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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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Jonathan Hand Memorial
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Audio recording of the memorial for tutor Jonathan Hand that took place on February 1, 2020 in the Great Hall of the Santa Fe campus.
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Golluber, Michael
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2020-02-01
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St. John's College owns the rights to this recording.
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Axelberg, Emily
Kgalema, Thato
Levine, David Lawrence
Levy, Allison
Pagano, Frank N.
Sterling, J. Walter
Storey, Benjamin
Storey, Jenna Silber
Stover, Sonya
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SF_Jonathan_Hand_Memorial_2020-02-01
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/6760">Jonathan Hand Memorial Program</a>
Tutors
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PDF Text
Text
In Remembrance of
Jonathan Hand
July 6, 1958 - November 6, 2019
ST JOHN'S
College
SANTA FE • ANNAPOLIS
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
FEBRUARY 1, 2020
3:00 P.M., GREAT HALL
�Lara Fabian ''Mistral Gagnant" lyrics
They say that souls wait around before returning to earth
That's what they say
Sometimes I think of this child of mine which is not yet here
And whom I am waitingfor
And I am so afraid for it
WELCOME
Michael Golluber
Ah to sit down on a bench for jive minutes with you
And watch all the people, Such as there are.
Talk to you ofthe good time Which is dead or which'll come back
Squeezing within my hand your little fingers
Then give something to eat to idiotic pigeons
Aim a few kicks at them in pretend
.
To hear your laughter which splits cracks in the walls
Which can cure above all wounds that I've had.
To tell you for a while how I once was: "Mino
The Fabulous Bombecs", Which we used to pinch from the shop.
"Car en Sac" and "Minto caramels"for one franc
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
To walk in the rain for five minutes with you
And watch life go past Such as there is.
To tell you tales ofthe earth feasting my eyes on you
Speak to you ofyour mum a little while
Ofjumping in puddles to make her grumbleRuining our shoes and having jun.
And to hear your laughter as one hears the sea
Stopping then starting offon the way back.
To tell ofabove all the "Carambars" of times past
And the "Coco- hoers" and the real "Roudoudous"
Which used to cut our lips and chipped our teeth enamel
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
Ah to sit on a bench for five minutes with you
Watching the sun going down
Talk to you ofa good time which is dead and I don't care
To tell you those in the wrong that wasn't us.
That ifI am crazy it's onlyfor your eyes
For they have the advantage of coming in twos
And hearing your laughter flying up as high
As fly up the cries of the birds
To tell you in the end that you need to love life
And love it even if time is a great killer
And takes off with him the laughter of children
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
Emily Axelberg
David Levine
Ave verum corpus
Performed by the SJC Schola Cantorum
(William Byrd)
Frank Pagano
Allison Levy
Benjamin Storey
Jenna Silber Storey
Mistral Gagnant
(Renaud Pierre Manuel Sechan)
Performed by
Christopher Young (piano) and
Natalie Gammill (vocals)
Thato Kgalema
Walter Sterling
Remarks from Jonathan '.s Family
Reception in the Junior Common Room
Cover image: Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War
�Tutor Michael Golluber
Jonathan - or "Mr. Hand" as my wife Tracey always playfully addressed him, easily embarrassing
him - he was so easy to tease, and he enjoyed being teased more than most , because he knew
we were all flirting with him. So, for example, one could say to him (as I in fact did) "I'm not
entirely sure what kind of look you're going for, Jonathan, but you've neglected to shave a
noticeable portion of the left side of your face."
Jonathan was a great friend and magnificent colleague. Life here at the college for me has not
been the same since he left us, and I suffer from losing him each and every day.
Jonathan, as everyone knows, was a most enjoyable and joyful interlocuter. I learned so much
from him during my many serious, and my many silly conversations with him (there was of
course hardly any - if any at all - of a distinction between silliness and seriousness when f
spoke with Jonathan - he nailed "that tragedy and comedy of life" thing down).
Jonathan had a twinkle or sparkle in his eye {I imagine he would prefer "sparkle" - "twinkle"
doesn't quite lend itself to the manliness he pretended to care about, dressing up as he did
every day as a lumberjack) . It was that sparkle that I saw, when, at a question period after a
lecture, I had just finished asking a question, and he turned around, and with a wink, let me
know that he knew that my question was not in fact a real question, but rather was a polite and
indirect way of pointing out that the lecturer didn't know what the heck they were talking
about. He was much more bold, straightforward and ruthless in communicating such things
than I, and to my astonishment he always got away with it somehow.
It was that same sparkle that I saw, when , sitting across from me in my Camille Paglia study
group (Paglia, by the way, is someone Jonathan was madly in love with, and he wanted to ask
to her to marry him, despite (and maybe because) she identifies as an "Amazonian lesbian") it was that sparkle I saw when I asked a question of our dear students that he could not quite
believe I could get away with asking, a question he knew he could never get away with as king.
And it was the same sparkle when at one of our many lunch conversations, I would say
something that he decided was exactly false. Behind the smile and that sparkle, he was
thinking: "Michael - there is no way you could have gotten it any more wrong than that! " Or at
another lunch, after things got a little heated, he would back down, acknowledging that maybe,
just maybe there was something I got a bit right and that he might give it some further
consideration.
The final setting for such conversation was in the context of my present study group on Simone
de Beauvoir' s "The Second Sex" (Beauvoir, by the way, was someone Jonathan had no desire
whatsoever to marry). Jonathan came to the first couple of these meetings. But with great
selflessness, sincere selflessness, he decided to leave the group because he was sure his
crankiness about the book would lead to some misbehavior on his part. After all, Jonathan
cared most of all for our students and their education. The strange thing, though, was that
�when I walked out of the Private Dining Room and into the dining hall after these meetings, I
was always greeted by Jonathan, sitting alone at a table, waiting for me to come out. There was
no wave of a hand, there was only that intense sparkle, commanding me to come sit down and
join him. You see, he had been keeping up with the Beauvoir readings as our group was reading
them. And he demanded from me, after each and every meeting, a minute by minute account
of who said what about this astonishing claim or that inexplicable argument, and then
demanded an account of why I thought that this student had said that, and then, applying
psychology to ontology, demanded that we decipher together what this "why", of the "that"
which was said by this particular student, about this book - what that could possibly mean for
the present and future of the human as such. And he grew irritated and delighted at the very
same time.
As deeply irritated as Jonathan may have been with us at one time or another, Jonathan deeply
loved us even more. He and his speeches remind one of how Alcibiades described Socrates and
his speeches as a sileinos, in all appearances a hubristic satyr, the inside of which is really
something altogether divine, having the largest number of images of virtue within, applying to
the whole area that is proper to examine for one who is going to be beautiful and good.
�Student Emily Axelberg
The most difficult part of Mr. Hand's passing, for me, has been accepting the fact that I will
never get the chance to adequately thank him for being my teacher, if such a thing is ever really
possible. With this brief speech, I would like to try to begin to express my gratitude.
I would like, first, to thank Mr. Hand for his seriousness. This one might surprise some of you
who knew him well, because Mr. Hand made a lot of jokes. He seemed never to miss an
oppo1tunity for biting sarcasm, and often didn't appear to pay much mind to whether or not those
around him would deem his humor appropriate to the context. However, I'd like to reference
briefly a commencement address that another excellent teacher of mine, Lise van Boxel, gave
that touched on this point. Sh~ astutely observed in that speech that, "seriousness does not have
to be grave." I think this is one of the most important lessons that I learned from Mr. Hand. He
openly rejoiced in the work that we do here, in the books, and in the company of his colleagues
and students. This rejoicing often took the form of a particularly effusive and lively approach to
teaching and conversation. Mr. Hand's ability to do the work here with impressive diligence and
rigor while unapologetically having the most fun possible is the standard by which I continue to
evaluate my own work. He taught me that the most serious response to the great books is an
ecstatic kind of joy, a lightness. In a document entitled "Mr. Hand's paper advice to freshmen ,"
which he sent to our freshman language class, he wrote, "these authors are suns: we, at best,
mere moons, straining to reflect some of that original brilliance." Mr. Hand's particular sort of
seriousness reflected the original brilliance of our authors to me and revealed the undeniable
vitality of their dusty old books when I was just starting out at the college. He was my first
shining example of what it means to search for humanity in the books we read, and to celebrate
when we find it. His last point of advice in that same document simply reads, " have fun. Really."
I believe this advice, though it might not seem like much, is one of the deepest and most
imp01tant lessons I have learned at St. John's.
I would also like to thank Mr. Hand for his continued commitment to my education. Mr. Hand
demonstrated a persistent dedication to my growth as a student and as a human being, even at
times when I was not so dedicated. A good example of this, which I will relate here mostly
because it's funny, is his contribution to my don rag about my performance in language class
during the second semester of my freshman year. When it was his turn to speak, he very curtly
declared something like: "I think Ms. Axelberg has gotten cocky and lazy." He, of course,
followed this remark by saying that my writing was basically satisfactory and there were no
major problems with my class participation, etc, but his first statement really stuck with me
because it was the truest thing that any one of my tutors said in that don rag. Even though my
work in class had been just fine, he knew that I was capable of doing better and called me to
account for it so directly that I couldn't disregard him . I remember that Ms. van Boxel even
asked him if she should write the first part down in the don rag notes, to which he responded, "I
don't see why not." This story is just one of many examples throughout my time at the college of
�Mr. Hand noticing me slipping, academically or personally, and encouraging me to do better
with the kind of totally unveiled criticism that it seems only he could get away with. The reason
he got away with it, though, is because even when he was at his harshest, I never doubted that he
was in my corner and wanted me to succeed. I know that the only reason he was so tough on me
is because my education mattered to him just as much, if not, at times, more than it mattered to
me. Without his constant support, I don't know how I would have persisted through some of my
roughest patches over the past four years. I don't think I really have to tell any of you how much
it means to have a great teacher believe in you and your work. Obviously, it means a great deal.
I will briefly mention my gratitude to Mr. Hand for his lesson on friendship. He once told me
that he reads to make friends, and the time I spent reading with him over the past four years
proved that to be abundantly true. I enjoyed reading with Mr. Hand not only because I had a lot
to learn from him about how to read the great books, but also because it provided an opportunity
for me to build the kind of trust and mutual respect with him that I had long been searching for in
a mentor. Because of this willingness of his to become a friend to me, I will cherish our time
together not only for how it contributed to my academic growth, but how it came to shape me
more broadly as a human being in my ability to be a better friend .
My last conversation with Mr. Hand was supposed to be on Book II of Rousseau's Emile, but we
ended up returning to a discussion that began for us in my freshman language class when we
were translating the Meno. We often revisited this conversation, which usually began with one of
us asking, "why do we even read these books anyway? What is it we're doing here? What do we
really hope to learn or gain?" Both of us struggled to provide an answer sometimes . It seemed to
me that Mr. Hand, like me, wasn't always completely sold on the promise of ultimate happiness
some people claim you will attain once you manage to figure out all the secrets hidden in the
pages of our most revered texts. Still, though, this work was the work of his life, and I know now
that it is mine, too. Faced with this version of Meno's paradox the last time we spoke to one
another, Mr. Hand and I once again sided with Socrates, agreeing that, " in supposing one ought
to seek what one does not know we would be better men, more able to be brave and less idle than
if we supposed that which we do not know we are neither capable of discovering nor ought to
seek -- on behalf of that I would surely battle, so far as I am able, both in word and deed ."
With Mr. Hand as my example, I feel confident I will continue to side with Socrates and attempt
always, through my seeking, to be better, braver, and less idle. Thank you.
�Tutor Frank Pagano
A few words on Jonathan
I am Frank Pagano, a tutor at the college and like so many others a friend of Jonathan's. I do not think I
am capable of speaking adequately about the personal characteristics that made Jonathan uniq ue like
his sunrise smile that glowed with good will, joy and mischief.
Instead I shall try to speak of the nobility of his mind. My theme, therefore, is Jonathan's daring intellect
and courageous soul, but I must start from afar, for Jonathan was at heart a St. John's tutor. The college
promotes and is defined by the conversation between the students and the great books. The tutors are
peripheral since it is not their education to which the college is devoted. According to the St. John's
Statement of the Program, tutors do not teach directly, they do not profess. The vocation of a tutor is to
ask good questions. Recently this humble calling has become harder to follow because good questions
presume that there are true questions. In our time the value of the truth itself is problematic.
Frequently we ask questions to avoid the truth. Jonathan was one of the few who dared constantly to
ask true questions. Let us try for our sakes to understand the truth of his questions.
Jonathan wrote primarily about Hegel, the man of many answers. Jonathan told me that he regarded
Rousseau as greater than Hegel. Each of the statements in Rousseau's Second Discourse is a hundred
questions. Jonathan did not share publicly his questioning of Rousseau. Instead he devoted himself to
demonstrating for us the inestimable worth of the truth. Thus his turn to Hegel. In some ways Hegel is
the culmination of modernity, but for Jonathan Hegel is not strictly speaking a complete
modern, at least from the vantage of the contemporary moment. Jonathan begins his lecture,
"Reconciling Subjectivity and Substance: Hegel's Critique of Pure Personhood," with the claim:
"Dissatisfaction with or at least ambivalence about modernity is part of modernity1.'' The reconciliation
that Hegel attempted is in one way a departure from the spirit of modernity.
Hegel thinks that he has achieved, according to Jonathan, an integration of the state, society and family
that prevents our person from being empty and our being from descending into nihilism and producing
a human nothingness. If Hegel's philosophical enterprise was successful, then there seems to be nothing
peculiar to our time for us to ask him. What then is the question? Jonathan's lecture is an act of startling
intellectual daring for it reveals how the true question lives. The true question, the question that does
not already know the answer, seeks out the right interlocutor. In our education, we must learn to be the
right interlocutor for the true question. But we do not know what for us the true question is. Because a
true question is a hybrid mixing ignorance and knowledge, our questioner must know and hope and
fear. The question must hold out hope for the truth and fear of the error of self-congratulation.
Accordingly in Jonathan's lecture Hegel is not the interlocutor, he is the questioner. Hegel puts the
question to modernity, including our contemporary pieties. Hegel integrates the human world, family,
society, and state. In contrast the way we like to talk is that modernity is revolutionary. Following
1
Hand, Jonathan. Reconciling Subjectivity and Substance: Hegel's Critique of Pure Personhood, Draft of March 10,
2019.
�Jonathan's Hegel we see this revolution is really disintegration. The contemporary revolutionary
movements in the family, society and state tear apart the Hegelian integration. This has always been the
spirit of modernity. In terms more convivial to my cruder mind, since its founding modernity has been in
decline.
What then does Hegel ask our contemporaries? He asks, What is the worth of your person without the
truth? This in its fullness is a terrifying question. Jonathan suggests that Hegel asks this questi on because
he has seen us once before. Hobbes claims that each of us awards ourselves infinite value and our
neighbors no value in themselves. We are the persistent deceivers of ourselves. Jonathan's Hegel
implicitly reveals that value, that social valuation, is an incomplete understanding of ou r fellow human
beings. It is merely the coin of the social marketplace. "I have my values and you yours" is the social
echo of an empty soul.
Jonathan was not a pure Hegelian. He recognized Hegel as the proper interrogator of our times, not the
least because he developed many of our approaches to our condition. Jonathan revealed how to
suspend the tyrannical spirit of modernity. Without fear he showed how to bring modernity to question
its own spirit. True questioning of ourselves, of the dominant spirit of our time, shining a light in our
cave, requires the strength of soul and the courage of a giant.
�Tutor Allison Levy
Jonathan
Jonathan was a true friend . To the College, to his students, to me and others. He and I got to be friends
back before I was a tutor, when I used to join David for lunch in the cafeteria and observe the fights he
and Jonathan had there over the mean ing of pretty much every seminar reading. It wasn't that
Jonathan didn't enjoy those fights -- I think he liked them, and I know David loved them - but at some
point Jonathan conceived the hope that the wife might prove a less misguided and argumentative
Hegel-hater than the husband, so one day he asked me to lunch alone. From this grew our tradition of
four- or five-hour margarita lunches at Harry's Roadhouse . From me he got less fighting about
philosophy, more drunken gossip, obscene jokes, and petty complaints, which he always treated with
great compassion. From him I got what everyone who's been fortunate enough to call Jonathan a friend
did: a profound, even visceral concern for my suffering and my good fortune, a fierce loyalty that often
defeated the dispassionate judgments of his prodigious intellect, a sensitive and deeply thoughtful
conversation partner, and a lively, irreverently funny drinking buddy who delighted in the ridiculous,
with which life and the College kept him generously supplied. He had a sharp wit and a particular gift for
impressions; if I had his talent and didn't mind getting fired, I'd share some.
But one of the many wonderful memories Jonathan has given me sticks with me and seems fitting to
mention. Last year, I happened to have all five of my senior essay orals scheduled over only two weeks,
which is a bit of a crunch and which occasioned much grumbling from me. Without mentioning it to me,
Jonathan noted the date and time of my last oral; when I came out of it, there he was, with a bottle of
champagne to congratulate me. We drank it in the coffee shop, where he complained to everyone who
walked by about the wrong I had suffered in being subjected to so grueling a schedule; he made sure
everyone knew of my heroic virtue in enduring such a trial, and called angrily for the punishment of all
responsible . little did he know, my feat was much less impressive than he imagined. It was Jonathan's
practice to devote to each senior oral an entire weekend of preparation, which issued in multiple typed,
single-spaced pages of careful commentary for every single essay; it didn' t seem to occur to him that
most of us give of ourselves less generously than he did, which was certainly the truth in my case.
Anyway, after we polished off the bottle I left; Jonathan struck up a two-hour conversation with a
student, about books and the meaning of friendship, a conversation which so impressed the student
that he told me about it many months later.
This was all standard Jonathan, I think. His generosity and intense care for his friends, for his obligations
to the College, for students in general, were central to who he was. As has been said, he was gravely
concerned about the possibility of deep human attachment in the modern world - in his own words,
taken from a speech he gave in honor of his beloved mother on her 801h birthday, "modernity is a world
of self-interest, of commerce, of fluid, contractual relationships, of social ties that are made and unmade
daily." His favorite image of modern human beings, as slices of "kraft singles" cheese -- that is, of
human beings as mass produced, identical " person units," individually sealed off and protected from
one another by plastic wrap -- was invoked often. Happily, Jonathan himself provided a very different
example of what human connection could be. His intensity of feeling and devotion to what he thought
right could make him quick to anger -- but unlike so many bloodless academics, he cared about things
worth caring about, and had the nerve to stick up for what was important even when it didn't win him
any friends. This combination of intense liveliness and awareness of the most pressing human concerns,
�together with an intellect as powerful as his, is extremely rare. Jonathan was a great boon to the
College and great delight and comfort to his friends. I miss him very much, and count myself extremely
grateful to have known him.
�Benjamin Storey
Jonathan Bradford Hand, 1958-2019
I met Jonathan some twentyyears ago. Both of us were graduate students at the C.Omrnittee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago. It was the spring of 1999; I was finishing my first year,
and was still more than a little green-curious and eager, but inexperienced and poorly read. I was a
kid who showed up from my state school education in the south to find myself surrounded by
people from Yale and other such places, who were infinitely better initiated into the ways of the
academic world than I.
Jonathan was older and wiser; he had read widely and traveled much. But he was also utterly devoid
of academic pretension. He never dropped names; he never jingled his Phi Beta Kappa key. He had
an infinite amount to share with me, which he did with great generosity. But he was also unfailingly
curious, always asking about what I was reading and thinking about, with his eyes always peeled for
new things that might engage his indefatigable attention.
We were both there to study philosophy, and philosophy, for Jonathan, was three things: political,
personal, and comedic. Political: Jonathan had no taste for metaphysical abstractions-he was
interested in the question of how to live, and how the spirit of the laws we live under shape our
souls. Personal: Jonathan thought that the thinkers and ideas that interested us were reflections of
our character, that you could tell a lot about a person from that person's taste in books and ideas.
And finally, comedic. & everyone who knew Jonathan knows, he was a great teacher, and he was
honored with a teaching award while we were in Chicago. Interviewed about that award, he
remarked that a good teacher was pan priest, pan lawyer, and pan comedian. He could do all three,
�but his comic talents were extraordinary. He excelled in imitations of the sages, living and dead,
who surrounded us in Hyde Park His Allan Bloom was forever spraying cigarette ashes about and
saying, "the-ahh, the-ahh, problem of, ahh, lxdng," his Martha Nussbaum was forever droning on in
an absurd falsetto about autonomy and wearing leather pants in solidarity with somebody or other.
He gave marvelous nicknames. For example, the chairman of the Committee on Social Thought,
Robert Pippin, was and is a brilliant scholar who commanded the respect of all of us, Jonathan very
much included. But Jonathan didn't respect him too much to give him a nickname. Pippin was
then writing about Hegel, whose progressive theory of history culminates in the liberal, bourgeois
modem life that we all find ourselves living, with all its material trappings, from the white picket
fence to the microwave oven. Jonathan cut through all the technical, Hegelian vocabulary in which
Pippin was so fluent so as to give him a splendid moniker: "The High Priest of the Minivan."
Jonathan's wit always brought life and thought together. In his way of thinking and talking, I found
the kind of playful, honest, learned but unpretentious philosophy I had come to Chicago to study.
Jonathan was my unofficial but deeply influential teacher, and he shaped my own way of thinking
and talking as much as anyone on the actual faculty of the university.
The classroom in which I got my lessons from Jonathan was a Hyde Park greasy spoon called
Salonica. There, we would meet almost every Sunday for long, leisurely brunches. Jonathan would
peruse the menu, for form's sake, and then proceed to order the same thing every time: skirt steak
and eggs, the steak medium rare, the eggs over easy-plus whole wheat toast, for health's sake. He
would do so in flirtatious engagements with his favorite waitress, a crusty Chicago dame who gave as
good as she got and who plainly enjoyed their repartee.
We would spend about three hours there, drinking large quantities of thin, American coffee and
talking about everything: Plato, Shakespeare, Tocqueville, our teachers, our friends, the young
�women in our circle. It was at that table, in Jonathan's company, that I really learned to think my
life through. For it was at that table that I learned how life and thought come together.
Afterwards, in the summer, we would repair to Promontory Point Park, where would swim off our
brunch in Lake Michigan. It was Jonathan who taught me that swimming in Lake Michigan was in
fact possible, in spite of the frigid temperatures and the occasional e-coli warnings. For he was an
adventurous spirit as much as a learned one. And we never caught either e-coli or frostbite.
Before long, I started dating one of the young women in our circle, Jenna Silber. Jenna and
Jonathan were friends, as well, and the three of us spent many hours in one another's company.
Both of us formed our adult selves in conversation with him, andJenna and I became a couple in
the context of those conversations. When we married in 2003, Jonathan gave a mischievous,
beautiful toast at our rehearsal dinner that people would remark to me about for many years
thereafter.
Eventually, we both left Hyde Park for our teaching careers, mine at Furman University in
Greenville, South Carolina; Jonathan here. You all know Jonathan's work here better than I do, but
I always thought that St. John's was made for Jonathan, and Jonathan for St. John's. For the mind
of a St. John's tutor must be both powerful and ready for anything-two qualities Jonathan had in
spades.
My own teaching at Furman was deeply marked by his influence. I agree with Jonathan that a
teacher is part priest, part lawyer, part comedian. I'm more priestly than Jonathan was, but I make
efforts at wit, as well. And when I listen to myself talk, I sometimes realize that I'm repeating
phrases I learned from him. More than that, my own who way of thinking about philosophy, as
something intimate and personal, something that we can see in all of our everyday interactions, from
the breakfast table to the convenience store, comes from him. One could see this influence in our
�shared love of the gauche Swiss-French philosopher Rousseau, who brought life and thought
together in a sprawling, unholy, but brilliant mess equal parts intellect, honesty, and absurdity.
Jonathan visited my family many times in Greenville, sometimes at Christmas or Thanksgiving,
sometimes just to hang out. Once, we all went for a hike in the mountains near there. On the way
home, we stopped for lunch at a squirrely-looking South Carolina roadside joint called the F-Man.
The proprietor, a guywith a handlebar mustache, a ten-gallon hat, and a brass belt buckle the size
and shape of Texas, took one look at us and decided he'd have some fun. When he found out we
were college professors, he began quizzing us on all manner of trivia he had picked up in his
correspondence school education, which wasn't~ bad. After he'd stumped me, the political science
professor, by asking about the running mates of failed presidential candidates of the 1890s, he
turned toward science, and Jonathan took over. Mr. F-Man had met his match. Before long, he was
sitting slack-jawed at our table, as Jonathan patiently explained the theory of relativity to him, using
the salt and pepper shakers to illustrate.
When we told my kids of Jonathan's death, and were talking about his brilliance and honesty with
them, my middle daughter, Rosalind, reminded us of his bravery. For she remembered the stories
he told when visited us after spending a sabbatical sailing across the Atlantic, through a near
hurricane in a boat that was no match for such weather. Most professors, after all, spend their
sabbaticals in libraries. Not Jonathan.
In thinking about what it means to have and to lose a friend such as Jonathan, a remark of one of
his favorite authors, Alexis de Tocqueville sprang to my mind. In his memoirs, Tocqueville writes
that " Whenever there is nothing in a man's thoughts to or feelings that strikes me," " I, so to speak,
do not see him. I have always supposed that mediocrities as well as men of parts had a nose, mouth
and eyes, but I have never been able to fix in my memory the forms that those features take in each
�particular case. I must constantly ask for the names of such men; yet it is not that I despise them,
but I have little truck with them, feeling that they are like so many cliches. I respect them, for they
make the world, but they bore me profoundly." Who has ever been less of a cliche than Jonathan
Hand? And who has ever been bored by him?
Jonathan suffered and he could be difficult; everyone who knew him well knew that. But I knew
him in the roles in which he was at his best: as my teacher and my friend. A few years ago, the two
of us met up in Roscoe, New York for a weekend. The place was an old haunt of Jonathan's, and
boasted of the two things that, in Jonathan's eyes, guaranteed a good weekend: a very good diner
and an excellent swimming lake. It was delightful, and Jonathan plainly delighted in introducing me
to it. He had discovered many beautiful things in life, and he was always eager to share them. The
man I am, the person mywife and children and students know, was formed by and through him.
He was a singular and decisive presence in my life, whose like I have no hope of meeting again. I do
not know if Jonathan believed in blessings, but he was a blessing, to me and to many others. To his
sisters, and his parents in Ithaca, thank you for sharing this extraordinary man with me and with my
family for so many years.
�Reflection for Memorial Service for Jonathan Hand
February l5t, 2020
J. Walter Sterling, Dean
St. John' s College, Santa Fe
Welcome and Opening
Welcome, thank you for joining us. Thanks especially to Michael Golluber, but also to other
faculty, staff, students, for planning and working on this event, and thanks to all of our speakers
today. I want to recognize Jonathan' s sisters, Sonya, Pattie, and Brooke, and his dear friends Ben
and Jenna Storey, and their children, Eleanor, Rosalind, and Charles, all of whom traveled so far
to be here. You 've heard some music playing now, by the Beatles, music which Jonathan
enjoyed and associated with lifelong memories . We'll hear more music in his honor ... We do
well simply to recognize the sadness and loss that many of us are carrying, but we are here today
to honor the memory of our friend, colleague, and teacher, and to celebrate together the gift of
his life, and in doing so we are strengthened as a community and brought closer together; and we
renew our sense of purpose. In that spirit, I invite our first speaker, Michael Golluber, to begin
when he is ready.
Reflection
Words, phrases, memories, images, quotes .. . jokes, so many jokes ... have flooded my
imagination, daily, since Jonathan 's passing. But it remains so difficult for me to wrap words
around it all. We wish, I wish, to honor and celebrate his life, to express the profound gratitude I
feel for the indelible, decisive mark he left on me, for the outrageously delightful and sometimes
maddening, often delightful because maddening, times we spent together. But my feelings of
sadness, confusion, and, yes, anger at his passing, and the powerful sense that a Jonathan-shaped
hole in my world will travel with me for a long time, forever, are all still with me. I have to
acknowledge that. It wasn't easy living with him as a friend, and it is much harder still to let him
go. His sister Pattie said recently he was larger than life. So true, so beautifully, absurdly,
magnificently true.
Jonathan contained fascinating multitudes within him and even people who knew him well could
be forgiven for not really seeing or believing all of it: his academic accomplishments, most
vi sible for us, perhaps, but also: - his incredible, unscripted, and sometimes remarkably
dangerous travels all over the world; his teaching sailing over many summers; his crewing a
sailboat on a physically exhausting North Atlantic passage on his sabbatical; summers spent
traveling in the Greek isles, or Turkey, or Italy; long daily swims in the Mediterranean; taking
his bike on the train to Albuquerque and cycling all around; his Jove of smart pop culture, going
to see stand-up comedy or Weird Al Yankovic (as he once reported, to my surprise); his serious
study, if I might put it that way, of Mad Men, or Downton Abbey, or South Park. His love of
jokes and impersonations. (One former student once sent him a mix tape, titled "I see London, I
see France .. ." with the rest of that off-color playground taunt left unstated, the tape had British
Invasion rock, the Stones, the Beatles, on one side, and some of his favorite French pop music on
the other - he loved that; he loved how that student got him , his playfulness, his sense of humor
and inuendo, his delight in that pop music, his love of Europe.) - and: his deep connection to
C_
�his family, especially his devotion to his parents, his rootedness in his eternal home in Ithaca. All of that lurking behind his jaunty grin, with a cocked hat on his head.
(
As dean and as a colleague, I will say now what I would say to some people while he was with
us, risking hyperbole: He was the best reader, the best teacher, we had here. He had enormous
intellectual gifts (surprisingly voracious for, obsessive with, mathematics and physics, and with
politics, and with the philosophy and literature that were his foundation) and he combined his
gifts with an intensity, a relentlessness, an incandescence, that was powerful and even more rare
- at times, too powerful to be contained in the word "teacher." One philosopher famously
wrote, "I am dynamite!" and sometimes, often even, Jonathan could feel like such dynamite. He
learned from some of his teachers - Harvey Mansfield, Allan Bloom ... -that it was possible
for these books, for philosophy, and for teachers, to make all the difference, if and only if
teachers, and students, could go right to the nerves of the books and the arguments, where
everything was at stake - to cut through jargon, to risk impoliteness and offense, to (as I long
said of Jonathan, to Jonathan) "strip and wrestle naked," to use a Platonic image for the most
serious business of conversation and dialectic. He got into the game for all of that- not to play
it safe, not to have a career, not to be esteemed or win accolades, but to be ready, like a great
poker player, to push out all his chips when it mattered most, to drop everything and follow the
argument wherever it led. Book after book, conversation after conversation, he was able to take
me, take students, take friends, to the center of things, to the difficult places where our hearts'
and souls' demands were all at stake and in play. But what a risk, and sometimes what a cost! I
know, I know, that sometimes, when he sensed it could matter, he put more hours, many more
hours, sleepless nights, of reading and thinking into, say, preparing for one senior oral where he
thought the stakes were high, more than I believe (from my experience) any of my other
colleagues do, certainly more than I ever had or would - more than once, I saw a senior on the
business end of that preparation, in copious notes Jonathan wrote but especially in an oral
bordering on interrogation, and that wasn't always ... easy to watch. Would they learn from that?
Would they be grateful for it? Would they realize that it came from respect - from seeing them
as worth that effort, that tension? I hope so, but it was a risk, it was teaching without a net, and
whatever the outcome, he poured his lifeblood into that kind of effort.
In reading hundreds of old emails from him in recent weeks, I came across one where a student
who had left the college had written a cringeworthy casual, familiar, and self-deluded, request to
Jonathan for a letter of recommendation, after failing Jonathan's class. Serious miscalculation.
Jonathan was the only tutor I know who would have responded as he did, and he copied me in
(as dean): he wrote a long letter, a brutally honest letter let's say ... and added, is that the letter
you want sent? St John's is forgiving, the world less, so, he said, closing with, " buckle up." He
put hours into crafting that, trying to do good for that student, to jolt that student into waking up;
in fact, hi s sincere plea was that the student really should return to the college. I, like many of us
I think, would probably have written a two-sentence note politely declining.
One of the things that he and I agreed strongly about is that beyond the job as a job, beyond
colleges as institutions, beyond all our rules and practices, beyond syllabuses and curricula,
beyond the books, beyond teaching as a vocation even, at the heart of it all was and is an
uncontrollable, unmanageable, quest to get to the bottom of everything, to get to what matters, to
fight for what matters ... you can' t domesticate that, and for someone like Jonathan who was
�always ready to push his chips out, there would always be risks and costs. Prices he'd pay,
bruises others would take. If all of us were like Jonathan, we wouldn't have a college, but if none
of us are like him, the peak of what we are about ceases to be visible. Without someone like
Jonathan, some of us would never hear the one thing needful, we'd never realize both how deep
and how immediate the books can be in speaking to us. To borrow from a revered author he
respected, Jonathan reminds us of "the sacrifices we must make in order that our minds may be
free." Like Falstaff, like Socrates, life is simpler, maybe easier, without him ... but real education
will always involve such dynamite. Certainly, some of us carry bruises, he carried bruises, from
his not playing it safer - but I know so many students and friends who were given treasures and
riches through his teaching, through that incandescence, and for us it was worth all the costs.
He was my late friend, my last friend, with whom the conversation could, would, go on forever.
Not everyone understands these friendships that are forged through hours and hours of arguing
about philosophy, about the good, the true, and the beautiful, with all that entails, but here at St.
John's I don't think it sounds too strange. I venture to say that for those of us for whom that is
the highest, or one of the highest, forms of friendship, we recognize that you only get a few, a
very few, friends with whom you can share almost everything, understand each other, drive each
other to the edge of what you understand, bring to articulation the questions that are just beyond
that understanding. And if you can do that with shared loves of music, poetry, film, travel, food
and drink, well, all the better .. . what a miracle ... - and, it seems to me, those friendships tend
to come during, and perhaps fade after, a certain season of life.
(
l
I met Jonathan our first week as tutors at the college, in August 2003, sitting at the Coyote Cafe.
I can say now, I never expected at that point in my life to have another friend, to join maybe the
one or two from the previous decades, with whom I could share all of that. I thought that season
of life was over. That friend you see on your way somewhere else ... and end up still at the coffee
shop, the bar, the park bench, driving in the country, hours and hours later, having forgotten
whatever else you meant to do that day. That day, Jonathan and I sat down together over a
margarita and talked - and talked. Our first conversation went on for hours (I still remember
exact phrases and formulations we used), we disclosed our views on religion, our deepest
commitments, our loves and lost loves, the books and authors we had in common, and ... for
many years, all the intervening years, that conversation - though interrupted by days, weeks,
months, and, much later, even years - never ended. I thought the season for such friendship, for
such ecstatic and wonderfully desperate conversation, had ended - but Jonathan at his core was
a kind of eternal springtime of the possibility of such friendship. It was what he lived for agonizingly irreconcilable as it might be with what counts as daily life for many of us. Part of
Jonathan's vocation was to be (as Plato wrote of the Greeks) "forever young" in this way. I think
any of Jonathan's close friends, and his many interlocutors and colleagues with shared interests,
know him as the one who would keep that dialogue going - forever, all night, as in Plato' s
Symposium, as long as we could go to what matters. - It was hard to keep up, and it was hard to
sustain. My memories of Jonathan include so many nights where he would nurse a last drink, or
jealously defend a last bite on a plate from waiters and busboys, or he might end up reclined on
your couch ... and he would seem content if the conversation never ended. You felt, I felt, like a
mortal, who needed sleep and rest, hanging on by a thread, with an Olympian who was prepared
to stay at the feast forever. At the end of every semester, we used to plan one escapist day in
Albuquerque. For years he loved to make that drive in my Miata convertible, top down, music
�playing, driving and talking, walking and talking, eating and drinking and talking ... peripatetics,
dreamers, adventurers of the mind. In search of. .. serendipity. Serendipity: he was with me at the
dinner in 2005, where I chanced to meet Meghan, in the great good fortune of my life, and he
was the first person I talked to the next morning, "see, that is the kind of woman I should be
with ... "
Jonathan was a great acolyte of serendipity: Among his favorite films, one we discussed many
times, for many hours, was Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, together with the rest of that
amazingly conceived trilogy, tracking the fate of a romance sparked on a train, with one night of
wandering the streets of Vienna, during which two kindred souls passing in the night test their
destiny together. Jonathan consciously and well understood that he lived his life as if the magic
of that movie might strike ... anywhere, any day, as romance, as friendship, as intellectual insight
or epiphany. We all have those hopes in us, but he lived it relentlessly, ever renewed; it animated
his European wanderings, it animated his desire never to end the conversation, it animated his
interest in what surprising next thing might come from a student's first reading of Plato, from the
exigencies of a seminar, from nature, from art. I said of him, to him, that "he loved not wisely,
but too well," like Othello, and I said that from a place of deep sympathy and shared,
unreasonable hopes; I have thought of that phrase often since his passing. That edge of
glistening, romantic hope married to such a rigorous intellect was ... dynamite. As his friend, it
was hard to keep the faith, hard not to disappoint, like Prince Hal with Fal staff, hard not to be the
first one to blink, to give up on the quest and return to ... life, to the demands of the day. But
Jonathan was always ... there ... waiting, ready ... there on the far side of all of everyday life,
ready to renew the quest, to forgive all, if we could just go again straight to the heart of things.
He was larger than life, he was Falstaff (which I intend and he took as the highest praise) - his
ideas and words, his wit, his perpetual youth, his incandescence, will stay with many of us who
were blessed to get close to him, to travel with him, in all senses. With a gratefu l heart, I today
mourn the passing, but celebrate with abundant gratitude the life, of a great teacher, the rarest of
friends, and a bright, restless soul who illuminated the world for me and many others, one with
whom I shared so many adventures, adventures that are the stuff of life.
-
J. Walter Sterling
�Williatn Byrd
(c.1539-1623)
Ave verum corpus
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Published by
:-«. Aoede Consort :-«.
Troy, New York
Copyright© 2012 Dan Foster, Aoede Inc.
Edition may be freely distributed,
duplicated, performed or recorded.
Please give credit.
________________________________________.
( \_, .._ www.AoedeConsort.org
Aoede@AoedeConsort.org
�Ave verum Corpus
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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Jonathan Hand Memorial Program
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Program for the Jonathan Hand Memorial that took place on February 1, 2020 in the Great Hall of the Santa Fe campus.
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Golluber, Michael
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2020-02-01
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Axelberg, Emily
Levy, Allison
Pagano, Frank N.
Sterling, J. Walter
Storey, Benjamin
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/6759">Recording of Jonathan Hand Memorial</a>
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Text
KEPLER'S DISCOVERY
OF THE ELLIPTICAL
ORBIT OF MARS
�ror e good many years I have had the ambition to be able to answer the question& How did Kepler errive at the so-called firat Keplerian law, the ellipticity
of the planetary orbit? The discovery of the ellipse ought to be, one would think,
a rather $traightforw®rd geom~trical aff~ir, a matter of calculating di~tsncee b~
tf.il~an Suri ~rid plenat t:rigonQmatdcaUy, arid eeein9 that thees distances fit into M
dlipse with the Sun at one focus. Now as all the commentat«:irs make clsar, eucli
dietance-dateTminetions do indeed play a role in Kepler's journey of discovery.
Sut this ~ole, as I believe I can now show, is e negative one; the trigon0atatry
does not lf!'Jiad to th~ !dee of thi!ii ellipse l.n the fi:i:at place, 1 t is too imprecitH~ to
gJ.vfJ the
£?J.,mansiof!_! t:Jf' the ll!lll.ipae, and H does not provide
~hl!lt Kepl~n~
regeu:·dsd
~~
en adequ~te confirm~t ion of the elliptical shape. What has smerged for me fr om ~
study of Kepler's book, the Aetronomia Nave of 1609 ~ and I do not believe that
thie underatanding appears in any of th;-;;condary literature -- is not msrely th~t
~epler gm~a hie journay theory-laden, btJt, that i t is £.Q!X thua that ha !iUai'U'lges to
rnrive 2t hie first tuio laws~ the ellipse end the e.i·aa law. It is en initial hum::Jl ~
~ physical hypothesis, which guides him throughout; every step ie made deliberat~ly ,
not only in confrontation with data, but in pursuance of that hunch. And the laws
~rrived et~ the ellipse and the area law, rest on the physical theory as on a pr~m
:Les; they r 't!main hy pothetical; t hey cannot be confirmed independently of one ano ther~ but taken jointly yield better predictions than had avar been achieved
before. What I shall try to show, then, is how this is so; to trace in achametic
outline the logical m~p of Kepler's journey.
let ma begin with two preliminary remar ks. The first has to do with the obthat Kepler used. With the benefit of hindsight , we can say that ell
the planets known to Kepler have nearly circular orbits. The one with the most
flattened orbit is mercury, but mercury, being close to the Sun, is difficult to
observe. The next greatest departure from circularity occurs in the orbit of IYlars
-- the orbit that Kepler studies -- and here the departure from circularity is such
that the minor axis of the ellipse is about 1/200 or i'% less than the major axis.
In a picture of this orbit drawn to scale, meet of us could noti by merely looking,
detect the departure from circularity.
~ervationa
Thus a planetary theory which uses circular paths can be surprisingl y good.
It is not quite right to talk about errors arising from the assumption of circularity alone; in any planetary theory, an additional aesumption has to be made ea
to the motion of the planet. But I can assert that, if one .2!2_ have a theory for
mars which erred only in assuming a circular path, the discrepancies between prediction and observation would never rise above 10' of arc. Now my thumb, held out
aa far as possible from my eye, subtends an angle of about two degrees, or 120'.
So the discovery of the elliptical orbit is going to depend on rather refined
observations.
The observations which Kepler used were made by Tycho Brahe, in the years
between 1575 and 1600. They were made by naked eye, but with large instruments, quadrants, sextants, on which the scales could be finely divided. Often
Tycho had two observers observing the same object simultaneously; their results
e0atetimes differed by ae much as 3' of arc, but the final result or average waa
regarded a s accurate to within 2' of arc~ This is to be compared with the 10'
discrepancy between observations which previous astronomers had allowed to be
tolerable. Without Tycho's reduction of the expected error to about 2' of arc,
Kepler's discoveries could not have been mede .
�2
/
FIGURE 1
STAGE 1
�3
The second preliminary remark concerns Kepler ' s hunch, the ph:1 sical hypothesis which guides him throughout his work. Whan Kepler went to Prague in 1600 ,
to work under Tycho Brahe, he was already an ardent Copernican. frJ saw that the
preeminent role of the Sun in planetary theory, which had appeared as an unexplained assumption in Ptolemy's constructions, becomes a simple cansoquance of
the postulates in Copernicus's system. However, Kepler felt that Copernicus had
failed to realize the full meaning of his new system. For Copernicus , tho Sun
sits like a lamp in the midst of the solar aystam, lignting and heating up the
world; otherwise it is functionless . The centers of the planetary circles do not
even lie in the sun.
Now Kepler felt that the Sun was more then a mere lamp. He noted that ae
you go o~t from the Sun, the actual linear speeds of the planets become lass:
Venus movas mere slowly than mercury, the Earth moves more slowly than Venuag mare
moves more alowly than the Earth, ~nd so on. To Kepler this correlation between
distance and speed suggested a causal relation: he hypothesi.zad that the Sun was
somehow causin_g the planets to move about, and that the motive force or virtue
fell off in strength ae one got farther from the Sun. Thus, when he sta~ted his
work on mars, l<aplar already had the germ of the idea of a celestial physics, that
is, an account of the planetary movements in which the planets do not have within
them the source of their motionsi but are moved from without by pushes and pulls.
What I think we need to see is how Kepler, faced with a mass of confusing data
end theory inharitad from his predecessors 9 is guided by this physical hypothesis
throughout his journey.
So much for preliminaries. I turn now to what Kepler, with his flnir for
the dramatic, calla his ~on mars. I shall divide the war into seven phases.
The first phase I shall baraly mention. It has to do with th3 latitudes of
the planet. The observed position of a planet is specified by latitude and longitude (Figure 1). Hare is the celestial epheret with the celestial north pole on
top, and the equator running around the middle. As far aa the making of observations is concerned, we can think of the (arth as being at or near the center of
this sphere. Inclined to the equator is the circle of the sclipti~. This is the
apparent path of the Sun during a year, projected against the background of tha
stars. The Sun's position along the ecl ipt ic, measured i n degrees eastward from
the vernel equinox, is called its longitude.
Now the plenets are observed tc do something like what the Sun doe3: their
general movement ie eastward, approximately along the ecliptic. However, they
depart from the ecliptic by small amounts, going above it and below. Now the
theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus with regard to the variati on in latitudes are
frightfully complicated. Kapler accomplishes an ancrmous simplification. He
hypothesizes that the plane of ffiar's orbit is inclined at a constant angle to the
plane of the ecliptic, and passes through the Sun. He is able to verify this
hypothesis by means of certain observations, which I shall not describe hers .
Note the use of the Sun as a fixed reference point; the previous theories had
always used an imaginary point called the mean Sun~ rather than the "real and apparent Sun", as a reference point in their planetary calculations, and this was
one of the reasons for the complications in the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories
of the latitudes . (In the case of Ptolemy, the additional complication due to the
use of the mean Sun is clearly apparent in the theories of Venus and Mercury; in
the Ptolemaic theories of the latitudes of the superior planets, the complication
arises mainly from the geocentric mode of description .) Kepler's establishment
�4
....
.&:,, , __
----
M,
/
/
/
E1
z
/
\
I
\
I
I
I
\
I
I
I
I
I
S
I
\
I
\
I
I
\
\
',
t1.'C'/
~y
" " . . . . . . . . -- - _p_1:1~-~.,, .
~~/
.......
p
FIGURE 2
STAGE 2
1
M
Mars as Evening Star
2
M
M rs a t Opposition
a
�5
of the constancy of the inclination, end the passage of the plane of the orbit
through the real Sun, is a first victory for his hunch about the role of the Sun.
In what follows, I shall ignore the problem of latitudes entirely. I shall deal
only with the longitudes, i.e., the positions of Mare as projected onto the
ecliptic.
Second Phase. Kepler sate up a theory for the longitudes of ~ars which is
successful in one way and fails in anothar . The first thing to understand is what
one hes to go on in setting up a theory for the longitudes of a planet. The observations of the planet are of two kinds. Let us agree to take the Copernican
standpoint, and to think of the Sun as a fixed point, and of the Earth and the
other planets as moving in orbits about the Sun (Figure 2). Hare the outer
circle is the assumed path of Mars, and the inner dotted circle is the assumed
path of the Earth. Ordinarily, when an observation on lilare,is made, the Earth,
Sun and Mars form a triangle, e.g., SEW. The observation gives only the direction of mars from the Earth, against t~e 1 background of the stars. At this point
we are far from knowing everything about the triangle. Of course Kepler does have
a theory of the Earth's motion, or rather of the Sun's motion, which he has inherited from Tycho, and we sh~ll find him trusting this theory to give the direction of the line E1 s 1 • for a reason which will appe ar shortly, Kepler will not
completely trust t~is theory to give him the distance E1 s 1 , which varies around
the circle since the Sun is off-center. And even if we accepted Tycho's theory,
to solve the triangle we would still need to know the direction of s~ 1 • How can
we determine the direction of sm,?
Thie b~ings us to the second sort of observation. About every 780 days, mars,
the Earth, and the Sun come into a line, with the Sun on the far side of the Earth
from frlars. At about this time, mars can be observed approximately on the meridian
overhead at midnight. At the exact time of opposition, an observer on Earth is
seeing mars against the background of the stars in just the positi on in which he
would see it if he were situated in the Sun. Kepler had twelve su~h observations
to work with, taken between 1580 and 1604 . Actually, one seldom ggts an observation at the exeat time of the opposition; the position of the planet at opposition
has to be calculated from a group of observations made about the time of the opposition . Kepler, for the first time, calculates the oppositions to the real Sun,
rather than the f1lean Sun; this is in line with his hunch; ha hopes this change will
lead him to a new and better theory.
But how set up •a theory? At the time of the opposition one knows the heliocentric longitude of mars, its position on the ecliptic as seen from the Sun. But
one does not know its distance from the Sun. The only thing to do is to make an
assumption. Kepler proceeds to try to fit a theory of Ptolemaic type to the data.
That ls, he assumes that r1lars is moving in a circular path with center at C, that
the Sun is off-center at some point S, and that the motion of the planet is uniform not necessarily about C but about another point Q, called the equent point.
All of these features are present in the Ptolemaic theory of the deferent of mars,
except of course that the Sun ia replaced by the Earth. What one needs to find is
the direction of the line SCQ, and the ratios of SC and CQ to the radius of the
circle. The procedure for finding these things, both for Ptolemy and Kepler, is
the horrendous one of trial and error: make a guess, than alter it if the theory
fails to fit the facts.
There is one difference between Ptolemy and Kepler that I should mention:
Ptolemy hed assumed that the point C is midway between S and Q for reasons that
�6
By vicarious theory :
SQ
~SQ
SC
=
18 , 564
9 , 282
11 , 332
From tw o tri gonometric
calculati ons :
p
SC between
8000 and 9943
(av . = 8971)
SC between
8377 and 10106
(av . = 9242)
FIGURE 3
STAGE
2
�7
are not entirely clear. Kepler did not want ta asaums this; rather, he wanted to
place the point C between S and Q et just the right point, to yield the beet fit
between observation and theory.
Kepler uses four of the twelve observQtions at opposition to set up hie
and afte~ 70 t rials, finds a theory which fits these observations. H~
than checirn the theory ~gain~t t he t'emaining eight observations , and finds the
concordance very good : the average discrepancy between theory and observat ion ie
50'' 9 the maximum dhcrepency being 2 1 12 11 • Whet th:ie theory does than, is to give
t he heliocentric longitudes of mars, ite positions es aeon from the Sun, with e
pr~~ie!on equal to that of the obearvatione .
theory~
Now ae we next discover, this theory is false. Kapler come~ to call ! t
hia vi carious or substitute theory , bacauee though false it serves to give him
the hel iocentric longi tudes of Mara, for all his later work. What it frtile to
gioo correctly are t he dhtancee of filers from the Sun.
How ca n Kepler learn ~y_thi n_g about the ~ence,!. of mars f'rom the Sun?
Suppcas f or ~ moment that wa take Tycho 's eolar theory and t ransform it into a
theory of the Earth's m
otion -- this ie a vary simple geometrical trensformaUon
mhich I shall descr ibe shortly -- end conaider. observations of' mars whtitr. it ie
~in opposition ( rigur a 3) . The Earth, Sun and mare in each of t he two ob0ervetions p.i.ctursd hers form a triangle . The position of Si'll is now known from the
vicerioue thaory j tha position of Em is given by the observation in each c~ae, and
the position of ES is determined by Tycho ~ s solar theory . Now Tycho'n eoler
theory~ which differs from Ptol emy'e only in its numbers, is known to giua ths
he liocentric l ongitudea or t he tarth with coneid~ rabla accuracy ~ juat as the vicarious theory gives the heliocentri c longitudes of Mars ~i th considersbla accu~acy, so all the angles in th~sa triangle$ are known to wit hin about 4 1 of arc.
The ratioa of t he sides of the t:r.ienglae can thiin be ci.ilculat&1d t ri gonometri©ally,.
If only one could huet Tyc:ho • e theory to give aJ.ao the ratio of SE1 to sr 2 - thase ar-e not equal becsuae the Sun is not in the center of the circl e -- on"
could determine the ratio of
sm1
to SM2 •
The fact is, Ksplsr know:<.l that ha can trust Tycho~e thAory, in its predi ction of Ea:rth- Sun distances, within ca!'tain lim.its. Ona beaie for this truat
is provided by observations of the apparent diameter of the Sunt e di sk~ which
shaw. ~hough ~ little toughly, thet tha distBncs b0twoen the Earth and Sun does
not change vary much, changes in far.t less than Tycho's th~ory p~sdicts . Th~
orbit ~mt be nsa:rly circul a!'. The possible er~ors are em3ll enough s o thet
Kepler can uae Tycho ' s theory to learn somsthing about ma1·e-Sun distance~ . He ifi
particularly interested in checking the plecramont of the point C, the cent~r or
tha orbit. The vicarious t heory had put i t about 0 . 61 of tha way from S to Q, By
computing mars-Sun distances near the line of apaidee Kepler now show6 t hat C mumt
ba muc h clcear to helf way between S and Q. !f he now alters the vicarious theory
eccordingl y, and puts C midway between s l!lnd Q, tha al tet~d theor y no lor.ger rn:edicts the heliocent ric longitudes of mars correctly, but gives errors as high as
B', whereas Tycho's observations cannot~ in error by more than about 2 1 • The
8' error ha r a~ Kapler tell o us, is what forced him to go on to a total reformetion
of aetronomy.
Kepler's situation, at this point, can be summarized as follows. He has
two theories, Tycho~s aolar theory for the Earth, and the vic8rioua theory for
�8
4
F I GU RE
STAGE 2
.
Theory s ucceeds
for
Why the Vicarious.
longitudes
heliocent ri c
�9
M
ars. Both are Ptolemaic-styl e theories, involving a circula r pati1, and uniform
angula= motion about a point within the circle. Each theory predicts tho heliocentric longitudes of its planet with errors not exceeding 1 1 or 2', as confirmed
rather direc tly by obser vation. * But if Tycho'e theory for the Ea:th is taken as
correct for Earth-Sun distancaa, then the uicarioua theory ie wrong with respect
to mars-Sun dio tancee . In f eet, tha vicarious theory is definitely wrong, becauae
the possible errors in the distances in Tycho 1 s theory are relativoly sm~ll, compared with those deduced for the vicarious theory . So of the two r ssurnptione on
u
ihich the vicarious theory r eErta , the ch'cular path and tns uniforr.1 m
otion ebout
an Equant point, one or the other m t be wrong. Ths vicar ious theory wil l remain
us
uasful, ana indeed indispeneabla 9 f or f inding the heliocentric longitudaa of
mars, but it i6 a false th11o:r y.
Which of the two Ptolamnic principles, circular path or equant point, should
ba changed? Kepl e r M no doubts en thie acore. If one has in mind tha possias
bi lity af a cclestiel physics, the equant principle appears artifi ci al: there i~
no body at th0 oquant point, no believable mechanism of which the equent principle
would b~ th~ 8Xprrcoian . ruoreover, the work on the vicarious theory has provided
Kepler mi h a cluA to a possible substi t ute for the equant principle. It is tha
equant princiclG th~t Koole r wil l firs t abandon, but before doing so , he undert ekee an inquiry as to why Ptolemaic-style theories, using equent points, can
be so successful, in tho prediction of heliocentric longitudes.
fundnrnantall '.; , tho success m6'0.ns this (figurf;! 4). The • arying motion of any
J
.i.$ symrr.etri r:2l. about a certain Hne 1 the line of apsi df,1s (AP}.
The fll!}E)\:.
r apid motion of the planat occurs at Gne point (P) , and its alawast motion et a
point 180° away (A). In between these points, on either side of the line of epsidss; the change in the planet's angular apeed about 5 ia gradual. Suppose we
assume the planet to be mouing uniformly on a circle concentric with S. This
theory is wrong , beceuse 1 sta rting at A5 tho po int of s lowest motion, the actuol
anet falls behind tna planet of our th8ory; the discrepancy builds up graduall y
to a maximum at about a quarter of tha planet 's period, and then decreasas again
to zero as the planet comes to P.
that after a
period tha pl anet is aean f rom S ~ long SK instaed af SU; in other words, the discrepancy ot thi s t ime between observation and
our first theory is the angle KSU. We can eliminate this discrapa~cy rather simply, by shifting the planetary circle up, so that its center is at Q. Thia new
theory will rhyme with observation when ths planet ·s in ths lines SA, S!C, SP, SL;
end the J(:r·g &-crde.< di;screp2mcv bstwsGn th$o:ry amJ obaervat.icri, angle ~CSU ( ,... a'f;,gl~
SKQ), amounting ta nearly 11° in the cBse of Mars, hae been elimin~tcd. Such diocrepanciea as remain will be in the octants, and will be much smaller; in the case
of luara these remaining errors are at maximum about 8 1 , i.e. , 1 /80 of the former
er ror.
Kepler goes on to ehow how 9 keeping Q fixed ae the equant point or center
of uniform motion, and taking a new orbit with center at some point C between S
and a, the remaining disc=epancies can be reduced below the level of observational
detection . In this fin al ad justment of the orbit ~ the point O~ previously deter*This statement is made from Kepl er's point of view. Actually, Tycho'a incorrect
values for ref rac~ion and for solar parallax lead to an eccentricity that ie too
high, nnd so the sol~r theory is more erroneous than the above statemsnt implies.
�10
Twins
5°30'
s
c
c
E
E/
E9~iva.lent Eal"th Theo~/
Tyc1o's Solar Theo1;y
F I GURE
5
STAGE 3
B A
Given :
( 1)
( 2)
SC
~
CQ
#
Then :
Q
AB : RP : : AQ : QP
c
(approximately)
s
But :
= SP ,
= SA .
AQ
QP
Therefore :
AB : RP : : SP : SA
(approximately)
RP
FIGURE 6
STAGE 3
�11
mined , must remain the equant point; otherwise, s oma part of t he n~ iginal l a r georder di screpanc y will be r e-introduced.
Thi s argument shows why , gi ven the general charactar of planotary motion,
a theory of the equant type is doomed ta succeao, as far as canca~na prediction
of heliocentr ic longit udes. There is one dther consequence I should like to mention for later use : it is that the placement of the equant point can be determined with greater precisi on then the placement of the center of the orbit, because
the placement of the equant point depends on the determination of a larger angle.
Third Staqe. Kepler devises a replacement for the equant principle. As I
mentioned before, the worl< with filers has already provided a clue. Kepler has
f ound t hat t he midpoi nt of the line of apsides, C, eannot be where the vicarious
theory puts i t , but must be more nearly midway between S and Q, the Sun and the
equant poi nt. Now it is a peculiar fact, on which Kepler had meditated, that
Ptolemy in his theories of Venus, mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, had assumed what is
called t h~ bisection of t he eccentricity . If we translate the Ptolemaic theor ies
i nto hel i ocentr i c form, what thi s means is that the center of the orbit is assumed ta l i o mi·· ~y between th9 Sun and tho Equant point . And Keplor has now gotten
a r ough veri f i r.ation o~ this assumption i n the case of Mars . Among the princ ipal
plenete, the main e xcopi.ion, to which this assumption had not been applied, was
the Sun, or if you are a Coparnicnn, tho Earth (rigure 5) . (Of tee other exception, mercury, Kepler ends by distrusting some of the observations on which
Ptolemy's theo r y is1based.) Tycho 1 s solar theory, like Ptolemy's, was a simple
eccentric theory : the Earth is off-center, but the Sun goes uniformly about the
center of the circle, so that equant point and center of the circle coincide.
When you transform thi s t heory into a theory of the Earth's motion, you again get
a simple eccentric theory, with equant point and center of the orbit coinciding .
Now what if the eccentricity were bisected in the case of all the planets?
Take a planetary theory in which the eccentricity is bisected (fiqure 6) . The
planet m
oves at a uniform angular rate about Q. In a given time ~t would, say,
go through e small angle AQB. In an equal time, later, it woul d go through the
equal angel RQP. The equality of,the angles means that, for small arcs near the
li:ie of apsides , very nearly, 'Ai3/RP = AQ/QP. But because of the bisection of the
eccentr icity, because Q and S are symmetrically placed about C, i~ follows that
AQ = SP and AS = QP. Substituti ng, AB/RP = SP/SA . In othar words, near the line
of apsi des , the arcs traversed by the planet in equal times are inversely es the
distances from the Sun. Or the velocity of the planet varies invoreely as i ts
distance f rom the Sun.
This is a new hypothe sis, which Kepler believes might be generally applicabl e , thr oughout t he or bit. I t is not precisel y equivalent to the equant pr inciple, e xcept in the li~e of apsides w
hen the eccentr icity is bisected . But this
h) pothes i s is in acc or d with Kepler's hunch , tho physical hypothesis he brought
wi th him to Prague, the i dea that t he Sun , by means of some mysterious, immaterial virtue, is pushing the planets about , and tha t its m
otive virtue f alls off
in c..h ''" •·:.t-h 11: i t. ~ ornat.or rli Ph~ '1C 8 S f rom the Sun .
Now Kepler feels that he will be justified in trying out this new hypothesis, if he can eateblish that tho eccentricity ie ~·~ so cted in the case of ths
Earth, just as Ptoleffly had assumed it to be for the other planets beaidee marcury.
�12
FI GURE
7
STAGE
3
Observat ion s a t E1 , E 2 ,
687 day s apart .
Dir ecti ons of lines
determined :
EJM ' E 2 M ~ E 3Mby
observati o n .
(2) SEJ , SE? ' SE 3 by Ty c h o ' s
soiar t fieory .
(3 ) SM by t he v ic a riou s t heory .
(1)
Leng th o f SM assume d the s am e for
e ac h o b serv at i on .
FIGURE
A
8
STAGE
3
I
\
I
I
I
\
\
\
\
\
\
" Radius Rule " :
Times fo r equal ar c s AB ,
BD, are as the distances of
t hose arcs from the Sen , Sm 1 ,
Sm 2 •
" Area Rule ":
Ti mes for equal ar c s AB , BD are
as the areas of the sectors ASB , BSD .
s
�13
The main procedure Kepler uses is as follows (Figure 7} . He takes three of
Tycho's observations of mars, made 687 days apart, the ti m it takes ffiars to go
e
once around its orbit. At ell three times, then, frlars should be at the same
place, m. Let the Earth at these timos be at the points E1 9 E2 , E3 • Then the
directions of the lines E1 ra, E2m, E3 mare determined by Tycho's obse rvations;
the directions of SE , SE , SE are determined by Tycho's solar theory; and
finally the position 1 of S~ is ~etermined by the vicarious theory of mars. We get
three triangles with all angles known 9 and one side, 5"11, in common. It is than
possible to find the ratios of SE , SE 2 , SE 3 to Sfil, and hence to one another; so
the positions E1 , E2 , E3 are found. Tnree points determine a circle, and so
Kepler can determine the position of the canter of this circle, and hence the
length SC in relation to the radius of the circle.
Now I want to stress that these trigonometric calculations are much less
satisfactory than the usual accounts of l<epler's work suppose; into each calculation of SC go seven pieces of data 9 each of which can be in error, and the trigonometric calculation can greatly magnify the initial e r rors, especially when
emall angles are involved.
Kapler goes throu gh procedures of this kind several times, and gets divergent results: the highest reault for SC is to the lowest as 5 to 3. All of them,
however, show that the ecc entricity of the orbit is ~than the valug assigned
by Tycho. Remem
ber that the eccentricity determined by Tycho is essentially the
eccentricity of the equant, which can always be determined with greater precision
than the canter of the orbit. Kepler's results, tho ugh markedly divergent among
themselves, show that the center of the orbit does not coincide with the equont
point as had always been previously assumed; rather-:-i't lies somewhere in the
middle between the equant point and the Sun. Kepler, then, assumes that the eccentricity is exactly bisected. Then he can proceed to try out his new hypothesis, that the velocities of the planet vary inversely as the distances from the
Sun.
The new hypothesis has one great disadvantage: it is dif ficult to calculate
with. The speed of the planet is const antly var ying as a function of its distance from the Sun, and the hypothesis says how it is varying; but what we need
to know is how far the planet goes in a given time along its path. To determine
this, one would need the methods of the calculus, not yet invented. K3pler attempts an approximation: approximately, he says, the times for the planet to traverse equal arcs are proportional to the distances of these arcs from the Sun; the
great er the distance, the greater the time (figure B}. In applying this idea,
Kepler goes through very tedious calculations, dividing the ssmicircle into 180
area of one degree each, computing the distancesof each of thsse arcs from S,
adding up successive sums of these distances and putting these sums proportional
to the times. Let me montion only one result: in the case of the Earth, predictions based on this new principle differ from those based on Tycho's theory by et
Most 9" of arcp which is below the level of observational detection. The new
theory is satisfactory in predicting the heliocentric longitudes of the Earth,
because it jibes with Tycho's solor theory. And Tycho's solar theory, a simple
eccentric theory in which th8 equant point coincides with the center of the orbit,
is satisfactory for heliocentric longitudes because the eccentricity of the
Earth's orbit is small -- less than 1/5 of the eccentrici ty of mars' orbit -- and
therefore what matters is only thA placemen t of the aquant point, which Tycho
has determined fai rly precisely. l<e pler knows this and depends on it.
�14
Fl GU RE
S TAGE
3
"Radius Rule":
Times for equal arcs AB, BD
are as the distances of those
arcs from the Sun, Sm 1 ~ Sm 2 .
"Area Rule":
Times for equal arcs AB, BD are
as the areas of the sectors ASB, BSD.
FIGURE
STAGE
)1...,,, ......
9
----.A
'
4
""\
\
\
\
I
\
I
Ptolemy's solar theory adapted to
account for eccentric orbit of Mars
s
I
Radius of epicycle = eccent ricit y SC
S replaces Earth; M replaces Sun
For circular path, angle A must be
equal at every moment to angle 1
I
c
I
\
'
I
\
I
I
\
'"
''
.......
--- p
/
/
/
/
I
I
�15
Then Kepler has another idea, to abbreviate the calculationE. The distances
from the Sun to the points in one of these equal ores (o.g. AO, figure 8a) are
all contained in the area of the sector, e.g. BSA. Tho aro::i of t ;iis sector suggests itself AS R ~~asure of all the dist~nces within the sector. Th8n just as
previous! y ·the distances of these equal a::cs wPre proportional to the times, eo
now the areas might be assumed to be proportional to the times, for thees equal
arcs. This is the origin of what is called Kepler's ~cco~~ law, ~h8 law of
areas: as it is usually stated today, the areas swept out by thF radius vector
from the Sun to the planet are proportional to the times. Actue~ly, t~is hypothesis is a new principle , not equivalent to the for~~r one. Out again, in the
case of the Earth, it rhymes satisfactorily ~1ith Tycho's theory: the m~~imum discrepancy is 34" of arc. In the case of mars, the differences t:JOU~d be r.;uch
larger.
f"ourth Staq_!!· Kepler renews his attack on r.lar:-:-., using his new principle,
that the areas are proportional to the times. (I a~ !Raving out of account here
the 'act that Kepler continued to calculate also with his firot hypoth3sis, that
the times for equal arcs are as the distances of th ose arcn from the Sun. I
shall deal only with his uce of the arP3 lru.)
In this new attack, Kapler first assumes a circulnr orbi~ for rn3r s, with
the Sun off-center. The Sun is presumably pushinq
pln~ot eround, the strength
of the push decreasing with increasing distcn~o fro~ ~~~ cun.
But at this point Kapler has to ask himself a quLJqtion. Why should the
distance of the planet from the Sun vary? w:1y dons it not si~~ly move in a circle concentric with the Sun? The only account Kepler can think of is an adaptation of Ptolemy's epicyclic theory for the Sun (figure 9). In this, the epicycle has a radius equal to the eccentricity, and movos count!"lrcJockwise oround
a circle with the Earth at the center, while thn Sun moves clock~ise a~: the same
rate on the epicycle. At every moment, anglo L = angle A. On these assumptions,
it can be shown that the Sun simply moves in a circlo ecccn~ric tJ the Earth
(dotted circle in the figure). Now this samo mechanism cen be adopted to make
Mars move in a circle eccentric to the Sun. Besidoo being moved 3round by tho
Sun, Mars then has a mover of its own, which moves it in this tiry epicyclic
circle. Kepler worries about how the planetary movBr might accor.plish this. He
knows,that, as Tycho's observations on the parallaxes of cornets ~3V8 indicated,
the heavens are not solid; there are no crystalline sphere~; comets rno110
straight through the planetary regions. Tho planetary mover h3s no feet or wings .
And there is another difficulty. The angle L docs not increase cniformly with
time, but rather follows the dictates of the area low. But for [ars t o remain on
a circle, angle A must at each instant be equal to angle L. So t~~ planet hos to
move !!2!!-uniformly about the epicycle. Oor.s ths planetary mover have to study
planetary tables, trying to find out whore it ought to be? J<ople= is sceptical
about that, but he proceeds anyway to 2rply th3 area law of the eccentric circular orbit.
I shall not describe the calculations. Uoing th8 aroa rule~ Kepler is
finding out where the planet is in its circle at givP-n ~imos in the whole period
of 687 days in which it completes its orbit. The rosu:ts ~re checked against
the predictions of the vicarious theory. As it tu~n~ out, thore is agreemont of
�16
A
FIGURE
10
STAGE
4
Er rors in Circul a r Theo r y
of Stage 4, as c ompare d
with the Vi c ariou s Theory .
p
STAGE 5
I
~c
Err ors i n t he Ov a l Th e ory
o f Stage 5, a s c ompa re d
wi th the Vicarious The o r y
�17
t he t wo t heor i e s i n t he apsi~oe (A, A) and i n t he quadrants (q, Q) but a discrepanc y of about 8' i n t he octants ( f i gur e 10 ) . At a1 for instancej the new theory
pu t s t h ~ plf~rm t 8'2"l 11 al'le a j of 111he r e i t shou l d be; and at o2 , it is 8 1 1" behind
where i t s houl d be . The pattern of e r r or i s s ym etrical in the other semim
ci r c l e . So t he pl ane t , on the assumpti on of a circular orbit end the area rule
or l aw, ie be i ng made t o m
oue too rap i dly about the aps i dee, and too slowly
about t ha quadr ant s . The re for8 either t he ci r cular orbi t must be wrong, or the
a r e a rul e, or both. I f i t is only the circl e which is wrong, t hen the orbit
must bs br ought wi t hi n t he ci rcle in t he m
iddle l ongitudes? around the quadrants,
eo t ht'lt t he amount of a r e a i s reduced t hare, and hence the times for given a rcs
ahortenad . The or bit woul d be oval.
Kepl e r perf orms a num
ber of c al c ul a tio ns wit h tri a ngles involving the Earth,
Sun and M s , in otd e r t o determine the di s tance of Mar s from the Sun in these
ar
middl e l ongitudes. I have pre vi ou s ly mc n:ioned the error in t his type of calcul etiqn . Kepler i s now i n a better po sit i on t o make these distance cal culations
t hen befor e, bec ause his ;~ odi f icati on of Tycho 1 s solar theory -- hie introduction
of the bi section of t he occontricity -- makes the the or y a better predictor of
Earth- Sun distanc e s . Eut 'the £'~ror is st i ll ~ trouble s ome . However , Kepler's
r esul t a £!.£ s how th.:i t f.'.:c.~ s '.':'.J ,:os l'.' i :.;hi n the c i r c le i n the mi ddle longitudes. In
othsr words, the or bi t is s ome kind of ova:, rather than circular. So the circle
of the Stage Four t heo ry is wrong . O the other hand, the area law may still be
n
right; it pr edicts that tha orh it i s ov al, and the distance-determinations,
though rough , confirm thi s prec;ic~ion.
fifth Stage . At the begi nning of Chapter 45 of the Astrono~l!!~'
Kapler tells us that, having di $covered that t he or bit is not circular, he felt
he knew the cau s e of th8 departure from circularity. from Stage four you will
recall that the planetary mover that was moving Mar s on its little epicycle was
having a rather diff i cult time. No t only did it l eek f eet or wirgs, but it was
having to move the planet .IJ£!!-~~ly on the epicycle in order to keep to the
sccsr.tric circular path. It u j ob would be easier, though still i mpossible, if
it had only to move the planet uniformly on the epicycle. But ii it were to do
thi s , t he resulting path would be oval, as required. This is eas y to show, but I
shall omit the demonstration . The actual orbit turns out to be 8gg-ehaped, wit h
the sharper end at the peri-helion, or point of closest approech to the Sun.
Kepler proceeds to calculate the consequences of this new hypothesis,
assuming as before the area rule. The calculations are horrendous. To simplify
matters, Kepler substitutes en ellipse for the egg-shaped oval; the difference
in shape is very small. I shall call th is el lipse the auxiliary ellipse . Even
then tha problem remain ~ difficult, and l<epler tries a number of different routes
to its solution. The results in which he finally reposes trust (fi gure 11) again
show agreement with t ho vicari ous theory in the apsioss and quadrants , and discrepancies in the oct ants. In onA calculation , for i nstance , he finds t hat the
new oval theory puts the plc11st 8 1 behind where i t should be at the f ir s t octant ,
and ?t' ahead of where it should b8 at the thi rd octant. Note that t he e r rors
in the oval hypothesis, on t~e ascu ~pt ion of the a r ea rule , are almost the exact
opposite of those found in t he circular hypothesis : the pl a net i s going t oo
slowly about the apsidea, and too rapidly in t he m ddle l ongi t udes . If t he area
i
law is right, then the orbit should bo ~ narrow: there needs to be more are a
between the Sun and th~ or~it in th8 middle ! ong i tudes y i n or der to show the
planet down t hore 9 areas being proportional to times .
�18
A
c
T
Q
s
+8'
-8'
Errors
in Circular and Oval The ori e s
Circular
Circu lar
Ov al
-8'
+8 '
1st octant
3rd octant
FIGURE
-8'
12
p
+8 '
STAGE
6
�19
!Hxth Sta.Q!. Keph:r now 0ee s that ~ on t he as eumption that the '111'&8 law ie
right , h~ will get a theory t ha t jibes with t he vica~ious th eory, in its predictiorts of heliocantr ic: longitudes , if he choos es an orbit j ust midway b~ti..1een the
cir cle of Stage four ~ nd the a~J x il .i.sr }4 d lipas of Stage f'ive ( f'igura 12).
Rounding off th e B:n·or s i n the oc t emb, we get an anti-symmetri ca l rarrey ( afl
shown oppo8 ite t he diegrelm) " Th e dotted !i!llipt icfi!l orbit, jumt 111ich.1m)' bE'Ntwaen
th ~ ci rcl @ ~n d t he su ~ il isr y ellips e, will reduco t hese symmetrical errors to
zer o. I n effe ct, t he arae l aw is controlling the s hape of the orbit . Tha f5 r3~s
swept out ftbout the Sun ~re es0umsd to be proportional to the timws; varioua ly
6h~ ped orb i ts distr ibute tha total area of the orbit in di ff er ent weye; only one
e hapa of orbi t will get t he planet t o the right plecG at t he right time. Dn the
eaeumptio n of the ~rea l i:u1p the right or bit csn differ only negligibly from the
dotted dlipee.
moreover , Kepler ia now able to calculate the precise dimensions of the
dotted ellipse. long before, he had calculated the width, CT, of th~ lunule
which the auxiliary ellipse cute off from the ci rcle. He hae only to he lvu t his
width to get QR , and hence RC , the semi-minor axis of the ellipse.
Two remarks.
As is well known , th e correct ellipse is that ellipaa which
hes the Sun et ona focus. Tha term "forcus" -- first introduced into European
mathematical literature by Kepler himself , in the Aatronomie ~Optics of 1604
-- is nowhere used i n the
now described (Phase#:£,),
realized that the Sun was
involved in the discovery
Astronomie Nave. At the stage of his journey we have
Kepler gives no indication ae to whether or not he
located at the focus. The focal properties were not
of the correct ellipse.
Second Remark. What about the possible role of mars-Sun diatancee, determined trigonometrically, in the discovery of the correct ellipse? From three cf
Kepler's letters, written in December, 1604 and January, 1605, it is apparent
that tha dietance-determinaticne are misleading him: they are giving the wrong
value for the amount of ingression of the orbit within the circle. Let the mean
distance from the Sun to the Eerth be 100,000. Than thG mean distance from the
Sun to mare comes out to be 152,350, approximately . The correct, dotted ellipse
comae within the circle by about 660 of these parts. Kepler was getting values
o f 800 or 900 parts. In a passage of a letter written in May of 1605 , after th e
war wea over -- it cema to an end about Easter time -- Kepler says thet the dis tance determinations generally left him in doubt by about 100 or 200 pe~ta.
By contrast, the assumption of the area law, together with the dotted ellipse,
laeds to predictions which, Kepler tells us, jibed mith the vicarious theory
"to the nail". The distance-determinations play an essential role , but this
r ole ie mainly negative and admonitory . They show that the vicarious theory is
wrong in ita predictions of mere-Sun distances, end that Tycho'e soler theory ie
wrong in its predictions of Earth -Sun dietancee; in both cases , they indicate
that the eccentricity is more nearly bisected; and in the case of Mare, they
show that the orbit ia not a circle but some kind of oval. After the discovery
of the correct elliptical orbit of mars, and after Kepler hes, arguing from
analogy, altered his theor y of the Eerth to make the shape of its orbit oval,
the distencee in these two orbits can be used in predicting positions of mars
es eesn from t he Earth; and these predictions can be checked against the obeer vetiona . But Kepler sees these confirmations es confirming hie mar s and Earth
t heories 1oint ly, not th ~ martien theory by itself . And in any case, the disUlnce de t erminatior~ do not lead, in the first place, to the idae of t he ellipse,
.2£. to its exact dimensions: they ere t oo ridden with error to do so.
�21
Seventh .2DS. final Stage. Kepler has the ellipse and the area lew -- the
first and the second plar1etary law!i that go under his name. He is in despair.
He feels that his triumph over filers is empty . He cannot explain ·.uhy the planet
should go in this particular orbit.
One day he ie considering a diagram of the eccentric circle -- not the
correct orbi t of ffiars, but the orbit of Staga Four (Fi gure 13). This circle, of
course, circumscribes the correct elliptical orbit. If we assign 100,000 parts
to the radi us of the circle, then the ellipse come s within the circle, in the
middle longi tudes, by 429 parts; Kapler had calculated this number. Now he had
been employing thie circle constantly, in his cal cul ations of areas in the el l ipse; and always in these calculations, a certain triangle pleyed a r ole: the
triangle with the base SC, where S is t he Sun, and C is the cente r of the orbit,
and the apex P is on t he circle, at such a point that PC ie perpendicular to CS.
The angle CPS, Kepler knew, woe s0 1a•. Kepler t ells us t ha t qui t e acc identally
he happened on the s ecant of CPS, t ha t i s PS/PC ; it was 100429/ 100000 . "It was
aa though" -- he says -- "I had awakened from s leep, and seen a new l igh t." In
the middle longi t ud es, betws8n the apsides, the lunula is broadest ,. and in fact
its width, 429 is just t he exc ess of PS over PC.
Keple r immediatel y a rrives at the notion t hat for othe r places on t~ e c i rcle,
e.g. , P' , t he distanc e of mars from the Sun should be gi ven , not by SP ', but by
the perpendicular project ion of SP' onto the correspooding di ameter of the circle,
viz . P'T .
lhe last part of the story I am barely touching on, because of its compli cation, but I do want to urge that Kepler's sudden sense of illumination is not
totally unintelligible. There are, I think, two raaeons for it. One of them has
to do with the relation between the area law, and that first hypothesis which
l<apler had proposed to replace the ~quant, the hypothesis that the times for
equal arcs are proportional to the distances of those arcs from the Sun. Kepler
knew that these t wo hypotheses were not equivalent fo r most orbi~A; b\Jt I thick
t hat et the moment of illumination, beca~ee of e certain geometrical rel a tion ,
he got the idea that the two hypotheses would be exactly equivalent for the
r i ght e l liptical orbit . This is not quite right, and Kepler finds a clear and
strictly corr ect formula t ion only much later, after the Astronomia ~was
f i nished.
The other reason has to do with the explanation of the e llipticity of
t he orbit. Kepler now proceed!:! to replace the motion of t he planet on the epicycle, used in Stages Four and five, by a libration or oscillation of the di ameter of the epicycle that goes through t he Sun. The possibility of such Bn
oscillation Kepler had thought of long before , when he was having all his di fficul t ies with the c onception of t he planetar y mover, and was t rying to imagine
a wey in which mar e could be caused t o move in an orbit eccentr i c to t he Sun .
K pler f i nal ly accounts for the osc il l at ion by a kind of m gnet i c a tt raction and
e
a
r 'pulaion. But the point I w ~n t to make he re i s that, i n Kepler's e arlier
study of this oscillation t ho tr i angl e P'TS i s i nvo lved .
Thus t his moment of i llumin~tion is t riggered by an dCCidontal observation;
but the reaso n that the acc idontal o~servation seems illuminating is that it
s uggests a solut ion to two prohl€ms on whi ch Kepler had spent long hours, and
with the geometry of llihic h he is thoroughly familiar.
�A
FIGURE
13
STAGE
7
Discove ry of the correct rule for Sun - Planet distances
When the angle at the center of the circle is x , and the
helio ce nt~ic longi t ude therefore u (approximately) ,
t hen -the Sun - Planet distance is n ot SP' (as in the circular
theory),
but P ' T (t h e p r ojection of SP ' onto the diameter) .
�23
What Kepler now has is a proposed procedure or formula for calculating the
distances of filers from the Sun. for a given angle at the center of the circle,
say~ x in rigure 13, the proper distance is not SP' hut P'T.
But: how is
P'T to be laid off? One end of it has to go et S, but where does the other end
go?
Kepler first verifies hie not-quite-defined formula by laying P'T off along
SP', the radius vector from Sun to planet in the old, discarded circular theory
of Stage rour. This theory, we recall, gave errors in the heliocentric longitudes of B' in the octants. The resulting orbit, gotten foam the new distance
formula, applied in this way, is not an ellipse. It does not matter; the angular
positions of the new distances era not quite right, but they are never off by
more than 8 1 • In an 8' shift, at the upper octant for instance, the radius
vector in the ellipse changes by about 25 parts. The distances determined by
observation and trigonometrical calculation are uncertain by 100 or 200 parts.
In other words, the observationally determined distances fit orbits which differ
slightly in shape from the ellipse.
Kepler knows this. But he wants to fit the distances of the new formula
into the ellipse. The orbit must be elliptical, as he has convinced himself
on the basis of the area law.~ter a time-consuming mistake, Kepler discovers
the right way. The new mistances, laid off from S, are to be shifted in position
from the line SP' to a position such that the end-point of the distance lies
on P'M, a line perpendicular to the line of apsides. Then the end-points lie on
en ellipse. Kepler is here discovering a new piece of geometry, hitherto unknown.
All right.
The war is over.
Whet I have bean trying to show may be summarized aa follo~E. The revolution which Kepler brings about in astronomy -- and the Keplerian rev~lution is
the decisive revolution, it is here rather than with Copernicus that we cross the
divide between ancient and modern astronomy -- this revolution does not consist
in the discovery of what may be called, in a simplistic sense, e~pirical laws.
If the first two Keplerian laws were empirical in that sense, thAn it 1110uld have
had to be the case that the ellipticity of the orbit was verified independently
of the area law, and then the area law verified within the ellipse thus found .
The actual process was the other way round: what Kepler verified, with the
degree of precision he wanted, was the proposition: .!.f. the area law is right,
!!:!.!!:!. the orbit is elliptical. It is true that he has satisfied himself, independently of the area law, on the basis of distance-determinations, that the
orbit is oval. But these determinations leave an unsatisfying range of
indeterminacy.
Newton will later write:
"Kepler knew ye Orb to be not circular but oval,
But the guess is no idle guess; it comes
out of a hunch actively pursued, in confrontation with all the previous theories,
end with Tycho's new data.
& guest it to be Elliptical." Yes.
If one is asked what is responsi ble for Kepler's discoveries, I think one
has to admit the role of chance, lucl<, or as Kepler would say, Providence. It is
into his care that Tycho's observations are eonfided
the only obaerveti~ns
that could have led him to his goal. The first task he is assigned is that of
�24
constructing a theory for mare - - the only planet whose elliptical path could
have been discoveredt in t he t hen state of the obse~vati gnal ert . The th@oriss
of Stages four and rive, which he constructs, happen to err equally in apposite
dir•ctione from the right result. H%ll .!1~.efL~!l! by accident on the !meant of s
tlertain eingle 9 ~nd sfJ emeirgss f'.l:om his final p~rplexity.
aut ruhat ii>l just as i.i:tpcrt.:ant, thro1,,.,igh all the
~ccid®nt
end ®I'ror
~nd
luck, is, first, Kepler's belief in the possibility of understanding, and his
dovation t.t:i hi~ task~ th~t con i es him th:cough four yaera of !'aaeord.ng i:md c:~l""
oulaUon;
~nd t>J~cond
y, the rightness of his initiB-1 hurv;h or insight., Md hh
ability to disentangle the confused state of things before him in the light of
.i t.
~~
procaecig
ioo~ad
e k i nd o f She&·i.m:k Holmei!3,'\,an l ngicp whi ch
cl ~ima
ir1
eliminating the impossible or false to arrive 8t the true ; and most of the
physical hypoth.wsas ha constructs wiH ha1Je lat.er to be discet>ded ~~ inconai~tant
~ith Nriwtonian theory .
But at ·the root of all his theorizing is that initial
aenao of the significance of the inverse releti~ between velocity and sietancs
'"""' I':! fir~t ~liW.!i11',!ll"
of wht'it will one dray be the law of cane1ervation t:f angulfU'
It is in the light of that hunch that he is guided through 900 paoss
or ~:@1. cul etion to El bettsx plen!'ltar y thecriry than hsd even.' bean proposed befoira.
No doubt K~pler ~ a di~cove~ies ~re a kind of mi~acle -- of chance and love, but
aleo ot inventive hypothesizing and detective logic.
mom~ntum.
�
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Kepler's discovery of the elliptical orbit of Mars
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Typescript of a lecture given in May 1967 by Curtis Wilson at the University of California at San Diego.
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Wilson, Curtis
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San Diego, CA
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1967-05
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lec Wilson 1967-05
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LAITY AND CHURCHES IN THE THIRD REICH
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Paper read at a conference on "Christianity and Resistance"
University of Birmingham, England
19-23 April, 1995
�BRvO, 1
While on an official trip to neutral Sweden in the spring of 1943,
Helmuth James von Moltke wrote a long letter to his English friend Lionel
Curtis. Moltke tried to give him a picture of the state of Germany and hoped
to get it to him from Sweden.1 The letter never reached Curtis; only a rather
deficient and severely abridged, memorized version was conveyed to the
Bishop of Chichester, who passed it on. It is interesting that, though
memorized and conveyed by a professional churchman, it omitted the bit on
the churches. 2
On his way to Sweden Moltke had read some recent Reports of the
House of Lords. In his job at the Abwehr, as legal advisor to the German
High Command, he had regular access to Hansard. The Reports may well
have included the pleas of Bishop Bell in the House of Lords on 11 February
and 10 March for a differentiation between the Nazi regime and the German
people, such as Stalin had made, but which the Casablanca formula of
Unconditional Surrender called in question. Moltke told his wife that he read
the debates with great interest and not without profit.
11
11
3
What concerns me here is what Moltke said about the churches, not in
the garbled version that got through to Curtis, but in his own letter, which
rested in a Swedish archive until resurrected a quarter of a century later.
After a long, detailed, and graphic description of conditions in Germany, he
addressed the question of the internal opposition to the regime, "the men 'of
whom one hears so much and notices so little,"' as he says, quoting one of his
ltteimuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya 1939-1945, edited and translated by Beate
Ruhm von Oppen, New York 1990, pp. 281-90.
2For the text of that version, see Ger van Roon, German Resistance to Hitler: Count von
Moltke and the Kreisau Circle, tr. Peter Ludlow, London, etc., 1971, pp. 364-67.
3Letters (see note 1), p. 277.
�BRvO, 2
English sources. He mentioned the immense difficulties any internal
resistance had to cope with and the losses inflicted by "the quick-working
guillotines. The opposition was, however, able to throw some sand into the
11
machine and surreptitiously save thousands of lives. Its chief mistake was
relying on the generals to act.
But it had done two things which, Moltke believed, would count in the
long run: the mobilization of the churches and the clearing of the road to a
11
completely decentralized Germany." He thought the churches had done great
work and he knew that some of the sermons of the more prominent bishops
had become known abroad, especially Galen's sermons against "euthanasia"
(so-called) and two sermons of the Bishop of Berlin, Count Preysing. The
state was putting great pressure on the churches, but did not dare to go too
far at present. And the churches were full, Sunday after Sunday.
Moltke's phrase about the opposition mobilizing the churches is
11
11
startling and in stark contrast with the assumptions of his later judge, the
President of the People's Court, Roland Freisler--assumptions shared, it
sometimes seems, by some historians: bishops give orders or exercise "social
control" and the faithful follow them.4 As Preisler knew, the Catholic church
was by no means as supine or supportive of the government as its postwar
critics allege. Unlike the Protestant churches, it had opposed the Nazis
before their assumption of power; and its adaptation to the new conditions
did not amount to capitulation.
In April 1940 the papal nuncio in Berlin considered it his duty to
report the following:
4see for instance Gordon Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler's Wars: A Study in Social
Control. NewYork, 1962.
�BRvO, 3
A part of the clergy have adopted an almost hostile attitude
toward Germany at war, to the extent of wanting complete
defeat. This attitude arouses not only the displeasure of the
government, but gradually also that of the entire people, as
they are almost all enthusiastic about their Leader; I therefore
fear that a painful reaction will one day follow which will divide
the clergy and even the church from the people. . . . As long as
it was merely a matter of domestic policy, it was easy for
anyone to distinguish between anti-Nazi and anti-state
attitudes; the clergy adopted the former but not the latter.
Now, when it is a matter of foreign policy ... there are only a
few who can understand that one can be against Hitler without
being against the state, i.e., without being a traitor.s
One member of the clergy he undoubtedly had in mind was Konrad
Preysing, the Catholic Bishop of Berlin. But there were others; and the
attitude observed by the nuncio was widespread among the lower clergy and
did not escape the Security Service or the Gestapo either. One has to wonder
if it was only the (unrepresentative) Protestant Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was
praying for the defeat of his country.
The Austrian clergy had little sympathy for the refusal of an Austrian
peasant, Franz Jagerstatter, to fight for Greater Germany. To Gordon Zahn is
due the merit of having discovered and publicized the story of that
extraordinary layman. Zahn had first delivered himself of a compilation on
the shortcomings of his church, full of dubious judgments, shocking
Srne Briefe Pius' des XII. an die deutschen Bischofe 1939-1944. ed. Burkhart Schneider
and others, Mainz 1966, pp. 354-56.
�BRv0,4
quotations and sociological jargon. 6 Then came the splendid book In Solitary
Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jagerstatter.7 The best part of it is
what the simple Austrian peasant Jagerstatter wrote himself. He was so
uncompromising in his refusal to serve in Hitler's army that the Gestapo
thought he might be a Jehovah's Witness, or at least under the influence of a
cousin who belonged to the sect. But no, he was a Catholic. He was not even
a pacifist--he had done some basic training earlier on. But he refused to
fight for the regime that was fighting against his church. His church,
however, was urging him to think of his wife and children and do what the
law required. The army, in the person of a sympathetic officer, even offered
him non-combatant service. But no--he would have nothing to do with that
army, not even in Russia, where it was allegedly fighting the godless
Bolsheviks. So, against the entreaties of his clergy, he went to the guillotine.
(According to Moltke's information there were nineteen of them at work in
Germany in 1943. Their installation had begun in the thirties. They were
more efficient than the hand-axe and quicker than hanging: three minutes
per execution; hanging took five.)
Where Zahn editorializes, he can go wrong--as in a surmise that in
talking about mass murder his hero may have been alluding to concentration
camps, whereas he obviously meant abortion. He was not a liberal. The
mass murder of the Jews may not even have impinged on the peasant of St.
Radegund.
What concerned Jagerstatter was not survival but salvation. He had
observed the Nazi policies against the church in Germany before the
6see note 4.
7New York 1964.
�BRvO, 5
Anschluss. When Hitler marched into his homeland, the Nazi system
developed in Germany in five years was instituted in a matter of days and
weeks. The church was not attacked at once. Cardinal Innitzer, the
Archbishop of Vienna, was a Sudeten German and rejoiced in the
incorporation of Austria into Greater Germany. He did not rejoice for long.
But first he and his bishops issued a proclamation praising National Socialist
achievements in national and social policy and economic revival. They were
not alone in this. Austrian Protestants were just as full of hopes and
illusions, and even some leading socialists shared them. Austrian church
resistance to the Nazis took about six months to form and stiffen.8
Did Jagerstatter condemn his hierarchy and clergy? He obviously
deplored their attitudes and utterances, but he understood them somewhat
better than their latter-day critics. This is what Zahn quotes of Jagerstatter's
notes:
Let us not ... cast stones at our bishops and priests. They, too,
are men like us, made of flesh and blood, and can weaken.
They are probably much more sorely tempted by the evil
enemy than the rest of us. Maybe they have been too poorly
prepared to take up this struggle and to make a choice between
life and death . . . . Perhaps, too, our bishops thought it would
only be a short time before everything would come apart at the
seams again and that, by their compliance, they would spare the
faithful many agonies and martyrs. Unfortunately, things
turned out to be quite different: years have passed and
8Erika Weinzierl, "Osterreichs Katholiken und der Nationalsozialismus," Wort und
Wahrheit, Vienna, XVIII ( 1963), pp. 417-39 and 493-526, and XX (1965), pp. 777-804.
�BRvO, 6
thousands of people must now die in the grip of error every
year. It is not hard to imagine, then, what a heroic decision it
would require for our people to repudiate all the mistakes that
have been made in recent years. This is why we should not
make it harder for our spiritual leaders than it already is by
making accusations against them. Let us pray for them, instead,
that God may lighten the great tasks which still stand before
them.9
On another occasion he wrote:
It may well be that hell holds great power over this world at
the present time, but even this need not cause us Christians to
fear. May the power of hell be ever so great, God's power is still
greater. Naturally, though, anyone who does not arm himself
with the weapons ... that Christ left behind for us in His
supreme legacy when He instituted the Most Blessed Sacrament
of the Altar, will scarcely be able to hold out very long against
these mighty enemies.10
The church had been instituted as the custodian and dispenser of the
sacrament, the means of grace. Should we not take that aspect seriously? It
is hardly ever discussed in the vast literature about the churches in the
Third Reich. Yet the Kulturkampf of the Second Reich had deprived entire
regions of their priests.
The enmity of the regime against the churches, indeed against
Christianity, was relentless, with only a few tactical adjustments during the
9solitary Witness (see note 7), p. 15.
lOJbid., pp. 231-32.
�BRv0,7
war. Towards the end of the 1960s John Conway had to remind the critics of
the Pope and the churches of this. enmity in his book The Nazi Persecution of
the Churches 1933-1945.11
The Nazis were not just anti-clerical; they were anti-Christian. Let me
add this: In public Hitler was careful about what he said. In the privacy of
his Table Talk he was quite open and indulged in denunciations of
Christianity along vulgarized Nietzschean lines: it made a people soft and
useless for great enterprises; it was the begetter of Bolshevism; it had Jewish
roots. Whatever one may think of the reliability of Hermann Rauschning as
a source, his report on Hitler's dictum about conscience as a Jewish
invention 12 rings true and agrees both with the indiscretions of the Table
Talk and the actions of the regime.13 As early as 19 34 the bloody purge of
Ernst Rohm and his associates in the S.A. included not only other enemies
like the former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, but also Erich
Klausener, the Berlin head of the lay organization Catholic Action. And it is
surely no accident that the much-quoted threat against the Jews in Hitler's
long speech of 30 January 1939 was immediately followed by a threat
against the churches if they stepped out of line and opposed the regime.14
The secret public opinion reports of the Security Service are full of
detailed observations of church opposition to and activities against the
11 London 1968.
12Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: a Series of Political conversations on his Real
Aims. London 1939, p. 220.
13Hitler's Secret conversations, New York 1953; and Werner Jochmann, ed., Monologe
im Fiihrerhauptguartier 1941-1944, Hamburg 1980.
14Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, vol. II, 1, 1939-1940,
Wiesbaden 1973, pp. 1058-59.
�'BRv0,8
programme and policies of the regime, with considerably more attention
given to the Catholics or "political Catholicism" than to the Protestants, who
were regarded as mere reactionaries and anyway always divided among
themselves. Catholic denunciations of Nazi neo-paganism were--rightly-regarded as attacks on the religion of race, and incidents of opposition to
round-ups and deportations of Jews were ascribed to church influence.
Little escaped the Gestapo and Security Service and their network of
informers and infiltrators. And Cardinal Bertram was, from his pusillanimous point of view, quite right to take fright when the last plenary meeting
of the German Catholic bishops at Fulda in 1943 drew up a pastoral letter on
the decalogue that had, in the section on "the human rights of the scond
tablet," comments on the fifth, sixth, and ninth commandments, with clear
condemnations of the wholesale killing of the innocent and the forcible
break-up of "racially" mixed marriages. The Security Service noted them too
and quoted them at length.15 They were obviously thought to have an effect
on the faithful.
The watchdogs of the regime were no doubt aware that the effects of
such pronouncements--there was a comparable one by the Confessing
Church in Prussia later that year--reached well beyond the flock of churchgoers. The churches were crowded during the war, and the crowds included
people who had not been in the habit of going to church. Thus Moltke only
went to a service held by Hanns Lilje after he had been bombed out of his
lSLudwig Volk, ed., Akten deutscher Bischofe uber die Lage der Kirche 1933-1945, vol.
6, Mainz 1987, pp. 197-205; and Heinz Boberach, ed., Berichte des SD und der Gestapo
uber Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1934-1944, Mainz 1971, pp. 767-69; also
Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte
des Sicherheitsdienstes und der SS, vol. 12, Herrsching 1984, No. 348 of 7 January 1943,
pp. 4635 ff.
�BRv0,9
flat and moved in with Peter Yorck and his wife; they went to hear a rousing
sermon from the man later re-encountered in jail. Even before the war
there was that tendency. I was certainly not a church-goer, and not even
confirmed, when, as a teenager, I went with one of my schoolteachers to
hear Martin Niemoller in Dahlem in the early phase of the Third Reich.
In fact, the inhuman and godless nature of the regime created
something I would call a wider congregation, which included even nonbelievers. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's brother Klaus was once twitted for kneeling
down at a wedding service and replied that he would rather bend the knee
there than to the dictator. The alternative may have urged choices on people
who in more normal times could have avoided them. When his brother KarlFriedrich later visited him in prison, Klaus told him that he had the score of
Bach's St. Matthew Passion in his cell. Karl-Friedrich commented that it was
nice that Klaus could hear the music when he read the notes. "Yes," Klaus
answered, "but the words also! The words!" 16
And then, in such a time, believers and many unbelievers looked to
the churches and watched them. They may often have been disappointed in
what they saw and heard. An activist like Moltke did indeed take part in
the "mobilization of the churches" against the regime. And the benighted
Anglican Bishop of Gloucester, Arthur Headlam, may have had a bit of a
point when he said that Moltke's concern about the church struggle in
Germany was primarily prompted by his antagonism to the Nazi regime,
which that bishop did not share, at least not in the mid-thirties. But it was
16Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision, Man of Courage, tr. Eric
Mosbacher et al., ed. Edwin Robertson, New York 1970, p. 832.
�BRv0,10
not the whole point.17 Fortunately George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester,
held different views.
When Fabian von Schlabrendorff was arrested in August 1944, the
police commissar told him that there were four grounds of suspicion against
him which led to the assumption of his involvement in the July plot: that
theological literature had been found in his luggage--a book on Catholic
moral theology, a book on Protestant ethics, publications on the
rapprochement between Protestants and Catholics, and a Bible. The second,
third and fourth grounds were that he had been a lawyer in civilian life, an
officer and a member of the nobility (one of Reich Labour Leader Robert
Ley's "blue-blooded swine"). The order of these suspicious circumstances is
surely noteworthy. The Nazis had never discovered the plot of 1943-because the intrepid Schlabrendorff had managed to retrieve and dispose of
the bomb that had failed to go off in Hitler's plane. But finding religious
books in the baggage of the reserve lieutenant on General von Tresckow's
staff rightly aroused the suspicions of the investigators. Schlabrendorff,
incidentally, held the view that before the Nazi challenge roused it German
Protestantism was somnolent, possibly even moribund.18
He was a dyed-in-the-wool Protestant. He was not alone in his
ecumenical interests and concerns, interests that went beyond Geneva and
Scandinavia and England and reached Rome and Roman Catholicism. Not for
17Michael Balfour and Julian Frisby, Helmuth van Moltke: A Leader Against Hitler,
London 1972, p. 71.
18fabian von Schlabrendorff, The Secret War Against Hitler, Boulder and Oxford 1994,
pp. xix-xx.
�BRv0,11
nothing did Hitler's ideologue-in-chief, Alfred Rosenberg, and his minions
denounce "Protestant pilgrims to Rome" in 1937.19
Moltke, another Protestant and the son of stoutly anti-Catholic
Christian Scientist parents, read papal encyclicals--probably the social policy
encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Ouadragesimo Anno--on the Sunday war
was declared. When he and Peter Yorck began to form what is now known
as the Kreisau Circle, they took care to include not only men of different
political experience and views, but members of both denominations-realizing the disastrous political consequences of the religious split in
Germany. In the letter to his wife about the way his trial went, Moltke
wrote that he was condemned for his friendship with Catholics, and,
sardonically, that he was going to die as a martyr for St. Ignatius. Indeed,
Roland Preisler had previously indulged in considerable vituperation against
the Jesuit Alfred Delp, a member of the Kreisau Circle, who was tried and
sentenced to death with Moltke.20 Augustin Rosch, the Provincial of the
Society of Jesus and another member of the Kreisau Circle, was arrested
while the trial was in progress.21 He survived. Lothar Konig, the least well-
19Nathaniel Micklem, National Socialism and the Roman Catholic Church: Being an
Account of the Conflict Between the National Socialist Government and the Roman
Catholic Church 1933-1938. London 1939, p. 180. Micklem also notes that in the context
of the anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge of March 1937, Preysing declared in
his pastorla letter of July 11th "that the Catholics had never felt themselves so firmly
united with their separated brethren nor felt so closely bound to them as at the present
time" (ibid.).
20Letters (see note 1), pp. 399 f,, 402, 404 f., 409 f.; also Roman Bleistein, Alfred Delp.
Geschichte eines Zeugen, Frankfurt am Main 1989.
21 Roman Bleistein, ed., Augustin Rosch: Kampf gegen den Nationalsozialismus.
Frankfurt am Main 1985.
�BRvO, 12
known but probably most active of the Munich Jesuits, escaped arrest.22 He
was also, like Preysing, a member of the Ausschug fur Ordensangelegenheiten, a committee of five bishops, four members of religious orders,
and a layman, which was officially concerned with the affairs of religious
orders, but was in fact a ginger group formed to overcome the paralyzing
effect of Cardinal Bertram, the chairman of the Fulda conference of bishops.
Preisler did indeed find Moltke's association with Jesuits most
objectionable. "And you visit bishops," he yelled. "What is your business
with a bishop, with any bishop? Where do you get your orders from? You
get your orders from the Fuhrer and the NSDAP! That goes for you as well
as for any other German, and whoever gets his orders from the guardians of
the Beyond, gets them from the enemy and will be treated accordingly."23
Preisler had got it back to front. The Protestant layman Helmuth
Moltke did not visit the Catholic Bishop of Berlin to get orders, but to
exchange information and to discuss the best way to fight the regime.
Moltke began his regular visits to Preysing, this most determinedly and
consistently anti-Nazi member of the German hierarchy, in July 1941.
Berlin, the young diocese of the Catholic diaspora, was lucky in its bishop,
who had opposed the Nazis even before his translation from Eichstatt in
Bavaria.2 4
22Roman Bleistein, ed., Dossier: Kreisauer Kreis. Dokumente aus dem Widerstand gegen
den Nationalsozialismus. Aus dem NachlaE. van Lothar Konig S.J., Frankfurt am Main
1987.
23Letters (see note 1), p. 403.
24see Edward N. Peterson, The Limits of Hitler's Power, Princeton 1969, pp. 295-311.
�BRv0,13
Berlin was lucky to have Preysing's right-hand man, Bernhard
Lichtenberg, the Provost of St. Hedwig's, the Catholic cathedral of Berlin, and
head of the bishop's Hilfswerk, the office for helping Jews or "non-Aryans."
After the pogrom of November 1938 he began regular public prayers "for
the persecuted non-Aryan Christians, for the Jews, and for the poor
prisoners in concentration camps." None of his parishioners ever reported
him. That was left for two visiting Protestant women students from the
Rhineland in October 1941. So he was arrested, as he had not been after
writing to Dr. Leonardo Conti, the chief medical officer of the Ministry of the
Interior and Reichsgesundheitsfi.ihrer, to protest against the killing of the
incurable and allegedly incurable inmates of institutions. But the public
prayer for the Jews led to his arrest and two years in jail for commenting on
politics from the pulpit, after serving which he was to be taken to Dachau.
He died on the way there.Zs
Berlin was lucky again, because Lichtenberg's job at the office for
helping Jews was taken on by a laywoman, Margarete Sommer, who on one
occasion, acting on Preysing's instructions, even penetrated to Cardinal
Bertram in Breslau and tried to get him to agree to a protest against the
deportation and murder of the Jews. But he insisted on incontrovertible,
undeniable proof of the latter--which she could not produce. So she failed.
But she did what she could. Gertrud Luckner did similar work with the
backing of the Archbishop of Freiburg. She was arrested and sent to
Ravensbruck concentration camp. Berlin had quite a network of people,
2Ssee Alfons Erb, Bernhard Lichtenberg, Domprobst von St. Hedwig zu Berlin, Berlin
1986.
�BRv0,14
members of the Protestant Confessing Church, too, who helped Jews evade
deportation.
Pastor Harald Poelchau, the Protestant prison chaplain at Tegel, was
one of them. He also helped innumerable political prisoners. By some quirk
of providence he had been appointed to his post in 1933--though he was a
socialist, a fact that could hardly have escaped the authorities. He was both
forthright and cunning-and indefatigable in help for others. As for his
sacramental ministrations, he once told Moltke--whose circle he joined in
1941--that he never offered communion, but that 50% of the people he
looked after asked for it spontaneously.26
What difficulties such ministrations had to overcome and what
interdenominational solidarity existed in prisons has been movingly
described by Eberhard Bethge, who was himself involved as prisoner and
ordained minister. He cooperated with Father Odilo Braun, a Dominican, in
the prison at Lehrterstrasse 3. Thus they shared the wine Bethge had
retrieved while tidying up the cell of Ernst von Harnack on the day of
Hamack's execution. They shared wafers, Bethge slipped the consecrated
host to Catholics when he distributed coffee in his capacity as prison trusty,
and sometimes he managed to bring the Eucharist to fellow-Protestants. All
these people were in solitary confinement after July 1944 and not all were
allowed visits by chaplains.27 Alfred Delp was supplied with wine and
wafers by two women who were allowed to bring laundry and other
necessities. The sergeant on duty was tolerant.28
26Letters (note 1), p. 169.
27Eberhard Bethge, "Plotzensee - die kostbare Gabe: Predigt am 20. Juli 1994,"
Evangelische Theologie, vol. 54, pp. 485-90.
�BRvO, 15
It was not just clergy that practised this solidarity. The case of the
Lubeck priests, three Catholic, one Protestant, who were tried and executed
together, was probably unique.29 The chief ecumenical push came from the
laity. Stauffenberg, the Catholic son of a Protestant mother, made it his
business to brief himself on the theology of tyrannicide. He may have felt he
had to do it because of the piety among the brave. He told Axel von dem
Bussche that tyrannicide was less problematic for Catholics, but that even
i
Luther permitted it in certain circumstances, and told him of a place in
r
r
Luther's works where he could look it up. Unfortunately Bussche never
passed that on and later even denied that it mattered to him: Notwehr. the
emergency, the need for self-defence, was sufficient.30 I still feel that
Luther, with his interpretation of Paul, especially Romans 13:1, was a great
impediment; and I wish I could find a helpful argument in his vast output.
f
I
!
'
Indeed, as Eberhard Bethge put it in his great biography of Dietrich
I
I
Bonhoeffer, "Like Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer had always believed that 'Luther
j
would say now the opposite of what he said then. 111 31 It took a sovereign
I
,_
spirit like Bonhoeffer to see that--or to claim to see it--and to act on it.
The Nazi challenge produced efforts to overcome theological and
sociological barriers. The situation in 1945 was very different from that
described by Thomas Nipperdey for the period from 1866 to 1918--which
he summed up by calling the denominational split, even among the
secularized majority, the basic religious factor, where the definition of
28Bleistein, Delp (see note 20), p. 325.
29Else Pelke, Der Uibecker ChristenprozeF.. 1943, Mainz 1961.
30seate Ruhm von Oppen, Religion and Resistance to Nazism, Princeton 1971, pp. 70-71.
31Bethge, Bonhoeffer (see note 16), p. 373.
,_
�BRv0,16
Protestantism for many Germans was anti-Catholicism and little else.32 How
tremendous the barriers were even up to 1934--and how Hitler was able to
exploit them--is fairly clear, too, in Klaus Scholder's account.33 But
something was happening to them--and it was not that secularization had
simply made them irrelevant or uninteresting.
One of the younger and earlier opponents and victims of the regime,
the 21-year-old Sophie Scholl, had a dream in her prison cell the night
before her execution. She and her brother and their friends in the White
Rose group were imbued with a sense of the need to rechristianize Germany
to overcome the Nazi regime and ideology. The tiny inner group actually
happened to extend from the Protestant Scholls to the Catholic Willi Graf and
even included one practising Russian Orthodox member, Alexander
Schmorell.34 This is how Sophie told her dream to her cell-mate:
It was a sunny day, and I was carrying a little child, dressed in
a long white gown, to be baptised. The path to the church led
up a steep hill. But I was holding the child firmly and securely
in my arms. Suddenly I found myself at the brink of a
crevasse. I had just enough time to put the child down safely
on the other side before I plunged into the abyss.35
That day she went to the guillotine, as did her brother and a friend.
32Thomas Nipperdey, Arbeitswelt und Biirgergeist, vol. 1 of Deutsche Geschichte 18661918, Munich 1991, pp. 428-530.
33Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, vols. 1 and 2, Philadelphia 198788.
341 am grateful to Christiane Moll for this information on Schmorell.
351nge Scholl, Die WeiF..e Rose, Frankfurt am Main 1955, pp. 101-102.
�BRvO, 17
Moltke considered the White Rose and its activities and motivations so
important that he took great pains to get a report to England, together with a
copy of their last leaflet. Unlike his letter to Lionel Curtis, this report did get
through, and the RAF later dropped thousands of copies of the leaflet over
Germany. Their effect may have been impaired by simultaneous bombing.
And Moltke's plea to the British not to treat the event as just a sign of
crumbling German morale, but as an indication that there were forces in
Germany with whom the Allies could and should cooperate, was hardly
heeded. The report ended up in the Foreign Office f1le on crumbling morale
and peace feelers put out by German opponents of the Nazi regime.
But perhaps even Moltke expected too much of the Allies after
Alamein and Stalingrad, especially Stalingrad, and over a year before the
Allied landings in Normandy. The war unleashed by Hitler and loyally
supported by the bulk of the German people had entered its last, most
massively brutal phase. And it was a coalition war, with very disparate
partners. That circumstance put severe limitations on the flexibility of
British and American policy regarding "the other Germany."
Yet some regret lingers. It is that, I supppose, that brought many of
us here. But let us give thanks for the lives and the deaths of these men and
women. It is by their deaths, and the pain of their families, that they made
possible a process of healing.
�
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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paper
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18 pages
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Laity and churches in the Third Reich
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Typescript of a paper read by Beate Ruhm von Oppen at a conference on "Christianity and Resistance" at the University of Birmingham, England. 19-23 April, 1995.
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Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
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England
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1995-04-[19-23]
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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text
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pdf
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English
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lec Ruhm von Oppen 1995-04-19
FaFi-Ruhm von OppenB007
Tutors
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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Zoom video conference
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00:36:02
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Learning While Alone Together On-Screen
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Video recording of an online lecture by Annapolis tutor William Braithwaite given on April 15, 2020. <br /><br />Braithwaite describes his lecture: "In <em>Memory and Recollection</em>, Aristotle distinguishes that calling-back to conscious attention which we name 'remembering,' from the kindred activity of re-assembling that ensemble of original perceptions and primary intuitions ('connecting the dots'?) which together constitute knowing some one thing whole. <br /><br />Are our e-meetings working as well as they are because we are able to remember and recollect the on-campus being-together that preceded them? <br /><br />This communal experience, now a memory, had at its heart a paradox: we regularly met face-to-face, in the same place, to read together books written long ago (some in languages not our own), in far-away places, by men and women whose faces we can never see, whose voices no technology can let us hear. How is such a way of learning fruitful? Can it be done through a screen? <br /><br />Drawing on our books, I shall offer some preliminary reflections on the differences, which we are now experiencing, between the screen and the page."<br /><br /><span>Enkh-Od Batzorig of the Student Committee on Instruction introduces Braithwaite's lecture.</span>
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Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas)
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2020-04-15
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Permission to record the lecture and provide online access to the recording has been received.
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image
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mp4
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Distance education
Technology--Philosophy
Quarantine
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Batzorig, Enkh-Od
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English
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Braithwaite_William_2020-04-15
Tutors
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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00:58:38
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Bib #81628
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Lessons from a decade of frustrating war
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 09, 2014 by Francis J. West as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the second in a series of joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
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West, Francis J.
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Annapolis, MD
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2014-04-09
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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 an audio recording of my lecture available online. 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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sound
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mp3
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United States, Foreign relations, Middle East
United States, Military relations, Middle East
War and society, United States
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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mp3
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01:20:38
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Memorial for Elliott Zuckerman
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Memorial service for Annapolis Tutor Elliott Zuckerman, October 27, 2019. The program includes musical tributes and eulogies by Jamie Young, Kirk Duncan, Dylan Knight Rogers, Eric Stoltzfus, Eva Brann, Christopher Nelson, Chester Burke, James Siranovich, Jonathan Tuck, Zena Hitz, Howard Zeiderman, and the St. John's College Ensemble.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2019-10-27
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Young, Jamie Zuckerman
Duncan, Kirk
Rogers, Dylan Knight
Brann, Eva T. H.
Stoltzfus, Eric
Nelson, Christopher B., 1948-
Burke, Chester
Siranovich, James
Tuck, Jonathan
Hitz, Zena, 1973-
Zeiderman, Howard
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Signed permission forms have 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 at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audio recording of my lecture available online."
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sound
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mp3
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Eulogies
Music
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Abbott, Robert Charles, Jr.
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English
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Zuckerman_Elliott_MemorialService_2019-10-27
Tutors
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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m4a
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00:43:35
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Myth and Mycelium
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Audio recording of a lecture given by Sophie Strand on April 22, 2023 as part of the Carol J. Worrell Annual Lecture Series on Literature. A description of the event: "For most of human history knowledge was kept alive through our relationships to each other and to our environments. Storytelling and scripture did not live on the page but in boats of breath, buoyed between generations. Our most important information was nested in oral narrative vessels compelling and flexible enough that they could reliably sail through cultural collapse, disaster, and climatological pressures. In oral cultures and the historical oral traditions, we see narratives that are intimately responsive to their environments and concerned with right relationship to land. What happens when we start writing our stories down so that they can no longer evolve? What happens when we shift from breath to text, from direct relationship to land to abstracted marks on a static page? When we uproot knowledge from its ecosystem – its map of relationships – it becomes more vulnerable to misinterpretation and misuse. What if oral culture’s cultivation of resilient community, narrative plasticity, and environmental embeddedness is exactly what we need to look to in an age of ecological peril? We cannot return to the folk traditions of our distant ancestors. But we can reclaim knowledge as inherently relational and environmentally situated.
What if we could reclaim narrative as a way of rooting back into a resilient multi-species network of beings with more feral suggestions on how to dismantle paradigms of domination? The type of stories we are called to write and tell now are probably somewhere closer to composting. We live in a culture that is remarkably good at abstracting itself from waste and off-loading it onto the marginalized communities least responsible for its creation. We cannot simply decide that civilization and patriarchy are toxic and then reject them. Instead, we can take responsibility for our entangled inheritance of bad stories through the transformative power of rot. On the compost heap, nothing is exiled. Beliefs and epistemologies never designed to touch, inappropriately combine in the moist refuse pile, fermenting into soil that can grow something freshly adapted to our dire circumstances. Let us reroot our favorite texts in their original environments to recover the ecological wisdom they were built to transmit."
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Strand, Sophie, 1993-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2023-04-22
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Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
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sound
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mp3
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Storytelling
Cultural narrative
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English
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SF_StrandS_Myth_and_Mycelium_2023-04-22
Worrell lecture
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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cassette tape
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00:34:11
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Bib #65727
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Newton's double pendulum experiment: talk and demonstration
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 20, 1999 by Curtis Wilson. This lecture was given as part of the Isaac Newton Conference & Exhibition at St. John's College, March 19-21, 1999.
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Wilson, Curtis
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Annapolis, MD
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1999-03-20
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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sound
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mp3
Deans
Tutors
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1538ee55ca16380a5942c5075bc01cd1
PDF Text
Text
On Nature and Grace:
The Role of Reason in the Life of Faith
Peter Kalkavage
St. John's College, Annapolis
Theology on Tap
Harry Browne's
2 July 2013
"Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature,
namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived
in the things that have been made." Romans 1:20
My goal this evening is to praise reason-that is, speculative reason-in the context of
Christian faith. Speculative here refers to reason that seeks the truth for its own sake.
Many voices inspired my effort: Clement of Alexandria, who extolled the wisdom of
ancient Greek philosophers; Anselm, who spoke of faith seeking understanding;
Augustine, whose path to God incorporated the philosophic eros for deathless truth;
Bonaventure, who coined the remarkable phrase and title, itinerarium mentis in Deum,
the mind's journey into God; and Dante, for whom the hallmark of heaven is the
perfection of the mind. A more recently composed inspiration has been John Paul's great
encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason").
The hero of my reflections is Aquinas. As a young student, Thomas was
unresponsive and seemed dull. But Albert the Great said something about him that turned
out to be prophetic: "We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine
will one day resound throughout the world." Aquinas is regularly in need of being
rediscovered. I say this because he is a logically rigorous author, whom some readers find
�dry and uninspiring. Admittedly, his writing lacks the emotional power of Augustine's
Confessions, the rhetorical energy of Anselm's Proslogion, and the inspired poetic flights
of Dante. Aquinas does not tell stories. He argues and makes distinctions. He is what
most people associate with the term "scholastic." And yet there are in the Summa, as I
hope to show, great beauties that cannot be found in other works of theology. Aquinas is
the greatest Christian theologian of nature and the natural. Nature for him is not the
sensuous, immediately given nature that St. Francis loved, nature as the world of trees
and birds, of the sun and moon. I am sure Thomas loved these things too, but nature for
him is something else. It is the realm of the universal and particular, cause and effect,
matter and form, essence and existence. It is the nature of Aristotle. This is nature as the
intelligible order of things that reveals itself to philosophic reason unaided by grace.
But Christianity also goes beyond Aristotle. Nature in Christian thought is the
creation of a loving God. We may therefore say that the world for Thomas does not
merely have but is blessed with intelligibility,just as man is blessed with reason. Nature's
beauty is not confined to the senses but extends to the mind. Shall we say that we
experience traces of God in a beautiful sunset or mountain range, or in stunning works of
art and music, and not in the rational order of things, the order that God infused into
matter? Such an admission would be absurd, indeed blasphemous, since God is the
source of the natural order. Reason, as the power of studying and beholding this order, is
inherently good. We should therefore be able to glimpse something of the mind of God in
things like the amazing structure and workings of our bodies and the mathematical order
of the universe. If Aquinas were alive today, he would surely continue his inquiry into
nature, unimpeded by any fear that such studies would undermine his faith. He would
2
�devote himself to quantum physics, relativity, genetics, and evolution-theories that call
his beloved Aristotle into question. He would persist in believing that reason is inherently
good and that all truths lead to God.
The Summa Theologica is a very big book with a vast range of topics. These
include the function and extent of reason in matters of faith, the existence and essence of
God, the order of creation, our passions, virtues, and vices, angels and demons, the
sacraments, the Trinity, laws human and divine, the resurrection of soul and body, prayer,
vows, and the vision of God reserved for the blessed. In spite of its difficulty, it is a good
book for casual browsing. Open it to any page at random and you will find something
interesting and instructive. The book is filled with arguments, but it is also a treasure
house of memorable sentences. I have selected one of these as the focus of my talk. The
sentence is about the great theme of Nature and Grace, and has always been my favorite
in the entire Summa: "Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it,
natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to
charity ." 1 The sentence occurs in Part I of the Summa, Question 1, The Nature and Extent
of Sacred Doctrine, Article 8, Whether Sacred Doctrine Is a Matter of Argument? Not
surprisingly, Thomas's answer to this question is a resounding "yes."
Before we examine the sentence in detail, let me describe the overall manner in
which Aquinas approaches a theological problem. As you know, the Summa consists of
so-called "questions," that is, topics that are to be investigated. Each questions is divided
into "articles." Every article begins with a well-defined question that invites a "yes" or
"no" answer. In the case of Article 8, as we have seen, the question is: Whether sacred
Quotations from the Summa Theologica are from the translation by the Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, Christian Classics, Westminster MD: 1981.
1
3
�doctrine is a matter of argument? Then Thomas proceeds to a numbered set of so-called
"objections." These usually but not always argue for positions that Thomas eventually
refutes. Then comes a turning point signalled by the dramatic On the contrary. This
section responds to the objections taken as a whole and cites Scripture or the Church
Fathers. Thomas then moves to a longer, more discursive section introduced by the words
I answer that. It mixes arguments from Scripture with arguments based on natural reason,
very often on the writings of Aristotle. The article comes full circle with the enumerated
Replies to the Objections. These are often the most revealing part of a given article, since
here Thomas exposes the error peculiar to each objection.
Thomas's way of structuring his argument is pedagogically effective. In addition to
addressing the theological problem at hand, the argument, in its carefully devised form,
habituates the learner to thinking in an orderly and logical way. The method also reminds
us that the tenets of Christian faith are often anything but clear and self-evident. There are
reasonable differences of opinion and potential confusions that require careful analysis,
sound judgment, and a judicious reading of Scripture. In addition, Thomas's methodical
discernment alerts the reader to the possibility of being deceived by false opinions that
have the outward lustre of piety and right-mindedness. In this way, the Summa, especially
in the Replies to the Objections, teaches us how to discern and expose that most
dangerous of intellectual animals-the half-truth.
Consider, for example, the first objection in our article: "It seems this doctrine is
not a matter of argument. For Ambrose says: 'Put arguments aside where faith is
sought."' How can anyone disagree with this view, which seems obvious, or dispute the
authority of St. Augustine's great teacher? Were it not for Thomas's discerning response,
4
�or something like it, a devout Christian might think: "Yes, that's right. One shouldn't use
arguments from human reason in matters of faith but stick to revelation, since it is the
direct word of God." But as Thomas goes on to show, the objection assumes, wrongly,
that the use of argument in sacred doctrine is an attempt to prove the truth of faith by
means of natural reason, which would undermine faith by making natural reason
supreme. That is not reason's function in theology, as Aquinas explains in the I answer
that: "As other sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their
principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences: so this doctrine does not argue in
proof of its principles, which are the articles of faith, but from them it goes on to prove
something else, as the Apostle [Paul] from the resurrection of Christ argues in proof of
the general resurrection (1 Cor. 15) ."
Thomas's argument proceeds not from the danger of undermining faith but from
the general form of science. Anyone who thought that theology was the attempt to
provide rational demonstrations of faith would only demonstrate his ignorance of what a
science is. Sciences cannot argue unless they have something to argue from, something
that is ultimately incapable of proof. These are called first principles. In the case of
theology, as Thomas explains, first principles do not come from natural reason but from
revelation. To be sure, this limits the power of reason, which can neither prove its first
principles nor in this case intellectually intuit them. But it also opens up a huge arena in
which reason is free, indeed obliged, to search out the logical connections between one
article of faith and another. One cannot argue rationally for either the resurrection of
Christ or the general resurrection of all human beings, for both are matters of faith. But
one can argue, as Paul does, that the one resurrection is the ground of the other.
5
�An important assumption underlying this approach is that revealed truth is logically
self-consistent. Like the truth that is the object of mathematics or physics, revealed truth
is a coherent whole and not a mere list of disparate propositions. It is to this whole of
truth, this "system," that theological inquiry devotes its unstinting efforts. Theology aims
at demonstrating the harmony of apparently umelated or even conflicting elements within
the body of sacred doctrine. In this quest for harmonization, theology comes to resemble
music.
Let us recall the sentence I mentioned earlier: "Since therefore grace does not
destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of
the will ministers to charity." It occurs in the Reply to the Second Objection. This second
objection is more complicated than the first. It states that arguments are either from
authority or from reason. If sacred doctrine argues from authority, then it is using what
everyone acknowledges to be the weakest form of proof and therefore uses for support
what is unbefitting the dignity of sacred doctrine. And if it argues from reason, then it is
using something that in spite of its strength within its own realm is unbefitting the end of
sacred doctrine. Thomas cites Gregory here: "faith has no merit in those things of which
human reason brings its own experience."
The first part of the argument against argument rests on the misapplication of a
generality. In its attempt to safeguard the dignity of sacred doctrine, the objection fails to
distinguish different kinds of authority, as Thomas will explain. According to the second
part of the argument, the use of reason would subvert the end of sacred doctrine, which is
salvation through faith, not reason. The logic of the whole objection rests on an either/or.
The objection seeks to reduce both sides of this either/or to absurdity, thereby proving its
6
�point. It assumes that there is no third possibility by which sacred doctrine may use
argument without imperilling itself, no third path. This is what our harmonic theologian
Thomas will reveal in his reply to the objection. He will open up a third path.
Whereas the Reply to Objection 1 is very short, the one that responds to Objection
2 is quite long. That is because Thomas must cover a lot of ground. He must find a way
to interweave faith, reason, argument, and authority. The interweaving will be made
possible by the harmonious interplay of nature and grace.
Thomas first takes up the thorny issue of authority. He agrees with the general
point of the objection: an argument from authority is the weakest form of argument.
Strictly speaking, such an argument is irrational, since it depends not on the content of a
proposition but rather on who said it. As I say, this is a thorny issue. We appeal to
authority all the time, not just in matters of religious faith. We trust some people more
than others, some authors more than others, some doctrines more than others. Even
avowed relativists do this. There are, moreover, degrees and kinds of trust. Sometimes
trust has something to stand on, some ground. But sometimes it is no more than a hunch
or gut feeling. Life is riddled with such acts of faith.
To return to the second reply in Article 8, there are different forms of authority.
Sacred doctrine is a special case. That is because its first principles come from faith, not
reason, and rely on the authority of Scripture, more precisely on those to whom God has
chosen to reveal himself. This leads Thomas to assert that although the argument from
authority based on reason is in general the weakest, the argument based on divine
revelation is the strongest. "Strongest" here does not mean "has the power to convince
the greatest number of people." It does not refer to the subjective effect of the argument
7
�but to the objective cause of truth, which is God. This leads us to the crucial question: In
what sense does natural reason function as an authority in sacred doctrine?
Thomas repeats what we already know: that natural reason cannot presume to
argue for the first principles of faith, and that its theological vocation is not to validate
faith but to bring clarity and coherence to what faith has already revealed. This is
Anselm's "faith seeking understanding." Then comes the crucial sentence: "Since
therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to
faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity."
The first thing to notice is that the sentence does not say "grace perfects nature" but
rather "grace does not destroy nature but perfects it." Thomas means to ward off an
opinion that an unreflective Christian might hold, that nature and grace are inimical to
each other, or more broadly that the supernatural is anti-natural. He means to defend
grace as an altogether positive force.
The core of Thomas' s sentence is an analogy between the order of knowing and the
order of loving. The unity of knowledge and love is characteristic of Thomas, and of
Catholic Christianity in general. The most famous instance is the Divine Comedy, where
Dante's vision of God is mediated by the poet's love for Beatrice. Beatrice incarnates the
unity of nature and grace, of reason and faith. Her physical beauty, most evident in her
eyes and smile, makes the grace of God stunningly visible. To address the objection
regarding the use of argument in sacred doctrine, Thomas harmonizes knowing and
loving. Each realm contains a hierarchy: faith is higher than reason, and charity is higher
than natural love or what Thomas calls "the natural bent of the will." The two higher
levels correspond to grace, the two lower to nature. Grace as a whole is higher than
8
�nature as a whole. But these two realms are not static rungs. There is an organic
connection: the higher realm presupposes the lower and works within it and for its sake.
Let us begin with the realm of knowing, which for Thomas embraces both reason
and faith. Reason should minister to faith, that is, serve faith. How does it do this? The
simple answer is that it engages in theological science. Theology has many functions. It
clarifies first principles and strictly distinguishes them from the conclusions drawn from
faith. It removes apparent absurdities and obstacles to faith. It raises and seeks to answer
questions that believers might have. It clarifies the content of faith and so gives the
believer a detailed account of what he believes. It generates plausible but erroneous or at
least partially true opinions in order to expose their shortcomings. In this way, it staves
off various heresies. Theology inculcates in believers the habit of thinking clearly about
the most important thing in their lives. It serves as a check on emotionality and sentiment,
which tend to warp our judgment and lead us astray in matters of faith. Finally, it is a
check on self-appointed reformers within the Church, who seek to remake sacred doctrine
in the image of their own ideologies, whether theological, social, political, or economic.
At this point, we may wonder: With all this emphasis on reason and intellect,
where is the sense for the mystery of faith? My first answer is that the great Christian
mystics, though not engaged in argumentation, nevertheless sought union with God
through their intellects. This is beautifully conveyed by that phrase and title of
Bonaventure's that I cited earlier: "the mind's journey into God." The true mystic is not
gloppy or vague. On the contrary, he is terrifyingly focused and disciplined. Through
prayer, fasting, and intense concentration, he goes through carefully ordered levels or
stages of divine immersion and divine ascent.
9
�My second answer is that natural reason has its own way of preserving the sense of
mystery, albeit indirectly. This is because the more we follow the path of theological
inquiry, the more we come to realize that our conclusions depend on belief in things that
ultimately defy natural reason and could only have been revealed by a supernatural
source: a God who became man, a God who is One and Three, love that extends to
enemies, and victory over death. When pursued in the right spirit, theological inquiry, by
seeking to exhaust the realm of natural knowledge, makes the believer keenly and even
happily aware of the limit of that knowledge. It is like a runner who runs as fast as he can
and waves his arms in an effort to fly. Unless he is insane, he does this comically, since
he realizes that his effort will never succeed. But his failure to fly does not refute or
belittle his natural power of running. It is rather the happy experience and felt realization
of that which surpasses him. Our comic runner marvels at beings that by nature fly and
feels a kinship with them. By feeling his limits in the power of his muscles and bones, in
the hard work of his heart and lungs, he may come to enjoy his running even more, since
he knows it embodies the aspiration of his whole being to take wing.
My image of the happy runner who joyfully embraces his limit leads me to a larger
reflection. It seems to me that there is a deep connection between the study of God and
the study of music. In each case, we use our rational powers to describe and as far as
possible explain something wondrous. In each case, mystery remains. In our music
program at St. John's College we read an author named Victor Zuckerkandl. What he
says about music applies to theology:
No one need fear that such an investigation will violate the mystery
and do away with the miracle. Music is not a fata morgana and not a
fake that it should dissolve before knowledge. On the contrary, the
true miracle will appear the more miraculous the closer our
10
�knowledge can approach it.2
I conclude this section on the order of knowing with an observation: Not all
Christians are up to or interested in the elaborate workings of Christian theology. Not
everybody philosophizes, not everybody theologizes. Not everybody has to. As Paul
reminds us, the gifts of the Spirit are many, and no single person has them all. But what
binds both sorts of people together, intellectual and non-intellectual believers alike, is the
shared faith in the ultimate vision of God. You do not need to be an intellectual to long to
see, see with one's mind, the face of God. Augustine in his Confessions gives us a
beautiful example of this. In Book 9 he tells the story of what happened shortly before the
death of Monica, Augustine's mother, when he and Monica were at Ostia, near Rome.
They were looking out a window into a garden while conversing about eternal life:
We ascended higher yet by means of inward thought and discourse
and admiration of your works, and we came up to our own minds.
We transcended them, so that we attained to the region of abundance
that never fails, in which you feed Israel forever upon the food of
truth, and where life is the Wisdom by which all these things are
made, both which have been and which are to be.3
This experience of transcendence is shared. Monica did not need to be an intellectual like
her wayward son in order to aspire to the supernatural Feast that was made for us all.
Having talked about the order of knowing, I now tum to the order of loving.
Experience tells us that the two orders are intertwined. To love something is to want to
know everything about it. To love someone is to want to know everything about that
person. In matters of love no detail is too small, no fact insignificant. What lover would
want to believe in but not see the beloved, or prefer a picture to the beloved's actual
2
3
The Sense of Music, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ: 1971, p. 9.
Confessions, tr. John K. Ryan, Doubleday, New York: 1960,p. 221.
11
�presence, or a recording to the beloved's living voice? This does not mean that lovers do
not delight in veils, signs, poetic symbols, and implied meanings. But these are all part of
the knowledge and intimacy that love seeks. They are the indirect, playful ways in which
lovers are revealed to each other. Our experience of earthly love points to why theology
is one of love's highest labors, for the mind too is a lover. The exertions of argumentative
reason in matters pertaining to God are all efforts on the part of the thinker to know the
God whom the thinker desperately loves.
We must bear in mind, however, that theology does not exist solely for the divine
delectation of the theologian. It is also for the edification, to use Paul's word, the
building-up of God's people, his Church on earth. As Thomas writes in his Prologue, the
"Master of Catholic Truth" has an obligation to teach both the proficient and beginners.
The Summa, he says, quoting Paul, is the milk on which beginners must be nourished
before they move on to the meat. Given the difficulty of the Summa, we marvel at what
theological meat might taste like! What I mean to suggest is that Thomas's book is a
work of charity. It embodies a love that seeks to guide and care for the Church, which
draws its strength from sound doctrine. Thomas cares for the young soul in particular,
that is, the soul young in faith.
As we have seen, Thomas's sentence connects the realms of knowing and loving,
and points out an upper and a lower level within each: grace and nature, respectively.
Natural reason ministers to faith by first adopting faith as a source of first principles and
then proceeding to clarify the manifold content of faith.
Something like this must be happening in the order of loving as well, the order in
which "the natural bent of the will ministers to charity." I think what this means is that
12
�the will is naturally directed to God as its ultimate object and First Principle. Our hearts
were made to love the highest good, just as our minds were made to seek the highest
truth. That is our nature. As Augustine so beautifully puts it, "our heart is restless until it
rests in Thee" (Confessions I, 1). Natural love loves God; it just doesn't-can't-love
him enough. Left to itself, natural love cannot obey the commandment Jesus gives in
Matthew: "You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (5:48)-that is,
perfect in love. Charity through grace takes hold of the naturally loving will and lifts it
beyond its natural capacity in order to fulfil its supernatural destiny. It perfects natural
love by making the will perfectly adequate to its object. Here is how Thomas defines
charity: "By charity I mean the movement of the soul towards the enjoyment of God for
His own sake" (II, II, Q. 23, Art. 2, On the contrary). The perfected love of neighbour is
a participation in this perfected love of God. Thomas's point is that grace does not enter
the realm of natural love and replace that love with something alien to it. Rather it causes
the love that is already there, and which God has made, to transcend itself so that it may
be fully itself, fully adequate to its intended object. To be sure, grace, Thomas argues, is
creative (II, II, Q. 23, Art. 2). It produces something that was not there before and cannot
be there unless grace is infused. But there is a there there to begin with-natural love as
the host of supernatural help.
The natural bent of the will thus ministers to faith, serves faith, by being at the
service of infused grace. And just as natural reason has as its vocation the acceptance of
first principles that do not come from natural reason but only from faith, so too natural
love has as its vocation the receptivity to being transformed and uplifted by a power
beyond itself. Furthermore, natural love is always moving us in the right direction,
13
�toward the highest good. It just needs help to get there, the help that is grace. The natural
bent of the will, natural love, ministers to faith because all our finite loves, and even our .
most trivial likings, are images of the Higher Love. Natural love, like natural reason, is a
runner who longs to fly.
In conclusion, for Thomas there is cooperation- not war, as some Christian
thinkers have affirmed- between the realms of nature and grace: between reason and
faith, and between natural love and divine love. Since grace works by infusion,
something has to be there beforehand to receive grace. Moreover, grace does not merely
change nature but perfects it. It is the vocation of our nature to be graced in both knowing
and loving. The harmonious union of nature and grace is the soul ofThomas's whole
teaching. It embodies his faith in the goodness of God and the goodness of what God has
made.
And so my praise of reason, and of Aquinas, reaches its end. I close with a passage
from a letter written by one of Thomas' s biggest fans, the southern Catholic writer
Flannery O'Connor:
I couldn't make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I
read it every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in
during the process and say, 'Tum off that light. It's late,' I with lifted
finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, 'On the
contrary, I answer that the Light, being eternal and limitless, cannot
be turned off. Shut your eyes,' or some such thing. In any case I can
personally guarantee that St. Thomas loved God because for the life
of me I cannot help loving St. Thomas.4
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald,
Vintage Books, New York: 1980.
4
14
�
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ON TRANSLATING PLATO
For "Retracing the Platonic Text":
Conference
held on March 20-22, 1997 at Penn State
Eva T. H. Brann
Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
I imagine that Professor Sallis asked me to speak on
translating in the first instance because of some work I had done
in turning German into English. First was the translation of
Jacob Klein's book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra, which was originally published by the M.I.T. Press in
1968, and, having become a sort of classic not only in the
history of mathematics but also in the study of modernity, was
picked up for republication by the Dover Press in 1991. I had
also done an annotated version of Heidegger's essay ''What is that
-- Philosophy?'' for the use of our seniors at st. John's College.
It remains unpublished because Professor Sallis was unable to
obtain reasonable terms from the Heidegger estate. Furthermore I
did an essay written by Nietzsche when he was twenty "On the
Relation of the Speech of Alcibades to the Other Speeches of the
Platonic Symposium," which our student journal Energeia published
to serve not only a model but also as an encouragement for our
students who choose similar topics for their annual essay.
I
aiso did a short vignette by Hermann Hesse, called "An Evening at
Home with Doctor Faustus" for the same journal; in this story
Mephistopheles invents a future-phonograph and plays for Doctor
Faustus the music of our century -- pretty nearly the same that
sometimes wafts across our campus. The Doctor concludes that the
world has gone to the devil, as he himself soon will.
In 1995 I was asked by the series adviser, Keith Whitaker to
do a first translation for the nascent Focus Philosophical
Library; Plato was suggested as a possibility. The Focus Press
publishes fresh translations, intended to be very reasonably
priced and to be used by American students. The project was
appealing to me both as a teacher in a school dependent on good
and accessible translations and as a dean in need of intellectual
recreation.
I had what turned out to be an inspired idea, that of
seeking collaborators among my colleagues, figuring that the
pleasure of becoming so really intimate with a dialogue as only a
translator is would be enhanced by the close partnership of
common work, and that three heads could better solve the problems
and detect the mistakes that would surely dog a lone translator.
Peter Kalkavage and Eric Salem agreed to becoming a trio. We
chose the Sophist because we had all three begun to recognize the
dialogue as the most ontologically future-fraught of them all,
�2
and we welcomed the challenge of preserving its originary
freshness.
What follows is a report, under various headings, of the
things we think we learned, and the advice we might venture to
give our fellow translators.
Collaboration
One feature of the Sophist is that wherever you are, there
he is not; he is forever trying to escape into trackless
impassible thickets, ("Impasse," incidentally, is one of our
translations, very nearly literal, of aporia -- waylessness.)
But those who deal in knowing also display an opposite fault in
the dialogues. That is the fault of position-taking. They
occupy positions in defense of which they throw up outworks
(problema is the Greek word for such a defensive outwork) and
employ various apotropaic stratagems. Evidently Socrates and
Plato consider that either to have a universal escape route in
all arguments or to occupy entrenched positions is unworthy of
the philosopher's mission.
And so it is of the translator's task. Those who work
together on transferring Greek meanings into English words have
to be focussed on what the Greeks call the praqma and what Hegel
calls die Sache. They have to eschew both escape and
entrenchment, and they must be objective -- intent on the object
at hand.
Yet while ego is out, there is a strong human element in a
collaboration put in the service of a dialogue.
It demands and
develops friendship.
The three of us all bring slightly
different strengths: One is perhaps more alert to Greek grammar,
another to the philosophical resonances of terms. All three of
us, having undergone the most effective part of our education at
St. John's College, are relatively fearless in the face of
ignorance and fresh in our deliberate amateurism.
The way we work is that each of us presents a translation of
one Stephanus page in turn every third week, which all of us
together then rake over as with a fine-tooth comb, the original
translator explaining but not particularly defending a choice.
Often we let somewhat daring or awkwardly accurate readings
stand, waiting for that reading, close to the final one, in which
we attend particularly to idiom and flow while erasing false
inspirations.
I think we have become persuaded that in putting a rich
Greek text into English there are so many facets to be attended
to, that three heads are indeed better than one. We do in fact
�3
have grand predecessors to look to: You will recall the legend
about the seventy-two scribes, six from each of Israel's twelve
tribes, who produced the Septuagint, the earliest extant Greek
version of the Hebrew Bible, in the third century B.C. They
worked in separate cells and came up with identical translations,
presumably inspired by the text itself. We might say that the
Platonic text acted on us in a more modest ex post facto mode in
a similar way -- one version would suddenly, after some trial and
error, click for all three of us.
Our advice to collaborators: Cotranslating is a form of
intimacy, best done by those who have the same object firmly in
their sights while viewing each other with affectionate respect.
Readership
We thought it essential to keep in mind for whom we meant
this translation. We meant it for the people that we imagine
standing around in this as in so many other dialogues as
spectators and auditors. They are presumably tacitly engaged,
like the silently present young Socrates, Theaetetus's friend,
who shares our Socrates' name, as Theaetetus shares his looks.
Another way to put it is that we thought of our students as they
prepare for a seminar by silent reading.
Some are quite innocent
of the issues, some have, or think they have, insider knowledge,
some read casually and disengagedly, and some are intensely
serious.
That brought up the delicate question of colloquialism. One
device that would keep the conversation casually speech-like was
contraction, and we used it a lot, but not in places that we
thought were meant to be stuffy, highflown, or solemn. We looked
for idiomatic equivalents but avoided slang (though we had a
great time devising some raucous interim translations, such as
"wise guy" or "weisenheimer" for the sophist himself) . While we
were well aware that every idiomatic translation will in time
betray its date, nothing dates more quickly than slang, and even
in its day it fails, like all truckling-under to fashion, to have
real appeal for students.
In the course of thinking about drawing readers into the
dialogue we often had occasion to consider what is probably a
real difference between the ear of a young contemporary Greek and
one of our students. The well-brought up Greek (and not only an
Athenian) , being nourished on Homer and the tragedians whose
language was no one's spoken Greek, could savor artificialities
and archaisms that our students would find simply off-putting. A
couple of generations ago some English-speaking students would
have absorbed enough of Shakespeare and Milton to be appreciative
of such echoes, but we couldn't count on that.
So we put
�4
everything into plain current English, sometimes allowing
ourselves the merest whiff of high poetry or archaism.
Above all, we tried, in our students' behalf, to put
ourselves into the interlocutors' sandals: What is being said,
what is being heard, what is being felt, what is being thought?
We called on our experience as teachers to guess at the dialogic
backdrop of anxious agreement, triumphant dissent, and shamed
realization - that young Theaetetus contributes.
But above all we
clung to our main hypothesis as trusting readers of the
dialogues:
that each speech uttered has a discernible meaning
contributing to the drift of the conversation, and that the
translation should preserve that motion.
our advice here is: In translating fill out imaginatively
not only the conversation within the text but draw in the
external participant, the reading student.
Predecessors
Of course, we took all the help we could get from earlier
translations. We used Robin for his intelligently chosen
readings, Campbell for his linguistic annotations, Cornford for
informational help.
The two translations we had always at our side were the Loeb
Fowler and Benardete. Fowler, though old-fashioned in diction
and uninspired in terminology, was almost unfailing in making
sense of puzzling passages and turns of phrase.
We consulted Benardete whenever we ran into trouble, because
of his meticulous attention to every word and because of his
linguistic ingenuity. His version is a crib for the better sort
of folk; it becomes intelligible if you read it as essentially in
Greek and accidentally in English. Since, however, we were
determined to translate not only from Greek but also into
English, we only rarely borrowed phrases from him though we took
many hints as to meaning.
Heidegger translates numerous passages of the Sophist in the
lecture notes published in 1992 under the title Platen:
Sophistes. These versions are a reminder that in certain
respects the translator into German is to be envied. Some of the
forms that have to do with Being go more directly into German
than into English.
For example, to einai becomes "das Sein,"
while in English the infinitive cannot normally be nominalized;
also to on readily goes into "Seiendes," and ta onta is rendered
as "das Seiende," which functions, like the Greek neuter plural,
as a collective noun. Probably most provocative and least
helpful to translators who intend to be as naively true to the
�5
text and as agendaless as possible, are Heidegger's terms for
ousia, which he renders in an uninterpreted and an interpreted
version, as it were.
In the former, ousia is plain "Sein." In
the interpreted version ousia is rendered as if it were parousia:
"das Anwesende" or "das Vorhandene," i.e., "the present" or "the
at-hand," in accord with his idea that Greek thought suffers from
the aboriginal flaw of thinking of Being as if it were a thing.
We puzzled a good deal over the proper translation of ousia,
being loath on principle, namely the principle that translation
should be as far as feasible into an existent language, to invent
non-current abstract substantives. But we finally decided on
"beinghood. 11 We chose it over "beingness" not only because it
sounded better to us but because it had more concreteness, as in
neighborhood or manhood; we were mindful that ousia means
something like ''real estate" in ordinary Greek. And we decided
to make up a word to begin with because we had an unresolved
sense that ousia, which in the Sophist is usually contrasted with
genesis, had a peculiar weight, and we wanted the reader to be in
a position to attend to that interpretational problem.
I was relieved to see that even German could not deal with
the crucial little adverb ontos, which for our private amusement
only we translated as "beingly" but more soberly, for public
consumption, as "in its very being;" thus the phrase that
concludes the ultimate collection of differentiating terms
reveals ton ontos sophisten: "the Sophist in his very being."
To return to the advantages of translating into German with
two examples.
1. We had long discussions about the translation of stasis,
the specific other of motion. We settled on rest, knowing full
well that rest is wrong insofar as it means lack of, or cessation
from, motion.
"Stand-still" or "stationariness," a condition
coequal with motion, seemed too strained, and we consigned them
to the glossary. German is lucky in being able to form
"Standigkeit" quite naturally, as Heidegger does (p. 579).
2.
In 244 c 4, when the stranger begins his critique of
Parmenides' hypothesis of the One, we were pretty much forced to
use the English word "hypothesis" with all it scientific baggage.
Schleiermacher uses the Germanized version of "presupposition,"
that is "Voraussetzung," but Heidegger eschews both and
brilliantly writes "Ansatz," with the observation that
Parmenides's One is not a supposition to be consequently
confirmed but a beginning, an arche, an "onset" -- which is
exactly what "Ansatz" may mean.
Nonetheless, with all the felicities to be gotten especially
from the German propensity for easy prepositional compounding, I
kept being grateful that it was our lot to be putting Plato into
�6
English, particularly American English.
In our idiom we could
achieve a plainness and a playfulness that must be, when all is
said and done, more pleasing to Socrates as he listens in than a
lot of linguistic incense.
I think our general advice to fellow translators would be
unabashedly to cannibalize and unabashedly to set aside previous
translations.
Apparatus
Since we were left very free by our press to decide on
supplementary materials, we thought long and hard about our
obligation to the text and to the reader.
We come from a school
meaning both a way of thinking and
an institution -- that has the greatest misgivings about standing
between a reader and the book. The extra-textual stuff in a
volume is of course meant to facilitate the approach to the
translated text, but really, how can it? Take an introduction.
If it says the same thing as the work, it will, assuming that the
work is of the highest quality, say it worse.
If it says
something else, it will keep the reader from the work by that
much time. We have a strong faith, based on our common teaching
experience, that good books don't need approaching; they need
facing, immediately and directly, at least at the first reading.
We compromised that faith, partly because by the end of our
labor we were simply so full of thoughts that we couldn't contain
ourselves, partly because we know perfectly well that wellinstructed students skip introductions and come back to them
much later, if at all.
So we decided to keep it short, simple, and straightforward.
We avoided historical backgrounding on the principle that Plato
would have felt about our doing it much as a landscape painter
might if we took his painting and provided it with a broad frame
extending the scenery so as to give the viewer an enlarged
setting. We didn't want to deface the dialogue or distract or
prejudice our student readers in this way; I should say that at
st. John's evidence of familiarity with introductions is a
suspect virtue. But we did set the dialogue briefly in its
sequence -- Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman and the mysteriously
missing Philosopher. We gave a succinct plot outline of the hunt
for the sophist, geared to a new and, we think, quite spiffy
diagram of the infamous divisions that play so large a role in
the Sophist. We pointed out some aspects of the dialogue that
had become particularly pregnant for us, such as the generic
nature of the Sophist here pursued (as opposed to the named
individual sophists Socrates politely persecutes in dialogues
�7
like the Gorgias and the Protagoras). We had a little section on
Father Parrnenides and the strange and wonderful fact that he, the
Stranger's own teacher, attracts the main attack of the dialogue.
Then we told briefly what we understood about the such deep
matters as the relation of Image to Non-being and of Non-being to
Otherness. And we left it at that.
Since we made use of the printer's full typographical menu,
we had a little note on that. We were very sparing with
footnotes, using them mostly to supply what we thought an ancient
contemporary reader might have known, or where we thought we
detected a joke or an allusion obscure to a current reader.
Our energy went into the glossary, which we put in back, to
be used or not. We arranged the Greek terms and our reasoned
translations in meaning-clusters.
(You will find something
similar in the Hope translation of Aristotle's Physics and
Metaphysics, except that we transliterated all our Greek in the
hope that students might learn to accent and pronounce words like
phr6nesis and poiesis and mimesis correctly.)
We avoided the
alphabetic order so as to prevent the impression that we -- or
the partners of a dialogue -- are ever looking for dictionarylike definitions. We also hoped to provide students with what we
thought of as the proto-terrninology of a corning ontology -- or
perhaps better a me-ontology, an account of Non-being; the
Sophist is a spawning ground of metaphysical terms-to-be.
Our advice to translators is to go easy on the paraphernalia
of translation.
Editing
The translator's final reading of course tries for absolute
correctness. But we have to warn the trustful that having a
perfect disk is no protection. Something will get screwed up,
there will be unexpected glitches and, as we learned to our
sorrow, it will be in the most carefully construed first
sentence.
No matter how good and accommodating the editor -- and we
have good reason to thank Ron Pullins, the editor-publisher of
Focus Press -- there will be howlers.
Our advice:
final proofs.
Trust no one but yourselves and demand to see
�8
Replies
Theaetetus plays to the Stranger by regularly uttering a
budget of stock replies signifying slight hesitation, passive
assent, positive agreement or requests for clarification.
After a while we began to suspect that the rotating litany
of responses might not be entirely mechanical. This apprehension
made it incumbent upon us to keep a list of our considered
renditions of nai, pos, pos d'ou, pos gar ou, ti de, houtos,
anangke, pan, panu ge, pantapasi men oun and a dozen others, so
that in one of our later readings we could make all the replies
consistent.
In that way we would give readers of the translation
a chance to discover patterns we only suspected.
For example,
pantapasi men oun, for which we borrowed Benardete's "That's
altogether so," occurs in the dialogue as a strong assent to a
summary claim and concludes the dialogue as Theaetetus's last
response to the final collection of divisions that catch the true
and ultimate sophist as the expert of the non-genuine.
Theaetetus is clearly assenting not only to the definitive but
also to the global character of this final determination of a
human type and profession.
Particles
We were similarly anxious to render particles fairly
consistently. The dialogic life is in them -- they indicate
inflections of the voice, gestures of the body, and even motions
of the soul.
The dictionary, or even Denniston's Greek Particles, though
they must be consulted to give the limits of usage, cannot do it
all.
The translators must savor the speech in its context and
judge whether it is marked as an inference or a new departure,
whether eagerness is being displayed, smiles are suppressed,
eyebrows raised or hands thrown up. We were mindful of
typographic and punctuational devices not available to a Greek
composer of living speech and used italics, dashes, colons,
semicolons and exclamation points liberally to render the force
of particles or emphases indicated by sentential order.
I might
mention here that capitalization helped us a great deal in
translating a dialogue full of terms for f orrns and kinds
designated in Greek by the definite article and a verbal or
adjectival substantive such as to on (Being), to me on (Nonbeing), tauton (the Sarne), thateron (the Other).
Our advice to translators is to be -- within the limits of
natural English -- consistent, careful and ingenious in rendering
apparently little and apparently automatic elements of the
�9
dialogues; they may be more revealing than one realizes at the
time.
Techno-humor
At the end of Bacon's New Oraanon there is to be found a
prescient catalogue of one hundred and thirty "histories" of
special investigations that are one day to constitute the sphere
of human expertise.
It is a strange and wonderful fact that the
first such comprehensive ordering of extant technical know-how ·
(that I know of) is found in the Sophist -- and that it is a
send-up.
The stranger, who is not an overtly funny person,
engages in what might be called techno-humor at the expense of
experts.
Of course, as readers of the dialogue, we thought a good
deal about the reason why a comprehensive classification of human
know-how or technique -- we translated techne as "expertise" and
sometimes "art," as in "arts and crafts" -- should be the
approach of choice to the delineation of the Sophist. We were,
of course, alert to the startling conjunction of apparently
disjunct themes that governs a number of the great dialogues, as
the Phaedrus, for instance, seems to yoke the unlikely pair of
love and rhetoric.
Moreover, it does not take much reflection to see that the
Sophist, whose nature is presented here as that of a faker and a
know-it-all, should be tracked into the branches of human
activity, and that in that great decision-tree he should reappear
in seven places, and sometimes among the lowly but genuine crafts
and sometimes among the high-sounding but dubious ones.
It also
made sense that the hunt for this elusive creature should be the
occasion for presenting to the world the new dialectic art of
division and collection and all its problems -- chief among them
what might be called the problem of heuristic direction: at what
moment in this dialectic enterprise, at the beginning, end or inbetween, does new insight arise?
But as translators it was not so much our business to have
theories about the inevitable implication of expertise and
shamming or about the problems of classification as to render the
divisions faithfully into English. And there we were in a pretty
good position. As I have said, all three of us come from a
college that has distanced itself from specialization, and we
were alive to the tragicomedy of defining human beings as the
professors of a profession.
(Our English version of sophistes
was, incidentally, "professor of wisdom.")
Not that all of us
aren't ourselves certified members of the world of expertise.
I
myself, for instance, began my working life in a profession that
the Stranger might have ranged, looking to the three great
�10
branches of human expertise called "getting," "separating," and
"making," under getting, specifying it as a hunt beneath the soil
for fragmented old artifacts carried on by means of pick-axes.
We call it archaeology. Recall that the Sophist is first found
in the right hand branch of animal hunting on land, specified as
the sham-teaching hunt of wealthy youths.
We tried to preserve the neologic high-jinks of some of the
divisions.
Thus the sophist is found a second, third, and fourth
time in the getting part of expertise as a psycho-trading virtueseller, and in the manipulating part both as a seller of selfmade learnables and a peddler of other-made learnables:
"psychotrading" renders pychemporike and "learnable-selling" mathematopolikon.
We had not long worked on our new current project for the
Focus Philosophical Library, a translation of the Phaedo, before
we became aware of the varieties of Platonic humor.
In fact one
of us, Peter Kalkavage, who, as it happens, got his doctorate at
Penn State, began retrospectively to refer to the Sophist as a
one-joke dialogue, dominated by the techno-humor of the otherwise
ponderous Stranger that I've just described. The Phaedo, because
in it Socrates not only speaks but even makes speeches, is, we
discovered, infused with a very different, far more subtle humor,
which we are doing our best to preserve.
It is the sort of
hilarity or jocundity in the original Latin sense, the subdued
joyousness and even merriment of the ultimate moment, that
belongs to a man going blithely to his death without having lost
his firm, even hard grip on the earthly condition. We have come
to think of it as the tone of the . lightness of Being.
It keeps
his companions in an ambivalent state of sorrowful exhilaration,
suspended between tears and laughter.
Of course the secondary partners too, are very different in
the two dialogues. Theaetetus is, at least vis-a-vis the
Stranger, a somewhat stuffy boy, while that comradely pair,
Simmias and Cebes, are each in their way pretty lively.
Does bringing out the humor of the dialogues in translations
need a justification? I should not imagine so, but I might
mention once more that all three of us are receiving our real
education in a place to which a way of reading Plato was
introduced by Jacob Klein, who in his interpretations was
especially alert to the mimetic character of the dialogues. As
imitations of Socrates and the conversations he conducted or
attended, they were bound to be playful, as Socrates was playful,
with a playfulness that is the kindly counterpart of his
notorious dissembling, his irony. But not all humor is comedic
in Aristotle's understanding of comedy as the imitation of what
is laughable, that is, low or ugly but relatively harmless (Else,
Aristotle's Poetics, pp. 39 ff, 183 ff).
The techno-humor of the
Sophist comes far closer to comedy than does that of the other
�11
dialogues, with the proviso that the laughableness of the
sophistic craft is not so harmless.
In any case, our advice to colleagues who plan to translate
Platonic dialogues is to be prepared not only to laugh themselves
but also to be the cause of laughter in others.
Faithfulness
It was clear to us from the beginning that looseness,
paraphrase, and interpretative adumbration were intolerable in
the translation of any Platonic writing, but especially in a
dialogue like the Sophist, which is so close to the brink of
technical metaphysics and yet so carefully refrains from letting
philosophy become a techne, an expertise. It does so by going at
what Aristotle will later codify as "problems" of Being in an
oblique and human way. It is oblique in concentrating, as was
said, less on ontology than on me-ontology, the account of Nonbeing as the ground of imitation or pretense, and it is human in
pursuing the Sophist as a human type as much as it does sophistry
as a profession.
In this morning-twilight of philosophy
meticulous accuracy is especially necessary.
So we spent, as I
have said, much time on words, determining for ourselves whether
they were terms of a trade or not -- yet. Aporia and methodos
are examples. Both come to be fixed as terms of philosophy:
"perplexity" and "method." But we aimed to preserve at least in
some places the unfixed original meaning:
"impasse," i.e. lack
of passage, and "way," both at which preserve the playful spatial
analogy that is so prominent in the Stranger's reflections on the
motion of thought.
We aimed at faithfulness, however, not only in words and
terms but also in sentences. The obvious problem is always subliteralness -- producing a contortedly accurate pony. We thought
that it was a part of faithfulness to render the various levels
of elegance, clarity and emphasis of the speeches -- and the
Stranger surely has his obscure and klunky moments, at least as
we heard them.
The faith of translators who mean to be faithful must be
that, meaning-element for meaning-element, it is possible to turn
Greek into English, and that this must imply that usually -- it
never pays to be too rigid -- one Greek word goes into one
English word or typographical symbol, one phrase into one phrase,
one clause into one clause, and one sentence into one sentence -in other words that it is possible to get equivalence without
sublinearity.
It also implies that one can find an English word
order that renders the emphasis of the Greek sentence, and
English connectives that maintain the Greek flow.
One of our
last readings was addressed, as I have mentioned, to the
attempted eradication of all signs of translaterese. Our trust
�12
was that if we stuck faithfully to the Greek, barring simple
mistakes and omissions, we would get English that said exactly
what the Greek said and with something like the original
naturalness and deviations from naturalness.
In other words, we
had the faith that we might overcome the charge expressed in the
Italian pairing traduttore: traditore; we hoped that a translator
need not be a traitor to the text.
our best advice to others is not to give in to current
hermeneutic theories concerning the essential untranslatability
of one language into another, but to suppose, as a starting
hypothesis, that even if not all human speech can say the same
thing, then at least we can think and say practically the same
thing as our ancient intellectual progenitors -- from which it is
evident that the translator's hypothesis is no negligible
commentary on contemporary philosophy.
Requirements
The last item on my list of observations concerns the
crucial question what translators need to know and be good at.
The three of us did not think that we were required to have
a full-fledged interpretation to have a go at a translation.
What we needed instead was a lively sense of intimations, a sense
born of a belief in the unfailing significance of the text.
In
other words, we came to Plato's philosophic plays with the trust
that every word (or nearly every word) was deliberately placed,
but that some terms and turns were special sign-posts to implied
meanings. We tried to be alert to oddities of language and
emphasis as well as to hapax legomena (linguistic singularities
which we treated as occasions for literalness even if it proved
awkward).
On another level, we listened for high points and
crucial junctures, which Plato's most responsible speakers, and
of course Socrates himself, often signal by a throwaway reference
to that one more "little" addition.
None of us are, this is the moment to say, great believers
in esoteric readings. We are much too possessed by a sense of
the pedagogic generosity of the dialogues, a sense that here a
discreetly fierce energy is devoted to carrying interlocutors,
bystanders, and readers beyond themselves, into realms reachable
only by circuitous and indirect means. To put it another way:
In the dialogues we are told as much, but no more, than we need
to make us want to think onward. That is why the dialogues are
fairly easy to read the first time and get harder to understand
as, with each reading, more signals are picked up.
There certainly exist occasionally esoteric writers like
Newton who, "to avoid being baited by little smatterers in
�13
mathematics ... designedly made his Princioia abstruse"
(Portsmouth Collection), and authors who touch guardedly on
theological or political issues in intolerant times (though they
never do seem to escape persecution).
Socrates' dissembling and
Plato's subtlety, however, are not of this self-protective sort
but are pedagogical devices for drawing the learner in -- at
least that is our experience. The dialogues work on the
principle that "a cat may look at a king," or rather, "a boy may
look at Being." And in any case, they display hardly any attempt
to mask the fact that not everything that goes on in these
conversations will be of comfort to respectable parents.
So the first translator's requirement is a belief in the
many-layered accessibility of the text and an alertness to those
signs and signals which the English version should preserve for
readers to puzzle over.
A second requirement we put on ourselves was to attempt
consistency but to shun method. An intelligent consistency is,
we thought, the guardian spirit of open minds. So as far as
possible we· tried, as I said, to choose the right word and to
stick with it even in fairly routine phrases.
Thus phainetai is
almost always "it appears" and dokei "it seems." At the same
time we tried to remain open to significant nuances and strange
turns within each dialogue, though our avoidance of methodical
translating bound to a particular interpretation of Platonic
philosophy applied mainly across the dialogues:
In taking up the ·
Phaedo we saw once again the truth of the teaching that each
dialogue is a fresh world of discourse and is to be faced without
preconceptions regarding "Platonic thought." That observation is
particularly true as between dialogues in which Socrates guides
the conversation and those in which he only listens in or is,
finally, even absent.
As far as preparation is concerned, since none of us can
really read Greek as a living language, we were glad to see that
we could do pretty well on a lot of Greek reading experience to
give us a feel for the intention and on enough grammatical
expertise to tell us when we needed to do careful parsing. We
found that besides Liddell-Scott we needed to have at hand
Roget's Thesaurus to help us to the word we were looking for.
But we think that all in all, the main requirement for
translators of Plato, and our advice to them, is to believe in
the semantic plenitude of the Platonic texts, and to produce an
English version that, like the Greek, says more than the
translators know.
�
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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On translating Plato
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1997-03
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Typescript of a lecture delivered in March 1997 by Eva Brann at the "Retracing the Platonic Text" conference held at Penn State.
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lec Brann 1997-03
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Deans
Tutors
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Patriotism in the 21st Century
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 13, 2016 by Seth Cropsey as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the first in a newly established joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
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Kristensen lecture series
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Text
Inauguration speech 9.16.16
Thank you to all who have spoken, to my friend Greg Avis, Ms
Morf, Pam Saunders Albin, Matt Davis and Chris Nelson for your
kind words. And also to former presidents Mike Peters, and John
Agresto for being with us tonight. And all those who made this
event happen, led by Sarah Palacios.
And thank you to all those who make this college happen - the
BVG, who hired me, the tutors, who inspire us every day with
their dedication and insight, the staff who provide the scaffolding
which allows the whole show to go on, to the alumni who make
the college a permanent and important part of their lives –
including those here for Homecoming and their leaders, the
Alumni Association board -- and to our amazing students…who
are why we are all here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------When we were beginning to plan this ceremony last February I
had been at the college for only a month. I had been thinking a
great deal about what makes the college unique. I had been
thinking, too, about how I would fit here and what I could do to
advance the life-changing work that is done at St. John’s.
Those of you who with a longer and deeper association with the
college may not remember as acutely as I do the combination of
excitement and bewilderment a person can feel when
encountering this place for the first time. St. John’s looks and
behaves, on the surface, like any other college: students and
faculty meet in classrooms, there are dormitories, a dining hall, a
bookstore, a gym…and even a bell tower.
1
�But St. John’s is not like other colleges. Faculty aren’t called
“professors,” because it is not their job to “profess.” No, at St.
John’s, faculty are called tutors, and their mission is NOT to help
students come to preordained conclusions but to provoke
learning by asking questions to which, in many cases, they
themselves are still searching for the answers…to actually learn
alongside students. The books and ideas in the academic program
are not means to an end – a good grade, the fulfillment of a
major, a light and shallow dip into one topic or another. They are,
simultaneously, the means and the end.
There is a purity to this, and a radicalism, that I have not seen
before. It can be difficult to take in. And as I began to take it in, I
realized that to succeed for the college in the way I wish, I would
somehow have to move these concepts from my head into my
heart, blood, and bones.
At that same time that I was thinking about these issues and
about how to make this ceremony meaningful, my wife, Dorothy,
and I watched the film Seymour: An Introduction.
The film, along with Seymour himself and his student, American
populist intellectual Michael Kimmelman, says so much about
what we seek to do here and about how we search for meaning in
our lives.
I am so grateful that Michael and Seymour agreed to be with us
this weekend. And I encourage any of you who have not seen the
film to do so and to join them and our own Sarah Davis for a panel
discussion about work and life’s meaning tomorrow, followed by
Seymour’s master class.
It will be worth your while.
2
�Seymour Bernstein is an extraordinarily gifted man who could
have spent his life perfecting his own craft. He certainly did not
have to take the path he chose – to be a teacher and mentor
above all else. But he made his choice knowing not only what he
was gaining, but also what he was giving up. His choice was to
follow his joy and pass that joy along to students like Michael
Kimmelman, with a brand of devotion that you heard earlier,
when they played Schubert.
This evening, and in other inauguration events, we are
highlighting teachers and students. Our processional music was
played by Evan Quarles, a Santa Fe student who is part of a senior
seminar in which I am a participant. Mr. Quarles will also
participate in Seymour’s master class tomorrow afternoon. Hoop
dancer Josiah Enriquez and drummer Duh-love-eye Denipaw
represent the long tradition of cultural mentorship in Native
American communities.
Tomorrow’s panel discussion and the piano master class will
amplify the idea that there is inherent joy in teaching and learning
and that the value of learning in community is irreplaceable –
even if the “community” is as small as just one teacher and one
student or two students together.
We say, correctly, that our academic program sets St. John’s apart
from all other colleges. What we don’t always underscore is how
much the success of the program depends on the way it is
executed – in community. But I would argue that the execution is
as well designed and intentional as the content and that it
deserves an equal share of credit when our students and alumni
reflect on what St. John’s means for their lives.
3
�For Exhibit A - observe that beautiful Steinway. There it sits, the
Schubert score in the rack, and anyone who reads music could
come to the bench and at least understand the sounds the
Steinway should make if played correctly. In the same way – and
many Johnnies will have heard this – anyone can get a list of the
books we study here and go off and sit under a tree and read
them.
But sheet music alone is not Schubert. Schubert “happens” when
Michael Kimmelman and Seymour Bernstein practice and
perform, and when we listen. Books alone are not Plato, Tolstoy,
Woolf or Shakespeare. St. John’s comprehends that, and the
Program we revere works because we understand that we are
enriched not only by the ideas of geniuses but by the
interpretations and insights we achieve together – in our
classrooms, in discussions at the koi pond or at the dorm, when
students and tutors, students and students, tutors and tutors
engage with the material and with each other.
This is the part of St. John’s that I have seen in the classroom and
in the faculty and student discussions and that makes me so
grateful to be standing here, about to be invested as president.
My challenge to all assembled here this evening is that we must
cherish this Program. We must do everything we can to ensure
that this radical form of learning doesn’t simply survive as some
kind of curiosity, but thrives as a viable alternative in the
increasingly homogeneous landscape that is mainstream higher
education.
But it is fair to ask exactly why does it matter that St. John’s
survive and prosper?
4
�This question is especially important right now, for, as many of
you know, St John’s has some significant organizational and
financial challenges that we must address.
And that makes it even more critical that we explore what
difference it would make if this small college disappeared, aside
from the – not insignificant – fact that students, tutors, and staff
who love it here would lose their home and would find no other
place like it.
Organizations come into being, and organizations fade away.
Why does St John’s matter so much?
While I was working on this speech I asked that question in
various forums, of tutors, staff and students, and, this being St.
John’s, answers came in large numbers, and many were very
beautiful.
One tutor views a St. John’s education as a curative for “the echo
chamber that passes as contemporary thinking.” Meaning, he
said, that by reading great books, students can learn to find their
own intellectual path in a society where many institutions that
past generations relied on for moral and intellectual direction
have faltered or lost influence.
Many pointed out that Americans find it difficult to talk
respectfully across difference. They noted that those kinds of
conversations occur at St. John’s every day, in and outside the
classroom.
A staff member and St. John’s graduate told me: “We leave this
place with confidence in our own identity, seeking authenticity in
5
�our interactions with the world we encounter.” She underscored
the view that many tutors shared, that “we are the only college
wholly devoted to the project of studying the great books with a
view to freeing ourselves from mere prejudice so that we can
think for ourselves.”
One tutor reminded me of how often we describe St. John’s by
saying what it is not rather than what it is. Offering what he called
a “positive account,” he said: “We are trying to show by actions,
the actions of thinking, speaking, reading, and writing, and of
living together in this residential college, that it is our deepest
nature to learn; that learning is a shared enterprise; and that it
fulfills us as human beings, makes us happy and assures us that
we belong with one another in the world as doers. The books we
read are like love letters. They invite us to happy marriages.”
I often use the word “radical” to describe the way learning occurs
on our two campuses – I have done so more than once in this
speech. That word may sound discordant if you think of St. John’s
as a place that teaches Great Books by “dead white men.” Isn’t
that kind of curriculum conservative to the core? How can we
reconcile the words “radical” and “conservative?”
We can do so by playing with the idea that in many ways what St.
John’s conserves is that which is radical in Western thought.
Arguably, everything a student encounters in the Program
demonstrates not incremental thought but radical disruption.
Thinkers like Socrates, who students get to know in their first
year, shake up everything in the known world. They express ideas
that can get a person killed. They unmoor us by insisting that all is
open to question, and they jar us from our complacency. A tutor I
spoke with earlier this fall told me that it is a rare student who
6
�reads and discusses Socrates and Plato in the Program and
doesn’t come away changed forever.
That is the “why” and the “so what” of St. John’s. It changes
people who can go on to change the world. Many St. John’s
alumni choose to teach, and many take a version of the Program
into their classrooms, where they give students the daylight in
which to examine ideas. Others take these habits of mind into
every profession you can imagine and into personal lives that are
of enormous consequence in the communities where they live.
We find ourselves on a planet beset by challenges. If we are to be
successful in facing down those challenges, we will need minds
tempered in a forge like St. John’s, at home with intellectual
disruption and subversion and able to embrace the quantum over
the incremental.
My commitment to preserving this education and celebrating its
impact is unwavering. I know that to succeed, we will do the work
before us in community, just the way we learn. We will question
everything. And we will attend to all voices.
And, I hope, when we think back on this weekend we will
remember not just the challenges in front of us but the joy and
beauty of the enterprise in which we are engaged. Schubert
becoming Schubert because we are here together. A hoop that
symbolizes eternity and interdependence and a young dancer
expressing the import. A ceremony as old as academia that
celebrates bold new thought. And above all else, this small,
wonderful, one-of-a-kind college that is unafraid to sail against
prevailing winds and that brings us all together, in community.
Thank you.
7
�
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Presidential Inauguration Speech, 2016
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Typescript of the inauguration speech given by Mark Roosevelt on September 16, 2016 in Santa Fe, NM.
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Roosevelt Inauguration Speech - 2016-09-16
Inauguration
Presidents
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PDF Text
Text
Inauguration Lecture
St. John’s College, Annapolis
October 28, 2017
Panayiotis Kanelos
St. John’s College is indeed a college. But it is very much more than that. It is both an idea and
an ideal. It is a place designed from the inside out, according to principles that are both unique
and universal. It is its own theorem and its own proof. It is the most vital institution in higher
education. It is a place that inspires love not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly
itself.
I am the luckiest person in higher education. How many people can claim that they have
passionately admired an institution from afar for a very long time, and then have been invited to
join that community? I’m simply pleased as punch to be here. This is a community, however,
that exacts a price. From the moment one becomes a Johnnie, one finds oneself drawn into that
most characteristic Johnnie behavior, talking endlessly about rather important things.
I have been here just over four months. During that time, I have had the great pleasure of getting
to know my colleagues through conversation. They have pressed me to think carefully about the
project we are engaged in. I have participated in seminars, attended lectures, and read with a
rollicking group through a Shakespearean play. And just this week, I had the honor of leading
my first preceptorial on one of my favorite authors, Jorge Luis Borges. Most importantly, I have
spent many hours in conversation with our students. My admiration for their courage, having
�selected to follow the most rigorous path towards a college degree that anyone might pursue, is
profound. They are much more courageous than I was at their age, or am even now.
My short time as part of the St. John’s community, already rich in conversation, has led me to
think quite a lot about this thing we call liberal education. What I would like to offer this
afternoon is a series of reflections on what we do and why we do it. These reflections are much
too short, too rough and too raw to be dignified with the title of essays. They also lack the
virtues of concision and precision found in a well-wrought aphorism. They’re really just
paragraphs, and not very finely crafted at that. But to make me feel better, let’s call them
something elevated, like folia, leaves. Like the Sybil’s leaves, they are interchangeable and will
fall where they may. Since their subject is the liberal arts, seven folia seems like an appropriate
number.
1. The Liberal Arts are the Arts of Memory
Contemporary culture appears to be averse to the pursuit of liberal education. This should not
surprise us. To call the era we live in "modernity" is to fetishize the present. We live in a
perpetual "now"—this “modern” age—and that “now” is held to be qualitatively superior to the
“not-now,” otherwise known as the past. The newest, the flashiest, the most up-to-date is the
thing most desirable. The state of modernity is thus the state of perpetual forgetting. To valorize
the present is to slough off the past. Liberal education, however, is predicated upon
memory. The heart of liberal education is conversation in shared space, but the soul of liberal
education is conversation across time. To take seriously the thoughts of those who have come
before us is to add dimensionality to the otherwise flattened experience of living in a perpetual
now. This is radically unfashionable, but it is essential nonetheless.
�2. Liberal Education and Liberty
It is commonplace to claim that the purpose of liberal education is to free the individual,
“liberal” coming from the Latin, liber, to be free. Of course, what is not commonly agreed upon
is what the individual is meant to be freed from. In the ancient world, liberal education was the
education of the free man -- that is, one who was not bound to labor and could therefore spend
time cultivating one's mind. Leisure was the precondition of such an education. This was also
the Oxford of Cardinal Newman or Evelyn Waugh, and still lingers in the notion of the
undergraduate years at college as a sort of Arcadia (one populated at most colleges, I might add,
by groups of libertines suspiciously calling themselves Greeks). Another claim made upon
liberal education is that it frees one from prejudice. Human beings are encased within a cocoon
of pre-spun ideas, opinions and preferences. Liberal education splices open that cocoon. We
emerge into the world in an altered state, transformed, capable of flight. Others hold that to be
liberally educated is to be freed from illusions. Our movement is from the cave of shadows into
the searing day. This is the model that promises enlightenment.
I would argue that the telos of
liberal education is to free us from ourselves. Our work is primarily internal, an activity of the
soul. We are bound tightly by our pride. It constrains us. It isolates us. It distorts our
relationships with others, with the world, and with Truth. The first order of business in a liberal
education is to chasten.
3. Virtue or Virtuosity
Modern education has become increasingly oriented towards virtuosity. It promotes the honing
of skills, generally towards useful ends. It is technical and narrow in focus. We have witnessed
�over the past decades the ascendancy of the STEM disciplines, Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math, and the dominance of Business as the single largest major in the nation.
Anyone pursuing a degree in the liberal arts has been cornered at one time or another by a
fretting uncle or a dismissive neighbor: “What are you going to do with that?” Yet the goal of
liberal education is not virtuosity, but virtue. The Greeks used the term, arête, for excellence. It
refers to the single-minded pursuit of an admirable goal. We might seek to become an excellent
X, where X might be a violinist, a computer programmer, or a pole vaulter. Liberal education,
however, challenges the notion that we should be defined by what we do. It suggests, rather, that
we should be concerned first and foremost with who we are. In a liberal education, the primary
object of study is the human being. Turning inquiry back upon ourselves, we find that what
defines us is that we are “thinking things.” We are above all else rational creatures. Our pursuit
of arête ought therefore to be the pursuit of logos. This, then, defines the proper focus of a
liberal arts college. Were we a conservatory we would seek excellence in the arts. Were we a
seminary, we would seek excellence of the spirit. Yet we are something like a conservatory of
the mind, dedicated to the proposition that the most characteristic trait of the human being is that
we are thinking things, and that the virtue we strive for is the excellence of the intellect. This
conviction does not deny nor diminish other forms of excellence in the world -- but it argues that
self-reflective inquiry lays the foundation for the art of being human.
4. Liberal Education Leads to Civil Discourse
A commitment to the arête of being human, leads to a capacity for civil discourse. If the pursuit
of excellence of the mind is predicated upon conversation and discussion, that is, if the arena of
the intellect is the exchange of ideas, one must treat other minds as infinitely valuable. This
�involves a significant degree of humility, accepting that we each superimpose upon the world a
kaleidoscopic set of opinions, which shift and change shape chaotically. It also involves a
degree of confidence, allowing that while we may often be wrong, we are not always so. A
seminar is civil discourse in action -- it is a conclave of those willing to revise and amend
opinion; it is a polis, where the currency is persuasion and the treasury a reliquary of truth.
5. There is no such thing as a "liberal art"
The term “liberal art” is in and of itself an absurdity. There is no singular art that liberates.
Liberal education runs across a network of ways of knowing the world. It understands that as
human beings, we can know the world only imperfectly. Let me offer an illustration. Each of
our five senses communicates something distinct, yet vital, to us. We can smell the freshly
baked apple pie, see the nicely browned apple pie, feel the toothsome pie crust in our mouth,
taste the gelatinous sweetness of the pie on our tongue, hear praise of the pie. In isolation, each
of our senses offers a fragmented perspective on phenomena. Taken together, we experience the
whole. Similarly, the liberal arts have historically offered seven “senses,” seven organs for
knowing the world. In the Middle Ages, these fields of knowledge were categorized as the
trivium – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – and the quadrivium – mathematics, astronomy,
geometry and music. Today, our notion of the liberal arts, as with most things, is more fluid.
Yet what must not be lost is the commitment of liberal education to aspire towards a multivalent
approach to knowledge. A true education must traverse a broad landscape of subjects, from
literature and philosophy to mathematics, the sciences and the languages, and put those subjects
in conversation with one another. Where truth is to be found, it is found only fleetingly, as one
synapse fires to the next, leaping across the arts of knowing.
�6. One Cannot Receive an Education
Words matter. We commonly, and casually, say that we received our education at School X or
College Y. This is a category error of the first order. To receive something is to accept it. It
puts the receiver in a passive posture. To “receive” an education, one would have to be a
receptacle of some sort, a container waiting to be filled. Yet the word itself, education, expresses
the opposite. The term originates from the Latin, “ex ducere”, which means “to lead out.” What
does this tell us about the process of education? It involves movement. It is active. It is
participatory. It entails collaboration between one who is led and one who leads. These leaders
we call “teachers”. A teacher may be another person, present to the learner, perhaps around a
seminar table. A teacher may also be one who has lived long before the student, who has left
traces of profound insight or resplendent beauty, that draw, like a lodestone, one out of oneself.
Teachers do not push, they do not drag, they do not compel. They invite the student on a
pilgrimage, one in which they are fellow travelers. Taking up the call, the student is led out of
complacency, out of docility, out of ignorance.
Some may think that to be led, to follow, is not in accord with the freedom inherent in a liberal
education: Why these 120 books? Why this tradition? This skepticism assumes a rather
desiccated notion of liberty, a rather modern notion, which takes autonomy, self-governance, as
its starting point. Self-governance, however, is the end point of education. To be liberally
educated is to have been led out of bondage. There are many forms of slavery, all pernicious,
and overcoming the first, ignorance, is only the beginning of the journey.
�7. We see through a glass, darkly…
There are, broadly speaking, two ways of knowing the world, both of which are necessary, yet
ultimately irreconcilable. What we know can be divided into two categories – that which we can
measure, and that which we cannot. On the one hand, human life is finite, bounded, defined by
ridges and borders. On the other, we touch the infinite. Because we are more than mechanical,
because we each have a mysterious sort of agency, our lives are imbued with the qualities of
better and worse. We make choices, and try to do so with the best information possible. This is
reflected in the liberal arts, divided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The first set of
disciplines encompasses the qualitative aspects of human experience: speech, expression,
discernment. The latter, the aspects of the world that we can measure – time, distance, breadth,
number. Our work as seekers of truth is to hold all these forms of knowing in our minds
simultaneously and to craft a synthesis that reconciles the whole. None of us is capable such a
project– we see through the glass, darkly – but were we able to achieve this synthesis, we would
approach that ever-elusive quality called wisdom.
I hope you will forgive me for these underdeveloped ideas, forgive me if I have been tedious, or
if I have been simply wrong. That quality called wisdom certainly eludes me. Yet let me
conclude be restating what I do know is true:
St. John’s College is indeed a college. But it is very much more than that. It is both an idea and
an ideal. It is a place designed from the inside out, according to principles that are both unique
and universal. It is its own theorem and its own proof. It is the most vital institution in higher
education. It is a place that inspires love not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly
�itself. It is an institution that I have come to love rather quickly, and will cherish always. Thank
you for allowing me to join this community.
�
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Presidential Inauguration Speech, 2017
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Typescript of the inauguration speech given by Panayiotis Kanels on October 28, 2017 in Annapolis, MD.
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<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3445">Audio Recording</a>
<a title="Inauguration Program" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3444">Inauguration Program</a>
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Kanelos Inauguration Lecture 2017
Inauguration
Presidents
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PDF Text
Text
Remarks at Retirement Dinner Celebration
Christopher B. Nelson
June 16, 2017
This whole affair and the celebratory events leading up to it have been rather overwhelming for me, and I
want to thank all of you for the honor of your presence here this evening. I see friends from my
engagement in every kind of activity associated with the life of this College: from those colleagues who
teach and work with me at St. John's, to members of our governing board, current and former leaders of
our Alumni Association, alumni from all over, including classmates from my class of 1970, parents of
students who graduated from the College in the last few decades, friends from town, leaders of our
Caritas Society, Friends' Board, and the Mitchell Gallery Board, and supporters of our community's
Historic Annapolis Foundation, Opera, Symphony, and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, colleagues
from other colleges and leadership from our national and statewide presidential associations. What a
strong, loving community you make! How could I not be happy having been a part of something so farreaching and magnificent?!
My thanks to all for your support of our financial aid program for students, to which you have contributed
by joining us this evening! Also to those of you who have addressed us this evening. I do not deserve
such friends but am certainly the happier for having them.
- To Ron Fielding, my thanks for your friendship from our early days at St. John’s College
some 50 years ago, for your leadership of our Board, and for the board’s confidence in and
support of the College’s future as exemplified in the capital campaign now underway, chaired
by Warren Spector. I’d like to recognize four former board chairs among us: Chuck Nelson,
Steve Feinberg, Greg Curtis, and Sharon Bishop. I add my deep thanks to them and to all of
the members of the Board of Visitors and Governors for the privilege of service these many
years and for their devotion to the College and its distinctive Program of Instruction. Perhaps,
I should recognize one further former board member, Brownie Anderson, who chaired the
presidential search committee who reached out to me in 1990;
- To Mark Roosevelt for his leadership and support of the College as a whole on both of our
campuses; also for his help in our presidential transition. To this I add my warmest welcome to
our incoming president, Pano Kanelos, now about to take the reins in Annapolis. Pano, for
those who have not met you, would you stand and wave a hand so that others can find their
way to greeting you on their own?
- To Joe Macfarland for his very fine assumption of the duties of the deanship during this period
of transition and for his helpful advice throughout the year. I cannot have said enough over the
years about the virtue of our Polity in articulating carefully and reasonably the respective
responsibilities of the deans and presidents to ensure the security of our Program of Study.
And I see that we have among us this evening all of the deans with whom I have served on this
campus, each of whom made my service at the College better for their care and advice: Eva
Brann, Harvey Flaumenhaft, Michael Dink, Pamela Kraus, and now Joe Macfarland. Thank
you all! And thanks to their Santa Fe counterparts over the years, now represented in the
person of Matt Davis, dean in Santa Fe, and his immediate predecessor, Ned Walpin, who is
with us today;
�- To our fellow officers, all of whom have come to the College recently and have worked hard
and successfully to integrate themselves into our governing structure on both campuses: Joe
Smolskis, Mike Duran, Laurie Reinhardt, and Phelosha Collaros; and two of their predecessors
here this evening with whom I worked happily for some two decades before their retirement:
Barbara Goyette and Bud Billups. Most of you knew Jeff Bishop when he was a part of the
leadership team; his widow, Sue, and daughter, March, are with us this evening;
- To the faculty and staff, without whom we would be a mere shell of ourselves. No group of
individuals has given more, or more sacrificially, to the happiness and success of this College
than those who serve it day in and day out, those who give of themselves to educate and
support our students in countless ways;
- To Adrian Trevisan, president of our alumni association, his incoming successor, Tia Pausic,
and their presidential predecessors who are also here: Frank Atwell, who flew in from Hawaii,
Allan Hoffman, Sharon Bishop, Glenda Eoyang, and Phelosha Collaros;
- To Don Nicholson, president of the Friends of St. John’s College, and to Anna Greenberg, Jim
Cheevers and Dennis Younger for the past leadership of the Caritas Society and Mitchell
Gallery Board;
- To David Warren and Tina Bjarekull, the superb heads of our national and statewide
independent higher education associations, and to Beth Garraway, the former head of the
Maryland Association. What a pleasure it has been to work with each of you!
- And to my Executive Assistant, Ashleigh Cadmus, whose cheerful manner, ready willingness
to help in anything asked of her, and whose professionalism I could not have done without.
Then there are three of my classmates who started St. John’s with me 51 years ago: Steve Forman, Susan
Lobell and Ron Fielding. One has a sense of continuity and comfort from, and especially a gratitude for,
such long-term friendships. Thank you for being here!
My father is here this evening. To him and my mother I owe the gift of life and an exposure to a St. John's
education. He introduced me early on to Homer, Euclid, Sophocles, Plato and more. But he also led
Sunday evening seminars at our home on Program readings when I was in high school. There I got my
first taste for a way of learning that allowed each of us in these seminars to make our education our own,
while at the same time helping our fellow learners come to their own learning as well.
Some 22 members of the Nelson clan are with us this evening including all of my siblings, four of our
children and a few nieces and in-laws - some 10 of whom are alumni of the College on one campus or the
other. Even three of our sixteen grandchildren are here to enjoy the festivities: Kinan, Xavier, and Anders.
I thank all of you for coming such great distances to be with Joyce and me this weekend.
There are two more people who deserve special mention this evening. Ken Upton of Ken's Creative
Kitchen has catered this affair. As always, the setting, the tables and presentation are beautiful and
flawless, and the food and wine chosen by him delicious and memorable. Ken and his wife Doran have
been generous, contributing members of this College community. Besides, I've loved him as a friend for
some 25 years now. He and his team have made it easy and a pure pleasure for Joyce and me to entertain
the College's many friends, alumni, faculty and staff over the years, supplementing the fine service of our
in-house catering firm, Bon Apetit.
�And finally there is Joyce! She has asked me to thank you on her own behalf as well, but I know of no
more selfless and generous a person than Joyce, who has given of herself to the College, to its many
friends, to the entertainment needs of the office, to the College’s gardens at home and on campus, to the
many students she has befriended and supported in times of their need, and to the community of
Annapolis and its many cultural and artistic institutions. At her request, Nay, at her insistence, I have
never but once publicly acknowledged her contributions over these 26 years, but now I must break with
her and thank her for her service to the College and for her steadfast support of me. In her retirement from
her own busy career as an attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, Joyce is now
pursuing a Masters’ Degree in the Graduate Institute, securing her position as a permanent member of the
College community. I could never have served these 26 years without her support and her quick, sober,
and most practical advice, usually counseling a certain kind of restraint that does not come naturally to
me. Joyce, my thanks - with my love.
It is time to turn the attention of us all to our proper object - the College itself. I'd like to do this by
proposing a concluding toast. As many of you know, it is a tradition at the College for the dean to give a
closing toast each year to our graduating seniors at the final dinner held in their honor. It is a toast to the
four republics by which we live and to which we belong. This evening, I'd like to offer a version of this
Toast to the Republics. Former deans in the room will recognize how shamelessly I have borrowed bits
and pieces of this from some of their own. But there it is then. We don't call this a 'community' of learning
for nothing. So --We drink first to the Republic of Letters.
These are the books and authors who have befriended our students and faculty over the course of
their studies at the College. They have spanned several civilizations and a few centuries. The
older works have survived the test of time because they are fundamental to understanding our
humanity; they are the building blocks and cornerstones of our edifices in the humanities, arts and
sciences. The newer ones test our ability to think afresh with each generation about the turns of
thought and discoveries that have been made that will cast a new light upon those deeply human
questions: What is this world I have been born into? What is my place within it? And what am I
meant to do with the life I have been given?
This Republic is a beckoning republic, welcoming every would-be immigrant who is fleeing
narrow-mindedness and willing to engage in serious dialogue across all sorts of boundaries:
disciplinary, national, cultural, and religious.
The second of my toasts is to The Republic of Plato.
This is the indispensable text that sets forth the plan of study for what we call the "Program" at St.
John's College. It provides the model of a liberal education at work. It teaches us both what it
might mean to be enslaved in our own personal caves and how we might climb out of those caves
into the light of the sun, freeing ourselves (with a little help) from the shadows below. This book
articulates the problem of what it means to be a republic, one that must support a kind of
dialectical interplay between the private good and the common good – perhaps even a tension
between the two that cannot ever quite be reconciled.
My third toast is to the Republic of the United States of America, whose foundation in freedom
grounded in law, has made it possible for this College, dedicated to cultivating the arts of
freedom, the liberal arts, to thrive since before the formal founding of this nation.
We owe this republic a debt of gratitude for our very freedom to think and speak critically about
it. We may not owe it our love, but surely many of us do love it for the freedom we enjoy to
�express our individual hopes and dreams, and then to find paths open to us to achieve those
dreams alongside others who see this as the common heritage of us all who belong to this country
of ours.
We drink fourth to this tiny Republic of St. John's College, grown huge by the company of its
many alumni and friends, as evidenced by your fellowship this evening. But it is also in this
republic where we have established a community of learning, in which our students have come to
realize that the conversation and inquiry among fellow learners are a shared experience and a
genuine common good - a good that has impressed itself deeply upon me.
This last reflection then brings me to a fifth and final toast.
This is a toast to that republic laid up high in our imagination, that aboriginal idea of community,
the image in us of a pattern of friendship in its highest and most liberal form, best expressed in
the closing lines of Plato’s Phaedrus. That dialogue embraces a conversation between Socrates
and his friend Phaedrus in which they explore how one might achieve harmony and balance in the
soul by directing the soul to the beautiful. Socrates concludes with a prayer to the gods:
“Friend Pan and however many other gods are here, grant me to be beautiful with respect to the
things within. And as to whatever things I have outside, grant that they be friendly to the things
inside me. May I believe the wise man to be rich! May I have as big a mass of gold as no one
other than a moderate man of sound mind could bear or bring along!”
Socrates then asks:
“Do we still need something else, Phaedrus? For I think I’ve prayed in a measured fashion.”
To which Phaedrus responds:
“And pray also for me. For what friends have, they have in common.”
This is a beautiful reflection that acknowledges that what we have in common are the things of
the intellect and of the heart that do not grow weaker for having been given away, but grow
stronger for having been shared and held in common by us as well.
It is the project of all of us in higher education who care about our students that we give them the
tools they require to struggle with the questions in life that will help to free them to make lives
worth living. It will be our friends - including everyone in this room - who will today and
tomorrow stand ready to give their love, encouragement and support to this generation of students
and each succeeding one in order that they may enter the world beyond this College and continue
to share in this gloriously human project that we call a liberal education.
Let us raise our glasses and drink to the five republics to which we belong and by which we live.
I thank each of you for your support of St. John’s College and for being with us this evening.
Thank you one and all.
�
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Remarks at Retirement Dinner Celebration.
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Remarks given by Chris Nelson on June 16, 2017 at his Retirement Dinner Celebration.
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Remarks at Retirement Dinner June 16 2017 (Nelson)
Presidents
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/26978450e46703d0d6317f1754f58a94.mp3
17552c932136fa76103c9be08ff24ea6
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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Reminiscences of Scott Buchanan
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Audio recording of a discussion entitled "Reminiscences of Scott Buchanan" circa 1973; with Nicholas Nabokov, Ford K. Brown, Simon Kaplan, John Kieffer, Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, W. Kyle Smith, and Miriam Strange.
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Buchanan, Scott Milross, 1895-1968
Brown, Ford Keeler
Kaplan, Simon, 1893-1979
Kieffer, John Spangler
Klein, Jacob, 1899-1978
Smith, J. Winfree
Stange, Miriam
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lec Nabokov et al 1973
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/45b4f0164ea4e18855870176c1547ad8.pdf
03ca2c6d079639c5f43239fb65a9e636
PDF Text
Text
This materiaf rn~\I h
Copyright law (Titl . !=i protected by
e 17 U.S. Code)
REVISIONISM AND COUNTER-REVISIONISM IN KIRCHENKAMPt' HISTORIOGRAPHY
by
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Paper presented on March 18, 1970 a.t The International Scholars
Conference on "The German Church Struggle 1933-1945: What Can
America Learn?·" held at Wayne State University March 15-19, 1970.
�Prefatory note
Two passages in what follows are printed in brackets.
They are portions of my original manuscript I left
undelivered when I read my paper in the morning of
17 March.
I have decided to reinstate them (a)
because some listeners expressed a regret that the
lecture was not
lon~er
and (b) because I myself
regretted the omission when I heard Richard
Rubenstein in the afternoon.
B.R.v.o.
�REVISIONISM AND COUNTER-REVISIONISM IN KIRCHENKAMPF HISTORIOGRAPHY
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
The title on our program is a terrible mouthful.
explain how I intend to deal with it.
Let me
I shall not confine myself
to the church struggle in the narrower, purely institutional sense.
Nor would you want me to do so.
What interests us all are the
wider implications of that part of church history, that crisis of
Christianity and Christendom.
As for "revisionism and counter-revisionism" in the writing
and thinking about that era of church history, tlie allusion to what is
going on in the general field of contemporary history is deliberate.
The last few years have witnessed some striking reinterpretations
of the history of the age of Hitler.
There was A.J.P. Tarlor with his Origins of the Second World
1
War.
He rejected the version that had been more
accepted since the Nuremberg trj_als.
~r
less
But what is cux-rently
known as "revisionism" is the interpretation provided by the New
Left.
There was Alperovitz with his Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima
2
and Potsdam in 1965 and quite a lot in that vein since. The
tenor of all this is the reasonableness of the Russians and the
obduracy and uncooperativeness of the United States, amounting at
times to collusion with the Germans.
The historian Arno Mayer digs
deeper and goes back further, at least to the Russian Revolution
and the Treaty of Versailles as an early exercise in containment
3
or counter-revolution.
�2-
But what concerns us more is his contention that in the context of the
international civil war that began in 1917, the Second World War and the
extermination camps wer0 r.tthe diabolic wages of revolution ."1.ud counter
4
revolution . . . . "
Th~.:J
:i.s
mor·'~ rndi~n 1,
PVcn, th'.""! P12tcr Waiss
j
in his Auschwitz oratorio The Investigation,
which mentions the com-
plici ty of Germ.an industry in the employment of slave labor.
It goes a
good deal further than Hochhuth who, after a tr€mendously long build-up,
finally lets his Pope appear and shows him preoccupied with
investments and capitalist calculations.
" ... von brennen.der
6
Sorge um Unsere Fabriken erfilllt ... "
and so on.
You may remember that clever crack.
For the benefit
for those without German among us I should perhaps add that "Mit
brennender Sorge," the famous first words of the anti-Nazi
encyclical of Pius XI, are here put into the mouth of his heartless successor to express his "burning concern" for the coffers
of the church.
The rapacity of Rome is quite an old theme, dating
back to Luther and beyond.
':I'he
complicity of German firms in the
slave labor system is a newer one and undeniable.
But to say that
that system and the camps that supplied some of the labor were
the consequence of the Western capitalists' view of Hitler's
Germany as a bulwarlt against Bolshavism is something else again.
It would be too much of a digression to say more about
revisionism in general contemporary history and its possible points
of contact with our subject.
another thing:
But the above examples illustrate
the difficulty of isolating "historiography."
7
Once political scientists and historians like Lewy
and
�38
Friedlaender
take Hochhuth seriously enough to start their works
with favorable references to his play and its historical appendices
and message and then are in their turn accepted as scholarly and cogent,
it is not only the public mind that has been invaded by melodrama
9
That invasion, its causes and
but the academic mind too.
consequences, form part of the story of revisionism and counterrevisionism.
And one might be quite prepared to let the
academic mind go to pot, if the universities were not the new
churches where people look for
salvatio~--provided,
of course,
they are "relevant."
Ever since Hitler came to power I have been interested in
the relevance of religion to Nazism and the resistance to it.
made me go to Dahlem, as a schoolgirl,
It
to hear Martin Niemoller.
But now when I say that I am working. on this subject, the
usual question is for figures:
what statistics are there?
I do
not think that relevance can be quantified, though one may be
able to draw certain conclusions from church attendance, penalties
inflicted on clergy and parishioners, the denominational breakdown
of the membership of the SS, and the like.
But was the church, for instance, "relevant" to the man who,
among those who tried to kill
Hitle~
caree closest to succeeding?
On the eve of his attempt to kill Hitler and bring down the Nazi
system, in the evening of the 19th of July, 1944, a very tense
and busy day, Claus Stauffenberg went briefly inside a church.
You will find no mention of this in Guenter Lewy's book The
Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, not even in the slender chapter
�4-
10
on "The Problem of Resistance."
Perhaps the incident does not
affect his argument--which at most, though not at all, times he
limits to the conduct and recorded utterances of bishops and
other representatives of the institution.
It does appear in a
11
book published long before Lewy wrote.
And Peter Hoffmann in
12
his recent book on the resistance
even goes into the question of
what church it was.
enquiries.
He has made exhaustive a.nd inconclusive
So we do not know if it was a Catholic or a
Protestant one.
uncertainty.
I quite like the
ecume~ical
aspect of that
Stauffenberg was a Catholic and the son of a
13
Protestant mother--who never
conve~ted
to her husband's faith.
But Lewy al:so goes into questions of theology and motivation
~.
Therefo:r.e it is even odder that he does not mention the
fact that earlier StRuffenberg had tried to recruit a fellowCa tholic for the conspiracy by pointing to the
Catholic view on Natural Law and tyrannicid'3 which, whatever the
Protestant view might be, made it the duty of a faithful Catholic
to act counter to 2n oath of loyalty that had been rendered void
by mass murder and a ruinous military policy.
the
Both Major Leonrod,
brother officer to whom Stauffenberg had talked in this v':i."@p,
and his confessor whom Leonrod had subsequently consulted on the
sinfulness of knowing about assassination plans, were later
14
hanged.
Lewy mentions just enough of the Leonrod story to make
one VlOnder about the priest and about Cardinal Faulhaber for later
praising him
11
?.s a fight er against Nazi tyranny . "
Every-
thing is possible, and I would not put it past the Faulhaber of
1946.
But in fact, when one goes to Lewy's source, one finds
�5-
Mother Mary Alice Gallin reporting something slightly different:
a Lenten Pastoral in which Faulhaber "praised the heroism of
those who fought against the Hitler tyranny and used as
illustration ... a letter ... in which a priest from Munich wrote to
him:
'What a beautiful day--the exaltation of the Cross!
I am
condemned to death for being the confessor of a man who
15
participated in the attentat.'''
Whatevar the possible intricacies of that communication, it
strikes me as both mean and misleading to bring out mainly the
negative points of that story.
Mother Gallin used it quite properly
in a discussion of the apparent or real inconsistencies in the
attitudes of the church to rebellion.
It is, indeed, close
enough to the posthumous misappropriation of a martyr by the
establishment to give one an inkling of the rage that anyone not
totally uncritical of the establishment might come to feel if
this line were followed consistently, with never a twinge of
self-examination or whisper of regret.
Then thera is, of course, not a word in Lewy about the hanging
judge's comment on this Catholic priest for having (as a matter of
course) considered a possible assassination of Hitler under the
16
heading of tyrannicide.
Yet that was precisely what Stauffenberg
meant when he spoke to Leonrod about the duty of a Catholic, and
the greater freedom of conscience a Catholic might have compared
with a Protestant.
What keeps Lewy's resistance chapter so slim?
indictment of the church for collaboration so fat?
What makes his
Sticking to
�6-
the recorded public utterances of the hierarchs and taking them at
their face value.
Where such statements deviate from t:'J.e diplomacy that
was widely practiced under the dictatcrship; they may be used
selectively, to exclude intim?.tions of opposition.
And silence
is taken as assent--though we know quite well that it was not
17
always so taken at the time.
But it is not in order to reduce the file on collaboratiofr and
increase that on resistance that !'urge a less selective view of
the church struggle.
It is in order to take accpvnt
of the fact that the churches as institutions were
fearful crisis.
~nd
are in a
Unless we regard them as dispensable or even in
need of liquidation in the general interest, we must try to see
what good they did--a.s well as what harm--when the challenge to
Christianity and to hllmanity was at its most deadly.
And if that
is our purpose, it will not do to persist in simple compilations
18
of damning quotations.
Even the juxtaposition of staunch lay
men and women and the timid clergy, a.nd even that of the devoted
pastoral and lower clergy and the diplomatic higher clergy can be
overdone.
(With this distinction I refer more to the Catholic
constellation.)
It is, after all, conceivable that if there had
been no Concordat, yes,
even with its secret annex on the clergy
and the armed services, Goebbels would have had no cause to complain
about the danger to the National Socialist cause represented by
army chaplains at the front.
These chaplains were clearly far more
important than the Nazi propagandist army bishop Rarkowski whose
significance is, I think, exaggerated by Gordon Zahn and Guenter
19
Lewy.
I must confess that in all my work on captured German
�7-
records Rarkowski never impinged on me, whereas the troublesome
20
army chaplains, both Protestant and Catholic, constantly did.
Goebbels considered them even more dangerous than he did Bishop
Galen of Milnster whom, nevertheless, he wanted eliminated as soon
as this was feasible, i.e., after the war.
Quite clearly there
were checks and balances of a kind, of a practical and psychological
kind, even in the totalitarian system of the Third Reich.
They
did not balance enough, they did not check nearly enough--but
they were real all the same.
They even saved lives sometimes.
It is one of the merits of Peterson's book on The Limits of Hitler's
21
Power
that he almost stumbled on the religious factor among the
limits and writes about it without, however, thinking much further
about it.
He simply takes it as one of the givens of a complex
situation, like character traits or the differences between small
and big towns.
�8-
[on Monday Eberhard Bethge gave a breathtaking description
of the self-deceptions and errors of the Confessing Church.
Twice,
I think> he referred to the "room to breathe" that Confessors
enjoyed at a time, for a time.
The fallacy of the "revisionists" lies in ignoring the
fact that in order to resist the murderers, people must be able
to breathe.
Theoretical constructs cannot resist.
To postulate
a population of perfect resisters does not restore to life a
single man, woman, or child.
To sneer
~t
those who did resist
because they do not conform to the current counsels of perfection(iamf
insults not only them but also the casualties they were trying,
by their lights, to save.
dimmer than ours.
I am not so sure their lights were
Hindsight is not perspicacity.
Neither is there
merit in not having been led into certain temptations by the grace
of geography or chronology; nor, of course, is there any merit
or demerit or moral immunity in genealogy or the accidents of
birth.
That, surely, is one thing we must have learnt.]
�9-
Thus I would say:
Neither the retrospective expectation of
the impossible nor the narrow institutional approach gets us
anywhere with our subject--though, of course, questions of the role
of institutions are very important, including, naturally, the
question of the self-defense of institutions and of its cost and
benefits, both to their members and to non-members.
I incline to
the view that the self-defense of the church, the real church
(and I know that that word "real" begs a question), both
Protestant and Catholic, had benefits trat reached well beyond
their own membership.
Of course there were moments when the
defense of the institution was in conflict with the defense of
the faith and of humanity.
But to make those moments into a
comprehensive indictment of these institutions strikes me as wrong,
irresponsible, and unh:lstorical.
Penitence is one thing--and we have had quite a lot of that
here, though we have had other things too, and sometimes one was
not quite sure about who was b?.ating whose breast.
But I think
wholesale condcmnation--even self-condemnation--does not help.
There are, I
ad~it,
moments when one can understand the
"revisionist" wave that swept over all earlier accounts of the
heroism and martyrdom of the church struggle.
But when a History
22
Scholar in Oxford refers to the churches as "tools of fascism"
revisionism has gone far enough.
The pre-war historians of the church struggle may have suffered
from the weaknesses John Conway described on Monday.
Yet they were
closer to the truth, I think, than the latter-day perfectionists.
�10It strikes me as significant that George Shuster who, with
Reinhold Niebuhr, seems to have been one of the first in this
23
country to recognize and denounce the evil of Nazism,
was also
the first to write a book about the church conflict.
he gave it, Like a Mighty Army:
The title
Hitler Versus Established
Religion, may have been over-optimistic, yet the
boo~
published in
24
1935,
gave an impressive picture of the clash.
Then, in 1936,
there was John Brown Mason's Hitler's First Foes: A Study in
25
When, thirty years later, I asked an
Religion and Politics.
assistant at the New Yorlt Public Library for it, he said somewhat
sardonically, "I didn't know he had so many enemies."
By then,
of course, Hochhuth held the stage and revisionism was in full
swing.
Mason, incidentially, was a Protestant, writing about the
conflict betweeri the Catholic church and the Nazi regime.
was another.
Micklem
He published his book in 1939, under the auspices
26
of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Lewy uses it exactly
~'
It is a classic.
in his chapter on "The Church and
Hitler's Foreign Policy," merely for the translation of an announcement read from the pulpits in the diocese of Berlin after the
Munich Agreement.
"God
has heard the prayer of all Christendom
for peace," and so on.
He uses Micklem's translation in his own
27
argument of church support for Hitler,
but does not quote
Micklem's comment which follows immediately after:
please the Nazis.
"This did not
It ascribed glory to God rather than to Adolf
28
Hitler."
And so it goes, I am afraid, in much of Lewy's book.
There is a lot one can do with selective quoting and taking things
out of their context; and he has done it; and thus what John Conway
�11-
29
has called a "brilliant polemic"
is built up.
Conway was more
30
severe with FriedlaendE:lr's booli: on Pius XII;
and my guess is that
one reason was that when he saw that he had seen more of the
documents on relations between Berlin and the Vatican and he knew
what Friedlaender must have seen and had suppressed, ignored,
or distorted.
docume~ts
! had had more experience with the domestic
and developments and therefore found Friedlaender mild
in comparison with Lewy.
Also, a misinterpretation of this one
dead po:rn worries me less than false siP'plifications of the complex
doings and sufferings of a lot of people.
Perhaps a personal note will help to explain why I feel this
so strongly and also feel that--whatever the revival of German
Protestantism and its theology in the Nazi era, in response to its
almost deadly challenge--Catholics should not be forgotten in all
this.
During and after the war I was working on Germany for the
British Foreign Office.
We heard and saw more than most, certainly
more than the news media; and received more reliable information than the
press and
r~dio
(television
hardly existed in those days).
Doing
that kind of work gave one a clearer view of the hell of Hitler's
Europe than anyone else outside, and clearer, too, than most
people insj_de had.
It is, I suppose, an experience that leaves
its marks.
After the Normandy landings, captured documents began to
arrive--including concentration camp records.
They conveyed a
picture of hell and the virtual inescapability of hell.
Then the
�12-
records of the Reich Chancery arrived, the records of the
administrative, governmental, center of it all (though, of course,
there was the Party Chancery too, and the SS and concentration camp
universe had more to do with that).
Rut here was the correspondence
of Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancery.
alia, the euthanasia or
It contained, inter
killing'' material.
'~ercy
Here were the
protests of Bishops von Galen and Wurm--one Catholic, one
Protestant--of the Protestant pastor Braune and of the Catholic
priest Bernhard Lichtenberg.
in the middle of hell.
died in captivity.
prayed for the Jews.
They were like an enclave of heaven
And of thesa four it was Lichtenberg who
But then he had also publicly pleaded and
All these men were brave, Braune perhaps the
bravest.
But Lichtenberg was imprisoned, maltreated, humiliated,
31
and then died in transit to a codcentration camp.
It is
that kind of thijg "f.::hat stays with one:
proof of courage and
the p.it,lpable, visible
fidelit~.
These men had kept faith with imbeciles and epileptics and
had tried to intervene at the heart, the unfeeling bureaucratic
heart, of the political machinery, to get one kind of killing
stopped.
They even eventually succeeded, probably because the
factor that had prompted their ~ion '--~~~-grief an~ horror of )h:_C<enext of kin, remained a factor.
There
~ people
all over
w·~D ~rxir
Germany whose institutionalized brothers, sons, aunts died sudden
deaths by medical means, who night have seen their relatives quite
recently, were then told that they had died of acute appendicitis,
and knew there had been no appendix since it had been taken out
�13-
years ago.
It was these lying death certificates, which one knew
bore no relation to the actual cause of death, that may first
have conveyed to ordinary, unpolitical people the fact that the
country was, in part at least, being run by murderers.
of course, always individual families that were hit:
It was,
it was just
one person they loved or were somehow attached to who had been
made to die; it might happen quite near where they lived, or in
an institution farther away; the victims were usually taken somewhere else to be killed; some of the trPnsports became known in the
institutions affected--even children heard about them; and here
and there smoke from cremation would attract attention.
But it
was not these--usually avoidable--failures of stagecraft that
caused unrest among the people.
It was the fact that the families
of the victims were leading normal lives among other families
leading normal lives, in a state whose laws did not provide for
the killing of the incurable--let alone light cases of epilepsy-and whose legal system, despite all political distortion, was
still function;.ng.
That the whole program of medical murder was
based on a secret order by Hitler, some may have known or heard by
way of rumor--most did not.
The whole thing was surrounded by
mystery, secrecy, brutality, administrative anonymity, and
33
misleading language, even organizations with phoney names.
All
this was happening all over the country and caused individual grief
and collective unrest.
The members of the clergy who were
approached by the bereaved or those about to be bereaved or who,
like Braune, were connected with institutions that housed and cared
�14-
for the patients the system was now exterminating, these men-Braune, Lichten'be:"."g, Wurm, Galen--could and did use the argument
of inexpedi8ncy against this policy of extermination.
Popular
unrest is not a thing a government wants, least of all during
a war that demands increasing sacrifices from the people.
also used the argument of illegality.
God and the dictates of humanity.
They
And they invoked the law of
But it was almost certainly
the consideration of the inexpediency of the operation that
eventually got it stopped or almost
sto~ped.
Quite an arsenal of arguments--though God and humanity did
not cut much ice with Nazis.
Expediency did.
But even here, what
surprised me, coming on this correspondence when I did, was that
anyone protested at all--not that there had not been more protest.
And th:id protest w2.s "through channels," the channels that were
left in what sm:vived of the old system, the ancien regime.
Galen
also preached in public, referred to the matter in sermons; and
at once the radicals, or progressives, of the new regime took counsel on
how he could be silenced. ·
T~ey
or to kill him during the war.
decided it was inadvisable to touch
He was too popular in Westphalia--
indeed all over the Reich, wherever people pricked up their ears
for a voice of dissent.
Lichtenberg, on the other hand, was hardly
known beyond Berlin and even there his name meant something only
to the Catholic minority and a few lively minds outside.
Incidentally, his arrest and eventual death were due not to police
initiative or the denunciation of one of his parishioners, but to
a couple of sharp-eared and vigilant women students from the
34
Rhineland who were sightseeing in his church during a service.
�15-
It is such human
.facto1·s,
social tac tors, atmospheric factors
one has to be aware of in dealing with those years.
It may have been partly as a result of this early conditioning
by much of the documentation on the churches that I felt that
even Bockenforde was not quite just to the German bishops in
his very critical article on German catholicism in the crucial
year of 1933.
This article appeared in the Catholic monthly
35
Hochland in early 1961
and was, I suppose, the real beginning
of the revision of the earlier
favorabl~
picture.
There was a reply
36
by Hans Buchheim
37
and then a rejoinder by Bockenforde.
I felt tha:.
even Bockenforde was isolating some episcopal statements from
their contexts--or at any rate not giving enough context for
38
certainty about the significance of the quotation.
Shortly
before there was Morsey with his long chapter on the end of the
39
Center Party in the big book Das Ende der Parteien.
So the nineteen-sixties were largely occupied by critical
literature, some of it hyper-critical, but they also saw the
beginning of the documentary series put out by the Vatican and the
Catholic Academy in Bavaria and the steady progress of the
publications of the corresponding commission on the Protestant
side, the AGK or Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes.
40
In 1967 came Bethge's Bonhoeffer
misleading:
--but to call it that is
it is to my mind the best single book on the develop-
ment of events and the feel of the time and, of course, the
figure and role of Bonhoeffer.
published in translation.
It is now, at long last, to be
It is the most vivid, the most telling
�16-
picture of the era of the church struggle you ara likely to
get anywhere.
41
John Conway's book on The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
appeared soon after and its very title signalled a change.
The
book is not just about persecution, it is also about adaptation
and resistance but it gets back, at last, to the point that,
whether we call them totalitarian or not, the Nazis, once in
power, had the initiative and had church policies of their own.
They were not friendly.
Readers of German had already been reminded of that in 1965
in Friedrich Zipfel's book, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933-1945.
Religionsverfolgung und Selbstbehauptung der Kirchen in der
nationalsozialistischen Zeit.
(That word "Selbstbehauptung"
is, I think, a key term in our context.)
The evidence about the relationship of the Nazis and the
churches is so vast and manifold that the argument about resistance
and collaboration can go on forever and lead nowhere, certainly to
no understanding, unless certain values and priorities are made
explicit.
One may have to agree to disagree about values; but at
least one then knows what the disagr€ement is about.
By all this
I do not mean to say that my own values and priorities are crystal
clear to me.
But very often in the polemics of the last decade I
have had the distinct impression that the basic quarrel was not
really so much about facts as about their interpretation.
Though
there are, admittedly, lots of facts, important facts that we need
to know more about.
One category of facts concerns the very
�17-
difficult questions who knew what when; also, what was knowable
at any given stage.
Here hindsight is a great hindrance, unless
one is aware of its dangers.
�18-
[These questions are complicated by the hardest question and
the most painful answer of all:
much.
the question who cared and how
Caring and knowing are connected--and so are courage and
knowledge.
In the pressures of the time certain kinds of knowledge
were dangerous.
There were, undoubtedly, such things as cognitive
courage and cognitive cowardice, factors of courage or the lack
of it that affected cognition itself.
Also much "knowing" was a
43
matter of interpretation.
Louis de Jong has shown
that the Jews
in Holland simply would not or could not believe what was going
on in the East.
They must have been lilte the many Germans who
knew of deportation but did not know of extermination.
In the
case of Jews who were themselves, as we now know, liable to
extermination, one cannot say they did not know because they did
not care.
But since in the
c~se
of non-Jews there is always the
suspicion that they did not care, or did not care enough, much
more contemporary knowledge of the mass killing is
~ow
assumed than
is probably justified.
The extreme example of wanting to know and taking steps to
find out is Kurt Gerstein.
It involved complicity.
Any knowledge
meant a kind of complicity, meant either tacit toleration of the
intolerable or attempts to counteract it which invariably involved
lies, deception, some harm to others, perhaps even murder.
Gerstein
himself became part of the system that supplied the gas with which
millions of Jews were killed.
If his own account is to be accepted
--and I do, on the whole, apart from some minor details, accept
it--he diverted
some of the supplies.
But his signature is on
�19-
the receipts for large quantities.
He signed for them in order to
divert them.
A proportion he was unable to divert or destroy.
44
He had joined the SS in order to find out about its murders.
This extreme example shows that the courage to see, the courage
45
to know, was a far from simple matter.
The present phase of recrimination indicts knowledge as well
as ignorance--knowledge, however, somewhat more than ignorance.
There is a widespread desire to incriminate.
Where so many
suffered and died, the desire to find c·:llprits who caused their
suffering and death is natural.
But it is hard to satisfy with
the truth.
Part of the truth undoubtedly is that there was less knowledge
of what we now know to have happenP-d at the time it was happening.
But the other and more painful part of the truth is that
most men (and most women, and most children) cared less than they
should have cared.
They did not love their neighbor like them-
selves--particularly not the neighbor who had been classified as
not-a-neighbor or the millions of Jews outside Germany, in occupied
Europe, especially in Eastern Europe where they were so numerous
and so segregated.
The Jewish experience of forsakenness--the sin of Christendom-is now being visited on Christianity.
was a deadly reality.
"Christian" anti-semi tism
But the mainspring and machinery of the
twentieth-century mass murder of Jews was not Christian, it was
post-Christian or neo-pagan.
Christians did not prevent the murders
but they did not instigate them.
And it is surely significant that
�20-
the Nazi agencies whose task it was to watch opposition to the
regime interpreted Christian, particularly Catholic, objections to
Nazi neo-paganism as objections to Nazi racial policies.
Nazis
and anti-Nazis were agreed on the synonymity of neo-paganism and
racism.
And that, to me, is the chief lesson to be learnt from that
epoch.
It does not mean that one ignores the anti-semitism or
cowardice or greed or cruelty of gentiles called Christians.
But it means that there is a difference between Christianity and
gentility, between Christianity and Judaism on the one hand and
paganism on the other; and the difference may be one between life
and death, earthly, physical life and death--as well as the other
kind.]
�21-
This conference may help us on toward the dialectical
synthesis mentioned by John Conway on Monday, which Victor
46
Conzemius prognosticated or hoped for when he wrote two years ago.
He had also suggested, even earlier, some such conference as this but
could do nothing to bring it about.
be a good :i.dea t'J get
Incidentally, it might
111s really outstanding sn:rvey of
the literature on the Christian churches and Nazi totali-
47
tarianism translated.
Meanwhile there is my own somewhat
shorter and less systematic article,
"N~-zis
and Christians" in
48.
World Politics, April, 1969.
---~----~-
.
-
I mention it here because church
---------~-
historians may not expect an article on our subject in that politiea1
quarterly.
Our subject has all along suffered from inter-
disciplinary as well as inter-denominational segregation.
That is
why this conference is such a wonderful opportunity to de-segregate,
to integrate, to bring together what belongs together.
Conzemius, I think, sees the essential as well as the
existential connection between the two components of the subject
of the
~~dress
with which our Chairman opened this ccnferoncc.
To sustain the tension between them without short circuits
seems to me the only way to illumination or enlightenment on the
darkest secret and the best publicized crime of Christendom.
publicity has been retrospective and blinding.
must come from elsewhere.
The
The il~umination
�22-
The church struggle was the struggle of the church to be true
to its Lord.
And I take that to be a vital concern not only to
its members but to all mankind.
I am not a member, but I am
passionately convinced of its importance.
What gave me that
conviction was precisely the experience of Hitler's millennium
and the Christian response to it.
�23-
Footnotes
1.
(London:
2.
A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War
Hamish Hamilton, 1961).
Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy:
Hiroshima and Potsdam;
the Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with
Soviet Power (New York:
3.
Simon and Schuster, 1965).
Arno J. Mayer, Poli tics and
DiplOI~_acr o~ Peacema}.~~!lg: Co~tain~_
nient and Counterrevolution at --·- Versailles, 1918-1919 (New York: Knopf,
-- - - - ---- ----- - --·-· -
~'--· -~
---·
-
·-
196'1).
4.
"Uses and Abuses of Historical Analogies," paper delivered at
the Annual Mc8ting of the American Historical Association, 1967.
5.
Peter Weiss, Die Ermittlung;
(Frankfurt am Main:
play.
Oratorium in 11 Gesangen
Suhrkamp, 1965); and The Investigation; a
English version by Jon Swan and Ulu Graubard (New York:
Atheneum, 1966).
6.
Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter.
Schauspiel, mit
einem Vorwort von Erwin Piscator (Reinbek bei Hamburg:
1963); The Deputy.
Translated by Richard and Clara Winston.
Preface by Albert Schweitzer (New York:
7.
York:
Rowohlt,
Grove Press, 1964).
Guenter Lewy, ThP. Catholic Church and Nazi GeI_"ma11y (New
McGrav'
'!T-•.L.l.
Book Company, 1964).
�24-
8.
Saul Friedlaender, "Pius X:£I and the Third· Reich.
Documentation.
Translated froil! the
Fullman (New York:
9.
A
French and German by ChRrles
Knopf, 1966).
For the invasion of the classroom by the Hochhuth
industry see Dolores Barracano Schmidt and Earl Robert Schmidt,
eds., The
Dep~ty_ _!leader:
Studies in Moral Responsibility (Chicago:
Scott, Forsman and Company, 1965).
10.
Lewy, pp. 309-321.
11.
Eberhard Zeller, Geist der Freiheit:
Juli (Milnchen:
12.
der zwanzigste
Hermann Rinn Verlag, 1954), p. 217.
Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat.
Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler (Milnchen, Piper, 1969),
pp. 465 and 808.
13.
She made a point of mentioning this to me when I saw her
in 1953.
14.
Spiegelbild einer Verschworung:
Die Kaltenbrunner-
Berichte an Bormann und Hitler Uber das Attentat vom 20. Juli
1944.
Geheime Dokumente ans dem ehemaligen Reichs-
sicherheitshauptamt.
Herausgegeben vom Archiv Peter filr
historische und zeitgeschichtliche Dokumentation (Stuttgart:
Seewald Verlag, 1961), pp. 262 f, 321-4, 435, and Christian
Milller, "19. Juli 1944" in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, ed., 20. Juli 1944.
Die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler im Urteil der auslandischen
�25-
Geschichtsschreibung.
Eine Anthologie (Bonn:
Presse- und
Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 1969), p. 225.
15.
Mother Mary Alice Gallin, German Resistance to ... Hitler:
Ethical and Religious Factors (The Catholic University of
America Press, Washington, D.C., 1961), p. 288.
16.
Volksgerichtshofs-Prozesse zum 20. Juli 1944.
Transkripte von Tonbandfunden.
Deutschen Rundfunks.
17.
Herausgegeben vom Lautarchiv des
Mimeographed,
n.~.,
April 1961, p. 136.
For a discussion of some of this see Beate Ruhm von
Oppen, "Nazis and Christians," in World Politics, vol. XXI, No.
3 (April 1969), pp. 392-424.
18.
Not even subtler
p~esentations
German Catholics and Hitler's Wars:
(New York:
such as Gordon
c.
Zahn's
A Study in Social Control
Sheed and Ward, 1962).
19.
Zahn, pp. 143-172; Lewy, pp. 236-242 and 247.
20.
For documentation refer to some of the earlier Guides
to German Records Microfilmed at Alexandria, Va. (Washington,
D.C.:
The National Archives, 1960-
records were filmed selectively,
).
Later Field Commands
omitting the chaplaincy
sections.
21.
Edward N. Peterson, The Limits of Hitler's Power
(Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1969).
�26-
22.
Magdalen Goffin, "A Contradictory Hero," in The New
York Review of Books, 21 August 1969, p. 34.
(opening Lecture by Franklin Littell).
23.
See above, p.
24.
George N. Shuster, Like a Mighty Army:
Established Religion (New York:
Hitler versus
D. Appleton-Century Company,
1935).
25.
John Brown Mason, Hitler's First Foes:
A Study of
Religion and Politics (Minneapolis, 1936).
26.
Nathaniel Micklem, Natior.al Socialism and the Roman
Catholic Church, Being an Account of the Conflict Between the
\
National Socialist Government of Germany and the Roman Catholic
Church 1933-1938 (London:
Oxford University Press, 1939).
27.
Lewy, p. 219.
28.
Micklem, p. 229.
29.
John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
1933-45 (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968; and New York:
Basic Books, 1969), p. 409.
30.
Ibid., pp. 494-450.
31.
Anton Erb, Berhard Lichtenberg.
1946).
(Berlin:
Morus Verlag,
�27-
32.
argues
It was not just, as Lewy (pp. 266-7; and Conway, p. 283)
that there was a popular outcry against the euthanasia
program because the next of kin felt sympathy for the victims as
relatives, and no outcry againct the extermination of the Jews bccauso
pro~aganda;
there had been anti-semitic
another important point
of difference was the almost instant knowledge of the fate of the
victins of the euthanasia program and the lack of it in the case
of deported Jews.
33.
Infamy:
Cf. Fred Mielke and Alexander Mitscherlich, Doctors of
The StoLy of Nazi Medical Crimes ... translated by
Heinz Norden ... (New York:
H. Schuman, 1949); Alexander
Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, eds., Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit
(Franldurt am Main:
34.
Fischer-Bilcherei, 1960) .
Cf. Otto Ogiermann, S.J., Bis zum letzten Atemzug:
Prozess gegen Bernhard Lichtenberg (Leipzig:
der
St. Benno-
Verlag GMBH, 1968), pp. 120-5.
35.
Ernst-Wolfgang B5ckenf5rde,
'~er
deutsche Katholizismus
im Jahre 1933; eine kri tische Betrachtung," Hoch land, vol. LI II
(February 1961), pp. 215-39.
36.
Hans Buchheim,
'~er
deutsche Katolizismus im Jahr 1933:
Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Ernst-Wolfgang B5ckenforde," ibid.,
(August 1961), pp. 497-515.
37.
Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenf5rde, "Der deutsche Katholizismus
im Jahre 1933:
Stellungnahme zu einer Diskussion," ibid., vol.
LIV (February 1962), pp. 217-45.
�28-
38.
Beate Ruhm von Oppen, ucatholics and Nazis in 1933,"
Wiener Library Bulletin, vol. XVI (January 1962), p. 8.
39.
Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der
Parteien (Dlisseldorf:
40.
Droste Verlag, 1960), pp. 279-453.
Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Zeitgenosse (MUnchen:
Theologe, Christ,
Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1967).
41.
42.
1945.
See note 30.
Friedrich Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland, 1933-
Religionsverfolgung und Selbstbehauptung der Kirchen in der
nationalsozialistischen Zeit (Berlin:
43.
de Gruyter, 1965).
Cf. Louis de Jong, "Die Niederlande und Auschwitz," in
Vierteljahrshefte flir Zeitgeschichte, 17. Jg., 1. Heft, January
1969, pp. 1-16.
44.
Cf. Saul Friedlaender, Kurt Gerstein ou l'nmbiguit6 du
bien (Paris:
Casterman, 1967); Kurt Gerstein oder die
Zwiespaltigkeit des Guten, deutsch von Jutta und Theodor Knust
(GUtersloh:
Bertelsmann Sachbuchverlag, 1968); Kurt Gerstein,
the Ambiguity of Good.
Translated from the French and German by
Charles Fullman (New York:
45.
Knopf, 1969).
Friedlaender brings this out.
But he does not make it
clear that the document known as the Gerstein Report was written
in April 1945, long after the events presented by Hochhuth, who uses
and stresses Gerstein's knowledge and his attempt to communicate it
to the Vatican--but not the cost 0£ its acquisition.
�29-
46.
See above, p.
47.
Victor Conzemius,
[John Conway's paper.]
'~glises
chretiennes et totalitarisme
national-socialiste," in Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique, vol.
LXIII, nos. 2 and 3/4, 1968, pp. 437 and 868-948.
been reissued as a monograph:
Victor Conzemius, Eglises
Chretiennes et Totalitarisme National-Socialiste.
Historiographique (Louvain:
See note 17.
Un Bilan
Bibliotheque de la Revue d'Histoire
Ecclesiastique, Fasciule 48, 1969).
48.
It has since
�
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Revisionism and counter-revisionism in Kirchenkampf Historiography
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Typescript of a paper by Beate Ruhm von Oppen presented on March 18, 1970 at The International Scholars Conference on "The German Church Struggle 1933-1945: What Can America Learn?" held at Wayne State University March 15-19, 1970.
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Detroit, MI
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1970-03-18
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lec Ruhm von Oppen 1970-03-18
FaFi-Ruhm von OppenB016
Tutors
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168471a4a7376273c851c1fc394fed08
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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Richards Scofield 1898-1970
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Richard Scofield (1898-1970)
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Program of the transcript for the memorial services of Tutor Richard Scofield, held in The Great Hall on the Annapolis Campus, October 17, 1970.
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memorial
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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
A name given to the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
5 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
Santa Fe Baccalaureate Address, Spring 1991
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a the address given on May 19, 1991 by James Carey as part of the Baccalaureate service in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Carey, James
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
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991-05-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000381
Baccalaureate service
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7545db4228dd9721eecc4fbb46481783.mp3
0652d23669b76cd7db3569168cb444c4
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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
audiotape (Tape 225)
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:29:45
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
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan answer questions about the history and development of the St. John’s College Program (Part 1 of 2)
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan discussing and answering questions about the history and development of the St. John's program. Recorded in two parts on August 25, 1966 as a supplement to Warren C. Bomhardt’s Master’s Thesis, “The St. John’s College Program: its history and development” for Loyola College, Baltimore, MD, 1968.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Barbara, CA
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1966-08-25
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/4051" title="Part 2">Part 2</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Barr Buchanan 1966-08-25 (part 1)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Barr, Stringfellow, 1897-1982
Buchanan, Scott, 1895-1968
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Bomhardt, Warren C.
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