.
118
Neils (2002), pp. 61-6.
119
Hurwit, p. 18.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
118
120 Pausanias,
I.xxiv.
121
His foresight later saved the sculptor from an accusation that he had
stolen some of the gold. \Vcighing proved he had not.
122
Hurwit, p. 164.
1D
Kagan, p. 113.
124
Hesiod, Theogony, 571-616 and Works and Days, 60-105.
125
Jenkins, p. 41.
126 Jenkins,
p. 40.
�
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<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.
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Dugan, C. Nathan
Brann, Eva T. H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert. B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Browning, Thomas
Barbera, André
Aigla M.D., Jorge H.
Flaumenhaft, Mera
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Dean's Office
CAMPUS MAIL
SUMMER 2007 LECTURES BY ST. JOHN'S TUTORS
BARR BUCHANAN CENTER/WOODWARD HALL.
KING WILLIAM ROOM
7:30P.M.
June20
George Russell
Plutarch's Alexander
June 27
Patricia Locke
Primordial Silence: The Silence of Chaco Canyon
July 11
Jonathan Tuck
Sons of Homer: The Post-Homeric Epic
July 18
Faculty Study Group
On Aristotle's Metaphysics
On the Metaphysics
July25
Daniel Harrell
Does Beauty Have a Place in Liberal Education?
August 1
Michael Weinman
"A divided sovereignty": Metaphysics, XII.lO and
the Echo of Homer
K/S/Lectures/SU07 schedule
�
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Summer Lecture Slate 2004
S!JOHN'S
College
June 2
Jason Tipton
"Something Fishy in Aristotle"
June 9
Elliott Zuckerman
"Streams, Spinning-Wheels, and
Organ-Grinders. A Talk at the
Piano"
June 16
Joe Sachs
"On Aristotle's Poetics"
June 23
Christine Kalkavage On Vergil
June 30
Susan Paalman
" Galen, Nature, and
0 bservation"
July 7
Samuel Kutler
"Begitmings"
July 14
Jolm Verdi
"On Seeing Aspects"
July 16 (Friday!)
Will Williamson
Louis Petrich
"Othello' s Beginning, Middle,
and End"
July 21
Sriram Nambiar
"Formal and Informal Proofs
In Ancient and Modem
Mathematics"
ANNAP O LIS • SANTA PB
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.0. Box 28oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2I404
4I0-626-25II
FAX 4I0-295-6937
www.sjca. edu
All lectures will be held at 7:30p.m. in the King William Room, except for
Mr. Zuckerman' s performance/talk, which will be in the Hodson Room, and
the Friday-night performance/discussion of Messrs. Petrich and Williamson,
which will be in the Great Hall.
�Summer Lecture Slate 2004
June 2
Jason Tipton
"Something Fishy in Aristotle"
June 9
Elliott Zuckerman
"Streams, Spinning-Wheels, and
Organ-Grinders. A Talk at the
Piano"
June 16
Joe Sachs
June 23
Christine Kalkavage On Vergil
June 30
Susan Paalman
"Galen, Nature, and
Observation"
July 7
Samuel Kutler
"Beginnings"
July 14
John Verdi
"On Seeing Aspects"
July 16 (Friday!)
Will Williamson
Louis Petrich
"Othello's Beginning, Middle,
and End"
July 21
Sriram Nambiar
"Formal and Informal Proofs
In Ancient and Modern
Mathematics"
"On Aristotle's Poetics"
All lectures will be held at 7:30p.m. in the King William Room, except for
Mr. Zuckerman's performance/talk, which will be in the Hodson Room, and
the Friday-night performance/discussion of Messrs. Petrich and Williamson,
which will be in the Great Hall.
�
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Summer Lecture Slate 2004
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2004, [sponsored by the Graduate Institute].
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2004 Summer
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
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8b7f58fd064c06069918ccd89878b4e4.pdf
5f9c68551158547d8d3303fdbddd539d
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�Lecture Schedule 1969-1970
Sept 26
Oct 3
Oct 10
Oct 16
Oct 24
Oct 31
Nov 7
Nov 14
Nov 21
Dec 5
Jan 9, 1970
Jan 16
Jan 23
Feb 6
Feb 13
Feb 20
Feb 27
Mar 6
Mar 13
April 10
April 17
April 24
May 1
Robert Goldwin
St. John’s College, Annapolis
P. von Blankenhagen
Jacob Lateiner, NYC
Robert Goldwin
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Harry M. Clor
Kenyon College, Gambier OH
Malcolm Brown
Center For Hellenic Studies, Washington DC
W. J. Fishback
Earlham Coll. Richmond IN
Edward Banfield
Harvard U. Cambridge MA
Victor Gourevich
Wesleyan U, Middletown CT
Mortimer Adler
Institute for Philosophical Research, Chicago
IL
Jonathan Fineberg
Harvard U. Cambridge MA
Deborah Traynov
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Alfred Sugg
Western Coll, Oxford OH
Br. Robert Smith
St. Mary’s Coll
Beaux Arts Quartet, NYC
Thomas Settle
Polytechnic Inst. of Brooklyn, Bklyn, NY
David Lachterman
Syracuse U., Syracuse NY
Dieter Henrich
Columbia U, NY, NY
Evelyn Harrison
Columbia U. NY, NY
Joseph Cropsey
U of Chicago, Chicago IL
Leo Strauss
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Bernard Kruysen,
New York, NY
Robert Horwitz
Dean’s Opening Lecture
“The Program of the Parthenon
Concert
“St. John’s College Asks John
Locke Some Questions.”
“What is Obsenity, and What’s
Wrong With It.”
“Rhetoric and Dialectic in the
Phaedrus”
“Groups- Galoi’s Great Gift
“The Unheavenly City
“The Relationship between
Ethics and Politics in the
Philosophy of Hegel”
“The Common Sense of Politics”
“Kandinsky and the Concept of
Abstract Art”
“Logic and Logos”
“Prometheus Bound”
“Two Concepts of Comedy”
Concert
On Galileo “The Natural History
of the Experiment”
“Selfhood and Reason”
“The Basic Structure of Modern
Philosophy”
“The Marathon Painting”
“On Descartes’ Discourse on
Method”
“The Problem of Socrates”
Concert
“Aristotle in Hawaii”
�Lecture Schedule 1969-1970
May 8
May 15
May 22
May 29
Kenyon Coll. Gambier OH
Paul Lehman
Union Theological Seminary, NYC
Laurence Berns
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Robert Osgood and Morton Halperin
Elliott Zuckerman
St. John’s College, Annapolis
“New Testament Paradigms of a
Politics of Confrontation”
“Rational Animal, Political
Animal”
Special Dual Lecture on
Vietnam
“On A Measure in Mozart”
�
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.
4 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 Schedule 1969-1970 (handwritten & transcribed)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1969-1970
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1969-1970 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1969-1970
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
Relation
A related resource
May 15, 1970. Berns, Laurence. <a title="Rational animal, political animal" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1094">Rational Animal, Political Animal</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
von Blankenhagen, P.
Lateiner, Jacob
Clor, Harry M., 1929-
Brown, Malcolm
Fishback, W. J.
Banfield, Edward C.
Gourevich, Victor
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Fineberg, Janet
Traynov, Deborah
Sugg, Alfred
Smith, Brother Robert
Settle, Thomas
Lachterman, David Rapport, 1944-
Henrich, Dieter, 1927-
Harrison, Evelyn
Cropsey, Joseph
Struass, Leo
Kruysen, Bernard
Horwitz, Robert
Lehman, Paul
Berns, Laurence
Zuckerman, Elliott
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e9723a83b6c01a61556f5396c78413d7.pdf
65bb45d784bf4a5eff1496049b9304fd
PDF Text
Text
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/171
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�Lecture Schedule 1970, 1971
Sept 25, 1970 Robert A. Goldwin
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Oct 2
Allen R. Clark
Silver Spring, MD
Oct 23
Alexander Bicket
Center For Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford CA
Oct 30
Martin Diamond
Claremont Men’s Coll., Claremont
CA
Nov 6
Noel Lee
Paris, France
Nov 18
Hans-Georg Gadamev
Heidelberg U, Heidelberg Germany
Nov 20
King William Players
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Dec 11
Richard McKee
Yale U., New Haven CT
Jan 8, 1971
Leon Kass
National Research Council,
Washington DC
Jan 15
Douglas Allanbrook
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Jan 22
Muhsin Mahdi
Harvard U., Cambridge MA
Feb 5
John Logan
SUNY, Buffalo NY
Feb 12
Iowa String Quartet
Feb 19
Charles Singleton
Johns Hopkins U, Baltimore MD
Feb 26
William Darkey
St. John’s College, Santa Fe
Mar 5, 1971
Gisela Berns
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Mar 12
Leo Strauss
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Apr 2
Eva Brann
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Aprt 16
Gabriel Stolzenberg
Northeast U, Boston MA
Apr 23
Eastern Chamber Ensemble
New York, NY
Deans Opening Lecture
“Philosophy of Law”
“The New Supreme CourtProspects & Problems”
On the U.S. Constitution
Piano Concert
“Plato As A Hermeneutic
Problem”
Henry IV, Part I
Concert
Biomedical Advance and
Ethical Problems
Harpsicord Concert
“Religion and Politics in
Arabian Nights”
“A Concert of Poetry, With
Comments”
Concert
“The Structure of The Divine
Comedy”
“Books and Experience”
“On Hippolytus”
On Machiavelli
On Thomas Mann’s Death in
Venice
On Mathematics
Woodwind Quintet Concert
�Lecture Schedule 1970, 1971
Apr 30
Peter Brown
The Urban Inst., Washington DC
May 1
May 7
Leslie Epstein & Douglas Allanbrook
Curtis Wilson
U. of California, San Diego CA
John Graham & Douglas Allanbrook
Allan Bloom
U of Toronto, Toronto Ont Canada
Jacob Kline
St. John’s College, Annapolis
William Pitt
Rabbi Bernard Ducoff
Bureau of Jewish Education, San
Francisco CA
May 8
May 14
May 20
May 28
June 4
“Some Moral Issues in
Metropolis Finance: Can I get
Away From It All in the
Suburbs”
Harpsicord & Recorder Concert
“Kepler, Newton and Planetary
Motion”
Harpsicord & Viola Concert
“Emile”
“About Plato’s Philebus”
“Logic- Beyond Modality”
“On Translating the Bible-Then
& Now”
�
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.
4 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 Schedule 1970, 1971 (handwritten & transcribed)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970-1971
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1970-1971 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1970-1971
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
Relation
A related resource
March 03, 1971. Berns, Gisela. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1093" title="Nomos and physis">Nomos and physis: an interpretation of Euripides' Hippolytus</a>
May 07, 1971. Wilson, Curtis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3647" title="On the origins of celestial dynamics">On the origins of celestial dynamics: Kepler and Newton</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
Clark, Allen R.
Bicket, Alexander
Diamond, Martin
Lee, Noël, 1924-2013
Gadamev, Hans-Georg
McKee, Richard
Kass, Leon
Allanbrook, Douglas
Mahdi, Muhsin
Logan, John
Singleton, Charles
Darkey, William
Berns, Gisela N.
Strauss, Leo
Brann, Eva T. H.
Stolzenberg, Gabriel
Brown, Peter
Wilson, Curtis
Bloom, Allan
Klein, Jacob
Pitt, William
Ducoff, Rabbi Bernard
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/269004295dbe7f27049d70b983ac342e.pdf
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Annapolis, Maryland
St. John's College
LECTURE AND CONCERT SCHEDULE
1971-72
Friday, Oct. 1
Jacob Klein
"P'lato's Ion"
Friday, Oct. 8
Burton Blistein
"The Quest for the Grail: Structure and Symbolism in
Prufrock, lb.!! Waste .!Ji!!!!!, and fE.!d!: Quartets"
Tuesday, Oct. 12
Juilliard String Quartet
/'J 'J L
Friday, Oct. 15
friday, Oct. 22
Samuel Kutler ...H . Jok'J Loll~~
"I Think, Therefore I Am"
friday, Oct. 29
Erwin Straus
"Body Schema"
Friday, Nov. 5
-AM'
A"'lf\At'()l.~
~~~l.,.wt l:h\c.:.\w.·""'
"The Mixed Kind of life and the Combining Kind of Mind"
friday, Nov. 12
Harford Opera Society
concert
Friday, Nov. 19
Mortimer Adler
"Language, Meaning, and Thought,"
�St. John's College
Annapolis , Maryland
1
5
iJ'i.-0 .;
'f Uda¥, Mer. 49
Friday, Apr. 7
Lecture and Concert Schedule, 1971- 72
Page 3
Charles Bell s:::rc. _a.~k F(__
"Blake: The Dance of Eternal Death"
Roland Frye U~o·ll v .{ Pevlltuy Jv ....V\.,;._ 1 tJJ.,.I~oo,l~fp~ f"A
"The D
evil in Milton and the Visual Arts: An Approach
to Understanding Milton's Attractive Satan"
I
~
Friday, Apr. 14
. oV'
I
I
J
I
(The Anti-Federalis~and the
Bill of Rights)
Herbert Storing
v/ ....j. ~i, U1;u,jO
(.."·~j .. !L-
J-~, Afv· / (,
C..,.vl/lyv-. I ioF~"'>
Friday, Apr. 21
Bernard Kruysen
baritone
NY'-
Friday, Apr. 28
Friday, May 5
Eva Brann J ,J L 11"'~/'o},_i
Friday, May 12
Eugene Thaw
(Visual Arts and Liberal Arts)
"The Problem of the Fine Arts a nd the Liberal A
rts"
{!"'ore's Utopia)
Friday, May 19
u~ .. , \
aLJ·
Friday, May 26
Winfree Smi th
(Aristotle's Ethics)
Erwin Straus
{on Hamlet)
a'
J ,,'-{
,
}
�St. John's College
Annapolis,Maryland
lecture and Concert Schedule, 1971-72
Page 2
Friday, Dec. 3
Robart Hazo
f. ft;\1,,v5k, I"A
"Political Decentralization"
Friday, Dec. 10
King William Players
Friday, Jan. 7
Marcus Berquist
(Euclid)
/J
·'"iv.M<'/"'1'~
Friday, Jan. 14
Douglas Allanbrook J
concert - harpsichord
Friday, Jan. 21
Bernard M. w. Knox (.,"),., J;,, 11<1/,.~,;~ Sh,J"~·. iAJ, )"'":)'f." D
"Medea, Hero, Goddess, Woman" (Euripides' Medea)
(Friday, Jan. 28)
(Great Hall)
friday, Feb. 4
C
(Starabin - Elizabethan Trio)
l~al ter Barns
0'""' ''i, lw""-1-t /wMI. o"+ c,,",l,_
"The Constitution and Threats to liberty"
Friday, feb. 11
Woodwind Quintet
concert
Friday, Feb. 18
Beata Ruhm von Oppen
_\J?~ A,·•·•"p;,),;
"Student Rebellion and the Nazis: I. The
Rise and Rule of Hitler"
),, ..
)
J\ '
i
friday, Feb. 25
Seats Ruhm von Oppan
)
L AvtktAfl~i,j
the Nazis: II. The
"Student Rebellion and
Case of the White Rose"
friday, Mar. 3
Matitiahu Braun
/1/ '/(
violin concert
''
�Annapolis, Maryland
St. John's College
NOTICE
The lecture schedule for the remainder of the year is as follows:
friday, April 21
Bernard Kruysen
friday, April 28
no lecture
friday, May 5
Eva Brann 5 S'L A~'!" I'~ on More 1 s Utopia
friday, May 12
Eugene Thaw
-*Wednesday, May 17- friday, May 26
concert
"The Problem of the fine
Arts and the Visual Arts"
Hi-la±-1-G-±ldin - - -en- ~ousseau's political philosophy
Winfree Smith J rc... A~111·bn Aristotle 1 s Ethics
- fr~day, June 2 -----c: :...~at:t-----~oiifln'l--£l:i!!:a!!!]ml~at..~
~
* Note-that
Prof~~r Gildin~s
lecture will be held Wednesday evening, not friday.
The Dean's Office
April 19, 1972
�
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.
4 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 and Concert Schedule 1971-72 (with written notes)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971-1972
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1971-1972 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1971-1972
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
Relation
A related resource
February 18, 1972. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3598" title="Student rebellion and the Nazis">Student rebellion and the Nazis (part one)</a> (audio)
February 25, 1972. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3590" title="Student rebellion and the Nazis">Student rebellion and the Nazis (part two)</a> (audio)
February 18, 1972. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3589" title="Student rebellion and the Nazis">Student rebellion and the Nazis (part one and two)</a> (text)
May 05, 1972. Brann, Eva. <a title="Utopia" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/260">On Thomas More's Utopia</a> (audio)
May 05, 1972. Brann, Eva. <a title="Utopia" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1236">On Thomas More's Utopia</a> (text)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Klein, Jacob
Blistein, Burton
Kutler, Samuel
Straus, Erwin
Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Bell, Charles
Frye, Roland Mushat
Storing, Herbert
Kruysen, Bernard
Brann, Eva T. H.
Thaw, Eugene Victor
Smith, J. Winfree
Hazo, Robert G.
Berquist, Marcus
Allanbrook, Douglas
Knox, Bernard M. W.
Berns, Walter, 1919-2015
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Braun, Matitiahu, 1940-
Kruysen, Bernard
Gildin, Hilail
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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�Lecture Schedule 1972-1973
Sept 15, 1972 Hugh McGrath
SJC Annapolis
Sept 22
Nancy Wilson Ross
Old Westbury, NY
Sept 29
Richard Kennington
Penn. State Univ., University Park, PA
Oct 6
Eva Brann
SJC Annapolis
Oct 13
Harford Theatre Assn.
Oct 20
Oct 27
Nov 3
Nov 10
Nov 17
Dec 1
Dec 8
Dec 15
Jan 12, 1973
Jan 19
Jan 26-27
Feb 2
Feb 16
Feb 23
Mar 2
March 9
April 6
April 13
Douglas Allanbrook
SJC Annapolis
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
SJC Annapolis
Wye Allanbrook
SJC Annapolis
Virgil Thornson
NYC
Leonard G Ratner
Stanford Univ., Stanford CA
Mortimer Adler
Inst. for Philosophical Research, Chicago
IL
Erwin Straus
Lexington KY
Edward Sparrow
SJC Annapolis
George Wend
SJC Alumnus, Baltimore MD
Christopher White
Curator National Gallery, Washington DC
King William Players
Sen. Eugene McCarthy
Washington DC
Matitiahu Braun
Jacob Klein
SJC Annapolis
William O’Grady
SJC Annapolis
Herman Kahn
The Hudson Inst., Crodon on Hudson NY
Amadeus String Quartet
San Francisco CA
Muhsi Mahdi
Harvard Univ. Cambridge MA
“The Circle and the Square”
“Asian Wisdom and the
Modern World”
“Decartes and the
Enlightenment”
“The Poet of the Odyssey”
“The Abduction from the
Seraglio”
“Keyboard Music and the
Art of Illusion”
“The Rhetoric of J.S. Bach”
“Dance, Gesture, and The
Marrage of Figaro”
“Words and Music”
“Rythmn in Classical
Music”
“The Objects of Discourse”
“On Hamlet”
“Jesus of Nazareth, Lamb
of God”
“Computer Mathematics”
“Dürer as a Draftsman”
“Taming of the Shrew”
“Poetry and Politics”
Violin Concert
“Speech, Its Strength and
Its Weaknesses”
“Plato’s Republic and the
Search For”
“The Prospects for
Mankind”
Concert
“The History and Myth of
Philosophic Religion”
�April 27&28
May 4
May 18
Catholic Univ Players
Catholic Univ, Washington DC
Nicolas Nabokov
Paris France
Modern Theatre Group
Apr. 27: “As You Like It”
Apr. 28: “The Birds”
“Stravinsky and Irony”
“The Dolls House”
�
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.
4 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 Schedule 1972-1973 (handwritten & transcribed)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1972-1973
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1972-1973 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1972-1973
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
Relation
A related resource
October 06, 1972. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="The poet of the Odyssey" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/261">The poet of the Odyssey</a> (audio)
October 27, 1972. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3605" title="Bach's rhetoric">Bach's rhetoric</a> (audio)
October 27, 1972. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3585" title="Bach's rhetoric">Bach's rhetoric</a> (text)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
McGrath, Hugh
Ross, Nancy Wilson, 1901-1986
Kennington, Richard, 1921-
Brann, Eva T. H.
Allanbrook, Douglas
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Allanbrook, Wye Jamison
Thornson, Virgil
Ratner, Leonard G.
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Straus, Erwin
Sparrow, Edward
Wend, George
White, Christopher
McCarthy, Eugene
Braun, Matitiahu, 1940-
Klein, Jacob
O'Grady, William
Kahn, Herman
Mahdi, Muhsi
Nabokov, Nicolas
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/5c4f47134187fef58a3caf5d6a2020da.pdf
d9795587b4f291b11fe4b77ea2ec06f4
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11
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�Lecture Schedule 1973-1974
Sept 14, 1973 Curtis Wilson
“On the Discovery of Deductive
Dean SJC Annapolis
Science”
Sept 21
National Players
Tartuffe
Washington DC
Sept 28
Charles Bell
“Satanic Math”
SJC Santa Fe
Oct 5
Edward Rosen
“The Achievement of
Grad School of CUNY, New York NY Copernicus”
Oct 12
Noel Lee
Concert
Oct 26
Stillman Drake
“Galileo’s Place in the History
Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, Ont
of Science”
Canada
Nov 2
Fr. Stanley Jaki
“The White Ribboned Darkness
Princeton NJ
of the Night Sky: Some Lessons
in Cosmology”
Nov 9
Mortimer Adler
“Majority Rule & Misrule”
Inst. for Philosophical Research,
Chicago IL
Nov 16
Bernard Knox
“Thucydides: Power, Empire,
The Center for Hellenic Studies,
Democracy”
Washington DC
Nov 30
Beate Ruhm Von Oppen
“A Trial in Berlin”
SJC Annapolis
Dec 7
Ray Williamson
“Archeo-astronomy of the
Inst for Space Studies, NYC
Southwest Indian Pueblos”
Dec 14
Owen Gingerich
“The Copernican Revolution, A
Smithsonian Inst. Astrophysical
16th Century View”
Observatory, Cambridge MA
Jan 11, 1974 Robert Jastrow
“The Coming of the Golden
NYC
Age”
Jan 18
Conrad Schirokaner
“Sung Neo Confucianism, It’s
CUNY New York NY
Content and Context (960-1279)
Jan 25
Ellen Davis
“The Vapheio Cups”
Queens College, Flushing NY
Feb 1
Georges Edelen
“The Judicious Hooker and the
Vinalhaven, ME
Laws of the Ecclesiastical
Polity”
Feb 15
The Gerles
Concert
Feb 22
Jonathan Griffin
“Translation of Poetry- Theory
London England
and Practice”
March 1
Howard Schless
“Chaucer- Wife of Bath Tale”
NYC
March 3
Martin Levin
“The Five Regular Solids”
Baltimore MD
Mar 8
Gisela Berns
“Lucretius”
�April 5
Apr 12
Apr 19
Apr. 26
May 3, 1974
May 8
May 17
SJC Annapolis
John Graham
Thomas Fulton
Johns Hopkins Univ. Baltimore MD
Allan Bloom
Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, Ont.
Canada
Michael Ossorgih
Jacob Klein
SJC Annapolis
Eva Brann
SJC Annapolis
Harry Golding
SJC Annapolis
Concert
“Physics and Mathematics: A
Foundering Marriage”
“Rousseau”
“In Introducing Dostoevski’s
The Brothers Karamazov”
“Plato’s Phaedo”
“What is a Body in Kant’s
System”
“Hume”
�
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
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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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.
5 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 Schedule 1973-1974 (handwritten & transcribed)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1973-1974
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1973-1974 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1973-1974
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
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St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
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pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wilson, Curtis
Bell, Charles
Rosen, Edward
Lee, Noel
Drake, Stillman
Jaki, Fr. Stanley
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Knox, Bernard, 1914-2010
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Williamson, Ray
Gingerich, Owen
Jastrow, Robert
Schirokaner, Conrad
Davis, Ellen
Edelen, Georges
Griffin, Jonathan
Schless, Howard H., 1924-
Levin, Martin
Berns, Gisela N.
Graham, John
Fulton, Thomas
Bloom, Allan
Ossorgih, Michael
Klein, Jacob
Brann, Eva T. H.
Golding, Harry
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
September 14, 1973. Wilson, Curtis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3669" title="On the discovery of deductive science">On the discovery of deductive science</a> (audio)
September 14, 1973. Wilson, Curtis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3651" title="On the discovery of deductive science">On the discovery of deductive science</a> (typescript)
November 28, 1973. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3599" title="Trial in Berlin">Trial in Berlin</a> (audio)
November 28, 1973. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3588" title="Trial in Berlin">Trial in Berlin</a> (typescript)
March 8, 1974. Berns, Gisela. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1082" title="Time and nature in Lucretius' De rerum natura">Time and nature in Lucretius' De rerum natura</a> (audio)
March 8, 1974. Berns, Gisela. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1088" title="Time and nature in Lucretius' De rerum natura">Time and nature in Lucretius' De rerum natura</a> (typescript)
May 8, 1974. Brann, Eva. T. H. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1237" title="What is a body in Kant's system?">What is a body in Kant's system?</a> (typescript)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7b3cce8592a0bae4098d81e5c4b3d609.pdf
13ca99ff6974bf0302a65779b9f9b256
PDF Text
Text
..
~~
LECTURE SCHEDULE - 1974- 75
St. John's
Kepler and the Mode of
Vision
September 13, 1974
Curtis Wilson, Dean,
College
September 20, 1974
Douglas Allanbrook
Concert
September 27, 1974
Francis V. O'Connor (NY, NY)
Symbolism in Abstract Art
October 4, 1974
Robert L. Spaeth, Tutor, St . John's The Philosophy of
College
Neils Bohr
October 11, 1974
Dr. Leon Kass, Tutor, St. John's
College
October 18, 1974
LONG WEEK-END
October 25, 1974
Professor Philip Fehl, Dept of Art
History, Univ of Illinois
Grace and Redemption in
Michelangelo's Last Judgment
November 1, 1974
Samuel Kutler, Tutor, St . John's
Generalization
November 8, 1974
Sterling Brown
A Poetry Reading
November 15, 1974
Stradivarian Quartet
Concert
November 22, 1974
Elliott Zuckerman
On Measuring Verse
November 29, 1974
THANKSGIVING RECESS
December 6, 1974
King William Players
The Alchemist
December 13, 1974
Mortimer Adler
The Human Constant and
the Changing Scene
December 20, 1974
WINTER VACATION
January 10, 1975
Virgil Thomson (Composer and
Music Critic)
How the Critical Press
Works
January 17, 1975
Donald Brady (Dept of Philosophy
Cheyney State College)
Freud and Philosophy
January 24, 1975
David Stephenson, Tutor, St . John's Beauty Alone has Looked
on Euclid Bare
January 31, 1975
Eva Brann, Tutor, St . John's
February 7, 1975
LONG WEEK-END
February 14, 1975
Leo Raditsa, Tutor, St . John's
February 21, 1975
Ernst Haefliger, Tenor
Teleology and Darwin's
Origin of Species: Beyond
Chance and Necessity?
The Novels of Jane Austen
Thucydides and Aristotle's
Politics
Concert
�- 2 -
The Symbolic Character of
Christian Language and Action
February 28, 1975
Albert Mol1egen (Virginia
Theological Seminary)
March 7, 1975
Ars Antigua de Paris
March 14-28
SPRING RECESS
<April 4, 1975
Ranlet Lincoln (Dean, University
of Chicago, Univ. Extension)
Kirkegaard's The Sickness
Unto Death
April ll, 1975
Ellen Davis (Department of Art
Queens College, New York)
The Metopes of the Temple
of Zeus at Olympia
April 18, 1975
Paul Serruys (Department of
Languages, University of Wash)
Writing and the Origins
of Language
April 25, 1975
Laurence Berns, Tutor, St. John's
Francis Bacon and The
Conquest of Nature
May 2, 1975
Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Tutor,
St. John's College
B·ach' s Rhetoric and the
Translation of his Texts:
Concert
w-ith examples taken mainly
May 9, 1975
REALITY
May 16, 1975
Douglas Buchanan (Massachusetts
General Hospital)
from the Passion according
to St. John.
Some Observatla'ns on the
Present State of Psychiatry
and Psychoanalysis
�october 30, 1975
William Dunham
Campus Mail
Mr.
Dear Will!
In listing the Bicentennial lectures for a proposal I left out Herbert
Storing's on "The Founders' Views on Slavery," March 5. so there are
seven lectures after all!
The corrected list is as follows:
1.
December 12
Mortimer Adler, Director Institute for
Philosophical Research -- The American
Testament
2.
January 30
George Anastaplo -- Title to be announced
3.
February 20
Robert A. Goldwin, Special Consultant to the
President -- John Locke and the Constitution
4.
March 5
Herbert Storing, University of Chicago -The Founders' Views on Slavery
5.
April 2
Donald L. Kemmerer, Department of Economics
University of Illinois - The Role of the
Monetary System in American History
6.
April 23
Max Isenbergh, Professor of Law, University
of Maryland School of Law -- The Pursuit of
Happiness in the American Constitutional
System
7.
April 30
Eva T. H. Brann, Tutor, St. John's College,
Annapolis -- The Declaration of Independence
Sincerely yours,
Curtis A. Wilson
Dean
�
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 Schedule - 1974-75
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1974-1975
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1974-1975 Academic Year. Also includes a memo of a corrected list of lectures.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1974-1975
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
Wilson, Curtis
Allanbrook, Douglas
O'Connor, Francis V.
Spaeth, Robert L.
Kass, Leon
Fehl, Philip
Kutler, Samuel
Brown, Sterling
Zuckerman, Elliott
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Thomson, Virgil
Brady, Donald
Stephenson, David
Brann, Eva T. H.
Raditsa, Leo
Haefliger, Ernst, 1919-2007
Mollegen, Albert T.
Lincoln, Ranlet
Davis, Ellen
Serruys, Paul Leo-Mary
Berns, Laurence, 1928-
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Buchanan, Douglas
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
September 13, 1974. Wilson, Curtis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3668" title="Kepler and the mode of vision">Kepler and the mode of vision</a> (audio)
April 25, 1975. Berns, Laurence. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1091" title="Francis Bacon and the conquest of nature">Francis Bacon and the conquest of nature</a> (typescript)
April 25, 1975. Berns, Laurence. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3874" title="Francis Bacon and the conquest of nature">Francis Bacon and the conquest of nature</a> (audio)
May 2, 1975. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3584" title="Bach's rhetoric and the translation of his texts">Bach's rhetoric and the translation of his texts</a> (typescript)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d3c8853da4ea88c12ca2842ede8c34fe.pdf
b2f2d4ec5e5d663b296189b78ab1a7d3
PDF Text
Text
~
ST
JoHN's Co LLE GE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21 404
FouN oLo IW6 As KING W i LLI AM's ScHOOL
Lecture Schedule 1 975 -76
Sept . 1 2, 1975
Curtis Wilson, Dean
St. John's College Annapolis
Homo loquens from a Biological
Standpoint
Sept. 19
The App l e Hill Chamber Players
Concert
Sept. 26
Charles Bell, Tutor
St. John'sCollege, Santa Fe
Rome
Oct. 3
Laurence Richardson
Duke University
Pompeii
Oct. 1 0
Douglas Allanbrook, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Annapolis
Power and Grace
Oct. 17
Long Weekend
No Lecture
Oct. 24
Alumni Weekend
Tom Simpson
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Newton and the Libera l Arts
Oct. 31
Wolfgang Lederer
How One Cures the Soul
Nov . 7
All College Seminar
No Lecture
Nov. 14
Douglas Allanbrook, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Annapolis
Concert
Nov . 16
James Ack erman
Fogg Art Museum
Harvard University
Miche langelo's Religion
Nov. 2 1
Duane Rumbaugh, Chairman
Dept . Psychology
Georgia State University
The Learning of Language
by The Chimpanzee
Nov. 28
Thanksgiving
No Lecture
Dec . 5
King William Players
Play
Dec . 12
Mortimer Adler
Institute for Phi losophical
Research
The American Testament
Jan. 9, 1976
Robert L. Spaeth, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
The Connection of Physical Science
With Philosophy and Re l igi on in
the Thought of Sir Arthur Eddington
Jan . 16
Howard Fisher , Tutor
St. John ' s College, Annapolis
The Great Electrical Philosopher
T[L[I'HONE 301 -l61- 2"371
�Page 2
Lecture 1975-76
Father Colman Barry, Dean
Catholic University
The Church Divided:
Question
George Anastaplo
Rosary College
Piety, Prudence and the
Mayflower Compact
Feb. 3
Joseph Tydings
Cancelled
Feb. 6
Long Weekend
No Lecture
Feb. 13
Annapolis Brass Quintet
Concert
Feb. 15
Joseph Alsop
Medici Art Collecting in the
15th Century
Feb. 20
Robert A. Goldwin
Special Consultant to the
President
Of Men and Angels:
In Search
for Morality in the Constitution
Feb. 27
Steven Crockett, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Webern, Symmetry, and Time
March 5
Herbert Storing
University of Chicago
The Founders' Views on Slavery
March 14-29
Spring Vacation
No Lecture
April 2
Ray Williamson, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
How Far is Up (On the Size of
the Universe)
April 9
Leonard Lutwack
University of Maryland
The American and His Land:
The Literary Record
April 13
Charles Segal
Brown University
Euripides' Bacchae
April 23
Max Isenbergh
University of Maryland
School of Law
A Serious Citizen's Guide to
Reading the Constitution and
Judging the Supreme Court
April 30
Eva T. H. Brann, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
The Declaration of Independence
May 5
Reality
No Lecture
May 14
Paul Tobias
Cellist
May 16
(Sun)
Thomas 0 'Brien
Keats and Nature
May 21
Benjamin Milner, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Jan. 23
Jan.
30
A
�
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.
2 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 Schedule 1975-76
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1975-1976
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1975-1976 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1975-1976
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
Relation
A related resource
September 12, 1975. Wilson, Curtis. <a title="Homo loquens from a biological standpoint" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3652"><em>Homo loquens</em> from a biological standpoint</a> (typescript)
September 12, 1975. Wilson, Curtis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3670" title="Homo loquens from a biological standpoint"><em>Homo loquens</em> from a biological standpoint</a> (audio)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wilson, Curtis
Bell, Charles
Richardson, Laurence
Allanbrook, Douglas
Lederer, Wolfgang, 1912-2003
Ackerman, James
Rumbaugh, Duane M., 1929-
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Spaeth, Robert L.
Fisher, Howard
Barry, Fr. Colman
Anastaplo, George, 1925-2014
Tydings, Joseph D. (Joseph Davies), 1928-
Alsop, Joseph, 1910-1989
Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
Crockett, Steven
Storing, Herbert J., 1928-
Williamson, Ray
Lutwack, Leonard, 1917-2008
Segal, Charles
Isenbergh, Max
Brann, Eva T. H.
Tobias, Paul
O'Brien, Thomas
Milner, Benjamin
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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bb36a4932e3c65780358e9721538e65f
PDF Text
Text
f
I
ST
JoHN 's Co LLEGE
ANNA POLI S. MARYLAND 21404
FouNDED 1&% M
KIN G WiU.IAM·~ SrHooL
Lecture Schedule 1976-77
Sept. 1 7
Curtis A. Wilson , Dean
St. John 's College , Annapol is
On Knowing How and Knowing What
Sept. 24
Noel Lee, Piano
Concert
October 1
Hugh McGrath, Tutor
Poetry Reading
October 8
All-Col l ege Seminar
No Lecture
October 1 5
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 22
Bruce Venable , Tutor
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Philosophy and Spirituality
in Plotinus
October 29
Professor Arnal do Momigliano
Universi ty College
London, England
The 18th Century Background
to Gi bbon
November 5
Professor Wm . M. Goldsmith
Brandeis University
The Dialectic of Presidential
Power
November 1 2
Robert Sacks, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Santa Fe
Genes i s
November 19
John S. Steadman, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Santa Fe
Why Should Gloucester Attempt
Suicide, and Why Must Cordelia Die?
November 26
Thanksgiving
No Lectur e
December 3
The University of Maryland Trio Concert
December 10
King William Players
Play
Dec. 16- Jan. 3
Winter Vacation
No Lecture
January 7
David Bolotin, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Annapolis
The Ajax
January 14
Michael Ossorgin, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Santa Fe
Celebrating with a Book
(The Brothers Karamazov)
January 21
Paul Sperr y Tenor and
Rose Taylor, Mezzo
Concert
January 28
Dr . Adelyn Breeskin
washington, D.C.
Changing Trends in 20th Century
Painting and Sculpture
TELEPHONI 'lOI ·lEd · 2'171
�Lecture 1976-77
Page 2
February 4
William O'Grady, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
February ll
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 18
Leo Raditsa, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
The Collapse of Democracy at Athens
and the Trial of Socrates
February 25
Jonathan Griffin
On the Translation of Rimbaud's
Poetry
March 4
Sequoia String Quartet
Concert
March 5
Charles Bell, Tutor
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Slide show:
A.D. 1500
March 6
Charles Bell, Tutor
Slide Show:
Shakespeare
March 12-27
Spring Vacation
No Lectures
April l
Paul S. Minear
Yale School of Divinity
The Epistle to the Galatians and
Christian Freedom
April 8
David Starr, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
On Plato 1 s Timaeus
April 12
Martin Robertson
University of Oxford
Daedalus on the Parthenon
April 22
David Eisenbud
Institut des Hautes
Etudes Scientifiques
The Interplay of Algebra and
Geometry -- A Twenteeth Century
Theme
April 29
Peter Quint
University of Maryland
On The Constitutional Law of
the Nixon Administration
May 6
Stillman Drake
University of Toronto
A. B. Johnson:
Philosophy
May 13
Reality
No Lecture
May 20
Alan Dorfman, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Freud and Ethics
Language and
�
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.
2 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 Schedule 1976-77
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1976-1977
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1976-1977 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1976-1977
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
Relation
A related resource
September 17, 1967. Wilson, Curtis. <a title="On knowing how and knowing what" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/282">On knowing how and knowing what</a> (audio)
September 17, 1967. Wilson, Curtis. <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3653">On knowing how and knowing what</a> (typescript)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wilson, Curtis
Lee, Noel
McGrath, Hugh
Venable, Bruce
Momigliano, Arnaldo
Goldsmith, Wm. M.
Sacks, Robert
Steadman, John S.
Bolotin, David, 1944-
Ossorgin, Michael
Sperry, Paul
Taylor, Rose
Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme, 1896-1986
O'Grady, William
Raditsa, Leo
Griffin, Jonathan
Bell, Charles
Minear, Paul S. (Paul Sevier), 1906-2007
Starr, David
Robertson, Martin
Eisenbud, David
Quint, Peter E.
Drake, Stillman
Dorfman, Alan H.
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/25a086e1bc7cadebd11b756e114dfc35.pdf
257b0953875888ba89ef2865e9bf8a95
PDF Text
Text
i
.· ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
\.,
ANNAPOLIS. MARYLAND 21404
fouNotD lW6 AS KING WiLliAM's ScHCJOL
TENTATIVE LECTURE SCHEDULE - FIRST SEMESTER 1977-78
v
September 16
Mr. Edward G. Sparrow, Dean
St. John's, Annapolis
Man, Image of the Word
September 23
Mr. Frank L. Fernbach
Some •rhoughts on Labor's
Progress and Problems
American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Org.
Washington, D.C.
September 30
Professor Harry Jaffa
Claremont Men's College
October 7
All College Seminar
October 9
(Sunday)
Ste John 1 s, Santa Fe
October 14
Long Weekend
October 21
Kronos String Quartet
Concert
October 23
(Sunday)
Mary A. Tobin
Exxon Company
Energy Crisis
October 28
Michael comenetz, Tutor
St. John 1 s, Annapolis
Chaos, Gauss, and Order
November 4
Mrs~
Charles Bell, Tutor
Florence Berdann,
The Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution
P.ascal's Reversal (Sat. 2 p.m.)
The Century of Mozart(Sun.8p.m.)
Daumier:
Lithographs
Baltimore Museum of Art
November ll
November 18
For Our Times
Professor Donald L. Kemmerer
University of Illinois
The Role of the Money
System in American History
Miss Eva Brannf Tutor
On the Imagination
St. John's, Annapolis
November 20
(Sunday)
Providence, Rhode Island
November 25
Thanksgiving Holiday
December 2
Mr. Mortimer J. Adler
Institute for Philosophical
Research
Mr. Bertram Minkin
TELEPHONE 'WI· 263- n71
A Greek Poet and His English
Language; the Poetry of
Demetrios Capetanakis
The Vicissitudes of Western
Thought
\
\
�TENTATIVE LECTURE SCHEDULE - FIRST SEMESTER 1977-78
December 9
Play
December 16 January 4
Winter Vacation
January 6
Dr. Otto Morgenstern
Africa -- Our Concern
Linda Tarnay and
Dance recital
January 13
Dancers
January 20
Professor Neil Weiner
Marlboro College
END OF FIRST SEMESTER
Health and Virtue:
Contemporary Psychology
and Aristotle's Ethics
�ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
Ai'INAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
FoUNDED lb':J{, /\S KING WiLLIAivl''> ScHOOl
November 18, 1977
LECTURE - CONCERT SCHEDULE - SECOND SEMESTER 1977-78
January 27, 1978
Mr. Thomas Simpson, Tutor
St. John's, Santa Fe
The Scientific Revolution
Will Not Take Place
February 3
Professor Wm. Theodore deBary
Columbia University
The Analects Of Confucius
February 10
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 17
Professor Robert Jenson
Lutheran Theological Seminary
On The Enjoyment Of God
February 24
Father William A. Wallace
Catholic University of America
Causality And The Growth
Of Scientific Knowledge
March 3
Dr. Renee C. Fox
University of Pennsylvania
The Rise of Medical Ethical
Concern In American Society:
What Does It Mean?
March 10
Dr. Thomas Pangle
Yale, Department of
Political Science
Montesquieu And The Philosophic
Basis Of Modern Republicanism
March ll March 26
Spring Vacation
No Lecture
March 31
Brother Peter, O.S.B., Monk
Mt. Saviour Monastery
The Function Of A Staretz
April 7
Professor Malcolm Brown
Brooklyn College of the City
University of New York
The 'Hybrid Reckoning'
Of Timaeus 52
April 14
Miss Beata Ruhm von Oppen, Tutor
St. John's, Annapolis
Interpretations Of The
Magic Flute
April 21
Mr. John Shirley-Quirk
Bass/Baritone
England
Concert
April 28
Mr. Hugh McGrath, Tutor
St. John's, Annapolis
*
Translation and Description:
Paul Valery's Le Cimetiere Marin
Father Zossima, a character in The Brothers Karamazov, is a staretz.
IHLI'HONE 301-261- n71
*
�Lecture Schedule - Second Semester 1977-78
May 5
Professor David Lachterman
Georgia State University
Mathesis and Descarte's Geometry
May 12
Real Olympics
No Lecture
May 19
Mr. Howard Zeiderrnan, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Investigating Philosophical
Investigations
May 26
Commencement
�
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.
4 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
Tentative Lecture Schedule - First Semester 1977-78 & Lecture - Concert Schedule - Second Semester 1977-78
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1977-1978
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1977-1978 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1977-1978
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
Relation
A related resource
November 18, 1977. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="On the imagination" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/262">On the imagination</a> (audio)
April 14, 1978. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3604" title="Interpretations of the Magic Flute">Interpretations of the <em>Magic Flute</em></a>
May 19, 1978. Zeiderman, Howard. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3873" title="Investigating philosophical investigations">Investigating philosophical investigations</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sparrow, Edward G.
Fernbach, Frank L.
Jaffa, Harry
Bell, Charles
Tobin, Mary A.
Comenetz, Michael, 1944-
Berdann, Florence
Kemmerer, Donald L.
Brann, Eva T. H.
Minkin, Bertram
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Morgenstern, Otto
Tarnay, Linda
Weiner, Neil
Simpson, Thomas
deBary, Wm. Theodore
Jenson, Robert
Wallace, William A.
Fox, Renée C. (Renée Claire), 1928-
Pangle, Thomas L.
Peter, Brother
Brown, Malcolm
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Shirley-Quirk, John
McGrath, Hugh
Lachterman, David Rapport, 1944-
Zeiderman, Howard
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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1a061a88f6fdda2f5ff89cad5754e433
PDF Text
Text
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
FouNom J(,9G A~ KING WJLliA/vl's ScHooL
FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - FIRST SEMESTER 1978-1979
September 15
Mr. Edward G. Sparrow, Dean
St. John's College, Annapolis
September 22
Professor Louis Finkelstein
Queens College
The Real World
The Late Paintings of Claude
Monet
September 29
Professor Louis L. Snyder
The Graduate School and
University Center of the
City University of New York
Milieu and Personality: The
German People and Adolf Hitler
October 6
Mr. Robert Gerle, Violin
Ms. Marilyn Neeley, Piano
Concert
October 13
Mr. Stefan Peters
Department of Insurance
Boston, Massachusetts
Gauss - A Path-breaker of
Modern Mathematics
October 20
Mr. Robert S. Bart, Dean
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Things As They Are
October 27
All-College Seminar
Thoreau - On Civil Disobedience
November 3
Mrs. Frances Stevens
Plymouth, England
The Dramatic Imagination
November 10
Mr. Mortimer J. Adler
Institute for Philosophical
Why It Is Sometimes Necessary
To Read Aristotle Backwards
Research
Chicago, Illinois
November 17
Dr. Leon Kass
Chicago, Illinois
November 24
Thanksgiving
December l
Professor c. Grant Luckhardt
Georgia State University
December 8
Play
December 15 January 3, 1979
Winter vacation
IW:I'JION[ 301-261- 2"l71
Looking Good:
Human Affairs
Socrates 1
Biology and
Ideal State
�FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 1978-79
PAGE TWO
January 5
Dr. Andrew B. Schmookler
Tucson, Arizona
The Riddle of Evil:
of Social Evolution
January 12
Professor Krister Stendahl
The Divinity School
Harvard University
The Jewishness of Jesus and
His Gentile Followers
January 19
Mr. David Stephenson, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
The "Oceanic FeeliFJ.g 11
Whole and Part
A Theory
:
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·~ '¥'
~"11!1\ a~
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JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
FouNDED
109~
A'>
KING WilliAM\ ScHOOL
FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - SECOND SEMESTER 1978-1979
January 26
February 2
Mr. Richard Rephann
Concert
Mr. S. Frederick Starr
Historical Patterns in
Kennan Institute for
Advanced Russian Studies
Soviet Life Today
February 9-12
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 16
Mr. John White, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
11
February 23
Mr~
Thomas McDonald, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Some Thoughts on Kant
March 2
Annapolis Brass Quintet
Concert
March 8-19
Spring Vacation
No Lecture
March 23
Mr. Joshua c. Taylor
National Collection of
Fine Arts
Art for the Thoughtful
0n Imitation"
Washington, D.C.
March 30
Queens College
April 6
The ReUse of Sculpture on
the Arch of Constantine
Mr. Thomas Slakey, Tutor
Changing Concepts of Morality
Miss Ellen Davis
St. John's College, Annapolis
April 13
Mr. Douglas Allanbrook, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Piano Concert
April 20
Dr. Dimitri Conomos
University of British Columbia
The Early Music of Eastern
Christendom
April 27
Professor John Herington
Yale University
On The Oresteia
May 4
Real Olmypics
No Lecture
May 11
Dr. Arnold M. Cooper
Professor of Psychiatry
New York Hospital - Cornell
Medical Center
Psychoanalysis in 1979
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
May 18
TELH'HONL 301- Hd- 2")71
�
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
Formal Lecture/Concert Schedule - First Semester 1978-1979 & Second Semester 1978-1979
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1978-1979
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1978-1979 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1978-1979
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
Sparrow, Edward G.
Finkelstein, Louis
Snyder, Louis L.
Gerle, Robert
Peters, Stefan
Bart, Robert S.
Stevens, Frances
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Kass, Leon
Luckhardt, C. Grant, 1943-
Schmookler, Andrew Bard
Stendahl, Krister
Stephenson, David
Rephann, Richard
Starr, S. Frederick
White, John
McDonald, Thomas
Taylor, Joshua C. (Joshua Charles), 1917-1981
Davis, Ellen
Slakey, Thomas
Allanbrook, Douglas
Conomos, Dimitri
Herington, John
Cooper, Arnold M.
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
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