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Goings and Comings
Graduate Institute Commencement Address
St. John’s College
August 4, 2017
William Pastille
“Every limit,” writes George Eliot near the end of Middlemarch, “is a beginning as well as
an ending.”
We come here today to mark a limit in the lives of you who are graduating—the limit
of your time in our halls.
Ceremonies like this are called “commencements,” even though they occur at the close
of study, because this ending, the ending of studenthood, coincides with the beginning of
a new life, the beginning of a new adventure.
That, at least, is the conventional explanation. Scholars, of course, who can’t seem to
abide the conventional, have tracked the historical source of the term “commencement”
down to a medieval ceremony called the Inceptio. This event was a formal induction into
the teachers’ guild, for which studenthood was the required apprenticeship. With the passage of time and changes in society, the original purpose of the ceremony was forgotten,
and its name was replaced by its English equivalent, Commencement. At its inception, then,
the Inceptio was all about beginnings and not all about endings.
Well, you can pretty much count on scholars to evaporate poetic truth. Whatever the
mundane antecedent of today’s ceremonies may have been, the poetic truth about commencements is that they are Janus-headed, one face looking toward student life in the past,
the other looking toward a new life in the future.
This truth is poetic because commencements, infused with wistfulness for what is past
and expectation for what is to come, are figures—not figures of speech but figures of life—
prefiguring something more universal, namely, that every moment, every Now, is also Janus-headed, both an ending and a beginning, both a going and a coming, both wistful and
expectant.
St. Augustine underlines this doubleness of the Now in the Confessions, in the section
on memory, where he writes about the experience of reciting a psalm. Every word of the
text stands before us in the future, enters into the Now as we speak it, and retires into the
past as the next word rises up. The eternal Now sits unmoving and attentive at the intersection of the goings and the comings, occupying the space in which they meet.
If commencements, then, are two-faced, like every Now, why do we name them after
the Janus face that looks toward the future rather than the one that looks toward the past?
The answer is obvious enough. If we called them “cessations” or “culminations,” we
would call attention to what is about to pass away and risk lingering on the emotions that
naturally attend the experience of loss. And why would we want to do that? These events
are not funerals.
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�Nevertheless, at the risk of provoking sentimental nostalgia, that is exactly what I propose to do now: focus on what is passing away. Why? Because the past you share is full of
exceptional distinctions and achievements that deserve commemoration and a proper estimate of their worth.
So, I begin with a distinction you shared long before you joined us. You are book lovers.
Most people don’t care about books. Most people never have. You were already singled by
sharing this trait before you came to us.
Then, by joining this community, you singled yourself out again. You are not ordinary
book lovers. You are readers, determined readers. You leapt eagerly at these difficult,
sometimes impenetrable, books. You wanted the wisdom they might hold. This is the mark
of genuine readers: they approach books like granaries of wisdom. They try to pry open
hatches and extract seeds of insight. Real readers are seekers after wisdom.
Next, you set about a series of exceptional labors. You raided the book-granaries and
hauled off sacks and sacks of seeds. You learned to blow open the hatches by asking and
dwelling on questions—and then learned how to ask better questions that go nearer the
heart of things, where the greatest satisfactions are most likely to be found. In the process,
you struck up lasting friendships with the spirits of some of our long-dead authors—permanent friendships that will stand you in good stead as the vicissitudes of life deprive you
of other friendships.
And finally, most exceptional of all, you discovered the master key that unlocks all the
book-granaries. For most of them are locked, as Socrates tells us.
In the Phaedrus, Socrates claims that written documents are singularly uncommunicative. Partly, this is because they are static; if you question them, they always give the same
response. Partly, it is because they cannot attend to the character or the needs of the reader.
And partly, it is because the author is not present to defend his words or to correct his
errors.
So, Socrates concludes that writing is not a serious occupation, but at best a playful art
of note-taking that produces reminders of what an author once thought.
Far more important for seekers, he says, is dialectic—living conversation in which
seeds of wisdom can be sown into the participants’ souls, where they may someday grow
to nourish both mind and heart.
It is high irony that we encounter this critique of writing in a text. This points up Plato’s
extraordinary way of writing that overcomes the usual limitations of the written word, a
way that does sow seeds of wisdom in the souls of readers by prompting them to engage in
internal dialectic.
The details of Plato’s method—his deployment of unresolvable contradictions, perplexing myths, tantalizing but questionable analogies, and a host of other tricks that push
the reader out of the text into a dialectical self-conversation—that is a subject for a different
speech on a different occasion.
But most books, even great books, do not stimulate dialectic on their own. Most of
them are of the sort that Socrates criticized—static, always responding to questions in the
same way. And because many of the best books are extraordinarily difficult, their unchanging responses are often cryptic. Their granaries remain, for the most part, under lock and
key.
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�The master key that opens all of them, as you well know, is serious conversation.
Serious conversation—by which I mean the sustained, focused inquiry of a cooperative
group of seekers after wisdom—supplies the necessary dialectic. When we share our perplexities and try out answers, when we interpret, reinterpret, and test interpretations against
one another—in short, when we search together in our classes, we turn the dialectical key
that opens up the stores. We shake out the seeds of wisdom so they can, with any luck, take
root in our souls.
But serious conversation achieves even more than that. It cuts through the usual divisions among us. If, as Aristotle says, all human beings desire to know, then serious conversation sets us all upon equal ground, uniting us in our common role as seekers. Serious
conversation makes it possible for us to have meaningful, civil, respectful, and thoughtful
exchanges about issues that, in unserious conversation, explode into animosity, hatred, and
even violence. And you have learned how to do this.
Summing up, then, your distinctions and achievements:
You are book lovers, and, what is more, genuine readers, which is to say, seekers after
wisdom. You have enhanced your seeking by practicing and honing your command of the
art of questioning. You have created permanent, inspirational friendships with some of the
authors we study. And you have learned how to use serious conversation to scatter seeds
of wisdom and promote mutual understanding.
All in all, as achievements go, this is not too shabby.
So much for the going Janus-face. In the coming direction, however, the scene has no
clear outlines. About your exceptional distinctions and attainments in the future I can make
out less than nothing. The only fairly certain relief is that each of you will apply your
common distinctions and attainments uniquely.
But since the future is malleable, I’d like to encourage you to lead at least part of it in
a common direction. Wherever your futures take you, I urge you all to carry on the practice
of serious conversation.
It is now common wisdom that our society is almost irreparably fractured, that we have
become too self-opinionated and truculent to speak with—or even to want to speak with—
those who hold differing opinions.
But you know this to be false wisdom. Serious conversation is possible. You’ve done
it. You’ve participated in searching—yet sociable and productive—discussions about God,
for God’s sake, and politics too—topics far too combustible for unserious conversation like
cocktail-party chitchat.
Since among your attainments is the art of serious conversation, you can use that skill
to relieve the epidemic of misanthropy and misology as few others can. You can have, or
at least try to have, serious conversations with the people in your lives.
I’m not suggesting that you set up St. John’s-style seminars among your friends and
acquaintances. That’s too far a stretch. I’m encouraging something more spontaneous,
something that can arise during lunch breaks or television commercials or taxi rides.
Such little serious conversations don’t have to last long. Many people can’t sustain
serious conversation for more than a few minutes anyway. These little talks don’t have to
be about books. Most people, as I said, don’t care about books. And Socrates didn’t need
texts to have serious conversations.
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�But they do have to be serious—that is, directed at the truth about something that matters to the way we understand and lead our lives. Pushing a social conversation a tiny bit
in the direction of universals, just far enough to strain the limits of routine, may make some
seeds scatter. One or two of them might someday take root.
Can this sort of thing make a dent in the wall of animosity? Who knows? You may
inspire others to seek in ways they had not sought before. With enough inspiration, perhaps
attitudes would soften, perhaps the compulsion to be right and to impose that rightness on
others would give way to the milder and healthier compulsion to seek wisdom.
Does this sound hopelessly idealistic?
So what? Change takes time. The Grand Canyon wasn’t cut overnight. It was etched
slowly over eons by the infinitesimal scratchings of innumerable water molecules, each
one effecting next to nothing. Why couldn’t a similar process work to transform the landscape of human nature?
At the very end of Middlemarch, George Eliot sums up the life of her protagonist, Dorothea Brande. In her youth, Dorothea dreamed of transforming society for the benefit of
the less fortunate. A misconceived first marriage and a socially unacceptable second marriage made it impossible for her to realize her youthful dreams. Nevertheless, Eliot judges
that her influence was inestimable. Here is the closing paragraph of the book:
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her
full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which
had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;
and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the
number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
I quote this not to imply that you should abjure a life of achievement. That would be
foolish to suggest to you, who are already so accomplished. By all means, if you wish,
reach out like Cyrus and bend the world to your will—provided your will inclines toward
truth and love.
But I do say that, in the matter of serious conversation, your influence will mostly go
unnoticed, even by yourselves. It could hardly be otherwise, since the fruits of serious conversation do not ripen in the visible world. And yet, your husbandry may prove to be incalculably diffusive, making things not so ill as they might otherwise be for generations
yet unborn.
And so, I hope you won’t think it too impertinent of me to conclude this farewell-thatis-also-a-greeting by begging of you this simple, but audacious, favor: Please, on occasion,
in all the goings and comings of all the Nows of the rest of your lives, please, spare a
thought for the planting of seeds.
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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/.
Title
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Commencement Programs and Addresses
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Description
An account of the resource
Addresses given at commencement and programs of events related to, and including, the annual commencement ceremonies at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />The College Archives holds programs and/or addresses for the following years:<br />
<ul>
<li>1796</li>
<li>1835-1836</li>
<li>1842</li>
<li>1852</li>
<li>1856-1857</li>
<li>1870</li>
<li>1878</li>
<li>1880</li>
<li>1890</li>
<li>1893</li>
<li>1895</li>
<li>1897</li>
<li>1907</li>
<li>1910-1918</li>
<li>1920-1924</li>
<li>1928-1929</li>
<li>1932</li>
<li>1936-1937</li>
<li>1939-1945</li>
<li>1947-present </li>
</ul>
Click on <strong><a title="Commencement Programs and Addresses" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=18&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the Commencement Programs and Addresses Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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commencementprograms
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Word doc
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4 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
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Commencement Address, Graduate Institute, Summer 2017
Description
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Typescript of the commencement address given on August 4, 2017 by Bill Pastille at the end of the Summer 2017 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Goings and Comings".
Creator
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Pastille, William
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2017-08-04
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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text
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pdf
Language
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English
Identifier
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Pastille Goings and Comings (GI Commencement Address 2017-08-04)
Commencement
Graduate Institute
Tutors
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