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Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 1
“Everyone Sees How You Appear; Few Touch What You Are”:
Machiavelli on Human Nature
How do the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli appear to us today? There is no small risk
that, whenever we crack the spines of The Prince or the Discourses on Livy, we will find these
books to be boring. Full of historical details, full of admittedly colorful and even shocking
anecdotes, they nonetheless appear to teach us only what we already know: the maxims of
amoral, or immoral, prudence, that ‘the end justifies the means,’ or that ‘might makes right.’ To
say that we already know such things does not mean that we believe them, of course. Perhaps in
extreme circumstances, with lives at stake, we might grant that it is necessary to be
Machiavellian; but who really expects to find himself in extreme circumstances? Most of the
time, among family, friends, and fellow citizens, we try to be good, to do what is right. We
might grant, while smothering a yawn, that we sometimes need to be Machiavellians. But we
would not say that we are Machiavellians.
And yet Machiavelli’s books are not just full of striking maxims about how we should
live, like “men should either be caressed or eliminated” [P 3:10].1 They are also full of striking
claims about how we do live, claims that Machiavelli offers in support of these maxims. “[M]en
should either be caressed or eliminated, because they avenge themselves for slight offenses but
cannot do so for grave ones” [P 3:10] – because, that is, only death can stop a human being from
seeking revenge, even for a slight injury. Behind or beneath the Machiavellian maxims about
how we should live, there appears to be a Machiavellian account of how we do live – an account
of what human beings are, an account of human nature. Could this account be true? And if we
find it to be so, are we compelled to be, not just rainy day Machiavellians, but Machiavellians
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 2
through and through? These questions, it seems to me, run a lesser risk of being boring.
Tonight I will sketch this Machiavellian account of human nature, chiefly as it is found in
The Prince, but with some reference to the Discourses on Livy. In concentrating on these two
books, I will be following Machiavelli’s advice, at least to some extent. In the Dedicatory Letter
of The Prince, he suggests that it contains all that he has learned and understood; while in the
Dedicatory Letter of the Discourses he writes that it contains as much as he knows and has
learned [P DL:3-4; D DL:3; compare TM, 17]. Either book on its own would presumably suffice
for the experienced student of Machiavelli. But for relative beginners like ourselves, it is helpful
to have the same matter given two different forms. What I hope to show by this sketch is that we
underestimate Machiavelli if we consider him simply as a teacher of amoral or immoral practices
that we can take or leave as we conduct our lives. To the extent that Machiavelli’s account of
human nature is shared by his successors, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau – to
whose thought we trace our political institutions and our understanding of ourselves – we may be
forced to acknowledge his account of human nature as our own. It may turn out that deep down,
where it counts, we are Machiavellians, even though we do not appear to be so, even to
ourselves.
This lecture will have three parts. In the first, I will offer the desire to acquire as the
main element of human nature as Machiavelli depicts it, and show how in a political setting this
desire ramifies into two humors, that of the great and that of the people. In the second I will
sketch goodness as the excellence of the popular humor and virtue as the excellence of the humor
of the great, and I will connect Machiavelli’s distinction between goodness and virtue to the
famous ‘turn’ in Chapter Fifteen of The Prince from the imagination of a thing to its effectual
truth [P 15:51]. In the final part I will suggest that Machiavelli’s view of human nature points to
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 3
a science of human nature without a distinctively human element – what Machiavelli calls a
“science of sites” – and I will raise some difficulties with this science, difficulties that originate
in Machiavelli’s own writings.
I
Readers who leaf through the pages of The Prince or the Discourses in search of the
phrase ‘human nature’ are bound, at first, to be disappointed. As far as I can tell, Machiavelli
never uses the phrase in either work. Mentions of nature, by contrast, are easy to find. In The
Prince, for example, Machiavelli writes of the natures of nonliving things, like sites, mountains,
low places, rivers, and marshes [P DL:4, 14:59]. He writes of the natures of living things, like
beasts, foxes, and lions [P 18:69, 70; 19:78]. He writes of the natures of particular human
beings, alone or in groups, like peoples, governments, ministers, emperors, princes, and cautious
men [P DL:4; 6:24; 4:18; 7:30; 17:68; 19:76; 23:95; 25:99, 100]. He even writes of nature in
general as something that contains things [P 7:26], and that causes particular men to incline in a
certain way [P 25:100].2 But each time he writes about nature, Machiavelli sidesteps the phrase
‘human nature.’ He is willing to write as if particular beings have natures, he is willing to
include particular human beings among these beings, and he is willing to imply that all beings
fall within nature in some general sense; but nature in each of these cases is subhuman or
superhuman – that is, not specifically human. The closest Machiavelli comes to writing about
human nature in The Prince is a single claim he makes about the “nature of men” – that they are
“obligated as much by benefits they give as by benefits they receive” [P 10:44]. Even there, he
does not dignify the nature of men with the specific adjective ‘human.’
Nonetheless, there are plenty of hints in The Prince that Machiavelli thinks that human
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 4
beings do have a nature, if only in the sense of an abiding character. Early in the work, for
example, he considers “a natural difficulty” and “another natural and ordinary necessity” that
confront a new prince: that “men willingly change their masters in the belief that they will fare
better,” but that “one must always offend those over whom he becomes a new prince” [P 3:8].3
In the immediate sequel Machiavelli treats these natural necessities that follow from the
character of men as “universal causes” [P 3:9],4 and suggests that they contribute to an
apparently permanent “order of things” [P 3:11] that endures despite the changes brought by
time [P 3:13; 10:44].5 Later in The Prince he invokes “human conditions” in much the same
way, to explain why a prince cannot have, nor wholly observe, all of the qualities that are held
good [P 15:62]. The conditions in question can be summarized in a single phrase: men are
wicked unless necessity makes them good.6 As with the other natural necessities felt by a new
prince, Machiavelli implies that these conditions will never change, as long as there are human
beings. If they did change, his description of the situation of the new prince, and of the political
situation more generally, would cease to be true.
Similar claims about the abiding character of human beings can be found in the
Discourses, in a somewhat more explicit form. In that work Machiavelli warns early on against
the error of thinking that men, among other things, have “varied in motion, order, and power
from what they were in antiquity” [D I.P.2:6]. To the contrary, “[w]hoever considers present and
ancient things easily knows that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the
same humors, and there always have been” [D I.39.1:83].7 Not just human beings but human
things have a permanent character: they “are always in motion, either they ascend or they
descend” [D II.P.2:123]. Perhaps as a result, the world has a permanent character too: “I judge
the world always to have been in the same mode,” Machiavelli writes, “and there to have been as
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 5
much good as wicked in it” [D II.P.2:124]. He even flirts, indirectly, with the idea that the world
is eternal. “To those philosophers who would have it that the world is eternal,” he writes, “I
believe that one could reply that if so much antiquity were true it would be reasonable that there
be memory of more than five thousand years – if it were not seen how the memories of times are
eliminated by diverse causes, of which part come from men, part from heaven” [D II.5.1:138139]. It is reasonable, then, that there be no memory of more than five thousand years, even if
the world is eternal. So is the world eternal? However this may be, Machiavelli regards the
world as lasting enough that he can claim that human things have an abiding character. “It has
always been, and will always be,” he announces, “that great and rare men are neglected in a
republic in peaceful times” [D III.16.1:254]. Men “have and always had the same passions, and
they must of necessity result in the same effect” [D III.43.1:302]. If it were to turn out that the
abiding character of human beings included an element specific to human beings, an element that
was a cause or principle of human motion and rest, then despite his avoidance of the term,
Machiavelli could be said to have an account of a specifically human nature.
The best candidate for such an element, in The Prince and the Discourses, is the desire to
acquire. In The Prince this desire sets the tone for the whole book. Machiavelli mentions it in
the first sentence of the Dedicatory Letter, writing “[i]t is customary most of the time for those
who desire to acquire favor with a Prince to come to meet him with things that they care most for
among their own or with things that they see please him most” [P DL:3]. In the particular form
of the desire to acquire a principality, this desire dictates the concerns of the first half of the
work, and is mentioned in three of the first fourteen chapter titles;8 while the second half, which
examines “what the modes and government of a prince should be with subjects and with friends”
[P 15:61], can be understood as containing advice about how to keep an acquisition. But when
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 6
Machiavelli formulates this desire as a principle, he writes, “truly it is a very natural and ordinary
thing to desire to acquire” [P 3:14], without saying for whom, or for what, this is very natural
and ordinary. He does continue, in the immediate sequel, “and when men do it who can, they
will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and want to do it anyway, here lie the error
and the blame” [P 3:14-15], but this amounts to saying that praise and blame are specifically
human, not that the desire to acquire is.9 In the Discourses Machiavelli elaborates: “nature has
created men so that they are able to desire everything and are unable to attain everything” [D
I.37.1:78]. As a result, “human appetites are insatiable, for since from nature they have the
ability and the wish to desire all things and from fortune the ability to achieve few of them, there
continually results from this a discontent in human minds and a disgust with the things they
possess” [D II.P.3:125]. While Machiavelli says that the insatiable appetites and the discontent
and disgust that they produce are specifically human, they are also effects of a cause that is not
specifically human: nature in general.
Not only does Machiavelli fail to insist that the desire to acquire is specifically human; he
also fails to assign the desire a specific end. In The Prince and the Discourses he depicts human
beings who desire to acquire material things like cities and provinces, states and kingdoms,
friends and partisans, and spiritual things like reputation, glory, and knowledge. But he never
argues that these are the proper objects of the desire to acquire. Instead, he asserts in the
Discourses, “each willingly multiplies that thing and seeks to acquire those goods he believes he
can enjoy once acquired” [D II.2.3:132; compare II.4.2:137]. The desire to acquire can have
anything as its object, then, so long as the one who acquires it believes he will enjoy it. But the
omnivorousness of the desire points again to its insatiability. Since the object of the desire is
nothing in particular, but rather acquisition for the sake of enjoying possession, and since
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 7
possession inspires only disgust and discontentment, the acquiring being goes from expecting
future enjoyment to feeling present dissatisfaction, and the desire to acquire must seek a new
object. Machiavelli is right, then, to call this desire a desire to acquire, since it aims at no object
in particular, but rather at acquisition, which is to say the feeling of acquisition, in general.
Human beings feel discontent and disgust with what they have; they enjoy only when they feel
that what they have is increasing.10 The desire to acquire thus resembles a drive to grow, since
its end is an increase in one’s own, without any intrinsic concern about whether one’s own is also
good.11
Understood in this way, the desire to acquire has both external and internal consequences.
Externally, this desire drives isolated human beings to acquire without limit and without
exclusion – in the Discourses Machiavelli mentions that it is even possible to “acquire the
world” [D I.20.1:54]. It follows from this that isolated human beings are almost entirely
formless.12 Perhaps this is one reason for Machiavelli’s practice of using “matter” as a term for
the human beings who are potential subjects of a prince [P 6:23; 26:102, 104]. But in a political
setting, when human beings live together, their desires to acquire interfere with one another, and
form arises. In The Prince, Machiavelli proclaims that in every city and every principality, “two
diverse humors are found” [P 9:39; compare 19:7613]: the people and the great. These humors
are defined by their characteristic appetites: “the people desire neither to be commanded nor
oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people” [P 9:39].14 In
the Discourses, Machiavelli calls these humors the nobles and the ignobles, and writes,
“[w]ithout doubt, if one considers the end of the nobles and of the ignobles, one will see great
desire to dominate in the former, and in the latter only desire not to be dominated; and in
consequence, a greater will to live free, being less able to hope to usurp it” – that is, to usurp
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 8
freedom – “than are the great” [D I.5.2:18].15
Lest we think that Machiavelli means that the people or the ignobles do not desire to
acquire, and that his two humors are therefore different natures,16 rather than ramifications of the
desire to acquire, Machiavelli points in the Discourses to their common source. Having just
characterized the difference between the nobles and the ignobles, he restates it paragraphs later
as the difference between “those who desire to acquire” and “those who fear to lose what they
have acquired,” and then explains that tumults are most frequently generated by those who
possess, because “the fear of losing generates in [them] the same wishes that are in those who
desire to acquire; for it does not appear to men that they possess securely what a man has unless
he acquires something else new” [D I.5.4:19].17 Machiavelli thereby blurs the difference
between the people and the great: fearing to lose has the same effects as desiring to acquire.
Later in the Discourses he makes much the same point, insisting that the difference between a
prince’s and a people’s way of proceeding “arises not from a diverse nature – because it is in one
mode in all” [D I.58.3:117], and that the popular desire for freedom is an effect of the desire to
acquire [D II.2.1:129].18 If these assertions are not enough, Machiavelli also tells a characteristic
story in the Discourses about Clearchus, the tyrant of Heraclea, who, finding himself caught
“between the insolence of the aristocrats… and the rage of the people,” “decided to free himself
at one stroke from the vexation of the great and to win over the people to himself.” By having
all the aristocrats cut to pieces, “he satisfied one of the wishes that peoples have – that is, to be
avenged. But as to the other popular desire,” Machiavelli continues, “to recover freedom, since
the prince cannot satisfy it, he should examine what causes are those that make [peoples] desire
to be free. He will find that a small part of them desires to be free so as to command, but all the
others, who are infinite, desire freedom so as to live secure” [D I.16.5:46]. Even if the humor of
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 9
the great is eliminated from a city or a principality, the remaining popular humor reforms itself
into two humors: the people, and the great.
These Machiavellian indications that the humors of the people and the great are
ramifications of the more fundamental desire to acquire also indicate that it is political life that
chiefly causes these ramifications. In isolation the desire to acquire knows only the feelings of
pleasurable increase or disgusting stasis; the desire to oppress, on the one hand, and the fear of
oppression on the other arise only in the political encounter with other more or less powerful
desires to acquire. Machiavelli acknowledges this in his brief account of the origins of political
life in the Discourses. “[S]ince the inhabitants were sparse in the beginning of the world,” he
writes, “they lived dispersed for a time like beasts; then, as generations multiplied, they gathered
together, and to be able to defend themselves better, they began to look to whoever among them
was more robust and of greater heart, and they made him a head, as it were, and obeyed him” [D
I.2.3:11].19 Thus arose the universal political struggle between the two humors, in which the
great give reputation to one of their number “so that they can satisfy their appetite under his
shadow,” while the people give reputation to one of the great “so as to be defended with his
authority” [P 9:39].20
The desire to acquire also has internal consequences: namely, the ramification of the
present into the past and the future. Like any desire, the desire to acquire involves opposing a
painful, factual present to a pleasant, counterfactual future. A being animated by such a desire
must be able to distinguish what it actually possesses from what it might possess, in order to
direct itself away from the former and toward the latter. So a being who desires to acquire, in
particular, must have memory, a continuing sense of its possessions, and foresight, a sense of
what its possessions might become. In the healthy case, its memory will be the basis of its
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 10
dissatisfaction with the present, and its foresight, the basis of its hope for the future. As
Machiavelli puts it in the Discourses, the insatiability of human appetites makes men “blame the
present times, praise the past, and desire the future, even if they are not moved to do this by any
reasonable cause” [D II.P.3:125].
It is the people or the ignobles in particular who blame the present and praise the past,
since their knowledge of the past is less accurate than their knowledge of the present, and past
things in general are neither feared nor envied [D II.P.1:123]. Moreover, memory supports the
popular form of the desire to acquire – the fear of loss – by preserving an inaccurate but
venerable past, and arguing that excellence consists in this preservation [D I.10.2:31]. Memory
encourages men to honor the past and obey the present, and thereby discourages conspiracies [D
III.6.1:218]. And when it involves fearsome events, memory can bring a state back to its
beginnings, and so preserve it [D III.1.3:211]. Perhaps unsurprisingly, memory is therefore also
an obstacle to the great or the nobles’ desire to acquire, especially when acquisition brings
innovation [P 2:7, 4:19, 5:21]. It is the first concern of new sects to eliminate the memory of
their predecessors, for example [D II.5.1:139]. But memory can also serve the foresight of the
great: if it helps to maintain a nation in the same customs for a long time, it makes it easy for
human beings to know future things by past ones [D III.43.1:302; compare I.39.1:83-84].21
Since the future is on this account the realm of hoped-for acquisition by the great, or
feared loss by the people, while the present is the realm of real possession, whether unsatisfying
to the great or satisfying to the people, the ramification of the present into the past and the future
is also a differentiation between the factual and counterfactual worlds, or between the real and
the imaginary. Taken together, the humors of the people and the great and the ramification of
the present into the past and the future explain the typical progressivism of the great, who want
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 11
to live in the future that their desire to acquire foresees, and the typical conservatism of the
people, who want to remain free of this future.22 Taken together, these forms of the desire to
acquire explain why each of Machiavelli’s humors has its corresponding understanding of human
excellence.
II
So far we have considered the desire to acquire as the core of human nature, according to
Machiavelli. We have also sketched the chief implications of this desire, showing how in
political settings it issues in a progressive great and a conservative people. Each of these
humors, it turns out, also has a characteristic understanding of human excellence: for the people
excellence is goodness, and for the great, excellence is virtue [D I.17.1-3:47-48; compare MV,
24-25]. We will discover, as we try next to fill in the content of goodness and virtue according
to Machiavelli, that the difference between goodness and virtue is also connected to his famous
distinction, made in The Prince, between the “effectual truth” and “imagined republics and
principalities” [P 15:61].
Perhaps because of its focus on the perspective of the great, goodness is only mentioned
twice in The Prince, both times in an ironic and disparaging way. Having begun his
consideration of ecclesiastical principalities with the claim that they are maintained without
virtue or fortune, Machiavelli concludes with the pious hope that “with his goodness and infinite
other virtues” Pope Leo X will make the pontificate “very great and venerable” [P 11:47]. In a
likeminded remark later in the book, during his survey of the fates of the Roman emperors,
Machiavelli notes that Emperor Alexander was of such goodness that he never made use of
summary execution. But he was also held to be effeminate, for which he was despised,
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 12
conspired against, and assassinated [P 19:77]. These examples distinguish goodness from virtue,
and can hardly be said to recommend goodness to a prince. In the Discourses, by contrast, there
is a fuller and less dismissive discussion of goodness. Machiavelli claims that it is the
characteristic excellence of peoples, as opposed to princes, writing that if the glories and the
disorders of princes be reviewed, “the people will be seen to be by far superior in goodness and
glory.” Princes, he explains, are superior to peoples in ordering, but peoples are superior to
princes in maintaining the things ordered – which is why they attain the glory of those who order
[D I.58.3:118]. Despite having characteristically retracted half of his praise of peoples,
Machiavelli leaves them with their superiority in goodness.
This excellence consists, then, in maintaining what is ordered at the founding of a sect, a
republic, or a kingdom, and promulgated by education [D III.1.2:209; III.30.1:280]: namely, the
laws, which are maintained by being obeyed by the people. Both peoples and princes show
goodness when they obey, and so are restrained by, the laws [D I.58.2:116; compare
III.24.1:270, III.46.1:307]. Indeed, early in the Discourses Machiavelli asserts, “the knowledge
of things honest and good” first arose out of the people’s obedience to the great. “[S]eeing that if
one individual hurt his benefactor,” he explains,
hatred and compassion among men came from it, and as they blamed the
ungrateful and honored those who were grateful, and thought too that those same
injuries could be done to them, to escape like evil they were reduced to making
laws and ordering punishments for whoever acted against them: hence came the
knowledge of justice [D I.2.3:11-12].
Now because goodness consists chiefly in obedience to the laws, it is closely connected
to religion as the basis of the laws [D I.11.3:35; I.55.2:110, 111], and to conscience as their
internal enforcement [D I.27.1:62; I.55.2:110]. Through obedience to the laws, goodness
procures and defends freedom [D I.17.1:47], which as we have seen is the goal of the people’s
modified desire to acquire. Lest we think that goodness consists solely in obedience to the laws,
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 13
Machiavelli mentions one example that “shows how much goodness and how much religion”
were in the Roman people. When the Senate issued an unpopular edict that required the plebs to
sacrifice to Apollo a tenth of the booty taken in a recent victory, “the plebs thought not of
defrauding the edict in any part by giving less than it owed, but of freeing itself from it by
showing open indignation” [D I.55.1:110]. Goodness consists chiefly in obedience to the laws,
but perhaps more importantly, in the refusal to use fraud even when one disobeys. It is almost
the same thing as honesty.
Machiavelli signals, in several places, that the opposite of goodness is corruption [D
I.17.1:47; I.55.1:110; III.1.2:209; III.30.1:280]. But there is reason to think that a more
thoroughgoing opposite to this excellence of the people is the excellence of the great, virtue.
This is not just because, as we have seen, Machiavelli is contemptuous of goodness in his book
on princes, nor just because the superiority of princes to peoples in ordering means that they
must destroy a prior order that others are trying to maintain. It is not just because virtue is
inimical to goodness. Rather, it is because goodness can also be inimical to virtue. We see how
so in one of the examples Machiavelli gives to illustrate the goodness of the matter and the
orders of Rome: that of Manlius Capitolinus, who found no one to support his rebellion against
the Senate and laws, and was condemned by the Roman people to death. “I do not believe that
there is an example in this history more apt to show the goodness of all the orders of that
republic than this,” Machiavelli concludes, “seeing that no one in that city moved to defend a
citizen full of every virtue, who publicly and privately had performed very many praiseworthy
works” [D III.8.1:238].23
In contrast to his account of goodness, Machiavelli’s account of virtue is developed more
fully in The Prince, and in particular in the book’s second half, Chapters Fifteen and following,
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 14
where he turns to consider “what the modes and government of a prince should be with subjects
and with friends” [P 15:61]. This statement of what remains of his project implies that the first
half of the book considered what the modes and government of a prince should be with
foreigners and with enemies; and when we see that the explicit subject of the first half of The
Prince is “How Many Are the Kinds of Principalities and in What Modes They Are Acquired”
[P 1.T:5] – that is acquisition – this implication is confirmed. We seem to be on a firm
Machiavellian footing: with foreigners and enemies the prince follows the desire to acquire,
while with subjects and friends he practices virtue. The generality of Machiavelli’s opening
statement on virtue might therefore come as a surprise. “A man who wants to make a profession
of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good,” he writes. “Hence it
is necessary to a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to
use this and not use it according to necessity” [P 15:61]. Necessity, and not the difference
between friend and enemy, or subject and foreigner, determines whether the prince should be
good or wicked. The “so many who are not good” include friend and foe alike. To be able to act
as necessity demands, we will learn, is virtue.
Machiavelli connects his new account of virtue to his famous move from the imagination
of a thing to its effectual truth, or from how one should live to how one lives [P 15:61]. Before
considering this connection, though, let’s follow his development of this account of virtue in the
chapter of The Prince devoted to whether a prince should be honest. Since combat with laws –
what we might call the combat of the good – is often not enough, one must have recourse to
combat with arms: so “it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the
man” [P 18:69]. The ancients understood this necessity, and communicated it by depicting the
centaur Chiron as the teacher of Achilles. “To have as a teacher a half-beast, half-man,”
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 15
Machiavelli writes, “means nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use both
natures” [P 18.69]. We have mentioned that Machiavelli is willing to say that there is a nature of
princes [P ED:4]: this nature now seems to be something more comprehensive than the nature of
a man or the nature of a beast, if it is capable of using, or imitating [P 19:78], both of these
natures. “Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast,”
Machiavelli continues, “he should pick the fox and the lion, because the lion does not defend
itself from snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So one needs to be a fox to
recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves” [P 18:69]. Each animal, then, has a single
defect that is remedied by the other: the fox’s astuteness remedies the lion’s gullibility, while the
lion’s fierceness remedies the fox’s contemptibility [compare P 19:79].
But if each of the two bestial natures that the prince should use has a single defect that is
remedied by the other, what use does the prince have for the other component of the centaur: the
nature of a man? Machiavelli has implied that this nature is needed for combat with laws, since
this is “proper to man” [P 18:69]; but we would be forgiven for doubting him, since he has also
claimed, six chapters earlier, that good arms are the necessary and sufficient condition of good
laws [P 12:48]. We might begin to suspect that combat with arms is also sufficient, and that the
prince who knows well how to use the nature of the fox and the lion has no need of the nature of
man in addition – that he could be entirely inhuman, all beast. But Machiavelli has more to say.
“[I]f all men were good, this teaching would not be good,” – if all men were honest, that is, there
would be no snares, and it would suffice for a prince to be a lion – “but because they are wicked
and do not observe faith with you, you also do not have to observe it with them” [P 18:69].
There are infinite modern examples, he claims, in which “the one who has known best how to
use the fox has come out best,” because a faithless prince has ensnared the gullible. “But it is
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 16
necessary,” Machiavelli continues, “to know well how to color this nature, and to be a great
pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple and so obedient to present necessities that he
who deceives will always find someone who will let himself be deceived” [P 18:70]. The nature
of the fox needs to be colored because its astuteness is limited to recognizing snares, as opposed
to setting them. There is a use for the nature of man after all: it equips an otherwise brutish
virtue with the specifically human ability to lie.
In restating his conclusion, Machiavelli makes it clear that his discussion of “In What
Mode Faith Should Be Kept by Princes” [P 18.T:68] is really a discussion of his account of all
virtue, which is to say a discussion “Of Those Things for Which Men And Especially Princes
Are Praised or Blamed” [P 15.T:61], or a discussion of human excellence in general. “[I]t is not
necessary,” he writes, “for a prince to have all the above-mentioned qualities [the traditional
virtues and vices] in fact, but it is indeed necessary to appear to have them” [P 18:70; compare
15:62]. Lest we infer that it is necessary to have some of these qualities, he then sharpens his
restatement: since “by having them and always observing them, they are harmful; and by
appearing to have them, they are useful,” it is necessary to “remain with a spirit built [edificato]
so that, if you need not to be those things, you are able and know how to change to the contrary”
[P 18:70]. To use a nature, or to imitate a nature, turns out to mean not to have but to appear to
have that nature. But to appear to have a nature one does not have is to lie. So the specifically
human ability to lie seems sufficient to generate the appearance of, and therefore sufficient to
make use of, all the other natures a virtuous prince might need.
This reading is supported by the discussion of Severus in the next chapter of The Prince.
Since Severus was a new prince whose actions were great and notable, Machiavelli wants “to
show briefly how well he knew to use the persons of the fox and the lion, whose natures I say
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 17
above are necessary for a prince to imitate” [P 19:78]. These natures are now persons, things
that can be impersonated. “[W]hoever examines minutely the actions of this man will find him a
very fierce lion and a very astute fox” [P 19:79], Machiavelli continues, again omitting to
mention the person or nature of a man. But it turns out that being like Severus is not sufficient
for the best kind of prince: “a new prince in a new principality… should take from Severus those
parts which are necessary to found his state and from Marcus [Aurelius] those which are fitting
and glorious to conserve a state that is already established and firm” [P 19:82]. Since we know
from the Discourses that those parts are called goodness, we might conclude that this is the use
of the nature of a man. But Marcus was an enemy of cruelty [P 19:76], whereas Severus was
very cruel [P 19:78], so the new prince who combines their parts will be neither, though he will
know how to appear to be both. In other words, the virtuous desire to acquire uses the
specifically human ability to lie to impersonate a man, just as much as to impersonate a lion or a
fox.
Understood in this way, the nature of the prince is something built, rather than something
grown. But this is also true of the nature of peoples. Recall Machiavelli’s practice of referring
to the people as “matter” to be formed by the prince [P 6:23; 26:102, 104], and his claims that
knowledge of goodness arises from obedient gratitude to the great, and knowledge of justice
from laws to protect against ingratitude [D I.2.3:11-12]. If the excellence of the people is
goodness, the maintenance of orders founded by the great, then the nature of peoples is
something built by the great, just as the nature of the great is something built by the great
themselves. The great, we might say, and especially the prince, give form both to their own
formless desire to acquire, and to that of the human beings around them. And they are guided in
this formation by necessity.
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Machiavelli means this foundation on necessity to justify his claim in The Prince that by
departing from the orders of others in his discussion of virtue and goodness, and focusing on “the
effectual truth of the thing” rather than on the imagination of it, he is writing something “useful
to whoever understands it” [P 15:61]. Imaginary republics like Plato’s and imaginary
principalities like Christ’s, which “have never been seen or known to exist in truth,” are used to
illustrate how one should live – that is, they are used to support goodness. Real republics and
principalities, by contrast, are used by Machiavelli to illustrate how one does live. That there is a
difference between how one should live and how one does live is a sign of the failure of the
imaginary realm to make human beings completely good, and a sign of the need to turn to the
real. “Hence it is necessary for a prince,” Machiavelli concludes, “if he wants to maintain
himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity”
[P 15:61].
So the virtuous live in the realm of the real, according to Machiavelli, while the good live
for the most part in the realm of the imaginary, or the counterfactual. The virtuous live in the
present, which exists, while the good live mostly in the future, which does not. What is
surprising about this conclusion is that it exactly contraries the conclusion we came to in our
analysis of the desire to acquire, which had the humor of the people seeking to maintain present
possessions, and the humor of the great hoping for future acquisitions. In other words, each
humor of human nature, each way that the desire to acquire expresses itself in a political setting,
must need the native realm of the other. The good people need an imaginary future because their
desire to acquire, frustrated by the competing desires of the great, is limited in the real world to a
hope for maintenance; only in another world, or in a city in speech, can they hope to avenge their
subordination and become great. The virtuous great, by contrast, need the present because their
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 19
practice of lying – that is, their construction of imaginary worlds – for the sake of future
acquisition needs to be informed by present necessities imposed by the people they are lying to;
in other words, they require goodness for their virtue to be effectual. The difference between
goodness and virtue, we could say, is the difference between an ignorant self-deception and a
knowing deception of others.
III
Having concluded our sketch of Machiavelli’s view of human nature, understood as the
desire to acquire, with its two humors and their corresponding excellences, we might begin to
wonder whether this view is true. This is too big a question to explore in the final part of this
lecture, though Machiavelli’s view does have the merit of explaining a common moral
phenomenon: the concern of those who are trying to be good, that they might be the dupes of
those who are not. Instead, this final part is devoted to a narrower, though related, question: does
Machiavelli think that his account of human nature is true?
Recall that in the fifteenth chapter of The Prince Machiavelli claims to turn from the
imagination of a thing to its effectual truth, and from how one should live to how one lives [P
15:61]. He makes these claims right after announcing his turn to “what the modes and
government of a prince should be with subjects and with friends” [P 15:61], and presumably
away from what his modes and government should be with foreigners and with enemies. The
first chapter of The Prince, by contrast, refers in its title to the modes in which principalities are
acquired [P I.T:5], and so announces the subject of the first part of the work. The suggestion in
both parts of The Prince, then, is that what human beings should do follows directly from what
they in fact do. What human beings in fact do provides the content of necessity, on the basis of
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 20
which virtue acts. Moreover, Machiavelli’s distinctions between foreigners and subjects, or
between foes and friends, vanish from the perspective of necessity. The first part of The Prince
focuses on acquisition, and so on foreigners and foes, but it treats in the same spirit how
acquisitions are maintained, and so mentions subjects and friends [for example, P 7:29-30].
Similarly, the second part focuses on how the prince should treat subjects and friends, but the
virtues that Machiavelli discusses in this part are needed also for dealing with foreigners and foes
[for example, P 17:67-68]. Perhaps the clearest indication that these divisions vanish from the
perspective of necessity is the title of the fifteenth chapter of The Prince, “Of Those Things for
Which Men and Especially Princes Are Praised or Blamed” [P 15.T:61]. Attentive readers will
remember that Machiavelli has already, much earlier in the work, said what these things are:
“truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and when men do it who can,
they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and want to do it anyway, here lie the
error and the blame” [P 3:14-15]. The difference between the first and the second parts of The
Prince is the difference between what human beings do to acquire, and what they ought to do.
The first part of the work is chiefly descriptive, the second chiefly hortatory; and Machiavelli’s
exhortation is based on his description: men should learn not to be good – that is, to be virtuous –
because men are not good – that is, they are corrupt. In other words, Machiavelli’s exhortation
to virtue requires two things to be true: that men are corrupt, and that there is a difference
between corruption and virtue. Let’s look at each of these criteria in turn.
One objection to Machiavelli’s claim that men are corrupt is that this may accidentally be
so, but it is not so necessarily. As we have seen, human nature, according to Machiavelli,
consists of a matter that is not specifically human, the desire to acquire, that can be formed to
have specifically human excellences, goodness and virtue. In other words, human nature is
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 21
malleable. (Moreover, Machiavelli is evasive about what is specifically human in goodness and
virtue: in The Prince, as we have seen, he guardedly identifies fraud, which uses or imitates
brutish natures, as specifically human; but since fraud merely serves the desire to acquire, it does
not serve a specifically human end.) In the Discourses Machiavelli makes this malleability more
explicit when commenting on Livy’s disparaging claim that the French begin battles as more
than men, but end them as less than women. “Thinking over whence this arises,” he writes, “it is
believed by many that their nature is made so, which I believe is true; but because of this it is not
that their nature, which makes them ferocious at the beginning, cannot be ordered with art, so
that it maintains them ferocious to the last” [D III.36.1:292]. To be precise, the nature of the
French makes them ferocious at the beginning of battles; it is the failure of this nature that makes
their ferocity lapse. This failure can be avoided, and their nature maintained, by the order
imparted by art. The Roman army, Machiavelli indicates later in the same chapter, exemplifies
such ordering. Nothing its soldiers did was not regulated: “they did not eat, they did not sleep,
they did not go whoring, they did not perform any action either military or domestic without the
order of the consul” [D III.36.2:292]. Not only can the difference between male and female be
maintained by art; art can also constrain the natural movements of growth and reproduction.
This artful ordering of nature produces the excellences that Machiavelli names goodness and
virtue.
But Machiavelli also admits in the Discourses that there are limits to what art can achieve
with its human material. He mentions two reasons why we are unable to change our natures as
necessity demands: “one, that we are unable to oppose that to which nature inclines us; the other,
that when one individual has prospered very much with one mode of proceeding, it is not
possible to persuade him that he can do well to proceed otherwise” [D III.9.3:240]. These
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reasons, which correspond to Machiavelli’s injunction in The Prince that one must both be able
to change one’s nature, and know how to do so [P 18:70], suggest that the limits to malleability
are imposed by the energy and the opinions of each human being.24 Since there will not always
be a human being available with the needed energy and opinions to do what necessity demands
in each case – and this is especially so if, as Machiavelli implies, success renders one’s opinions
inflexible – art will eventually fail to order nature, with a consequent failure of virtue and of the
goodness it orders. A permanently good human order, then, is not to be hoped for, despite the
malleability of human nature. Corruption is necessary, and so virtue is needed.
The requirement that virtue be different from corruption is trickier to establish. We have
seen that both of these forms of human nature are opposed to goodness; they differ because
virtue in departing from goodness looks to a different standard, necessity, whereas corruption in
departing from goodness does not. The difference between virtue and corruption depends, then,
on the existence of knowable necessities in human life. Now we have seen Machiavelli write as
though necessities are knowable by human beings; this is what he seems to mean when he urges
princes to “learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity”
[P 15:61].25 In other words, Machiavelli seems to think that there is a science of necessities. But
in The Prince and the Discourses taken together, Machiavelli mentions science only twice: both
times in a chapter late in the Discourses that asserts that a captain must be a knower of sites, or
of “the nature of countries” [D III.39.T:297; III.39.2:299]. The argument of this chapter closely
parallels that of a similar chapter in The Prince, titled “What a Prince Should Do Regarding the
Military” [P 14.T:58] – a chapter where, admittedly, science is not mentioned. In these two
places, Machiavelli advises that princes, captains, and the great should train in hunting, part of
the practical mode of the peaceful exercise of the art of war [P 14:59].26 Hunting yields
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particular knowledge of the country in which one trains. “First,” Machiavelli writes in The
Prince, “one learns to know one’s own country, and one can better understand its defense; then,
through the knowledge of and experience with those sites, one can comprehend with ease every
other site that it may be necessary to explore as new” [P 14:59]. Particular knowledge becomes
general knowledge, and defensive ability becomes offensive ability, because of a “certain
similarity” between the corresponding features in every country, “so that from the knowledge of
a site in one province one can easily come to the knowledge of others” [P 14:59].27 Machiavelli
makes sweeping claims for his science of sites. Not only is it necessary for a captain to have this
“general and particular knowledge” of “sites and countries” if he wants to work anything well [D
III.39.1:297-298], but it will allow a prince to know “all the chances that can occur to an army”
[P 14:60]. While Philopoemen, Machiavelli’s example of a possessor of this science, led his
army, “there could never arise any unforeseen event for which he did not have the remedy” [P
14:60]. As long as we have the energy to be able to act as necessity demands, the science of sites
guarantees that we will know how to do so.
We might grant Machiavelli’s claim that there are no supernatural kingdoms: that
because all countries are alike in nature, knowledge of one leads to knowledge of all. But why
does he think that a perfected science of sites allows a prince to overcome fortune? A sentence
from the Discourses is helpful here. “Whoever has this practice,” Machiavelli writes, “knows
with one glance of his eye how that plain lies, how that mountain rises, where this valley reaches,
and all other things of which he has in the past made a firm science” [D III.39.2.298]. This talk
of plains, mountains, and valleys should remind us of the comparison in the Dedicatory Letter of
The Prince, between the natures of peoples and of princes, on the one hand, and the natures of
mountains or high places and of low places, on the other [P DL:4]. By limiting his use of the
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word “science” in The Prince and the Discourses to the science of sites, Machiavelli indicates
that there is no science specific to human beings, nor even one specific to living beings. Human
nature and living nature are continuous with nonliving nature, and psychology is continuous with
geography – or better, with physics. The malleability of human nature, then, is great enough that
nonhuman and nonliving phenomena are imitable by human beings, but not so great that human
beings become incalculable as a result.28 Just as there are no superhuman kingdoms, there are no
supermen – though as we have seen there are centaurs.
This understanding of Machiavelli’s science of sites is puzzling, though, because it seems
to require a descriptive treatment of virtue, rather than the hortatory one that we find in the
second part of The Prince. If human beings are as determined and predictable as nonhuman
bodies, why not describe what they do, rather than fruitlessly exhorting them to behave otherwise
than they do? In particular, we would expect Machiavelli to insist that princes do learn to be
able not to be good, and to use it according to necessity, to the extent that they have the most
excellent form of the desire to acquire. Instead, as we have seen, he insists, “it is necessary for a
prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not
use it according to necessity” [P 15:61; emphasis added]. Now what sense does this condition,
“if he wants to maintain himself,” make in the light of Machiavelli’s claim that all human beings,
and the great above all, are driven by the desire to acquire? Since acquisition presupposes the
persistence of the acquiring being, how could a prince not want to maintain himself?29
In the chapter of The Prince devoted to conspiracies, Machiavelli admits that there exist
very rare human beings with “an obstinate spirit,” who do not care about death. A prince cannot
avoid death at the hands of such a conspirator, because “anyone who does not care about death
can harm him” [P 19:79]. Since the threat of death and the consequent loss of all one’s
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 25
acquisitions – the threat of ruin, as Machiavelli puts it – is the paramount necessity faced by
human beings [for example, P 15:61], these very rare human beings apparently fall outside the
scope of this necessity, and therefore outside the scope of the science of sites.30 There is no
remedy available to princes for such unforeseen events. We might expect Machiavelli to try to
account for the existence of such human beings by tracing their obstinacy back to the desire to
acquire, saying, for example, that they do not care about death because they hope for an afterlife
in which they will be rewarded. But he does not do so; instead, he says only that they are
motivated by the desire to avenge a “grave injury” [P 19:79-80; see also D III.6.11:227] – a
desire that can be satisfied in this life, even if one does not long survive its satisfaction.
In the Discourses Machiavelli claims, “private men enter upon no enterprise more
dangerous or more bold” than a conspiracy against a prince [D III.6.1:218; see also III.6.4:223].
In The Prince, by contrast, he writes, “nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of
success, nor more dangerous to manage, than to put oneself at the head of new orders” [P 6:23].
The obstinate spirit one needs to brave the greatest danger in a conspiracy is presumably also
needed to brave the greatest danger in founding something entirely new, for every new
foundation begins as a conspiracy against the old. We might wonder, then, whether this account
of human nature is adequate to explain the activity of the new prince, or even Machiavelli’s own
activity. Is Machiavelli himself motivated by the desire to acquire? We cannot seriously believe
that a virtuous possessor of the science of sites, for whom, as long as he is armed, no accident
can arise for which he does not have the remedy [P 14:60], could be compelled to endure a
“great and continuous malignity of fortune” [P DL:4]. Machiavelli does make it seem, at the
beginning of the Dedicatory Letter of The Prince, that he desires “to acquire favor with a Prince”
[P DL:3]; but in the Preface to the first book of the Discourses he claims instead that he has
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 26
always had a “natural desire… to work, without any respect, for those things I believe will bring
common benefit to everyone” [D I.P.1:5].
These doubts about Machiavelli’s science of sites – that it ought to preclude the hortatory
character of the second part of The Prince, and that it cannot account for human beings who are
contemptuous of death – suggest that the account of human nature in The Prince and the
Discourses is partial, and that Machiavelli knows it.31 Through these works he means to shape
human nature, to the extent that it can be shaped, by an education that claims that human nature
is more malleable and more predictable than Machiavelli really thinks it is. For the sake of the
common benefit, he means to persuade the great to act as if they are acting only according to
necessity. This project would amount to nothing more than a curiosity in the history of political
thought were it not for its remarkable success. We are the indirect beneficiaries of Machiavelli’s
questionable attempt: we who believe that our natures are malleable, especially by technology;
we who believe in rights founded only on necessities; we who believe ourselves great because of
the dream of acquisition without limit; we who believe in progress, and in the necessity of a
better future; and we who believe ourselves to be the people whose acquisitions the laws of
nature and of nature’s God secure. Without attention to Machiavelli’s account of human nature
we run the risk of remaining the unconscious inheritors at third hand of a partial account, of a
project, posing as a science, to narrow human possibilities through education. We risk being
Machiavellians without knowing it. How is this to the common benefit of everyone?
Jeff J.S. Black
Annapolis, Maryland
20 June 2012
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Notes
1
References to The Prince and to the Discourses will be given in the text, in the forms [P Chapter:page] and [D
Book.chapter.paragraph:page], respectively. In these references, DL stands for dedicatory letter, P for preface, and
T for title. The editions used are Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. A New Translation with an Introduction, by
Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), and Niccolò Machiavelli,
Discourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. (Chicago and London: The University
of Chicago Press, 1996). I also refer to Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A Study of the
Discourses on Livy. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001) in the form [MNMO, page]; to
Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996) in the
form [MV, page]; and to Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1958) in the form [TM, page].
2
In the former passage, Machiavelli writes, “states that come to be suddenly, like all other things in nature that are
born and grow quickly, cannot have roots and branches” [P 7:26], while in the latter he writes that a man cannot be
found who is so prudent to accommodate himself to changes in fortune, in part “because he cannot deviate from
what nature inclines him to” [P 25:100]. In two passages in the Discourses analogous to the latter passage in The
Prince, Machiavelli writes that we are unable to change in part because “we are unable to oppose that to which
nature inclines us” [D III.9.3:240], and “it is given by nature to men to take sides in any divided thing whatever, and
for this to please them more than that” [D III.27.3:275]. In these last three passages we might expect Machiavelli to
write “his nature” or “our nature,” but he does not. There is one passage in the Discourses where he refers to “the
wicked nature of men” [D III.29.1:277], but he makes the reference while quoting a view with which he does not
agree.
3
In nearby chapters at the beginning of The Prince, Machiavelli uses the phrases “natural prince” [P 2:7] and
“natural affection” [P 4:17] to refer to the prince who inherits a principality and the affection felt for him. The
natural and the ordinary are closely connected at this point in the work, and they both refer primarily to the sequence
of human generation. The new prince is opposed to the natural or ordinary prince in Machiavelli’s argument, and
the natural and ordinary is both an obstacle and an opportunity for him.
4
Machiavelli may mean to contrast these “universal causes” with the “superior causes” that he mentions in his
discussion of ecclesiastical principalities [P 11:45].
5
“[T]ime sweeps everything before it and can bring with it good as well as evil and evil as well as good” [P 3:13],
according to Machiavelli, and “worldly things are so variable that it is next to impossible for one to stand with his
armies idle in a siege for a year” [P 10:44]. There is another reference to an “order of things” much later in The
Prince: “in the order of things it is found that one never seeks to avoid one inconvenience without running into
another; but prudence consists in knowing how to recognize the qualities of inconveniences, and in picking the less
bad as good” [P 21:91].
6
“[O]ne can say this generally of men,” Machiavelli writes, “that they are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and
dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain. While you do them good, they are yours, offering you their blood,
property, lives, and children… when the need for them is far away; but, when it is close to you, they revolt” [P
17:66]. Having taught his reader later in The Prince that a prudent lord cannot observe faith, he continues, “if all
men were good, this teaching would not be good; but because they are wicked and do not observe faith with you,
you also do not have to observe it with them” [P 18:69]. Indeed, “men will always turn out bad for you unless they
have been made good by a necessity” [P 23:95]. Machiavelli’s other claims about the apparently abiding character
of men include, “men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because seeing is given to everyone,
touching to a few” [P 18:71], and, “men are much more taken by present things than by past ones, and when they
find good in the present, they enjoy it and do not seek elsewhere” [P 24:96].
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7
Machiavelli repeats this claim much later in the Discourses, in a way that suggests an amendment. “Prudent men
are accustomed to say,” he writes, “and not by chance or without merit, that whoever wishes to see what has to be
considers what has been; for all worldly things in every time have their own counterpart in ancient times. That
arises because these are the work of men, who have and always had the same passions, and they must of necessity
result in the same effect” [D III.43.1:302]. What prudent men say by custom rather than by chance, and not without
merit, is then corrected by what Machiavelli says in the immediate sequel: that it is true that the works of men “are
more virtuous now in this province than in that, and in that more than in this, according to the form of education in
which those people have taken their mode of life” [D III.43.1:302]. Education can shape nature, such that “Men
Who Are Born in One Province Observe Almost the Same Nature for All Times” [D III.43.T:302; emphasis added].
Similarly, when investigating “Whence It Arises That One Family in One City Keeps the Same Customs for a Time”
[D III.46.T:306], Machiavelli argues that this “cannot arise solely from the bloodline, because that must vary
through the diversity of marriages, but it necessarily comes from the diverse education of one family from another”
[D III.46.1:306].
8
“How Many Are the Kinds of Principalities and in What Modes They Are Acquired” [P 1.T:5]; “Of New
Principalities That Are Acquired through One’s Own Arms and Virtue” [P 6.T:21]; “Of New Principalities That are
Acquired by Others’ Arms and Fortune” [P 7.T:25].
9
This suggests another reason why Chapter XV, titled “Of Those Things for Which Men And Especially Princes are
Praised or Blamed” [P 15.T:61] is also about acquisition.
10
The desire to acquire thus amounts to a desire for novelty. Later in the Discourses Machiavelli writes “men are
desirous of new things, so much that most often those who are well off desire newness as much as those who are
badly off. For, as was said another time [at D I.37.1:78], and it is true, men get bored with the good and grieve in
the ill” [D III.21.2:263].
11
And just as reproduction is growth by other means, so are one’s offspring and their acquisitions one’s own
acquisitions, by other means. Consider Machiavelli’s hints about how Alexander VI used Cesare Borgia [P 11:46].
Death is not simply a limit of the desire to acquire. But compare note 27, below.
Machiavelli does occasionally refer to a good that is the goal of acquisition. For example, in the
Discourses he writes,
[i]t appears that in the actions of men, as we have discoursed of another time [D I.6.3:21-22,
where he wrote of “inconveniences”], besides the other difficulties in wishing to bring a thing to
its perfection, one finds that close to the good there is always some evil that arises with that good
so easily that it appears impossible to be able to miss the one if one wishes for the other. One sees
this in all the things that men work on. So the good is acquired only with difficulty unless you are
aided by fortune, so that with its force it conquers this ordinary and natural inconvenience” [D
III.37.1:294].
But it is not clear that by “the good” here Machiavelli means anything other than any acquisition that can be felt and
so enjoyed.
Also, there are occasional hints in The Prince and the Discourses that some acquisitions can be harmful to
the body that acquires them. In The Prince Machiavelli first raises the possibility of such acquisitions when he tells
his reader that to keep an acquisition the prince must ensure that the acquired body becomes “one whole body” with
the acquiring body [P 3:9]. If the new acquisition instead remains disparate with respect to the prince’s other
possessions, then he runs the risk of losing it. A powerful foreigner can easily gain the lesser powers in a disparate
province, since the lesser powers, moved by their envy of their rulers, quickly and willingly make “one mass” with
the foreign invader [P 3:11]. A prince who rules a disparate state, and who fails to prevent powerful foreigners from
taking advantage of this disparity, will soon lose his new acquisition, and “while he holds it, [he] will have infinite
difficulties and vexations within it” [P 3:11]. So acquisitions can be harmful to the prince and his state as long as
they remain disparate with his other possessions; in general, Machiavelli claims, “the disparity in the subject”
explains why some conquerors hold their acquisitions while others lose them [P 4:19]. This disparity can be
eliminated, and the new acquisition made into one whole body with the acquiring state, by eliminating the new
acquisition’s memory of its previous way of life [P 4:19] – that is, by making the acquisition more complete.
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 29
Acquisition in Machiavelli’s account thus resembles nutrition, in that the acquired body must become like
the acquiring body before it can be good for the acquiring body. As long as an acquisition remains disparate, it
remains undigested, and a cause of “difficulties and vexations.” But it is not until he considers cities and
principalities that live under their own laws before they are acquired that Machiavelli suggests that some
acquisitions are by their nature indigestible. Considering the case of a city, he claims at first that “a city used to
living free may be held more easily by means of its own citizens than in any other mode, if one wants to preserve it
[P 5:20]. But Machiavelli soon admits that this is impossible: “in truth there is no secure mode to possess them
other than to ruin them” [P 5:20]. The acquisition of a free city is necessarily harmful: “whoever becomes patron of
a city accustomed to living free and does not destroy it, should expect to be destroyed by it” [P 5:20-21]. The
indigestibility of such a city results, as we might expect, from the persistence of the memory of its way of life,
despite length of time, benefits received, and anything short of destruction [P 5:21]. So the only secure way for a
prince to keep such an acquisition is to eliminate it, or to live in it – that is, rather than digesting it, to be digested by
it [P 5:21].
This marks the extent of Machiavelli’s admission in The Prince that some acquisitions are not good for the
acquiring body. In the Discourses he writes that “[t]he intention of whoever makes war through choice – or, in
truth, ambition – is to acquire and maintain the acquisition, and to proceed with it so that it enriches and does not
impoverish the country and his fatherland” [D II.6.1:140]. Machiavelli thereby admits that there can be acquisitions
that are not good. A later chapter title, “That Acquisition by Republics That Are Not Well Ordered and That Do Not
Proceed According to Roman Virtue Are for Their Ruin, Not Their Exaltation” [D II.19.T:172], suggests that virtue
might be the necessary and sufficient condition that makes acquisitions good, though Machiavelli ends the chapter
by suggesting that “acquiring was about to be pernicious for the Romans in the times when they proceeded with so
much prudence and so much virtue” [D II.19.2:175]. His most general remark about the goodness of acquisition in
the Discourses comes in a chapter whose title proclaims its concern in part with the causes that eliminate the
memories of things, where Machiavelli asserts in passing that “in simple bodies, when very much superfluous matter
has gathered together there, nature many times moves by itself and produces a purge that is the health of that body”
[D II.5.2:140]. But this remark about the goodness of acquisition, like the analogous discussion in The Prince,
reduces goodness to similarity to the acquiring body: that is, it reduces the good to what is one’s own. It does not
point to the an account in terms of a good that is independent of one’s own.
12
Almost, because the presence of other competing desires to acquire is likely not the only source of formative
effects on the desire to acquire. To the extent that circumstances resist acquisition – one is not strong enough, for
example, to climb the tree to reach the desired apple – the desire to acquire is also given form. But these formative
effects are presumably not as lasting as political ones. If they were, then our common experience of infantile
weakness would yield in everyone the humor of the people.
13
Here Machiavelli writes, “in other principalities” than the Roman empire, “one has to contend only with the
ambition of the great and the insolence of the people” [P 19:76]. In the Roman empire one had to contend as well
with the cruelty and avarice of the soldiers.
14
Later in the same chapter Machiavelli will reformulate this distinction, writing, “the great want to oppress and the
people want not to be oppressed” [P 9:39]. The disappearance of command from his formulation calls for an
explanation, and Machiavelli provides one in the sequel when he claims, “when a prince who founds on the people
knows how to command,” among other things, “he will see he has laid his foundations well” [P 9:41], since
“citizens and subjects” can become “accustomed to receive commands” [P 9:42]. Where oppression is concerned,
the great and the people have nothing in common; but they do have something in common where command that is
not oppressive is concerned. Command is thus the closest thing to a political solution to the existence of two
humors.
15
One difference between the perspectives of The Prince and the Discourses is signaled by Machiavelli’s different
description of the desires of the two humors in the two works. ‘Command and oppress’ in The Prince becomes
‘dominate’ in the Discourses. In the former work Machiavelli distinguishes between kinds of domination; in the
latter he does not.
16
Mansfield writes that according to Machiavelli, morality
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 30
is controlled by natural temperament, by the two humors that divide all mankind and underlie all
moral behavior and opinion. By speaking of humors Machiavelli indicates that they are not habits
of the mind nor mental in origin but prerational dispositions. Not being rational in nature, they
cannot be reconciled by speech or argument. These are two human types who do not understand
each other – the one preferring security and comfort, suspicious of anyone who desires more, the
other seeking risk and demanding honor, unbelieving that anyone could be satisfied with less [MV,
24].
17
Machiavelli’s sudden shift from the plural to the singular in the course of this passage is both striking and
puzzling. Could he mean to imply that men can be made to feel secure in their possession if only one man among
them – their prince, for example, who in a sense has what they have – acquires something new?
18
“It is an easy thing to know whence arises among peoples this affection for a free way of life for it is seen through
experience that cities have never expanded either in dominion or in riches if they have not been in freedom” [D
II.2.1:129]. Moreover, if a republic “will not molest others, it will be molested, and from being molested will arise
the wish and the necessity to acquire” [D II.19.1:173]. The desire to acquire is also an effect of the desire for
freedom.
19
There is a similar but less detailed account in the previous and first chapter of the Discourses. Since all cities are
either founded by natives or by foreigners, and all foreigners were natives elsewhere, then the original foundation of
cities
occurs when it does not appear, to inhabitants dispersed in many small parts, that they live
securely, since each part by itself, both because of the site and because of the small number,
cannot resist the thrust of whoever assaults it; and when the enemy comes, they do not have time
to unite for their defense. Or if they did, they would be required to leave many of their
strongholds abandoned; and so they would come at once to be the prey of their enemies. So to
flee these dangers, moved either by themselves or by someone among them of greater authority,
they are restrained to inhabit together a place elected by them, more advantageous to live in and
easier to defend [D I.1.1:7].
20
That the command of one of the great produces a political struggle between the two humors indicates that this
command is not a perfect solution to the existence of the two humors. This is partly because the great continue to
desire to acquire by oppressing the people. But it is also because the satisfaction of the people’s desire to be free of
oppression cannot amount to a satisfaction of their more fundamental desire to acquire. Even a free people is
compelled to recognize the superiority of the great, whose fundamental desire they share, and to see this superiority
as an obstacle to the satisfaction of their desire to acquire. The result is envy: the desire that the great be deprived of
their superiority. Machiavelli acknowledges this difficulty early in The Prince, when he considers the challenges a
prince faces in holding a recently-acquired province that is disparate from those he already holds. “[T]he order of
things is such that as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a province, all those in it who are less powerful adhere to
him, moved by the envy they have against whoever has held power over them” [P 3:11]. Even or especially
founders face envy [P 6:25], though Machiavelli conceals this difficulty in his concluding exhortation of a prince to
seize Italy and free her from the barbarians [P 26:105]. Since envy persists among the people even when they are
free from oppression by the great, and arises among the great when they elevate one of their number to command the
people, Machiavelli distinguishes envy from fear [P 7:31; D II.P.1:123] and elevates it to a characteristic of human
beings in the Discourses. “[T]he envious nature of men,” he writes there, “has always made it no less dangerous to
find new modes and orders than to seek unknown waters and lands, because men are more ready to blame than to
praise the actions of others” [D I.P.1:15]. The political solution to the existence of the two humors is not just
command, but hidden command.
21
According to Machiavelli, there may be airborne intelligences, by contrast, who foresee future things by “natural
virtue” [D I.56.1:114].
22
This is not to deny that the people, and especially an oppressed people, might long for a future in which they are
free from oppression. But such a future would require that the great be deprived of their superiority. The people are
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 31
typically conservative as long as they cannot imagine a satisfaction for their envy. In a chapter titled “The Multitude
is Wiser and More Constant than a Prince,” Machiavelli admits that under a corrupt prince the people fear the
present more than the future, while under a corrupt people they fear the future more than the present, because in the
future a tyrant might emerge [D I.58.4:119]. But the corrupt case is not the typical one. Similarly, circumstances
might require the great to fear the loss of their acquisitions, rather than to desire further acquisitions – for example,
when threatened by a superior desire to acquire. But this is also an atypical case for the great.
23
Manlius’ fate points to another of Machiavelli’s remarks about goodness. Later in the Discourses, in a chapter
partly titled “For One Citizen Who Wishes to Do Any Good Work in His Republic by His Authority, It Is Necessary
First to Eliminate Envy” [D III.30.T:278], Machiavelli suggests first that “virtue and goodness” can eliminate envy,
and then characteristically revises his claim by adding that “goodness is not enough” [D III.30.1:279, 280] –
implying that virtue, if not sufficient, is at least necessary.
24
Extraordinary energy is needed for a prince to avoid the dangers of either being loved or being feared, according
to the Discourses. “One cannot hold exactly to the middle way,” Machiavelli writes, for our nature does not consent
to it, but it is necessary to mitigate those things that exceed with an excessive virtue” [D III.21.3:263; compare
22.3:266]. Perhaps most difficult is the apparently miraculous feat of ordering virtue and goodness in the same
human being. In the same work Machiavelli praises
the generosity of spirit of those [Roman] citizens whom, when put in charge of an army, the
greatness of their spirit lifted above every prince. They did not esteem kings, or republics; nothing
terrified or frightened them. When they later returned to private status, they became frugal,
humble, careful of their small competencies, obedient to the magistrates, reverent to their
superiors, so that it appears impossible that one and the same spirit underwent such change [D
III.25.1:272].
25
In a later formulation, Machiavelli writes that the prince “needs to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of
fortune and variations of things command him” [P 18:70].
26
The theoretical mode of the peaceful exercise of the art of war involves reading histories and imitating some
excellent man in the past [P 14:60]. The practical and theoretical modes of the peaceful exercise of the art of war,
added to the wartime exercise of this art, make up the whole art of war, which Machiavelli says should be the only
art of the prince, because many times it enables men to acquire states, and it helps them to maintain them [P 14:58].
Machiavelli wrote a book called The Art of War.
27
Machiavelli repeats this reasoning in the Discourses. “Once one individual has made himself very familiar with a
region, he then understands with ease all new countries; for every country and every member of the latter have some
conformity together, so that one passes easily from the knowledge of one to the knowledge of the other” [D
III.39.2:298]. Without this familiarization with one’s own country, one comes to know new countries either never,
or only after a long time and with difficulty.
28
As Mansfield puts it,
Machiavelli adumbrates the modern scientific understanding of nature that, with Bacon, abandons
natural beings and begins the search for natural laws, but he does no more than adumbrate. Since
he approaches the question of the nature of nature from the standpoint of what is good for human
beings, he remains faithful to the fact that in morals and politics, different natures appear distinct
to us, above all the difference between good and evil [MV, 21].
I mean here to fill out the content of Machiavelli’s adumbration with respect to human nature, and to point out the
resulting tension between his abandonment of natural beings and his fidelity to the natural difference between good
and evil. One sign of this tension is that while the science of sites seems to entail a mechanical or hydrodynamic
account in which lifeless nature is primary [see, for example, P 25:98-99], the examples that Machiavelli offers for
the excellent human being to imitate are chiefly living beings [compare P 25:100-101]. It is not clear whether the
living or the nonliving is the primary category for Machiavelli’s comprehensive science.
�Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 32
29
A reader who remembers the example of Pope Alexander VI from The Prince might object at this point that
Alexander hoped to continue acquiring after his death, using his son Cesare Borgia as “his instrument” [P 11:46].
But acquisitions made through one’s offspring can be lost to death just as well as one’s own acquisitions, as long as
one’s offspring are also mortal [P 7:31-32]. Also, it may necessarily be the case that a prince’s instruments are
always inferior to him; had he lived, Alexander VI might not have made the errors that Cesare Borgia made
[compare P 7:32-33 with 18:70]. Lastly, the pleasure of an predicted acquisition might necessarily be poorer than
the pleasure of a real acquisition, if one has doubts about the possibility of enjoying it.
30
We learn by Machiavelli’s treatment of the same episode in the Discourses that the centurion with the “obstinate
spirit” was not in fact the initiator of the successful conspiracy. Rather, he was the instrument of a prefect, who was
himself driven to conspire against his emperor by the necessity imposed by the prefect’s fear of death [D
III.6.11:227]. This elaboration does not detract from Machiavelli’s admission that some human beings cannot be
compelled by the threat of death, and so his admission that his science of sites is not comprehensive.
31
There are other details in The Prince that raise similar doubts about the science of sites. For example, Machiavelli
suggests that “obedience to present necessities” is what makes human beings vulnerable to being deceived [P
18:70]. He seems to mean not just that necessities can be manipulated [compare D III.12.1:247], since a human
being would be no less excellent were he to be responsive to artificial necessities as well as to natural ones, nor just
that necessities can be apparent rather than real, since a science of sites would distinguish only real necessities.
Instead, he seems to mean to qualify his claim that it is sufficient for virtue to orient itself by necessity. In the same
chapter Machiavelli also warns that “the vulgar are taken in by the appearance and the outcome of a thing”; and
there is a similar passage in the Discourses where he writes, “all men are blind in this, in judging good or bad
counsel by the end” [D III.35.2:291]. Again, if necessity were as knowable as Machiavelli elsewhere claims that it
is, judging by the end would not be an instance of blindness or gullibility.
�
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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"Everyone Sees How You Appear; Few Touch What You Are": Machiavelli on Human Nature
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Black, Jeff J. S., 1970-
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St. John's College
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2012-06-20
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Annapolis, MD
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Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527
Philosophy, Renaissance
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English
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Bib # 80134
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An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on June 20, 2012 by Jeff Black as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Black is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is on exactly what constitutes human nature in the work of Machiavelli. In particular, he considers how this view has affected the way we see Machiavelli's works and what it has to teach us about his writings.
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Summer lecture series
Tutors
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3f9edf83237ac11fc28a36fd8a32d130.mp3
d4563f211022ff33e093317f259c8b50
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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A Tale of Two Theodicies: Kant and the Self-Contradictions of Leibnizian Theodicy
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on June 28, 2017 by Joseph Trullinger as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Trullinger, an assistant professor at George Washington University, examines Leibniz, Kant and the philosophers’ emblematic responses to the problem of evil. He also explores Kant’s critique of his predecessor and discusses what he calls “contradictions” in Kant’s arguments.
Trullinger received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Bucknell University in 2003; his master’s in philosophy from the University of Kentucky in 2006; and his PhD in philosophy from Kentucky in 2010. His dissertation was titled, The Hidden Life of God: Kant and the German Idealists on Ethical Purity.
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Trullinger, Joseph
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-06-28
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Permission 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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Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804
Theodicy
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
Good and evil
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English
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Trullinger_Joseph_2017-06-28
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
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9c322938f97a00bf754ecdf73a43bafc
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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01:29:02
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Community Colleges and Teaching in the Liberal Arts
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Video recording of a panel discussion held on July 1, 2020 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Like St. John’s, community colleges are institutions devoted primarily to teaching and learning. They reach a broad and diverse portion of our country’s population. (In 2017–18, 38% of undergraduates were attending 2-year public colleges.) St. John’s collaborated with Anne Arundel Community College to bring together for this panel discussion faculty from a number of community colleges that have implemented discussion-based liberal arts education, including Austin Community College, Hostos Community College, Borough of Manhattan Community College and LaGuardia Community College.
The panelists include Andrea Fabrizio and Gregory Marks of Hostos Community College, Daniel Gertner of LaGuardia Community College, Holly Messitt of Borough of Manhattan Community College, Theodore Hadzi-Antich of Austin Community College, and Steve Canaday of Anne Arundel Community College. The panel was introduced by Emily Langston and moderated by Erica Beall of St. John's College.
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Fabrizio, Andrea
Marks, Gregory
Gertner, Daniel
Messitt, Holly
Hadzi-Antich, Theodore
Canaday, Steve
Beall, Erica
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2020-07-01
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Signed permissions form have been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online."
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moving image
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mp4
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Community college teaching
Education, Humanistic
Anne Arundel Community College
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Langston, Emily
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English
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PanelLecture_2020-07-01
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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2121b78de4bcae6cae7f46883020ee8a
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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CD
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00:44:45
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Title
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Courage, Insight, Sympathy, Solitude: The Genealogy of the Noble Type in Part Nine of <em>Beyond Good and Evil</em>.
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Boxel, Lise van
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St. John's College
Date
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2012-08-01
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Annapolis, MD
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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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mp3
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Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. English
Nobility
Philosophy
Courage
Good and evil
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900
Language
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English
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Bib # 80814
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 1, 2012, by Lise van Boxel as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Ms. van Boxel was a tutor at St. John's College. Her talk is on Nietzsche's <em>Geneology of Morals</em>. In particular, her talk examines what it is that makes up a "noble type" for Nietzsche by looking at a close reading of part nine of his work. Her lecture aims to point towards a positive definition of what the noble type in Nietzsche actually constitutes.
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sound
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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CD
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01:05:00
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Gimbel, Steven, 1968-
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Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion
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2012-07-11
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mp3
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 11, 2012 by Steven Gimbel as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Gimbel's lecture is on the relationship between Judaism and Einstein's scientific thinking, in particular Einstein's unique convergence of science, religion, and politics. Gimbel holds the Edwin T. Johnson and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where he also serves as Chair of the Philosophy Department. He received his bachelor's degree in Physics and Philosophy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and his doctoral degree in Philosophy from the Johns Hopkins University, where he wrote his dissertation on interpretations and the philosophical ramifications of relativity theory.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Rights
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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. To make an audio recording of my lecture available on the St. John's College web site."
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sound
Subject
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Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955
Physics
Religion and science
Judaism--20th century
Language
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English
Identifier
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Bib # 80142
Summer lecture series
-
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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mp3
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00:56:41
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Euclid as Teacher
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 10, 2019 by William Braithwaite as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Braithwaite is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk centers on Euclid's role as an educator not just of mathematics but also of life. In particular, Braithwaite examines the ways in which Euclid's mathematical reasoning has applicability outside of what would be traditionally thought. Using examples from Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, and others, this talk deepens an understanding of Euclid as a teacher of logic, mathematics, and life.
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Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas)
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2019-07-10
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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 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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English
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Braithwaite_William_2019-07-10
Subject
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Teaching
Euclid. Elements
Mathematics
Geometry
Education
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
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PDF Text
Text
8
.~
i
\
\
~
:
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS. MARYLAND 21404
FouNDED 16% AS KING WtLllAM·s ScHOOL
Friday Night Events:
June 7
- Lecture:
Summer 1985
Meno's Paradox and the Zetetic Circle
Mr. Jon Lenkowski
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
June 14- Lecture:
What Does-counting Presuppose?
Mr. Samuel Kutler
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
June 21 -_All College Seminar:
Prometheus Bound
8:00 p.m. - Rooms posted
June 28- Lecture:
on Aristotle's Ethics and Politics
Mr. Laurence Berns
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
July 5
Mr. Douglas Allanbrook
- Concert:
(Program to be announced)
8:15 p.m. F.S.K. Backstage
July 12 -Lecture:
On Plato's Timaeus
Mr. Peter Kalkavage
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
July 19 - Lecture:
On Sophocles' Antigone
Miss Janet Dougherty
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
July 26 -Lecture:
Aristotle's Metaphysics VII, 17
Mr. Stewart Umphrey
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
August 2 - Lecture:
On Lavoisier
Mr. Chester Burke
8:15 p.m. in the King William Room
TELEPHONE 'JOI- 263-2371
�
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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1 page
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paper
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Creator
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Graduate Institute
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Friday Night Events: Summer 1985
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1985
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 1985, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 1985 Summer
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
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Lenkowski, Jon
Kutler, Samuel
Berns, Laurence, 1928-
Allanbrook, Douglas
Kalkavage, Peter
Dougherty, Janet
Umphrey, Stewart, 1942-
Burke, Chester
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Sound
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wav
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01:05:26
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Title
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From Nature to History: The Search for Fundamental Necessities in Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 13, 2017, by Charles Zug as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Creator
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Zug, Charles
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2017-07-13
Rights
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Permission 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
Language
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English
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LEC_Zug_Charles_2017-07-13
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
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Title
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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44:18
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Ideas: America Rising, A Call for a New Great Awakening
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered on June 17, 2020 by David Townsend as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Townsend describes his lecture: "The idea of America, the ideal type American, and the Spirit of America depend on purposes and virtues. What are the virtues and texts that identify America and an American? Can a Great Awakening based on these principles free our minds?"
Creator
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Townsend, David L., 1947-
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2020-06-17
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online."
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moving image
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mp4
Language
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English
Identifier
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Townsend_David_2020-06-17
Subject
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National characteristics, American
Americans
Ideals (Philosophy)
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
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PDF Text
Text
Joe Sachs, draft of introduction to his translation of Aristotle's Physics
Delivered as a lecture for the Graduate Institute, August 6, 1983
1
INfRODUCTION
Philosophic writing
The activity known as philosophy did not originate among the ancient
Greeks. It is a permanent human possibility, that must have arisen in all
places and times when anyone paused in the business of life to wonder
about the way things are. But it was among the Greeks that it was named
and described, and began to be reflected in written texts. It was two
thinkers who wrote during the fourth centucy B.C., Plato and Aristotle, who
showed the world for all time the clearest examples of philosophic
thinking.
Plato's dialogues display the inescapable beginnings of
philosophy in all questions that touch on how a human being should
live~
and show that such questions must open up for examination all the
comfortable assumptions we make about the world. Aristotle's writings
trace an immense labor of the intellect, striving to push the power of
thinking to its limits.
Reading Aristotle, to be sure, is not at all like reading Plato. The
dialogues are beautiful in style, sensitive in the depiction of living and
breathing people, and altogether polished works meant for the widest
public. The writings of Aristotle that we possess as wholes are school texts
that, with the possible exception of the Nicomachean Ethics, were never
meant for publication. The title that we have with the Physics describes it
as a "course of listening." The likeliest conjecture is that these works
_-. . originated as oral discourses by Aristotle, written down by students,
.
corrected by Aristotle, and eventually assembled into longer connected
. arguments.
They presuppose acquaintance with arguments that are
referred to without being made (such as the "third
m~"),
and with
�2
examples that are never spelled out (such as the incommensurability of
.•
i"
the diagonal). They 'are demanding texts to follow, and are less interested
in beauty of composition than in exactness of statement. But in the most
important respect, the writings of Plato and Aristotle are more like each
other than either is like anything else. Both authors knew how to breathe
philosophic life into dead words on a page.
In Plato's dialogues, it is the figure of Socrates, always questioning,
always disclaiming knowledge, always pointing to what is not yet
understood, who keeps the tension of live thinking present. Despite the
efforts of misguided commentators, one need only read any dialogue to see
that there is no dogma there to be carried off, but only work to be done,
work of thinking into which Plato draws us. It may appear that Aristotle
rejects this Platonic path, giving his thought the closure of answers and
doctrine, turning philosophy into "science,"
but this is a distortion
produced by transmission through a long tradition and by bad translations.
The tradition speaks of physics, metaphysics, ethics, and so on as sciences
in the sense of conclusions deduced from first principles, but the books
written by Aristotle that bear those names contain no such "sciences."
What they all contain is dialectical reasoning, argument that does not start
with the highest knowledge in hand, but goes in quest 'of it, beginning with
whatever opinions seem worth examining. Exactly like Plato's dialogues,
Aristotle's writings lead the reader on from untested opinions toward more
reliable ones. Unlike the author of the dialogues, Aristotle records his best
~·, efforts to get beyond trial
and error to trustworthy ·conclusions. What
keeps those conclusions from becoming items of dogma? The available
translations hide the fact, but Aristotle devises a philosophic vocabulary
that is incapable of dogmatic ·use.
�3
This claim will come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the lore of
substances and accidents, categories, essences, per se individuals, and so
forth, but if Aristotle were somehow to reappear among us he would be
even more surprised to find such a thicket of impenetrable verbiage
attributed to him. Aristotle made his students work hard, but he gave
them materials they could work with, words and phrases taken from the
simplest contents of everyday speech, the kind of language that is richest
in meaning and most firmly embedded in experience and imagination. The
only trouble with ordinary speech, for the purposes of philosophy, is that it
carries too much meaning; we are so accustomed to its use that it
automatically carries along all sorts of assumptions about things, that we
make without being aware of them. Aristotle's genius consists in putting
together the most ordinary words in unaccustomed combinations. Since
the combinations are jarring, our thinking always has to be at work, right
now, afresh as we are reading, but since the words combined are so readily
understood by everyone, our thinking always has something to work with.
The meanings of the words in Aristotle's philosophic vocabulary are so
straightforward and inescapable that two results are assured: we will be
thinking about something, and not stringing together empty formulas, and
we will be reliably in communication with Aristotle; ·thinking about the
· very things he intended.
. We need to illustrate both the sort of thing that Aristotle wrote, and the
way the translations we have destroy its effect.
Consider the word
essence. This is an English word, and we all know more or less how to use
it. Perfumes have essences, beef stock can be boiled down to its essence,
and the most important part of anything can be called its essenceo It
seems to have some connection with necessity, since we occasionally
�4
dismiss something as not essential. By the testimony of usage, that is
about it. Essence is a relatively vague English word. If we know Latin, the
word begins to have some resonance, but none of the:it has crossed over
into English. So what do we do when we find a translation of Aristotle full
of the word essence?
We have to turn to expert help.
Ordinary
dictionaries will probably not be sufficient, but we will need philosophic
dictionaries, commentaries on Aristotle, textbooks on philosophy, or
trained lecturers who possess the appropriate degrees. In short, we need
to be initiated into a special dub; it may make us feel superior to the
ordinary run of human beings, and it will at least make us think that
philosophy is not for people in general, but only for specialists. Medical
doctors, for example, seek just those effects for their area of expert
knowledge by never using an ordinary, understandable name for anything,
but only a Latin derivative with many syllables. But did Aristotle want
such a result? If not, writing in such a style can hardly be presented as a
translation of Aristotle.
What did Aristotle write where the translators put the word essence?
In some places he wrote "the what" something is, or "the being" of it. In
most places he wrote "what something keeps on being in order to be at all,"
or "what it is for something to be." These phrases brlng us to a stop, not
because we cannot attach meaning to them, but because it takes some
·work to get hold of what they mean. Since Aristotle chose to write that
way, is it not reasonable to assume that he wanted us to do just that?
When the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes the line "Though worlds of
· · wanwood leafmeal lie," everything in his words is readily accessible,
though the pieces are combined in unusual ways. We recognize this sort of
word-play as a standard device of poetry, that works on .us through the
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ear, the visual imagination, and our feelings.
The poet makes us
experience a fresh act of imagining and feeling, at his direction. (Think of
all that would be lost if he had written "Notwithstanding the fact that an
immeasurable acreage of deciduous forest manifests the state of affairs
characteristic of its incipiently dormant condition.") Aristotle's phrases in
the present example do something that is exactly analogous to the poet's
word-play, but is directed only at the intellect and understanding. Other
words and phrases of his do carry imaginative content, but subordinated to
the intellect and understanding. Aristotle is not a poet, but a philosophic
writer, one who, like a poet, loosened and recombined the most vivid parts
· · of ordinary speech to make the reader ·see and think afresh.
Many
philosophers have written books, but few have worked as carefully and
deliberately to make the word be suited to the philosophic deed
Tra.nslati.on and tradition
A long stretch of centuries stands between Aristotle and us. The usual
translations of his writings stand as the end-product of all the history that
befell them in those centuries. For about five centuries up to 1600 they
were the source of the dominant teachings of the European universities; for
about four centuries since then they have been reviled as the source of a
rigid and empty dogmatism that stifled any genuine pursuit of knowledge.
One has to be very learned indeed to uncover all that history, but
fortunately for those of us who are interested only in understanding the
writings themselves, no such historical background is of any use. In fact it
takes us far away from anything Aristotle wrote or meant.
By chance1
when Aristotle's books dominated the centers of European learning, the
common language of higher learning was Latin. When in tum later
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thinkers rebelled against the tyranny of the established schools, it was a
Latinized version of Aristotle that they attacked. They wrote in the
various modern European languages, but the words and phrases of
Aristotle that they argued with and about came into those languages with
the smallest possible departures from the Latin.
Thomas Hobbes, for example, writing in 1651 (in the next to last
chapter of the last part of Leviathan), makes a common complaint in a
memorable way: "I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more absurdly
said in naturall Philosophy, than that which is now called Aristoteles
Metaphysiques...An.d since the Authority of Aristotle is onely current [in
the universities], that study is not properly Philosophy, (the nature
whereof dependeth not on Authors,) but Aristotelity...To know now upon
what grounds they say there be Essences Abstract, or Substantial] Formes,
wee are to consider what those words do properly signifie...But what then
would become of these Terms, of Entity, Essence, Essential], Essentiality,
that. ..are... no Names of Things... [T]his doctrine of Separated Essences, built
on the Vain Philosophy of Aristotle, would fright [men] ...with empty names
as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty doublet, a hat, and a
crooked stick."
The usual translations of Aristotle are concerned most of all with
preserving a continuity of tradition back though these early modem critics
of Aristotle. Richard McKean, in a note to a philosophic glossary, defends
this practice: "The tendency recently in translations from greek and latin
philosophers, has been to seek out anglo-saxon terms, and to avoid latin
derivatives. Words as clear and as definitely fixed in a long tradition of
usage as privation, accident, and even substance, have been replaced by
barbarous compound terms, which awaken no echo in the mind of one
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familiar with the tradition, and afford no entrance into the tradition to one
unfamiliar with it. In the translations above an attempt has been made to
return to the terminology of the... english philosophers of the seventeenth
century. Most of the latin derivatives which are used...have justification in
the works of Hobbes, Kenelm Digby, Cudworth, Culveiwell, even Bacon, and
scores of writers contemporary with them... ff]he mass of commentary on
Aristotle will be rendered more difficult, if not impossible, of
understanding if the terms of the discussion are changed arbitrarily after
two thousand years." (Selections from Medieval Philosophers, Vol. II, pp.
422-3., Scribner's, 1930)
The tendency deplored by McKeon has not made its way into any
translations of the writings of Aristotle known to this writer. There was
some hope of it when Hippocrates Apostle announced a new series of
translations, and included the following among its principles: "The terms
should be familiar, that is, commonly used and with their usual meanings.
If such terms are available, the use of strange terms, whether in English or
in some other language, adds nothing scientific to the translation but
unnecessarily strains the reader's thought and often clouds or misleads it."
(Aristotle's Metaphysics, p. x, Indiana U.P., 1966) This is a sentiment
worth endorsing, but Apostle respects it only to the minor extent of
avoiding such pretentious phrases as ceteris paribus (Latin for "other
things being equal"), and nothing in his translations would disturb McKeon.
But if Apostle's general claim is correct, and if in addition Aristotle never
used technical jargon in his own language, then surely to use such language
to translate him is to confuse Aristotle's writings with a tradition that
adapted them to purposes that were not his. And if that Latin tradition
distorted Aristotle's meaning and was untrue to his philosophic spirit, until
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all that remained was the straw man so easily ridiculed by Hobbes and
every other lively thinker of his time, then to insist on keeping Aristotle
within the confines of that caricature is perverse.
It is never possible to translate anything from one language to another
with complete accuracy, and it is especially difficult to translate an author
who takes liberties with common usage in his own language. But in this
case there is one simple rule that is easy to follow and always tends in a
good direction, and that is to avoid all the conventional technical words
that have been routinely used for Aristotle's central vocabulary. In fact,
virtually all those words are poor translations of the Greek they mean to
stand for. The word privation, for instance, will not be found in this
translation for the simple reason that its meaning cannot be expected to be
known to all educated readers of English. The commentaries on Aristotle
use the word extensively, but if the Greek word it refers to has been
adequately translated in the first place, you will not need commentaries to
tell you what it means. Here that Greek word will be translated sometimes
as deprivation, sometimes as lack, according as one or the other fits more
comfortably into its context. What matters is not whether Latin or AngloSaxon derivatives are used, but whether an understandable English word
translates an understandable Greek one. Accident is a perfectly good
· English word, but not in the sense in which it appears in commentaries on
·Aristotle; the Greek word it replaces has a broad sense, that corresponds to
our word attribute, and a narrower one that can be conveyed by the
phrase "incidental attribute." In this case again, Latin derivatives are
available which cany clear and appropriate meanings in English, since one
does not need to know any Latin to ferret them out. It is true that adcadere has a sense that could have given rise to the meanings we attach to
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the words "incidental" and "attribute," but it did not in fact transmit that
meaning to its English derivatives. There is some pedantic pleasure in
pointing out those connections, but to use the word accident in that sense
is to write a forced Latin masquerading as English, guaranteed to confuse
the non-specialist reader, where Aristotle used the simplest possible
language in a way that keeps the focus off the words and on · the things
meant by them.
But to undo the mischief caused by McKeon's third example, substance,
stronger medicine is required. Joseph Owens records the way this word
became established in the tradition.
(The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian 'Metaphysics', pp. 140-143, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1951) It is a comedy of errors in which Christian scruples were
imposed upon a non-Biblical theology, and a disagreement with Aristotle
was read back into his words as a translation of them. This translator
ignores the contortions of the tradition and without apology uses the
barbarous Anglo-Saxon compound thinghood. This is a central notion in
the Metaphysics, and in all Aristotle's thought, though it occurs rarely in
the Physics, and the word "substance" does nothing but obscure its
meaning. Lively arguments about substance go on today in the secondary
literature, but a choice must be made, and the primary texts of Aristotle
are better, clearer, richer, deeper, easier to absorb, and more worth
pursuing than the commentaries on them. · As it stands in the usual
translations, the word "substance" is little more than an unknown x, for
which meaning has to be deduced by a kind of algebra, while Aristotle
shows (Metaphysics 1028b 2-7) that just asking what the thinghood of
things consists in, and what is responsible for it, unlocks the highest
inquiry of which philosophy is capable. For the promise of such a return, it
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is worth risking a little barbarity. The barbarism of a word like thinghood
is just the fact that it falls far outside common usage in our language, and
not in a direction that needs any historical or technical special knowledge
to capture it, but in one that invites the same flexibility that poets ask of
us. We cannot read such a barbarism in a passive way, but must take
responsibility for its meaning. This in itself, in moderation and in welljudged places, is something good, and is an imitation of what Aristotle does
with Greek.
It has already been remarked that the present translation does not
always use the same English word for the same Greek one. This is partly
because no English word ever has the same full range of meaning as any
Greek word, so that such a range has to be conveyed, or unwanted
connotations suppressed, by the use of a variety of near-synonyms. It is
partly because a Greek word may have two or more distinct uses that
differ by context; in this way, the word for thinghood will often be
translated as "an independent thing." It is also partly because Aristotle
always paid attention to the fact that important words are meant in more
than one way. For him this was not a fault of language, but one of the
ways in which it is truthful. A word often has a primary meaning and a
variety of derivative ones, as a reflection of causal reiatlons in the world.
A diet can be healthy only because, in a different and more governing
-sense, an animal can be healthy, and there can be a medical knife only
because there is a medical skill. This array of difference within sameness
usUally cannot be lifted over from Greek to English, and has to be gotten at
indirectly. In the Physics, every kind of change is spoken of as a motion,
though the word for motion is gradually and successively limited until it
refers strictly only to change of place. This progression determines the
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main structure of the inquiry, but in English the path is not as clearly
indicated by transitions of meaning within a single word. And finally,
there are some words that have many translations that are equally good in
their different ways. In such cases, this translation rejoices in variety; this
again is an imitation of Aristotle's general practice. Where the traditional
translations are marked by rigid, formulaic repetitions, Aristotle loves to
combine overlapping meanings, or separate intertwined meanings, to point
to things the language has no precise word for. It is the living, naturat
flexible character of thinking that breathes through Aristotle's use of
language, and not the artificial, machine-like fixity one finds in the
translations.
This last point should not be taken as a promise of smooth English, but
just the reverse. Idiomatic expressions and familiar ways of putting words
together conceal unthinking assumptions of just the kind that philosophy
tries to get beyond. The reader will need a willingness to follow sentences
to places where meaning would be lost if it were forced into well-worn
grooves, and will need to follow trains of thought that would not be the
same if they did not preserve Aristotle's own ways of connecting them. As
far as possible, this translation follows the syntax of Aristotle's text.
Montgomery Furth has followed this same procedure in a translation of
part of the Metaphysics, and apologizes for the result as neither English
nor
Gree~
but Eek. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Books Vll-X, p. vi, Hackett,
1985} Furth does this because of an interest in following Aristotle's logic
faithfully, but he retains all the usual Latinized vocabulary of Ross's Oxford
translation, so that the resulting language might better be called Leek. The
present translation goes farther, in vocabulary and syntax both, beyond
the Latin and toward the Greek, and could be called Gringlish, but for this
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as well it comes before you without apology.
Furth violates English
sensibilities for the special purposes of graduate students and professional
scholars; this translation violates them for the common human purposes of
joining Aristotle in thinking that breaks through the habitual and into the
philosophic.
A philosophic physics?
Now it may seem odd to combine philosophic aims with the topic of
physics. It may seem that Aristotle had to speculate philosophically about
the natural world because he did not have the benefit of the secure
knowledge we have about it. In the current secondary literature, one sees
at least some scholars who think they might learn something about
thinking from De Anima, or about being from the Metaphysics, but articles
on the Physics seem at most to pat Aristotle on the head for having come
to some conclusion not utterly in conflict with present-day doctrines. This
kind of smugness is a predictable result of the way the sciences have been
taught to us. Conjectures and assumptions, because they have been part of
authoritative opinion for a few centuries, are presented to us as stories, or
as facts, without recourse to evidence or argument. Particular doctrines,
even when they stand on theoretical structures as complex and fragile as a
house of cards, or even when they presuppose a picture of things that is
flatly in contradiction with itself, tend to be prefaced with the words "we
know... " All the rhetoric that surrounds the physics of our time tells us
. that philosophic inquiry need not enter its territory, that here the
philosophizing is over and done, the best minds agree about everything,
and non-experts couldn't hope to understand enough to assess the
evidence in any case. Strangely, the physics of the twentieth century is
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surrounded by the same air of dogmatic authority as was the schoolAristotelianism of the sixteenth century.
But there are two kinds of support for the present-day physics that
seem to lift it above dogmatism. One is a long history of experiment and
successful technology, and the other is the greatest possible reliance on
mathematics. These are both authorities that cannot be swayed by human
preferences, and cannot lie.
Their testimony can, however, be
misunderstood, and can be incorporated into a picture of the world that
fails in other ways. But even if the current physics contains nothing
untrue, one might wish to understand it down to its roots, to unearth the
fundamental daims about things on which it rests, which have been lost
sight of in the onrush of theoretical and practical progress. To do this one
has to stand back from it, to see its founding claims as alternatives to other
ways of looking at the world, chosen for reasons. The earliest advocates of
the "new physics" did just that, and the alternatives they rejected all stem
from Aristotle's Physics. Martin Heidegger has said that "Aristotle's
Physics is the hidden, and therefore never adequately studied,
foundational book of Western philosophy." ("On the Being and Conception
of ct>U:U: in Aristotle's Physics B, 1," in Man and World, IX, 3, 1976, p. 224)
The physics of our time is inescapably philosophic, ifonly in the original
choices, preserved in it, to follow certain paths of thought to the exclusion
of others. To see that physics adequately and whole, we too need to be
philosophic, to lift our gaze to a level at which it can be seen to be one
possibility among many. Only then is it possible to decide rationally and
responsibly to adopt its opinions as our own.
But there is a second respect in which twentieth-century physics has
opened its doors to philosophy, and will not be able to close them. The
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physics that came of age in the seventeenth century, and seemed to have
answered all the large questions by the nineteenth, is limping toward the
end of the twentieth century in some confusion.
Mathematics and
technology have coped with all the crises of this century, but the picture of
the world that underlay them has fallen apart. It was demonstrated
conclusively that light is a wave, except when it shines on anything; then it
arrives as particles. It is shown with equal certainty that the electron is a
particle, except when it bounces off a crystal surface; then it must be a
wave, interacting with the surface everywhere at once. Just when atomic
physics seemed ready to uncover the details of the truth underlying all
appearances, it began to undercut all its own assumptions. A wavemechanics that held out an initial promise of reducing all appearances of
particles to the behavior of waves failed to do so, and degenerated into a
computational device for predicting probabilities. The most far-seeing
physicists of the century have shown that particles and waves are equally
necessary, mutually incompatible aspects of every atomic event, and that
physics, at what was supposed to be the ultimate explanatory level, must
abandon its claim to objectivity. The physicist is always describing, in
part, his own decisions to interfere with things in one way rather than
another; this brings along, as a causally necessary conclusion, the collapse
of the belief in causal determinism. When Hobbes laughed at Aristotle, he
.was certain that he knew what a body is. Today all bets are off.
But some physicists have been unwilling to give up their dogmatic
habits without a fight. Even Einstein, after he had taught the world to give
up the rigid Newtonian ideas of time, space, and mass, was unable to
suspend his unquestioned assumption that bodies have sharply defined
places, and cannot interact except by contact or by radiation. Niels Bohr
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and Werner Heisenberg had announced the most radical of revolutions,
requiring physicists to ask what knowledge is, and no longer to answer by
pointing to what they do. Einstein, in a famous 1935 collaboration ("Can
Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality be Considered Complete?",
Physical Review 47), tried to hold off this final revolution, saying in effect
"I know enough about the fundamental structure of the world to be certain
that some things cannot happen." Experiments have revealed that those
very things do happen, that the state of one particle is provably dependent
on whether a measurement is performed on a distant second particle, from
which no signal could have radiated. But a new and opposite tactic permits
some physicists to embrace this or any other seeming impossibility
without admitting the need for any philosophic re-thinking of the way
things are. Listen to these words of Richard Feynman: "We always have
had a great deal of difficulty in understanding the world view that
quantum physics represents. At least I do, because I'm an old enough man
that I haven't got to the point that this stuff is obvious to me...you know
how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it
becomes obvious that there's no real problem." (quoted by N. David
Mermin in The Great Ideas Today, 1988, p. 52) So if the discoveries of
quantum physics make you feel an urgent need· to re-examine the
presuppositions of physics, just repress that feeling for a generation or
two, and it will go away.
Perhaps more than any other reason for resisting opening physics to
philosophic examination, there is the plain fact that there is no need for it
to do anything differently.
Whatever happens can be described
mathematically, and new discoveries are readily incorporated into some
mathematical scheme, and then predicted. Technology aQ.vances no less
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rapidly in areas in which the explanatory ground has been cut from under
our feet, than in those in which its workings are intelligible. But the new
physics arose out of a desire to know, and has undeniably become a highly
questionable kind of knowing. Indeed, the very fact that its picture of the
world can collapse while leaving its mathematical description and practical
applications intact is a powerful stimulus to wonder. While wishing
physics well in all its dealings, some of us may simply want to understand
what it is and what it isn't. But we cannot see how its various strands
have separated without understanding what it was to begin with, so again
we are thrown back to the choices by which it came into being, and thus in
turn to the picture of the world that it rejected. From this standpoint,
though, that is more than a quest to uncover something past and
superseded.
It entails the risk of being convinced that the original
decisions of the seventeenth century physicists were not all worthy of our
own acceptance. It is possible that parts of Aristotle's understanding of
the world might serve to heal our own dilemmas and confusions.
The things that are
Where should an understanding of the things around us begin? It
might seem that there are plain facts that could serve as uncontroversial
starting points. What are some of the plainest ones? The stars circle us at
night, the sun by day. Rocks fall to earth, but flames leap toward the sky.
Bodies that are thrown or pushed slow down continually until they stop
moving. Animals and plants belong to distinct kinds, which they preserve
from generation to generation. The visible whole is a sphere, with the
earth motionless at its center. These are facts of experience, so obvious
that the only way to be unaware of them is by not paying attention. If you
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disbelieve any of them it is not because of observation, but because you
were persuaded not to trust your senses. No physics begins by looking at
the things it studies; those things must always be assigned to some larger
context in which they can be interpreted. Aristotle states this in the first
sentence of his Physics by saying that we do not know anything until we
know its causes. Nothing stands on its own, without connections, and no
event happens in isolation; there must be some comprehensive order of
things in which things are what they are and do what they do. Physics
seeks to understand only a part of this whole, but it cannot begin to do so
without some picture of the whole.
But it has been noted earlier that none of Aristotle's inquiries begins
with the knowledge that most governs the things it studies. We never
start where the truth of things starts, but must find our way there. That
means that we cannot dispense with some preliminary picture of things,
though we must be ready to modify it as the inquiry proceeds. What is
Aristotle's preliminary picture of the whole of things? It is one that
permits the plainest facts of experience to be just the way they appear to
us. We live at the center of a spherical cosmos as one species of living
thing among many, in a world in which some motions are natural and some
forced, but all require causes actively at work, and cease when those
causes cease to act. The natural motions are those by which animals and
. plants live and renew their kinds, the stars circle in unchanging orbits, and
the parts of the cosmos-earth, water, air, and fire-are transformed into
one another by heat and cold, move to their proper places up or down, and
maintain an ever-renewing equilibrium. This picture is confirmed and
fleshed out by Aristotle's inquiries in writings other than the Physics, but
since Aristotle never writes "scientifically," that is deductively, there is no
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necessary or right order in which they should be read. All those inquiries
stand in a mutual relation of enriching and casting light upon one another,
and the Physics is in an especially close relation with the Metaphysics.
It is not only a picture of the whole that is assumed in the Physics, but
also a comprehensive understanding of the way things are.
In the
Metaphysics, this latter is not assumed but arrived at by argument,
through the sustained pursuit of the question, what is being? Since being
is meant in many ways, Aristotle looks for the primary sense of it, being as
such or in its own right, on which the other kinds of being are dependent.
That primary sense of being is first identified as thinghood, then
discovered to be the sort of being that belongs only to animals, plants, and
the cosmos as a whole. For these pre-eminent beings, being is being-atwork, since each of them is a whole that maintains itself by its own
activity. For any other sort of being, what it is for it to be is not only
something less than that, but it is in every case dependent on and derived
from those highest beings, as a quality, quantity, or action of one, a relation
between two or more, a chance product of the interaction between two or
more, or an artificial product deliberately made from materials borrowed
from one or more of them. Life is not a strange by-product of things, but
the source of things, and the non-living side of nature has being in a way
strictly analogous to life: as an organized whole that maintains itself by
continual activity. In the central books of the Metaphysics, Aristotle
captures the heart of the meaning of being in a cluster of words and
phrases that are the most powerlul expressions of his thinking. · In the
usual translations-substance, essence, actuality, and actuality again-they
not only fall flat but miss the central point: that the thinghood of a thing is
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what it keeps on being in order to be at all, and must be a being-at-work
so that it may achieve and sustain its being-at-work-staying-itself.
Now the physics of our time adopts an understanding of being that is
exactly opposite to that of Aristotle, in the principle of inertia. The
primary beings are what they are passively, by being hard enough to
resist all change, and do nothing but bump and move off blindly in straight
lines. The picture of the world assumed by this physics is of atoms in a
void, so there can be no cosmos, but only infinite emptiness, no life, but
only accidental rearrangements of matter, and no activity at all, except for
motion in space. This is ancient idea, that goes back long before Aristotle's
time. Lucretius finds it appealing, as a doctrine that teaches us that, while
there is little to hope for in life except freedom from pain, there is little to
fear either, since a soul made of atoms will dissolve, but cannot suffer
eternal torment. There are reasons of two other kinds that make this
picture of things attractive to the new physics.
First, it makes it
unnecessary to look for causes. Just because everything is taken to be
reducible to atoms and the void, every possible event is pre-explained.
Mechanical necessity takes over as the only explanation of anything, so the
labor of explanation is finished at one stroke. And second, this picture
makes every attribute that belongs to anything, and every event that can
happen, entirely describable by mathematics. The glory of the new
physics is the power it gains from mathematics. The world that is present
to the senses is set aside as "secondary," and the mathematical imagination
takes over as our way of access to the true world behind the appearances.
The only experience that is allowed to count is the controlled experiment1
designed in the imagination, with a limited array of possible outcomes that
are all interpreted in advance.
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From its beginnings, mathematical physics moves from success to
success, but almost from the beginning its mechanistic picture of things
fails. Newton begins his Principia with the assumption that all bodies are
inert, but in the course of it shows that every body is the seat of a
mysterious power of attraction. Is this simply a new discovery to be
added to our picture of the world? Shall we say that there are atoms, void,
and a force of gravitation? But the whole purpose of the new worldpicture was to avoid occult qualities. And where do we put this strange
force of attraction? There is no intelligible way that inert matter can be
conceived as causing an urge in some distant body. Shall we say that the
force resides in a field? A field of what? The Principia shows that the
spaces through which the planets move are void of matter. How can a
point in empty nothing be the bearer of a quantity of energy? This new
discovery can be described mathematically, but it does not fit into the
world-picture that led to it, and cannot be understood as something added
to it. Something similar happens with light, which is discovered by
Maxwell to be describable as an electromagnetic wave. But a wave is a
material conception: a disturbance in a string, or a body of water, or some
such carrier, moves from one place to another while the parts of the body
stay where they were. So when it is shown that a iight-bearing aether
would need to have contradictory properties, electromagnetic radiation is
left as a well-described wave motion taking place in nothing whatever.
In the twentieth century, the mechanist picture underlying
mathematical physics has broken down even more radically, in ways that
have been mentioned above. Popularizations of physics usually tell us that
the ideas of Newton and Maxwell failed when they were applied on an
astronomic or atomic scale, but remain perfectly good approximations to
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the phenomena of the middle-sized world. But in what sized world can
matter be inert and not inert, and space empty and not empty? And the
middle-sized world is characterized more than anything else by the
presence of living things, which the atoms-and-void picture never had any
hope of explaining, but only of explaining away. Shall we at least say,
though, that we have learned that the world is not a cosmos? Let us listen
to David Bohm: "The theory of relativity was the first significant indication
in physics of the need to question the mechanist order... [I]t implied that no
coherent concept of an independently existent particle is possible...The
quantum theory presents, however, a much more serious challenge to this
mechanist order... so that the entire universe has to be thought of as an
unbroken whole. In this whole, each element that we can abstract in
thought shows basic properties (wave or particle, etc.) that depend on its
overall environment, in a way that is much more reminiscent of how the
organs constituting living beings are related, than it is of how parts of a
machine interact... [T]he basic concepts of relativity and quantum theory
directly contradict each other... [W]hat they have basically in common...is
undivided wholeness. Though each comes to such wholeness in a different
way, it is clear that it is this to which they are both fundamentally
pointing." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Ark, 1983, pp. 173-6)
According to Bohm, it is only prejudice and habit that keep the evidence
of the wholeness of things from being taken seriously. The contrary view
is not just an opinion, but one of those fundamental ways of looking,
thinking, and interpreting that permit us to have opinions at all, and to
decide what is and what isn't a fact. To abandon the ground beneath our
feet feels like violence, especially when no new authority is at hand to
assure us that there is somewhere else for us to land We
t~nd
to prefer to
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live with unreconciled dualities. Descartes notoriously makes the relation
of mind and body a "problem." Newton speaks in his General Scholium as
though gravitation were incapable of explanation by physics, a
supernatural element in the world. Leibniz speaks of two kingdoms, one of
souls and one of bodies, as harmoniously superimposed (as in Monadology
79). Kant tells us that we are free, except insofar as our actions are part of
the empirical world.
We sometimes speak of biology as something
unconnected with physics, as though what is at work in a tree or a cat is
not nature in its most proper sense. We have had the habit so long that we
consider it natural to regard ourselves, with our feeling, perception, and
understanding, as an inexplicable eruption out of a nature that has nothing
in common with us. Might it be possible to find a more coherent way to
put together our experience? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to suspend,
at least for a while, our notions of what can be and what it is for something
to be, to try out some other way of looking.
A non-mathematical physics
The world as envisioned in Aristotle's Physics is more diverse than the ·
world described by mathematical physics, and we must accustom
ourselves to a correspondingly richer vocabulary iil order to read it.
Motion means one thing to us, but irreducibly many kinds of thing when
Aristotle speaks of it, and the same is true of cause. We tend to use nature
as an umbrella-word, a collective name for the sum of things, while
Aristotle means it to apply to whatever governs the distinct pattern of
activity of each kind of being. It would be possible to use different English
words for these three ideas, to bring out what is distinctive in Aristotle's
meanings, but here it seems best to keep the familiar words.and push their
�23
limits beyond their prevalent current meanings. Nature, cause, and motion
are the central topics of the Physics, and come to sight first as questions; it
is important to see that Aristotle and the later mathematical physicists
were ultimately asking about the same things. Nature is mathematized not
as an interesting game, or to abandon a harder task in favor of an easier
one, but in order that the truth of it may be found.
In the Assayer, Galileo makes the famous claim that "this grand book,
the universe, .. .is written in the language of mathematics." Later in the
same book, in a discussion of heat, he explains why. "I suspect that people
in general have a concept of this which is very remote from the truth. For
they believe that heat is a real phenomenon, or property, or quality, which
actually resides in the material by which we feel ourselves warmed
...Without the senses as our guides, reason or imagination unaided would
probably never arrive at qualities like these. Hence I think that tastes,
odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object
in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the
consciousness.
Hence if the living creature were removed, all these
qualities would be wiped away and annihilated."
But shapes, sizes,
positions, numbers, and such things are not mere names, imposed on
objects by the consciousness of the living creature, because "from these
conditions, I cannot separate [a material or corporeal] substance by any
stretch of my imagination." (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Anchor,
1957, pp. 237-8, 274) The direct experience of the world has the taint of
· subjectivity, but the mathematical imagination captures the object just as
it is. Sadder but wiser physicists would no longer try to read themselves
out of physics; they too are living creatures, interpreting the experience of
a consciousness, with all the risk and uncertainty that accompanies such an
�24
activity. But our use of language may betray our second thoughts, and pull
us back to Galileo's point of view.
What is motion? Do you think of something like a geometrical point
changing position? What about a child moving into adolescence? Warmth
moving into your limbs? Blossoms moving out of the buds on a tree? A
ripening tomato, moving to a dark red? Are these other examples motions
in only a metaphorical sense, while the first is correctly so called? Are the
other examples really nothing but complex instances of the first, with
small-scale changes of position adding up to large-scale illusions of
qualitative change? For Aristotle, the differences among the kinds of
motion determine the over-all structure of the Physics, but they first of all
belong together as one kind of experience.
The kinds of becoming
correspond to the ways being belongs to anything, and being-somewhere is
only one aspect of being. A thing can also be of a certain size, or of a
certain sort or quality, and can undergo motion in these respects by
coming to be of another size, or of a different quality, by some gradual
transition. It can even undergo a motion with respect to its thinghood.
One thinks first of birth and death, but eating displays the same kind of
motion. A cow chomps grass, and it is no longer pa.rt of the life of a plant,
and soon it is assimilated into the body of the cow. This is no mere change
of quality, since no whole being persists through it to have first one, then
some other quality belonging to it. Something persists, but first in one,
then in another, kind of thinghood.
In any encounter with the natural world, it is the kinds of change other
than change of place that are most prominent and most productive of
wonder. Mathematical physics must erase them all, and attempt to argue
that they were never anything but deceptive appearances of something
�25
else, changing in some other way. Why? Because those merely local
changes of merely inert bodies can be described mathematically. But if the
testimony of the senses has a claim to "objectivity," and to be taken
seriously, that is at least equal to that of the mathematical imagination,
then there is no necessity of such a reduction. And in fact the reduction of
kinds of motion that is required is not just from four to one, but to less
than one. Aristotle has considerable interest in change of place, but such a
thing is possible only if there are places. Motion as mathematically
conceived happens in space, and in space there are no places. Underneath
the idea of motion that is prevalent today lurks this other idea,
unexamined and taken on faith, that there is such a thing as space.
Aristotle twice makes the argument that space, or empty extension, is
an idea that results only from the mis-use of mathematics. It is the exact
counter-argument to Galileo's claim that ordinary people project their nonmathematical ideas onto the world. Aristotle says that the mathematician
separates in thought the extension that belongs to extended bodies. (This
is sometimes called "abstraction," but the word Aristotle uses is the
ordinary word for subtraction.)
There is nothing wrong with this
falsification of things, which makes it easier to study what has been
isolated artificially, so long as one does not forget that the original
falsification took place. But some people do just that, and read this
extension, which they have subtracted from bodies, back into the world as
though it were empty and somehow existed on its own, prior to bodies.
Now, in the imagination, it is possible
~o
examine this "space" and
determine all sorts of things about it. It is of infinite extent, for example,
and since it is entirely empty, no part of it can have any characteristic by
which it could differ from any other part. If our impulse,. when thinking
�26
about motion, is automatically to give it a mathematical image, that is
because we have pre-supposed that the ultimate structure of the world is
space. But this supposition is laden with consequences and ought not to be
adopted blindly. Aristotle says that one of the reasons physics cannot be
mathematical is that the mathematician abolishes motion. Physics is the
study of beings that move, and motion is a rich and complex topic, but
within the constraints of "space" every form of motion disappears, except
for one which is diminished out of recognition. If it is in space that our
examination begins, nature will be nowhere to be found (but will survive
as a mere name) because space is, from the beginning, a de-natured realm.
Conversely, without the imposition of the idea of space, it is possible for
nature to be understood as part of the true constitution of things, because
motion in all its variety can be present. But since motion is not reduced to
the pre-explained realm of mathematics, it is necessary to understand
what it is. Aristotle says that, so long as we are ignorant of motion, we are
ignorant of nature as well. But how can one give a rational account of
motion? To assign it to some other genus would seem to make it a species
of non-motion. In fact, two of Aristotle's predecessors, Parmenides and
Zeno, had argued that motion is completely illusory. Parmenides argued
that any attempt to say that there is motion must
drum that what is-not
also is. And Zeno, in four famous paradoxes preserved by Aristotle, tried
to show that any description of motion involves self-contradiction of some
kind. It would seem that motion has to be accepted as a brute fact of
experience, from which explanations can begin, but which cannot itself be
explained But Aristotle, for the first and perhaps only time ever, did give
motion a place not only in the world but in a rational account of the world,
explaining it in terms of ideas that go deeper. The Parmenidean challenge
�27
is met by Aristotle primarily in the Metaphysics, where he shows that
being must be meant in more than one way. His response to Zeno's
challenge spreads over the whole of the Physics, and is concentrated in his
definition of motion.
Aristotle defines motion in terms of potency and being-at-work. In the
first book of the Physics there is a preliminary analysis of change that
discovers the ultimate explanatory notions available to the inquiry to be
form, material, and the deprivation of form. Material is described as that
which, by its own nature, inherently yearns for and stretches out toward
form. This should never be called matter, by which we mean something
that stands on its own with a determinate set of properties (has weight,
occupies space, preserves its state of motion in a straight line). What
Aristotle means by material, on the contrary, is (1) not inert, (2) not
necessarily tangible, (3) relative to its form, which may in tum be material
for some other form, (4) not possessed of any definite properties, and (S)
ultimately a purely "ideal" being, incapable of existing in separation, which
would be rejected by any "materialist." Form, in turn, does not mean
shape or arrangement, but some definite way of being-at-work. This is
evident in Book II of the Physics, and arrived at by argument principally
in VIII, 2 of the Metaphysics. Every being consists of material and form,
that is, of an inner striving spilling over into an outward activity. Potency
and being-at-work are the ways of being of material and form.
The usual translations render potency as potentiality, which might
suggest mere indeterminacy or logical possibility, which is never the sense
in which Aristotle uses it. What is worse, though, is the rendering of
being-at-work, and the stronger form of it used in the definition,
being-at~
work-staying-itself, as actuality. This has some reference, by way of Latin,
�28
to activity, but is a useless word that makes it completely impossible to get
anything resembling Aristotle's meaning out of the definition.
"The
actuality of the potentiality as a potentiality" becomes a seventeenthcentury joke, the ultimate example of the destruction of healthy common
sense by pretentious gobbledygook. Does it refer to the actuality that
belonged to the potential thing before it changed? That's not a motion, but
something that precedes one. Does it refer to the actuality that exactly
corresponds to the pre-existent potentiality? That's not a motion either,
but something left when the motion ends. Does it mean, though it would
have to be tortured to give this sense, the gradual transformation of a
potentiality into an actuality? That at least could refer to a motion, but
only by saying that a motion is a certain kind of motion. Perhaps it means
that motion is the actuality of a potentiality to be in motion. This is surely
the silliest version of them all, but respected scholars have defended it
with straight faces. An intelligent misinterpretation of the definition was
put forward by Thomas Aquinas, who took it to mean that the special
condition of a thing in motion is to be partly actual while partly potential,
and directed toward greater actuality of that same potentiality. But this
account would not distinguish motion from a state of balanced equilibrium,
such as that of a rock caught in a hand, still straining downward but
prevented from falling any further.
The account is subject to this
ambiguity because it focusses on an instantaneous condition, a snapshot of
a thing in motion, which is what an actuality is, but by no means what a
being-at-work is.
What Aristotle said was that motion is the being-at-work-staying-itself
of a potency, just as a potency. When an ongoing yearning and striving for
form is not inner and latent, but present in the world just as itself, as a
�29
yearning and striving, there is motion. That is because, when motion is
present, the potency of some material has the very same structure that
form has, forming the being as something holding-on in just that particular
motion. This does not mean that every motion is the unfolding of some
being into its mature form; every such unfolding can fall short, overshoot,
encounter some obstacle, or interact in some incidental way with some
other being. It does mean that no motion of any kind would take place if it
were not for those potencies that emerge of their own accord from beings.
Motion depends on the organization of beings into kinds, with inner
natures that are always straining to spill into activity. Only this dynamic
structure of being, with material straining toward form, and form staying
at work upon material, makes room for motion that is not just an
inexplicable departure from the way things are, but a necessary and
· intrinsic part of the way things are.
For example, consider the most uninteresting motion you can think of,
say the falling of a pencil from the edge of a desk onto the floor. What is
the potency that is at work, and to what being does it belong? The potency
is not that of being at that spot on the floor, and the being that has it is not
the pencil at all, since it is no genuine being. The potency at work here is
that of earth to be down, or of the cosmos to sustain itSelf with earth at the
center. No motive power belongs to the pencil as such, but it can move on
its own because there is present in it a potency of earth, set free to be at
work as itself when the obstacle of the desk is removed. And the motion is
not defined by the position or state in which it happens to end up, but by
the activity that governs its course; the former is an actuality, but is not a
being-at-work. Just as Newton's laws give a set of rules for analyzing any
motion, Aristotle's definition directs us in a different way to bring the
�30
structure of any motion into focus: first, find the being, and then find the
potency of it which the motion displays, or to which the particular motion
is incidental. No motion, however random or incidental, gains entrance
into the world except through the primary beings that constitute the
world.
Aristotle sometimes argues about a body A that moves from B to C. Our
first impulse may be to let A be represented by a point, the motion by a
line, and Band C by positions. But Aristotle always has in mind an A with
some nature, and a motion that may be from one condition to another
rather than one place to another. Even if a motion from place to place is in
question, those places would not be neutral and indifferent positions, but
regions of the cosmos, that might or might not be appropriate surroundings
for body A. The argument might be about something like continuity, so
general that the particular Band C need not be specified, but it makes all
the difference in the world that they represent motion in its fullest sense,
as spelled out in the definition. The mathematized sort of motion, that can
be fully depicted on a blackboard, is vulnerable to the kinds of attack
present in Zeno's paradoxes.
Motion as Aristotle understands it,
constituted by potency and being-at-work, deriving its wholeness and
.·
continuity from a deeper source, overcomes those paradoxes.
(The
particular arguments will be looked at in the commentaries on the text.)
It is evident from this account of motion that material and form are
understood as causes. The usual examples given for material and formal
causes, an inert lump of bronze and a static blueprint, miss the point, that
material meets form half-way, and form is always at work. And it is not
just motions that they cause, but everything that endures. We tend to
speak of causes as events that lead to other events, since that is the only
�31
kind of causality that remains possible in a mathematically-reduced world,
but Aristotle understands everything that is the case as resulting from
causes, and every origin of responsibility as a cause. Something called the
"efficient" cause has been grafted onto Aristotle's account; it means the
proximate cause of motion, like the bumping of billiard balls. This is
sometimes even used as a translation of one of Aristotle's four kinds of
cause, but not correctly. Aristotle speaks of the external source of motion
as one kind of cause, the flrst thing from which the motion proceeds. The
incidental and intermediate links, that merely pass motions around
without originating them, are not causes at all, except in a derivative sense.
All of Aristotle's causes stem from beings, and are found not by looking
backward in time, but upward in a chain of responsibility.
There is a fourth kind of cause, in most cases the most important one of
all, the final cause. This is often equated with purpose, but that is only one
kind of final cause, and not the most general. A deliberate action of an
intelligent being cannot be understood except in terms of its purpose, since
· only in achieving that purpose does the action become complete. The claim
that final causes belong to non-human nature becomes ludicrous if it is
thought that something must in some analogous way have purposes. What
Aristotle in fact means is that every natural being is··a whole, and every
natural activity leads to or sustains that wholeness. His phrase for this
kind of cause is "that for the sake of which" something does what it does or
is what it is. Does rain fall for the sake of the crops that humans grow?
No, but it does fall for the sake of the equilibrium of the cosmos, in which
evaporation is counter-balanced by precipitation in a cycle of
ever~
renewed wholeness. That wholeness provides a stable condition for the
flourishing of plants and of humans, in lives and acts that come to
�32
completion in their own ways. Aristotle's "teleology" is just his claim that
nothing in nature is a fragment or a chance accumulation of parts. To
grasp the final cause of anything is to see how it fits into the ultimate
structure of things. But surely there are fragmentary things and chance
combinations to be found around us. Aristotle finds it as strange that some
thinkers deny chance altogether, as it is that others think chance governs
everything. From Aristotle's standpoint, even chance always points back
to that which acts for the sake of something, since it results from the
interference of two or more such things. It therefore represents not an
absence of final causes, but an over-abundance of them, a failure of final
cause resulting from a conflict among final causes.
Because such incidental interactions lead to innumerable unpredictable
chance results, nature is not a realm of necessity, but neither is it a realm
of randomness, since the forms of natural beings govern all that happens.
Aristotle speaks of the patterns of nature as present not always but "for
the most part." His way of understanding the causes of things does not
need to do violence either to the stability or to the variability of the world,
but affirms the unfailing newness-within-sameness that we observe in the
return of the seasons and the generations of living things. It offers an
example of a physics that interprets causality without recourse to
mechanical necessity or mathematical law. Both the collision of billiard
balls and the co-variation of the two sides of an algebraic equation are too
random in their beginnings and too rigid in their consequences to . be
adequate images of the natures we know.
The shape of the inquiry
�33
It has been mentioned above that all Aristotle's inquiries are dialectical.
His writings have structures that are not rigid but organic, with parts that
are whole in themselves, but arranged so that they build up larger wholes.
In Book I of most of his works, he reviews what has been said by his
predecessors, and here that is combined with a preliminary analysis of
change, which concludes that it must always imply the presence of some
material that can possess. or be deprived of form. This first analysis of
everything changeable into form and material is then available as a
starting point to approach any later question. Next comes the heart of the
Physics, in Book II and the beginning of Book III, of which an account has
been given in the last section of this introduction. It begins with a
definition of nature that has all the characteristics Aristotle attributes in I,
1 to proper beginnings: it starts from what is familiar to us, is clear in its
reference but unclear in its meaning, and takes its topic as a whole and in
general, without separating out its parts or their particular instances.
Since it defines nature as an inner cause of motion, the first task is to
explore the meanings of cause and motion, not as words or logical classes,
but through disciplined reflection on our experience. The result is a
sharpened and deepened understanding of a way of encountering and
interpreting the world. This is a more sustained use of the kind of analysis
that took place in Book I, that dwells on a topic to unfold into clarity what
was already present in an implicit and confused way.
A second kind of analytic reasoning begins after motion has been
defined, a successive examination of conditions presupposed by the
presence of motion in the world. This occupies the rest of Books III and
IV. Zeno had taught everyone that motion presupposes infinity, and
Aristotle turns first to this.
He finds a non-contradictory way to
�34
understand the infinite divisibility of motion, but his conclusion that there
is no infinite extended body is incomplete as it stands. It depends upon
the claim that things have natural places, and so the topic of place must be
e.xplored next. Place is understood as a relation to the parts of the cosmos,
on
but this topic in turn dependsLthe next, since the exclusive array of places
in the world results from the impossibility of void. The e.xploration of the
idea of void completes this sequence, since the arguments against it stand
independently. But motion also entails time, to which Aristotle turns next,
finding that it is not in fact a presupposition but a consequence of motion.
Time is found to result from a comparison of motions to one another, that
can only be carried out by a perceiving soul. Like place, time is not a preexisting container, and not graspable by the mathematical imagination.
Each of them is an intimate relation amongs beings, intelligible only when
the particularlity of this world is taken into account.
The last four books of the Physics take up the kind of cause and the
kind of motion that are least central in Book II. The formal, material, and
final causes of a living thing are internal to it, and constitute its nature,
and it has parents that are external sources of its motions of birth,
development, and growth. But as Aristotle mentions at the end of II, 2,
both other human beings and the sun beget a human being. All life is
dependent upon conditions supplied by the cosmos, which seems to
maintain itself primarily through cycles of local motion. Books V through
VIII trace a complex argument up to the source of all change of place in
the world. In its broadest outline, that argument is reminiscent of the
structure of the Metaphysics. Though the Metaphysics is put together out
of a large number of independent pieces, it has perhaps the clearest line of
unifying structure of any of Aristotle's works. The meaning of being is
�35
pursued through four most general senses, to an eight-fold array of kinds
of non-incidental predications, to its primary sense of thinghood, to the
source of thinghood as form, to the meaning of form as being-at-work, to
the source of all being-at-work in the divine intellect. It thus culminates
in the discovery of the primary being that is the source of all being, and
gets there from the innocent question, which of the meanings of being is
primary?
A similar progressive narrowing of the meanings of motion takes place
in the Physics. In Book III, motion was said to be of four kinds: change of
thinghood, alteration of quality, increase and decrease, and change of place.
In Book V it is argued that motion properly understood is from one
contrary to another, passing through intermediate states or conditions. But
coming-into-being and destruction should be understood strictly as
changes not to a contrary but to a contradictory condition, abrupt changes
that have no intermediate conditions to pass through. Thus in a strict
sense there are only three kinds of motion. But in Book VI it is argued
that there is a certain discontinuity in every qualitative change.
If
something black turns white, it goes through a spectrum of intermediate
shades, but it can be regarded as still being black until sometime in the
course of the motion. In a change of quantity or place·; once the thing is in
motion it has departed from its initial condition, however much one might
try to divide the beginning of the motion. So in the still stricter sense of
being unqualifiedly continuous, there are only two kinds of motion.
Finally, it is pointed out in Book VII that quantitative change must be
caused by something that comes to be present where the changing thing is,
so that it depends always upon a change of place prior to it, and it is
argued in Book VIII that change of place is the primary kind of motion in
�36
every sense in which anything can be primary. The analysis goes one
more step, to the primary motion within the primary kind, which is
circular rotation. This is the most continuous of motions, so much so that it
alone can be considered a simply unchanging motion.
Though the definition of motion in Book III applies to all motions, its
application is most straightforward in the case of those motions most
opposed to the primary kind, those that involve the greatest amount of
change. Birth, development, and growth obviously unfold out of potencies
that are present beforehand, and these changes point most directly to the
inner natures of things that operate as formal, final, and material causes.
But at the opposite extreme of the spectrum of change there is changeless
circular motion. Because it moves without changing, it can be in contact
with a completely unvarying cause. The last step of the inquiry in the
Physics is the uncovering of a motionless first mover, acting on the cosmos
at its outermost sphere. It is a source of local motion that not only holds
the cosmos together, but contributes to the conditions of life by descending
through the lower spheres, including that of sun, to maintain the stable
alternation of the seasons. Nature is thus seen as twofold, originating in
sources of two kinds, the inner natures of living things and the cause
holding together the cosmos as the outer condition of iife. This is reflected
in a bi-polar relation of motion and change, in which the ascending scale of
motions· (leading to the first external mover), is also the descending scale
of changes (starting from the coming-into-being of new beings). The twodirectionality of the scale is all-important. Aristotle does not reduce
change to change of place, but traces it back, along one line of causes. But
the primacy of local motion in the cosmos does not abolish the primacy of
the opposite kind of change, spilling over out of potency, that guarantees
�37
that even changes of place will be wholes, not vulnerable to the attacks of
Zeno. The Physics has a double conclusion, displaying the continuity rooted
in potency as present in the limit of mere change of place, as a final and
deepest refutation of Zeno, which becomes one of the last steps in the
argument that uncovers the motionless cause of motion.
Acknowledgements
The interpretation presented here has been stewing for almost thirty
years, since my first college teacher, Robert Bart, opened my eyes to
Aristotle's definition of motion in particular, and to the whole project of
looking beneath and behind the presuppositions of modern science. Jacob
Klein's "Introduction to Aristotle" is printed here as an appendix to help
those who might wish to read further in Aristotle's writings; it was my
first guide on that journey. Klein had heard Martin Heidegger lecture on
Aristotle in the 1930s. This translation owes much to Heidegger's example
of the possibility of reading Aristotle directly, not through the language of
either the Latin tradition or the science of recent centuries. Heidegger
suffers in translation almost as much as Aristotle does, but a good English
version of his lectures on Book II, Chapter 1 of the Physics is cited earlier
in this introduction. He is too ready to see form
as presence-at-hand,
uninvolved in the joining of things and emptying of one thing into another,
and he is much too ready to talk about "the Greek idea of (whatever),"
when discussing an insight that may have been achieved by only one or
two thinkers, but as an antidote to the deadening effects of most
commentary on Aristotle he is hard to beat.
This translation was a gleam in my eye for about fifteen years, until it
was made possible by the generosity of St. John's College, the National
�38
Endowment for the Humanities, the Beneficial Corporation, and the Hodson
Trust. Students and colleagues at St. john's have read drafts of it in classes
and study groups. I am grateful for their conversation, and above all for
encouragement given to me in 'this work, shortly before his death, by J.
Winfree Smith. Whatever faults this translation may have, it had the
merit of giving delight to that good man.
The marginal page numbers, with their a and b divisions, are from the
standard two-column Bekker edition. The line numbers between them
match up with the lines of the Oxford Classical Text. Ross's text as given
there is followed with a few departures into his notes of variant readings;
in the first paragraph of V, 3, for example, Ross has needlessly scrambled
the text, and the translation follows the manuscripts in everything but the
placement of one sentence. The old Oxford translation by Hardie and Gaye,
outside of Aristotle's central vocabulary, was an invaluable aid to the
meaning of many words and phrases, and Ross's commentary was the
source of a number of references. Ordinary parentheses in the text contain
Aristotle's own parenthetical remarks; square brackets are used
occasionally for my own insertions, when these go beyond repeating an
antecedent of a pronoun. In one instance (at the end of IV, 8), curly
brackets are used around a passage that is not in th·e early manuscripts
but appears in some late sources. The text is interspersed with running
commentary, and preceded by an extensive glossary, intended in part as a
supplement to this introduction.
This translation is not intended to stand in place of Aristotle's inquiry in
pursuit of nature, but to draw you closer to it. If what you find in the
translation makes you want to go further, you should consider reading
Aristotle's own Greek. His grammar is elementary, and · his style is so
�39
repetitious that it doesn't take long to catch on to; the only difficulty in
reading him is the concentration required to keep his pronouns straight.
But if that route does not appeal to you, it is still possible to join with
Aristotle just by doing your own thinking about the questions he raises, in
the light of the broadened and deepened array of possibilities he leads us
to see.
Annapolis, Maryland
May, 1993
�
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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39 pages
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Introduction: Philosophic Writing
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1983-08-06
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on August 6, 1983 by Joe Sachs s part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Mr. Sachs is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is a draft of his introduction to his translation of Aristotle's <em>Metaphysics</em>. His talk compares and contrasts the writings of Plato and Aristotle and in particular the differences and similarities between the Platonic Dialogues and Aristotle's corpus.
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lec Sachs 1983-08-06
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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Philosophy
Aristotle
Plato
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Sachs, Joe, 1946-
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Learning, Knowing, and Remembering in a Digital World
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 26, 2017 by Naomi Baron as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Baron, Naomi S.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-07-26
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Baron_Naomi_2017-07-26
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
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LECTURE SCHEDULE
Summer 1981 - February Freshman
Samuel Kutler
On Perfection
June 12
John White
Poetics (of Aristotle)
June 19
Douglas Allanbrook
Concert
Great Hall
June 26
Donald Conroy
Pindar
July
Mr. Lindemuth
Ethics of Aristotle
July 10
Elliott Zuckerman
On Major and Minor
July 17
N o
July 24
Joe Sachs
Metaphysics of Aristotle
July 31
Winfree Smith
The Wandering Moon
June
5
3
L e c t u r e
(essay week-end)
�
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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1 page
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paper
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Graduate Institute
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Lecture Schedule, Summer 1981 - February Freshman
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1981
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 1981, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 1981 Summer
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
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Kutler, Samuel
White, John
Allanbrook, Douglas
Conroy, Donald
Lindemuth, Donald
Zuckerman, Elliott
Sachs, Joe
Smith, J. Winfree
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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Text
.,,
On Finisfiing PCato's Symposium
--] onatfian Tuck
Though my title is "On Finishing Plato's Symposium," it might better be called "On
Not Finishing Plato's Symposium"--(with "on" meaning both "after" and "about")-- since
I'm going to claim that it is a particularly difficult book to finish. This is to say not onlythat the issues it raises are perennially perplexing, but also that the work itself is an open
structure of such a kind that it is hard to see what sort of closure or resolution its ending
could supply. I want mostly to share with you some of my confusions about this. As a
beginning, perhaps I can sneak up on the ending of the Symposium by telling you a few
things about the ending of another book which is less familiar to you, but perhaps almost
as wonderful.
That book is Il Libra del Cortegiano, The Book of the Courtier, written in about 1528
by a man named Baldassare Castiglione. It is a dialogue, set in the court of Urbino· at
a time when that small Italian city-state was in full flower. The court we see-~· and we
may hope that there is some truth in the picture-- is a witty, genteel gathering of
noblemen and ladies, courtiers and men of letters, presided over with gentle authority by
the Duchess Elisabetta of Urbino. As a recreation after supper, it is proposed that those
present speak in turn of the qualities that a perfect courtier must have. As it turns out,
that endeavor extends over four evenings and a great variety of topics. Much of the
courtier's perfection is not specific to his social role as we might narrowly conceive of
it; he must have many of the virtues of the ideal Prince, or even of the ideal man; he
must be a man for all seasons or, as the cliche goes, a "Renaissance Man." Certainly he
must be educated in all the activities that are helpful to soldiers and statesmen: both the
"gymnastic" arts like riding, hunting and swordsmanship, and the "musical" studies of
literature, singing, dancing, and graceful conversation. He must possess all the natural
virtues and all the acquired graces of civility. These requirements may seem rather
general, but the various speakers often enter into minute details, such as whether the
Courtier should pronounce certain words in a Tuscan dialect, or which musical
instruments he should play. (The wind instruments will make his face look ugly.) The
conversation lingers, for example, on the subject of what sort of jokes a Courtier should
tell-- and we are treated to the telling, with gusto, of many specimens of the sort he
should not tell! Two principles are paramount: First, this perfect Courtier-- or Court
Lady, for she too receives a lengthy scrutiny-- must never seem to expend effort in the
graceful mastery of all the appropriate activities. The Courtier is himself a work of art,
as it were, and the best thing for him is to use art in order to conceal its use: to cultivate
a kind of nonchalance, a sprezzatura or casual disdain, a leisured equilibrium that
�[Tuck--Symposium- p.2]
distinguishes the Courtier's skill from the vulgar strivings of the professional.
The second principle is that the Courtier should be a lover. Or should he? For the
various participants disagree. It is well into the fourth night of conversation, and Signor
Ottaviano Fregoso has just told eloquently of what virtuous counsel a Courtier must give
to his prince. But if he is to be thus wise and mature of judgment, it almost seems that
our Courtier must be an old man, and learned-- even a philosopher like Aristotle or Plato.
And if so, than it is not fitting or dignified for him to be in love. Indeed the freedom
from love's .compulsion is not only an advantage but a blessing. At this point, Pietro
Bembo speaks up-- Bembo, the shrewd and brilliant Venetian humanist, certainly the most
learned· person present. Bembo undertakes to show that old men can and should be
lovers, but first he must say what love itself is; The speech which ensues is probably the
most famous and popular exposition of Italian Neoplatonism, springing from the
Florentine Academy of Marsilio Ficino, the most erudite and subtle of all commentators
on Plato's Symposium. Love, says Bembo, is a desire for beauty. But the beautiful and
the good are necessarily one, born of God and transcending the particular attachment to
the physical beauties of individuals. Indeed the best lover will mount the steps of a
ladder, from the beauties of sense to those of the intellect, from the many to the one, the
true angelic beauty-- Beauty Itself-- passing beyond what is rationally expressible and
merging finally into the divine forever.
Having spoken thus far with such vehemence that he seemed almost transported and beside himself, Bembo remained silent and still, keeping his
eyes turned toward heaven, as if in a daze; when signora Emilia, who with
the others had been listening to his discourse most attentively, plucked him
by the hem of his robe and, shaking him a little, said: "Take care, messer
Pietro, that with these thoughts your soul, too, does not forsake your body. 11
"Madam, 11 replied messer Pietro, "that would not be the first miracle
Love has wrought in me. "
Then the Duchess and all the others began urging Bembo once more to
go on with his discourse: and everyone seemed almost to feel in his mind a
certain spark of the divine love that had inspired the speaker, and all wished
to hear more; but Bembo added: "Gentlemen, I have uttered what the holy
frenzy of love dictated to me at the moment. But now that it seems to inspire
me no longer, I should not know what to say: and I think that Love is not
willing that its secrets be revealed any further, or that the Courtier should
pass beyond that rung of the ladder to which he has been willing to have me
show him; therefore it is perhaps not permitted to speak further of this matter."
[The Book of the Courtier, tr. Charles Singleton, p. 357 .]
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.3]
At this point we get a little bit-~ a ~ little bit-- of comic byplay between the feminist
and the misogynist of the group: Can women rise to this same height in their loving:
The Duchess intervenes:
Signor Gasparo was on the point of replying, but the Duchess sai<;l: "Let
messer Pietro Bembo be the judge of that, and let us abide by his decision
whether or not women are as capable of divine love as men. But, as the
dispute between you might be too long, it will be well to postpone it until
tomorrow."
·
'
"Nay, until this evening," said messer Cesare Gonzaga.
"How, this evening?" said the Duchess.
Mes~er Cesare replied: "Because it is already day"; and he showed her
the 1ight that was beginning to come in through the cracks at the windows.
Then everyone rose to his feet in great surprise because it did not seem
that the discussion had lasted longer than usual; but because it was begun
much later, and, because of its delightfulness, it haci so beguiled the company
that they had taken no notice of the passing of the hours; nor was there anyone who felt the heaviness of sleep upon his eyes, which happens almost
always when we stay up beyond the accustomed bedtime hour. Then the
windows were opened on the side of the palace that looks toward the lofty
peak of Mount Catria, where they saw that a beautiful rosy dawn had already
come into the east, and that all the stars had disappeared except the sweet
mistress of the heaven of Venus that holds the border between night and day;
from which a soft breeze seemed to come that filled the air with a brisk coolness and began to awaken sweet concerts of joyous birds in the murmuring
forests of the nearby hills.
[p.359]
And there, in effect, the dialogue leaves us. Bembo's discourse takes only about twenty
pages in a hook of over three hundred; but all the other speeches, no matter how valuable
and memorable in themselves, must seem to us now to be somehow subsumed into
Bembo' s vision of the ladder of love. This is Castiglione' s Symposium, and his imitative
homage to Plato tells us quite plainly how he reads the older book. But as I shall argue,
Castiglione is not alone.
When we turn to Plato's Symposium, we can see a significant formal difference.
Socrates' and Diotima's speech in praise of love ends loftily at, or near, the top rung of
the ladder of love, where the true best lover may look upon Beauty itself, pure, unmixed,
"not infected with human flesh and colors and much other mortal nonsense"; where he
may beget true arete and win the friendship of the god. The speech ends here, but there
still remains folly one-fifth of the dialogue called Symposium-- and this, I think, demands
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.4]
an explanation. Plato's dialogues may or may not end in philosophic irresolution, but we
have ample evidence that Plato is capable of giving them a powerful sense of rhetorical
closure-- Take for example the endings of the Republic and the Phaedo. Clearly the
Symposium ends as it does, not through some authorial inadvertence, but by choice. This
is to say that by not ending with Socrates' speech, the dialogue deliberately passes up an
opportunity for the kind of sublimity and powerful generality that we saw at the end of
The Book of the Courtier.
Let's consider what the implication would be if the Symposium did end with Socrates'
speech. How might the denouement of the dialogue read? The other guests, suitably
dazzled, fall sil~nt for a brief space as Socrates finishes speaking. Perhaps the ardent,
boyish Agathon cannot restrain himself longer: He bursts out in enthusiastic praise of the
poem that Socrates has made; at least, that is what he calls. it, and Socrates does not
demur. Aristophanes contributes a brief quip to release tension, perhaps a jab at his usual
butt, the doctor Eryximachus, who points out in his reply that the dawn is breaking; they
. have talked all night. Wonder seizes the participants, and as the sun, visible emblem of
the Good, pours its effluence through the drawn-back curtains, the camera moves back
and the music comes up. We, the audience, are left as privileged observers of a kosmos
whose orderliness provides the ground and the validation of Socrates' discourse. The
effect of such a conclusion would be clear: We would feel strongly--or perhaps I should
say even more strongly, since many readers already feel this way-- that Socrates' version
of love is the true one, the valuable core of meaning that the dialogue seeks to commend
to us. And if so, what part would we say that the other speeches play? Surely they are
not merely ornamental, or "dramatic foils," whatever that phrase might mean. Rather
they must somehow be proleptic--dramatic foreshadowings, visions through a glass darkly
of the truth that Socrates brings to light. This reading would give a very ·satisfying
structural analogue, in the dialogue's form, to the ladder of progressively increasing
vision and fulfillment that is, in this reading, the central matter of the dialogue.
As putative evidence in favor of this way of reading, we do in fact find very many
points of correspondence between each of the five preceding speeches and the speech of
Socrates. Let me enumerate a few. Phaedrus says that Love is the cause of our greatest
human benefits, a motive for noble behavior and a means to the favor of the gods.
Socrates would surely agree with this formulation, as far as it goes. In the next speech,
Pausanias appears, at least, to be distinguishing between the shameful, "popular" love he
calls paiderastia --pederasty, love of young boys-- and the nobler, "heavenly" love he
associates with philosophia and other pursuits of excellence. He also gives a version of
Diotima's myth of Pores and Penia: The rich resources of the older, wiser lover supply
thepoverty of the youthful beloved, who has only his beauty to offer. What we may think
of the real motives or the larger purpose of Pausanias is quite another question; I only
�[Tuck- Symposium- p .5]
want to suggest that dramatically, he too is foreshadowing S~crates after a fashion,
introducing themes and images that Socrates will employ later. The case of Eryximachus
is clearer. In treating eros as a kind of harmony by which the cosmos is ordered, he
generalizes it into a physical principie that can be used to describe any motion toward an
object or goal. Socrates, similarly, would have us think that the word "love" is only very
partially applied to the romantic relationship between two people. Just as the word
"poetry" should be used to denote any act of making or generation, so should the word
"love" point to the common activity of pursuing a goal, some real or apparent good
which awakens desire.
I shall presently argue that the speech of Aristophanes is in its tendency the most
hostile to the cl~ims of Socr~tes and Diotima; yet even here we can find a few points of
contact. Aristophanes pictures each of us as a half-person, left incomplete by a past act
of rebellion against the gods. This is a forceful way of showing that love is of what one
lacks, just as Socrates also emphasizes. In another dialogue perhaps we could imagine
Socrates using something like Aristophanes' myth of the half-human as an image of our
relation to the eide: We find ourselves born incomplete-- That which is most of value
to us and which will make us happy is not within us but elsewhere. But we have a
memory of it-- perhaps an ancestral memory, or one from a former lifetime-- which may
serve to bring us to what we seek. The difference, of course, is that the thing sought for
is not, in Socrates' account, another person.
The tragic poet Agathon's rhapsodic tribute to love begins with a distinction: Others
have spoken of the acts and benefactions of the love-god; he, Agathon, will first address
what sort of being the god is. Here is a conspicuous point of correspondence with the
discourse of Socrates, 'Yho congratulates Agathon on these opening words at the start of
his own devastating cross-examination. Apart from their beginnings, Agathon and
Socrates have other common ground. Agathon claims that Eros is a poet himself and the
cause of poetry in others: Everyone, touched by love, becomes poetic, even if unmusical
before. He goes on to say:
And indeed, who will deny that the making [poiesis] of all living things is
Love's wisdom, by which all creatures are begotten and come to be? Again,
do we not know that in the workmanship of the arts [technai], the man whose
teacher this god is becomes well reputed and famous, while the man whom
Eros does not touch is obscure?
(197A)
Agathon appeals here to the generalized notion of "poetry," just as Eryximachus
generalized "love." Socrates agrees with both men, though he goes beyond either of
them in broadening both worqs and linking them together. Perhaps here, if anywhere,
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.6]
we could look for a truce in the war between Philosophy and Poetry that is one of the
implicit themes of the dialogue. But of this, more later.
So far we've seen that each of the first five speeches does proleptically participate, to use
a pregnant word, in the larger whole that is Diotima' s presentation by way of Socrates.
But of course a foreshadowing is still shadowy, and the points of similarity I've
enumerated give only an inkling of what is to come. In my thought experiment, the
speech of Socrates concluded the dialogue by commendin'g to ~s a true and universal
account of a hierarchy of value in human activities. By means of love we engage in these
different activities, since love in its broadest sense steers every action; but more
importantly we learn by means of love to redirect our actions. We learn by loving; but
what we learn is to love learning to love, until we apprehend the last best object of our
love and, by apprehending, attain it. The first five accounts fall short of recognizing this
truth because they are partial, in two senses of the word. They do not include enough,
but also they are not impartial-- Each speaker is limited by his narrower vision. For
example, each of the five shows a kind of guild solidarity, a commitment to other
sophists, lawyers, doctors, comedians or tragedians. Each speaker is also characterized-some of them rather fully-- so that we get a vivid sense of the fussy, humorless
Eryximachus or the shrewd sensualist Pausanias. Their several apprehensions of love are
tainted by the merely personal; but the theme of Socrates' discourse is that the merely
personal is exactly what we must get beyond. Recall this exchange: Agathon says," I
cannot refute you, Socrates; let it be so." And Socrates replies, "It is the truth, dear
Agathon, that you cannot refute; it is no great matter to refute Socrates." Implicitly
Socrates claims a higher validation for his assertions, higher than his personal authority
or even the authority of the mysterious Diotima, who as her significant name implies is
probably not a person at all. Socrates characterizes the love of a single person or a single
activity as a "mean, petty enslavement." Nor is he limited by any guild loyalty to his
"trade" of philosophy, for philosophy is not a trade at all. Rather it is the paradigmatic
human activity. It is true that some of the earlier speakers, especially Eryximachus and
Agathon, seem to make analogous claims for their own trades; but in our hypothetical
dialogue Socrates preempts their titles precisely ~ coming last. He. leads us to a height
from which we may survey the ground we have traversed; and like Dante in Paradise we
look back down on this vile threshing-floor, the earth, and smile in gentle contempt.
Thus if we imagine a Symposium which ends as Castiglione's book does, the action
of the whole dialogue is in the direction of transcending what is merely personal. The
earlier speeches, the incidental comic episodes of the drinking party itself, the special
radiant glamor of the occasion even as recounted many years later-- All these are
inklings, fruitful contrasts that prepare us for our eventual enlightenment. One particular
incident from the earlier part of the dialogue now assumes added importance:
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.7]
Aristodemus arrives at Agathon's house to find that he has left his companion Socrates
behind. For Socrates has withdrawn into a neighboring porch and stands there, unwilling
to go inside eveff at the invitation of Agathon' s servant. (In the completed dialogue
which we have, of course, Alcibiades recounts· a similar occasion during the campaign
to Potidaea.) This kind of abstractedness suggests Socrates' peculiar relation to the
corporeal world. We may plausibly assume that in such fits of ecstasy-- ekstasis,
11
standing outside 11 himself--Socrates contemplates the higher objects of human love.
From such a height there is a marked descent into the pleasantries of the drinking party.
Socrates' ironic disclaimers of wisdom must seem very disingenuous when he hopes to
be filled, like an empty vessel, with Agathon' s wisdom-- which he says is much brighter
and more potef\t than his own, paltry and wavering as a dream. In fact the Socrates who
delivers the ext~nded discourse is more assertive than questioning, and the form of his
speech suggests that his wisdom can be transmitted whole, by contact, as a teaching or
a religious initiation. It does not waver, though we may waver before it. Only in his
brief but trenchant examination of Agathon does Socrates here resemble the "torpedo
fish" of many other dialogues. Otherwise, emulating his five predecessors, he discards
the treacherous fluidity of conversation and gives a lengthy exposition, which perhaps his
hearers can simply assimilate from him as he did from Diotima.
The dialogue I've been describing is not the one that Plato wrote, but perhaps the
description was worth the effort; for I claim that this non-existent dialogue is nonetheless
present as a rejected possibility within the work we do have. Or to put it more strongly,
the dialogue that ends with Socrates' speech is precisely and conspicuously the one that
Plato avoided writing. Instead he jostles us abruptly from the sublime to the ridiculous,
as the drunken Alcibiades bursts into the party. (I intend to suggest later that this
characterization, "from the sublime to the ridiculous," may be quite misleading. But for
the moment, let it stand.) In a number of ways, Alcibiades' arrival signals the exact
reversal of the norms of the little ·kosmos over which Socrates had been effectively
presiding at the time of the interruption. The initial decision to send away the flute girl
is the first to be reversed; the notes of another flute girl are he.ard, along with other
noises of revelry. Next to go is the agreement to drink only moderately, and then
Alcibiades disarranges the seating order to which our attention was so pointedly called
by Socrates when he first came in.
By sitting down between Socrates and Agathon, Alcibiades seems to disrupt a·
pedagogical relationship of great significance in the foregoing part of the dialogue.
Agathon was celebrating the victory of his tragedy, but in this evening's contest the prize
has gone to Socrates. But we cannot simply regard Socrates' victory as a rejection of
Agathon and of the claims he makes for eros and poetry. After taking great pains to
interrogate Agathon about these claims, Socrates pointedly casts himself in the role of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.8]
Agathon, putting the young tragedian's erstwhile errors into his own youthful mouth as
he describes his own correction at the hands of Diotima. We might suppose that the
education of Agathon was the purpose that called Socrates to descend from his
philosophic ecstasy into the shadow world of the drinking party. This purpose Alcibiades
seems to frustrate, symbolically by interposing himself between the younger man and the
older, but more importantly by shifting the conversation back into the· realm of the ·
personal. What was once the praise of love becomes the praise of the praisers, first
Socrates but then conceivably others, as we gather from the by-play that follows
Alcibiades' speech. Although Socrates displays embarrassment for good and obvious
reasons, his unwillingness to be praised may also bespeak a concern for Agathon's
welfare: He has just been at pains to tell Agathon that it is the truth, not Socrates, that
cannot be refuted. It is a form of slavery for the· student to depend upon that particular
teacher from whom, or in whose presence, he receives enlightenment.
How do we as readers cope with the eruption of Alcibiades into the ordered sublimity
of Socrates' school of love? We might think that the pra~se of Socrates which follows,
though broadly ironic at times, gives added authority to his teaching. Even Alcibiades,
beautiful, brilliant and dissolute, is forced to pay a kind of homage to the teacher. It was
not an accident that Diotima's portrait of Eros resembles Socrates himself in Alcibiades'
portrayal; both these descriptions contribute to the raising of Socrates to a mythic status.
According to this way of reading, then, the strategy of the dialogue is to glamorize the
man above all, and his teaching as a consequence. In fact, the whole occasion is made
illustrious by its remoteness in times from the act of recounting it. There were giants in
the earth in those days, before Agathon left town for good,' before the treason of
Alcibiades and the disasters in Sicily, back when Athens could still regard itself with
some justification as the school of Hellas. And Socrates is the schoolmaster. As
Alcibiades makes clear, he loves beauty without extravagance and wisdom without
softness, in the words of Pericles; and he can even drink wine, lots of it, without
inebriation. He is a man for all seasons; his claim of expertise on the subject of eros
becomes , as eros is generalized, a justified claim of omnicompetence. And we, who
survive in these degenerate days, are left to wonder at him.
But we should be disquieted by this reading, if we hope by the heroic apotheosis of
Socrates to give greater weight and authority to the teaching he expounds. Even leaving
aside for a minute that teaching's argument against arguments from authority, if we are
to give credence to what is said because of the authoritative stature of the man who says
it, ought we not to worry that this praise of Socrates comes out of Alcibiades' mouth?
And isn't it alarming that he seems at times to have a very crude if not actually mistaken
sense of who Socrates is? We will be forced to say that Alcibiades spoke better than he
knew, while Socrates, also ironically, minimized his own powers unjustly in referring his
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.9]
own teachings to the authority of some fictive Diotima. And again, if we depend at all
on the figure of Socrates to validate the teaching of Socrates, th~t teaching is vitiated: we
are in the realm of the personal, and the doctrine that lived by the personal power of the
man Socrates may also die with him. This same dilemma goes far toward making the
Phaedo one of the most problematic of the Platonic dialogues. ·To the extent that the
narrative resembles a saint's life, the very reasons for canonization are paradoxically
called into question.
Let's entertain, for a moment, another possible response to the speech of Alcibiades.
Instead of supporting the Socratic teaching about love, perhaps Alcibiades in effect
undercuts it. Superficially he can do this just by being who he is: Alcibiades, the
paradigm of the· corrupted youth, the alleged desecrator of sacred images, future turncoat,
a· byword for license and extravagance. Furthermore, his view of Socrates is complex
and disquieting, planting seeds of distrust and cynicism in us. Lavish but barbed praise
is mingled with implications that Socrates has occult powers of which we should beware.
Even if this is no more than cheerful irreverence, it effectively breaks the former mood
of high philosophic transport. Socrates is an object of wonder, but also a slightly
grotesque figure of comedy. Along the same lines we get a first-hand view of Alcibiades'
effect on the tone of the gathering-- Doesn't it presage the fate of all such attempts at
transcendence, possibly including the fall of Athens itself? If we are radical Platonists
and humorless readers, Alcibiades is an unwelcome irritant; because we are virtuous there
shall be no cakes and ale. But even if we enjoy the revelry that he brings, our more
measured evaluation might be that there has been a fall from grace somehow-- or more
seriously yet, that the seriousness of the gathering was suspect from the start. Were these
ribald boozers ever worthy of Socrates and his invitation to raise our sights, out of the
muck of corporeality? And what about us-- If we've been chuckling at Alcibiades all the
while, mustn't we now pass judgment on ourselves? Perhaps no one is ready for the
message of Socrates, or at least the later, more ethereal part of it. Or perhaps the
message itself is thereby flawed.
The contrast between the sublimity of Socrates' discourse and the festive ribaldry of
Alcibiades poses these problems for our sympathies because it juxtaposes high and low,
noble and base, beautiful and grotesque, general and particular, .speculative and sensual.
We can see these same dualisms at work within Alcibiades' account of the man Socrates.
As a Silenus he is base and repellent on the outside but full of precious and attractive
things on the inside. The other eikon, of Marsyas the satyr, reverses this relationship:
The siren-like piping of Socrates is superficially alluring but actually a call to a high and
uncomfortable, even forbidding, way ofliving. There is a similar paradox in Alcibiades'
portrayal of Socrates as erotic. The account of the younger man's attempted seduction
seems to give us a Socrates who is outwardly sportive but truly and inwardly chaste-- a
teaser, as it were, though perhaps without intending it. On the other hand, much of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.10]
Alcibiades' jesting at Socrates' expense depends on exposing this outwardly sober
philosopher as actually motivated only by his penchant for a pretty face. Socrates himself
actually contributes to this impression by willingly participating in some of the bitchiness
and banter before and after Alcibiades' discourse. So the contradiction is replicated just
in the appearance, and replicated again just on the inside, at least according to Alcibiades.
All these are paradoxes referring to the person of Socrates, but as we have seen, the same
kind of paradox seems to complicate the issue of Socrates' person versus Socrates'
teaching. It is not clear whether the concluding focus on the man represents a descent
or an apotheosis.
Because as\eaders we find our responses suspended between these two poles, we
should not be entirely surprised by the way the dialogue concludes.
So Agathon was getting up in order to seat himself by Socrates, when suddenly a great crowd of revellers arrived at the door, which they found just
opened for some one who was going out. They marched straight into the
party and seated themselves: the whole place was in an uproar and, losing
all order, they were forced to drink a vast amount of wine. Then, as Aristodemus related, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and some others took their leave and
departed; while he himself fell asleep, and slumbered a great while, for the
nights were long. He awoke towards dawn, as the cocks were crowing; and
immediately he saw that all the company were either sleeping or gone, except
Agathon, Aristophanes, and Socrates, who alone remained awake and were
drinking out of a large vessel, from left to right; and Socrates was arguing
with them. As to most of the talk, Aristodemus had no recollectio11, for he
had missed the beginning and was also rather drowsy; but the substance of
it was, he said, that Socrates was driving them to the admission that the same
man could have the knowledge required for writing comedy and tragedy-that the fully skilled tragedian could be a comedian as well. While they were
being driven to this, and were but feebly following it, they began to nod;
first Aristophanes dropped into a slumber, and then, as day began to dawn,
Agathon also. When Socrates had seen them comfortable, he rose and went
away-- followed in the usual manner by my friend; on arriving at the Lyceum,
he washed himself, and then spent the rest of the day in his ordinary fashion;
and so, when the day was done, he went home for the evening and reposed.
(222B-223D)
Socrates, who embraces and subsumes contradictions within himself, is shown framed
symmetrically by a tragedian aqd a comedian, each presumably making a claim of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.11]
exclusivity. (We are reminded of the vocational chauvinism that the early speakers of the
dialogue displayed.) Our surrogate in the scene is Aristodemus; we have to suspect
ourselves of having nodded off and missed something. What is the relationship between
the philosophic issues that the dialogue has posed and this assertion about tragedies and
comedies? We are left with this question. And Socrates having succeeded in posing yet
another uncomfortable problem for us, walks calmly out of the dialogue and into the
world.
The relevance of Socrates' last argument may depend on how we take "tragedy" and
"comedy, wha~ associations we make with these terms. I have no wish to define either
of them; in most post-Aristotelian discussions of tragedy, in particular, the urge to define
is symptomatic of a touching but doomed faith in the power of legislation in criticism.
But perhaps we can think out loud for a minute, not about tragedy itself or comedy itself,
but about the use of them as a pair. When they are put together and set off in opposition,
it is usually because, roughly speaking, tragedies tend to end badly and comedies tend to
end well, tragedies in deaths and the fall of princes, and comedies in marriages and the
reappearance of lost children, tragedies in social disintegration and comedies in the festive
creation or restoration of a just city, tragedies in the recognition that we are hemmed in
by harsh necessity and comedies in the gratification of our deepest desires. It is in some
such way that Dante can entitle his poem Com media. (The divine part, by the way,
was a later addition.) Let us ignore for a moment the inconvenient fact that much of the
surviving corpus of Greek tragedy calls this way of distinguishing genres into question;
we have at least the authority of Aristotle that a tragic mythos or plot should present a
change of fortune from better to worse (1453al5). Presumably Aristotle's lost treatise
on comedy would flesh out this distinction by claiming that comedy is or ought to be
eucatastrophic-- that is, should have a happy ending. But I think that for this passage in
the Symposium we need a somewhat more complex view of the difference between
tragedies and comedies. Aristotle does remark in the surviving part of the Poetics that
tragedies represent men as better than they actually are, comedies as worse (1449a31).
To this we may add a social distinction: Tragic characters are aristocrats and comic
characters are low-born, even ludicrous and defective (l 449a31). Rhetorically speaking,
·a tragedy should be in the high literary style, avoiding crude everyday words or
colloquialisms; comedy, on the other hand, should suit its style and diction to its lowly
characters. Trying to pull even more out of Aristotle, we might be led to wonder what
the opposite of "catharsis" is; if he associates tragedy with a kind of purgation or
purification, would he be willing to say that comedy soils or taints us somehow? Or
would he claim, rather, that comedy brings about the catharsis of a different set of
pathemata or affections?
ti
ti
ti
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.12]
While I want to retain the Aristotelian emphasis on the social distinction between
tragedy and comedy, I particularly want to avoid a notion of comedy as exclusively
satirical or aggressively moralistic. It seems better to think instead of the high
Shakespearean comedies, with their final atmosphere of festive reconciliation and
forgiveness. If comic plots do poke fun at human foibles, they also seem in a certain
way to license them, or to extend to them a kind of charity. If a victim or scapegoat is
excluded or driven out at the end-- a Malvolio, a Shylock or.a Jacques-- it is because he
has shown a snobbish or mean-minded intolerance of the human failings of others. As
an audience, we are invited to consider and accept our own ~rdinary limitations and to
forgive ourselves; it may be that forgiveness is the high comic analogue to purgation.
If laughter is a mark which distinguishes our response to comedies, it should be laughter
with others at least as much as laughter at them, perhaps a laughter of wonder or of
innocent pleasure, but not merely the laughter defined by Hobbes as "sudden glory." It
might take an extensive critical wrestle with the works of the real Aristophanes for me
to be able to ground this notion of comedy in actual Athenian practice; but I am hoping
that the Symposium itself will eventually provide me with some justification for
introducing it.
Now if we apply these large, complexified terms, "tragedy" and "comedy," to what
has been happening in the Symposium, possibilities and questions abound. Aristophanes
the comedian and Agathon the tragedian have both given their own speeches, which at
first encounter seem appropriate to their callings. The myth Aristophanes tells certainly
contains grotesque and laughable elements, as well as the possibility of a final comic
reconciliation; while Agathon's speech is "tragic" in the rhetorical and stylistic sense:
self-consciously lofty and refined, in the style of Gorgias, as Socrates points out. (We
know by the way, that Plato is willing to use the word "tragic" in this limited sense. At
Meno 76E, to give one example, Socrates mocks his own definition of color "in the
manner of Gorgias" as "an effluence of figure commensurable with vision and
perceptible." He says of this definition, "It is a tragic [i.e., high-flown] answer, Meno--tragike gar estin. o Menon. he apokrisis -- and so it pleases you more than the one about
figure.")
So far, so good. It seems on this showing that our comedian has spoken comically
and our tragedian tragically. But unfortunately the opposite ·pairing seems equally
justified: The pathos of Aristophanes' story lies not only in our given human sense of
incompleteness but also in our limited ability to find wholeness and peace in another.
The offer of Hephaistos to weld the lovers together is mentioned only in a hypothetical
case; it is not a real option for us. Finally we are left tragically alone, at the mercy of
the gods and of necessity. Meanwhile, Agathon's speech, for all its posturing and claims
�[Tuck- Symposium- p. 13]
of high seriousness, might to an attentive ear have the ring of inadvertent self-parody.
The pretensions of .the speech are effectively punctured by Socrates in his response. Our
final judgment might be that the speech is comically inadequate, even though we are filled
with good will and forgiveness for the boyish poet who makes it'. Adding it up, each of
the two speeches seems to authorize a "tragic" or a "comic" reading in itself; this
ambiguity gives us a preliminary illustration of the truth of the claim that the same man
can ~rite both tragedies and comedies.
I have noted that the two poets are finally posed symmetrically around the enigmatic
Socrates, the walking paradox. It might seem that the two speeches can find some
reconciliation with each other in Socrates' discourse. It is noticeable that Socrates makes
use of each speech in order to refute the other. In his interrogation of Agathon, for
example,. he stresses the relational aspect of love: Love is of something, something
which is lacking. Therefore love cannot be good in· itself. A lover is a lover precisely
because he is incomplete-"" We are forcibly reminded of Aristophanes. But Socrates,
through words he attributes to Diotima, later turns on his erstwhile ally:
"And certainly there runs a story," she continued, that all who go seeking
their other half are in love; though by my account love is neither for half
nor for whole, unless, of course, my friend, this happens to be something
good. For men are prepared to have their own feet and hands cut off if they
feel these belongings to be harmful. The fact is, I suppose, that each person
does not cherish what is his own, unless someone should say that the good
is what is familiar and one's own, and what is bad is what belongs to another.
For there is nothing else that men love except the good."
(205E)
Here the emphasis is not on the love relation, but on the love object as definitive of love;
we might almost say, not on the lover but on the beloved (Cp. 204C2). And to say that
the good is the only object of love is to remind us that, speaking figuratively, eros
"confers benefits" and "fosters virtues"-- just as Agathon claimed. It is noteworthy that
Socrates disagrees so explicitly with the comical-tragical-mythological logos of
Aristophanes; for in principle as well as affectively Aristophanes is the greatest threat to
Socrates' own argument. (I have observed, for ·example, that many freshman seminars
have sought to promote Aristophanes' story at Socrates' expense.) Both men recognize
that human beings are seekers-- but what are we to seek? Will we find happiness in what
is our own, somehow familar even if never glimpsed before? This would give our search
the pathos of a homecoming and would validate our present pas'siions and frailties,
�[Tuck- Symposium- p. 14]
bathing them in a universal, calm charity. Or can we be happy only in striving for what
is other, self-subsistent, needing neither us nor anyone? This sounds sublime, but also
solitary and hazardous. There is a high mythic drama about both of these quests; but one
seems to make too small a concession to human frailty while the other might seem to
concede too much.
By using each of the playwrights as ammunition against the other, Socrates stakes out
a larger, more inclusive position. Now it is Socrates who can write both tragedy and
comedy, and both at the same time, though not perhaps in the same respect. Perhaps we
can see this dualism not just in his response to his two immediate predecessors, but also
in a more gen.era! difficulty about our response to his argument: Which are we to
emphasize in Sdcrates' doctrine, the union o.f high and low springing from the generality
of eros, or the hierarchical ranking of love objects which demands that we forsake the
less good for the better? It is often objected against Socrates (especially by the young)
that relationships between individual people are not sufficiently valued, since the merely
personal kind of love is supposed to point beyond itself. But with equal justice we could
shift the emphasis and rejoice that the ladder does have a bottom rung, that ordinary
human passions and experiences can find some place in the search for what is really
valuable. Each of these two ways of reading will find some justification in Diotima's
discourse. The "tragic" reading emphasizes the lofty, the noble, the purgative, and
implies that human fulfillment may not be possible in this world. The comic reading
heals us and makes us whole by containing and validating all forms of human activity,
from the bodily begetting of children up to the rapturous gaze upon Beauty itself. But
here a Platonist might object that we have our categories mixed up: The lofty reading
is the comic reading, for it alone can have a genuinely happy ending: immortality and the
friendship of the god. (Dante would say this, I think.) If so, then the more holistic,
earthier reading represents a failure to choose right objects for loving, or perhaps even
a hubristic attempt to remake the good in our own image, to assimilate the divine to the
human. If we heed this objection and reallocate the words "tragic" and "comic"
accordingly, we must make an adjustment of emphasis in the way we read the speech of
Socrates; but it's striking that the same dichotomies still apply to the speech, even when
the. two terms are transposed. The same man can make both tragedies and comedies-This principle persists, even though, embarrassingly, we are not too sure which of the
two he is making at any given time.
ti
ti
We have seen that it's possible to take Socrates' final, cryptic argument as a
programmatic or organizing statement about the structure of several parts of the dialogue.
We applied it in turn to the speeches of Aristophanes, of Agathon, and of Socrates in
subsuming the first two. And the same remark about tragedies and comedies also seems
to pertain to the problematic relationship we saw between Socrates' speech and that of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.15]
Alcibiades. A Platonist reading would consider Socrates' description of the ladder not
only as the climax of the work (Hellenists, please pardon the pun), but also as the
valuable core of meaning for whose sake the dialogue is written. The remaining or
Alcibiadic portion of the dialogue would then probably have to be considered as a kind
of betray! or a tragic fall from good fortune into evil. But an "anti-Platonist" reading
would hold that entrance of Alcibiades signals the comic reassertion of the value of
earthly and even of earthy things, along with a comprehensive offer of benediction and
forgiveness for human beings, who cannot stay at the height to which Diotima calls us.
As things now stand, the man who can write both tragedies and comedies is not·
Socrates but Plato himself, subsuming all the previous oppositions into the felt coherence
of the whole dialogue. I say that Plato is this man, but you may be tempted to accuse
me of attributing to him tragicomedies and comitragedies that I myself have made. Has
this critical enterprise grown too perversely permissive? It is certainly worrisome that
the dialogue shows itself willing to fit into each of these dichotomous structures. Perhaps
we can agree on this: Socrates' last argument about tragedy and comedy is a resonant
one, virtually demanding some integration with the other themes of the dialogue.
Formally, the pair "tragedy" and "comedy" has the look of a universalizing doublet, like
"heaven and earth," "rain or shine," "young and old," "gods and men." All these pairs
by their neat contrariety imply that they are comprehensive; they seem at first glance to
cover the whole domain of choices to which they pertain. I'm speaking rhetorically now;
clearly in the world of mere facts, there is such a thing as middle age; there are other
metereological conditions besides rain and sunshine. As to my first and last examples,
it is in fact a claim of some momentousness in the Symposium that there is something in
between heaven and earth, gods and men, knowledge and ignorance, beauty and ugliness,
having and lacking. This intermediate ground-- to metaxu, the in-between-- is associated
both with Eros, bastard child of Poros and Penia, Resource and Poverty-- and with
Socrates, most erotic of men. But at the same time a certain ambiguity attaches to this
intermediate position when we regard it as a thing in itself. Viewed statically, it might
be some sort of mean which embraces the two extremes, reconciling them and
symbolically including them. Viewed dynamically, the metaxu is neither one extreme nor
the other, precisely because it is on the way from one to the other. The difficulty is
augmented if the extremes themselves refuse to hold still for us. Let me give two
examples.
Diotima claims that just as daimones, spirits, are intermediaries between gods and
men, so daimonic activities like love and, in particular; the loving of wisdom
(philosophy) are in the in-between between the human and the divine. But shortly
thereafter she argues that because all men desire the good, everyone is a lover and
virtually all human activity is erotic. If humans are then essentially daimonic beings, we
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.16]
have lost one of the poles of opposition that together define the in-between. Does it make
sense to say that human beings are always in between themselves and Something else?
And if it should turn out that humans can attain immortality in any unqualified way, we
will then have lost the other pole as well. So much for Diotima's assertion the "God with
man does not mingle" (203A2). My second illustraion depends 'on a lexicaf ambiguity.
Eros is said to be the child of Poros and Penia, "Resource" and "Poverty." "Resource"
is a perfect translation for the.Greek poros because it reproduces an important bifurcation:
Like poros, it can mean both the means to the procuring of some desired provision, or
it can mean that provision itself. The first meaning might by itself be rendered as
"contrivance" or "craft," the second ~.cerhaps as "wealth" or "p.lenty." {The usual
antonym of penia is ploutos, "wealth.". )Probably there is more backing for the first
meaning in ordinary Athenian usage, but the second meaning seems crucial to this
dialogue. Just as Socrates hopes, by virtue of mere propinquity, to be filled with the
overflow of Agathon's wisdom, so Penia is in fact filled with the overflow of the nectardrunk Poros. But if we do also retain the first meaning of contrivance or resourcefulness
--as I think we are obliged to by Diotima's subsequent explanation-- the structural clarity
of Diotima's myth is disturbed in a puzzling way. Poros the father is already as it were
a means; it is thereby harder to consider him as one of the polar extremes by which to
define his son Eros, the intermediary.
Such moments as these in the dialogue may license us to say that the Symposium is
interested in the notion of dichotomy or polar opposition and also, in how the human mind
copes with it. Thus the significant universalizing doublet of comedy and tragedy at the
dialogue's end alludes backward to a thematic pattern of other problematic pairings, such
as lover and beloved, harmony and discord, wholeness and partiality, object and relation,
lofty and base, human and divine ... (I could go on with this list a while longer.) The
point is not to identify any of these doublets with comedy and tragedy, although we have
seen that sometimes such an identification is suggested by one of our multiple readings.
Rather I have been claiming that the dialogue provides for us a number of bipolar
contexts in which to seek for kosmos and intelligibility. Initially these pairings are
provided as instruments to aid our understanding of some finite question about love and
other human activities. But by being problematic, the pairs themselves become the object
of our attention; sometimes, as I've tried to show, the poles can exchange positions, or
shift into the middle, or overlap with some other pair of categories. Eventually we as
readers have to consider independently the question of how our minds cope with the fact
of two-ness.
This issue is clearly relevant to the general topic of eros. Do we see love as making
one out of two, uniting things that are separated? Or do we see it as an activity of choice
�[Tuck- Symposium- p. 17]
and aspiration, concerned not with wholes but with a hierarchy of goods. These two
theories of eros correspond to alternative strategies for dealing with polar dualities. We
might call the first of them "both/and" and the second "either/or."
The "both/and" strategy, for example, would accept without further protest the
difficulty we noted before, that Socrates' speech-- or for that matter, the Symposium
itself-- might with equal ease be called "comic" or "tragic." There is no reason that it
cannot be both at the same time. Poetry, after all, need not, perhaps ought not to observe
the principle of non-contradiction; by some accounts that is the distinguishing mark of
poetry. We cal) view the work itself as an enveloping kosmos which holds such dualities
in its embrace. The ordering power of art officiates at a sort of festive marriage between
co!l)edy and tragedy, and the reader by giving his assent is drawn into this union. The
effect of Socrates' last argument, then, is to remind us that we are invited to this lovefeast, to implicate us in the atmosphere of reconciliation and acceptance. We need not
give up our particular attachments to the world of bodies and sensations; there is no final
contradiction between different kinds of loving, for cannot love itself bring about a
concord or harmony between one love and another? This strategy explains what many
readers have felt about the Symposium: That here, perhaps uniquely among the Platonic
dialogues, we find an acceptance of the wholeness and fulness of human life.
The other strategy is "either/or." Though Socrates says that the same man can write
both tragedies and comedies, nonetheless a tragedy is not a comedy. It is up to us to
distinguish the tragic from the comic in considering the dialogue in its various aspects and
parts, just as it is up to us to distinguish the high from the low, the better from the
worse. The activity of reading the Symposium, then, is like the moral activity of living
in the world. The artwork is not privileged; the effect of its complexity is to sharpen
issues for us and project us back into the same human condition of temporality and
limitation.
In describing these two strategies I have implied an association of the first with what
we've been calling "comedy" and of the second with what we've been calling "tragedy."
It is apparently not an accident that I was able to give two and only two ways of dealing
with two-ness or duality. I think it was White.head who said that there are two kinds of
people: those that divide things in two's, and the others. Clearly I am .of the first kind,
and so, I suggest, was Plato. But in prescinding from the more concrete pairs of
opposing terms into the level of strategies for dealing with them, we have not left our
dilemma behind. Can we somehow accept both "both/and" and "either/or" as ways of
dealing with the dialogue, or must we choose either one or the other? Put in this way,
the question sounds ridiculously derivative and hyperingenious; it doesn't seem likely that
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.18]
any normal person would worry about such a thing as he reads through the dialogue. But
perhaps I can put the question in a way that sounds more urgent. Can we or can we not
reconcile the "comic" "both/and" of poetry with the "tragic" "either/or" or ·philosophy?
Both the poetic act of inclusion and the philosophic act of discrimination subject us
as readers to a kind of compulsion or necessity. In the one case this compulsion appeals
to our passions to command our wills to assent: in the other case it appeals to our reason.
So, at least, the conventional wisdom holds; who knows?.:- perhaps it is even true.
Socrates, we remember, was last depicted compelling [prosanankazein] Agathon and
Aristophanes to admit that the same man could write both tragedy and comedy. (In
contrast we shm.1Jd think of Diotima's words to Socrates: "Do not compel [me anankaze]
what is not beautiful to be ugly, nor what is not good to be bad" [202Bl] .) Part of our
predicament in reading the dialogue is to find· a loving concord between these different
works of Ananke, Necessity-- since, as Agathon says, the works of Love have superseded
the works of Necessity among both gods and men.
It might seem strange to be claiming that in a Platonic dialogue poetry's appeal to the
passions could be set up in true equipoise against the claims of reason and philosophy.
The standard Platonist tack would be to subordinate the one firmly to the other. We can
see this attitude at work in the common explanation given for Plato's well-known
apparent self-contradiction on the subject of tragedy and comedy. In Book III of the
Republic (395A2) Socrates remarks to Adeimantus that the same man cannot imitate many
different things well-- not even the two forms of imitation that seem closest to each other,
that is, tragedy and comedy. Therefore, he continues, all imitative arts are inferior.
How do we square this with the end of the Symposium? The common explanation lays
stress on the wording in Symposium 223D-- What Socrates forced them to admit was that
the same man would have ~ scientific understanding (epistasthai) of the writing of
comedies and tragedies, that the man who writes tragedies with art (techne) must be able
to write comedies as well. Now, the argument runs, this must be the middle of a
reductio proof: Since we know that this result is impossible, it follows that poetry has
nothing to do with episteme or techne, but acts by divine inspiration. And therefore we
are back on the familiar ground of the Ion and the Meno: By relegating poetry to the
realm of inspiration, Socrates denies it the power of true knowing that philosophical
activity can offer.
The difficulty with this explanation is that, at least within the bounds of the
Symposium, it is not clear whether it is poetry or philosophy,' or even both, that we
should associate with divine inspiration. Socrates makes a point of portraying the
philosopher as daimonios, "spiritual," connected with divination and prophecy, in explicit
opposition to techne (203A7). Alcibiades too explicitly portrays Socrates himself as one
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.19]
who has the god within him and who is able to communicate its power. (The same word,
katechesthai [21506], that is used here is also used about inspiration in the Ion.) We
have also the endependent testimony of Socrates' ecstatic trances. Poetry, on the other
hand, seems to be ranked with the other trades in that Agathon and Aristophanes take
their places alongside Eryximachus and the earlier speakers in making their partial claims
for their craft or crafts. Agathon, in saying that Eros is a poet, begs leave to honor his
own techne just as Eryximachus did. Diotima herself applies the word·techne to poetry,
in her'generalization of poiesis: "Thus," she says, "the productions of all the technai are
poetries, and their craftsmen are all poets" (205Cl). --None of these considerations
denies the force of the more traditional view of Plato's relative valuation of poetry and
philosophy; for ·that view also there is ample evidence in the dialogue. But it is beginning
to look as though both philosophy and poetry can each be seen as both artful and
inspired, both rational and visceral, or either one or the other. It is getting harder to
differentiate the two forces of compulsion that sway our reading; perhaps their vector
resultant is perplexity and freedom.
The Symposium is simply there. It does not present itself to us a either a poetic or
a philosophic work, and at St. John's we pride ourselves-- rightly, I think-- on not
pigeonholing books that way. Nonetheless the "poetic" and the "philosophical" may have
a certain reality as categories, not only of books but of ways of reading. The dialogue
itself is self-conscious about this issue, as I have all along been ,claiming; and to read it
is to become self-conscious about how to read. For what we love and how we love it
may determine even what we perceive as there in the intricate, Protean, magical fabric
of the writing itself.
John Keats wrote memorably in one of his letters about the conflicting claims of
poetry and philosophy:
Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed
in it are fine; the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel-- By a superior
being our reasonings may take the same tone-- though erroneous they may be
fine-"'" This is the very thing in which consists poetry; and if so it is not so
fine a thing as philosophy-- For the same reason that an eagle is not so fine
a thing as a truth.
(Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 Feb.--3 May, 1819)
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.20]
There is great pathos in the spectacle of the youthful, doomed Keats offering up the thing
he loved best. Perhaps Plato may yet force us to that choice; but in the Symposium the
verdict is not clear. May there not be some truth in the eagle, some powerful, winged
grace in the truth? A person may love both the truth and the eagle. Which shall we
choose-- or must we choose at all?
*******
[Delivered as a public lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, Summer, 1986]
�
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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On Finishing Plato's <em>Symposium</em>
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Typescript of a lecture delivered in summer 1986 by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lectures Series. <br /><br />Mr. Tuck is a Tutor emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is about how to approach and to reapproach a reading of Plato's <em>Symposium</em>. He presents a variety of views from the dialogue as well as those of Castiglione and Dante to aid in diciphering Plato's dialogue on love.
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Tuck, Jonathan
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Annapolis, MD
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1986-07
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lec Tuck 1986 Summer
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Plato. Symposium
Philosophy
Love
Tutors
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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01:03:34
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Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age
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Video recording of a lecture by Professory Chad Wellmon of the University of Virginia, held on June 23, 2021 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Professor Wellmon describes his lecture: "The humanities didn't come into their own, didn't become modern, until relatively recently, when scholars began to frame their previously disparate practices and ideals as a unique and unified resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. This new self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis, it justified itself in terms of crisis. The modern humanities are always in crisis because their defenders and detractors alike have needed them to be. <br /><br /><em>Permanent Crisis</em> is neither a call to action nor an apology. It is a work of historical scholarship and conceptual inquiry that shows how claims of crisis are not only older than we think, but also have played a crucial role in grounding the idea that the humanities have a special mission. In uncovering this history, <em>Permanent Crisis</em> highlights continuities and transformations that extend from early nineteenth-century Prussia to the twenty-first-century United States. It shows how the very processes that have allowed the modern humanities to flourish and attain social and institutional value—democratization, secularization, institutional rationalization—have also consistently imperiled them. In this talk, Chad Wellmon will offer an overview of <em>Permanent Crisis</em> and suggest why its story offers reasons for hope in what might otherwise seem like the twilight of liberal learning."
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Wellmon, Chad, 1976-
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2021-06-23
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Signed permissions form have been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online."
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moving image
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Humanities
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Langston, Emily
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Wellmon_Chad_2021-06-23
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Property, Belief, and the Barbarian in Montesquieu's <em>Spirit of the Laws</em>
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on June 13, 2018, by John M. Peterson as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Peterson, John Matthew
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2018-06-13
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Permission 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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LEC_Peterson_ John_2018-06-13_ac
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Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689-1755. De l'esprit des lois.
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
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10e760de2f14ca041e7858e8eb964cf5
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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01:03:38
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Reading Plato’s <em>Meno</em> Online
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Video recording of a lecture delivered on June 24, 2020 by William Braithwaite as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. The final minute of the recording (beginning at 01:02:00) is in audio format only. <br /><br />Mr. Braithwaite describes his lecture as follows: <br /><br />"Traditionally serving to introduce the study of Plato’s two dozen dialogues, the <em>Meno</em> raises questions about what virtue is and how it is acquired, about what knowledge is—both in itself and in relation to opinion, and about how teaching and learning are connected. <br /><br />I will offer a preliminary, or serious beginner’s, reading of the dialogue, with a view to opening one path to these questions: What are the conditions Plato suggests as ideal or best, indispensable or useful, for learning and teaching? How, and to what extent, are these conditions affected by the differences between face-to-face student-teacher meetings, and meetings among geographically-dispersed teachers and students, mediated by an electronic screen? What sort of community is an 'on-line' community?"
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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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2020-06-24
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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 at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audio recording of my lecture available online."
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moving image
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mp4
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Plato. Meno
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Education
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Langston, Emily
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English
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Braithwaite_William_2020-06-24
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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Text
“Reasons without Reason: Anti-rationalism in Heidegger’s Being and Time”
by Lee Goldsmith
(Delivered at St. John’s College Annapolis, June 29th, 2016)1
Every polity—but especially a democratic polity—faces difficult questions that they must
answer together. Often we settle the answers through political institutions, but sometimes the
questions remain in the informal sphere of social life. On many of these questions we disagree
with one another deeply, sincerely, and seemingly intractably. It is no surprise then that public
discourse can be exasperating, even among friends and colleagues. Nevertheless, we should not
succumb to the exasperation. However we finally resolve difficult questions—and even if we
never do—it would be best if public discourse were reasonable. Even where we persistently
disagree, we ought to be able to articulate the reasons we have, understand those of others, give
rejoinders, and, if necessary, reconcile ourselves to a resolution. In order to continue working
together as a polity, we ought to be able to have reasonable disagreements where everyone
involved can acknowledge the sincerity of the reasons offered, even if the reasons are ultimately
unconvincing. If public discourse is to be public reason, we must treat each other as capable of
having reasons.
Unfortunately, many participants in public discourse scrutinize each other as if they were
not offering reasons but some non-rational consideration. Bruno Latour describes the problem
ably:
One could say, with more than a little dose of irony, that there has been a sort of
miniaturization of critical efforts: what in the past centuries required the formidable effort
of a Marx, a Nietzsche, a Benjamin, has become accessible for nothing… You can now
have your Baudrillard’s or your Bourdieu’s disillusion for a song, your Derridian
deconstruction for a nickel. Conspiracy theory costs nothing to produce, disbelief is easy,
debunking what is learned in 101 classes in critical theory. As the recent advertisement of
a Hollywood film proclaimed, ‘Everyone is suspect… everyone is for sale… and nothing
is true!’2
To sum up: when reason is suspect, so is everyone else. If we believe that humans can act only
non-rationally—that is to say, not on the basis of reasons but due to causes such as desires,
drives, and manipulated beliefs—then we will treat others’ words and deeds as expressions or
outgrowths of subterranean roots, and the truth of our criticisms as the more secure, the deeper
beneath the surface those roots stretch, the more inscrutable they become. Our public
appearances will be interpreted in the first place as idiosyncrasy rather than potential
communion. When we encounter difference or disagreement, we will tend to explain away its
bearing on us and have our own explanations likewise dismissed. Most importantly, deep public
questions about how we are to live together peacefully and respectfully will tend to elicit
recriminations rather than answers. I expect anyone who has tried to have serious conversations
1
I would like to note that my work on Heidegger has been deeply influenced by my teachers, Cristina Lafont and
Rachel Zuckert, although I do not reference their work in this piece. I owe them much thanks.
2
Latour, Bruno. “What is Iconoclash? or Is there a world beyond image wars?” in Iconoclash, Beyond the ImageWars in Science, Religion and Art, ed. Weibel, Peter and Latour, Bruno, ZKM and MIT Press (Cambridge, MA:
2002). The movie tagline is from 1997’s L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson, although I believe the last
clause should read, “and nothing is as it seems.”
1
�with strangers on social media will recognize the phenomenon: the cheapness of critique erodes
the soil of productive public discourse.
I do not mean to suggest that public discourse today is more fraught than it has been in
the past. However, we do face a different problem today than our predecessors did. Latour’s
quote provides the clue that the erosion of public discourse today arises at least in part from the
popularity of reductive anti-rationalist critics of rationalist thinkers. By ‘rationalist’ here, I do not
mean the traditional notion: someone who holds that we have some central concepts and
knowledge independent of sensory experience. Instead, I mean someone who holds that human
beings have a faculty of reason. A faculty of reason is a systematically unified set of principles,
encompassing more than classical logic, that binds each of us because it is part of us. Prominent
rationalist philosophers, in my sense, include Plato, Leibniz, and Kant. Each held that reason is
governed by a single principle—the good, the principle of sufficient reason, the unconditioned—
and that subordinate principles align with the fundamental unifying principle as well as cohere
with one another, producing a systematic set of principles for thought that a person could
discover through introspection. For the rationalist, a person has a reason when she correctly
subsumes her situation under the principles set out in the faculty.3
Anti-rationalists, on the other hand, deny that human beings have such a faculty. And
anti-rationalists are reductive when they treat any appearance of having a reason as the
manifestation of a proximate cause alone. Reductive anti-rationalism rose to the foreground as a
final critique of Enlightenment ideals. Reductive anti-rationalists—among whom we might count
Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—worked from the premises of modern scientific inquiry to show
that we do not have a faculty of reason. Even the appearance of having reasons is illusory,
generated by a false consciousness of our own self-constitution. From the perspectives of history
and psychology, they maintained, human considerations are too diverse, contextually embedded,
and self-interested to cohere with a systematically unified set of rational principles. In light of
these alternate explanations, the existence of reasons is an extraneous hypothesis.
The reductive anti-rationalists pose a serious objection to rationality and, thereby, the
very possibility of public reason. One response to their challenge would be to defend the
rationalist position. I will not be exploring that line of thought here. Instead, I will present a third
option, which I lift from Heidegger’s work in Being and Time. According to the schematization I
have presented, Heidegger is an anti-rationalist: he presents a purportedly complete account of
human existence that excludes any faculty of reason. Nevertheless, we can reconstruct from
Heidegger’s work a conception of reasons. To be specific, Heidegger’s account of authenticity
and the roles that death and conscience play in that account provide the basis for an account of
when a person has a reason to do or believe something.4 That is to say, Heidegger holds out the
possibility that we might be able to accept the anti-rationalist critique of rationalism without
losing reasoning from the picture of humanity. From this Heideggerian account of reasons
without reason, we can look again at the question of public reason with fresh eyes.
I have drawn this account of a faculty of reason from Susan Neiman’s work on Kant. (Neiman, Susan. The Unity of
Reason: Rereading Kant. Oxford UP (New York: 1994).) The three features—universality, unity, and
systematicity—are meant to be minimal conditions. They provide the beginning of a complete account of a faculty
of reason but not at all the whole thing.
4
Steven Crowell has already developed an account of rationality based on Heidegger’s conception of conscience.
For the basic account, see: Crowell, Steven. “Conscience and Reason: Heidegger and the Grounds of Intentionality”
in Transcendental Heidegger. eds. Crowell, Steven and Malpas, Jeff. Stanford UP (Stanford: 2007) pp.43-62. This
essay does not address that work directly but implicitly extends it.
3
2
�To flesh out my interpretive assertion, I will begin with a brief overview of Being and
Time, then present you with two key quotes that will serve as the focus for an interpretation of
authenticity as the basis for having reasons. After that, I will conclude with some reflections on
the relationship between Heideggerian reasons and public reason.
In Being and Time the central question for investigation is: what is the meaning of being?
Heidegger’s answer is temporality (H.1).5 Let’s take the question first. Heidegger initially
demarcates being as what distinguishes entities as such from each other and what makes those
entities intelligible to us (H.6). To say that temporality is the meaning of being is to say that
temporality is the first basis on which entities are distinguishable. (If you are having trouble
imagining what this means, consider that a basic property of matter is to persist through time
despite changes in location.) His conception of temporality is abstruse and difficult to grasp,
even for those who have studied it intently. At a first pass, temporality is the unfolding of past,
present, and future in which the future takes priority.(§65, especially H.327-8) But Heidegger is
not an eschatologist: the meaning of being is not to bring about some destined or desired state of
affairs. Rather, the future is essentially what is not yet, what is possible but never actual.6 In
time, I hope to make this essential futurity clearer. But to do that we must turn to the outline of
Heidegger’s argument.
The crux of Heidegger’s argument that temporality is the meaning of being rests on the
claim that we ourselves stretch through past, present, and future, and are the fundamental source
of all other distinctions among entities. We are the distinctively ontological entity, who asks the
question of being and cares about answering it (H.12). In caring about that question, we open up
a world of people, places, and things and find meaning within it. To pick out this distinctive
character of our being, Heidegger coins the technical term ‘Dasein.’7 Heidegger uses the term—a
common German noun for ‘existence’— in order to distinguish the biological interpretation of
humanity—homo sapiens—from that which makes us truly human. Dasein is being in the world
(H.53) and the entity for whom being is at issue (H.12). It is not for anything in particular
(H.130) and is distinctive precisely because it can interpret its own existence all the way down to
the most basic concepts (H.9). Dasein is in the world by both being determined by it and
determining it in return. For this reason, Heidegger calls Dasein a thrown-project (H.199). We
are thrown and socialized into a world with an established order, from the past, that we now, at
the present, have to project ourselves into, so as to make for ourselves a future. In doing so we
inherit complex distinctions among entities that we then have to apply to our own situations and
sometimes even add, edit, or discard in order to make better sense of the world and who and
what are in it. When we add, edit, and discard distinctions, we do not do it for ourselves alone
but anticipate that it will make better sense of future situations as well. Indeed, it would be
5
Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. 19th edition, Max Niemeyer Verlag (Tübingen: 2006). I will provide references
to Being and Time within parentheses. These will mostly point you to passages I am paraphrasing. The format for
the page references is ‘H.#’ where the ‘H’ indicates the pagination of the published German text and the ‘#’
indicates the page. In any translation of Being and Time you can find the German pagination along the outside
margin of the pages. In a few cases, I reference not the pages but the section of Being and Time. In that case the
section number will be preceded by this symbol: ‘§.’
6
Hence, Heidegger’s slogan: possibility is higher than actuality (H.38).
7
Heidegger initially defines the term at H.7 and spends a large section of the introduction characterizing Dasein’s
special role in ontology.
3
�unjustifiable to offer a purely idiosyncratic concept for others to use because Dasein lives in an
always already shared world.
According to Heidegger, as we have it so far, the meaning of being is temporality
because humans live by unfolding the phases of past, present, and future with each other. It is not
that time is a container in which we exist but rather that humans create a past, present, and future
through their interpretive social activities. According to Heidegger, the sense of time as a
container is derived from the sense of time as unfolding through meaning-making (H.424-5).
How, then, does Dasein make meaning and why is meaning-making connected to time?
Here is the summary answer that we will spend the rest of the talk unpacking: Dasein makes
meaning for itself as a movement from inauthenticity to authenticity (die Eigentlichkeit), and it is
enabled to make this movement by its mortality. By ‘authenticity,’ Heidegger does not mean
what we tend to mean by it, namely, being connected to one’s roots or being different for
difference’s sake. Rather, inauthenticity bears these descriptions just as well as authenticity
because by ‘inauthenticity’ Heidegger means being lost in the crowd, which one can be when
one is trying to reconnect with one’s roots or trying to stand out just to stand out. Authenticity, at
a first pass, is recovering oneself from the crowd, individuating oneself from others, and taking
ownership over oneself (H.12, H.42-3). It is in this movement that Dasein becomes able to have
reasons.
What then is this movement like? We must start from a structural description of what it is
like for Dasein to be in the world.8 Imagine yourself cooking dinner for your family. You are in
your kitchen, surrounded by your supplies and tools. You have ingredients, a knife for cutting
them, a cutting board on which to cut them, and so on. You also have a recipe that sets out the
steps for cooking the meal. The meal, in turn, is the end-product of a sequence of steps or inorder-tos that employ your resources and tools. Moreover, the meal is for you and your family.
You all are ends of the cooking but in a different sense than the meal is the end. You will
appropriate the meal from the cooking activity to the eating activity. You are the end as
consumer rather than product. In turn, the eating activity has the same structure: it serves to
sustain you so that you can go on to participate in other activities. As far as this structural
description takes us, it seems as though we are the executors of activities in order to be executors
of other activities. Everything is for-something already given. Even you seem to be forproducing and for-consuming endlessly. But observe: this indefinite series of activities tells us
nothing about how you benefit from the activities, unless we assume that merely participating in
activities, whatever they are, is beneficial. Of course, that is a non-starter. A person may choose
to forego eating and bring the series of activities to a close. Although it might be sad that she do
so, it can nevertheless be good for her, in which case the distinction between beneficial and
harmful collapses. Thus, the indefinite series of activities cannot be the whole story of our
participation in these activities. Our activities cannot be merely in order to participate in other
activities. We must at least be capable of participating in them for the sake of something final,
something that brings the indefinite series to a third kind of end, the end of explanation or
justification. In other words, we must be able to say why we participate in activities without the
answer admitting of a further why-question. The world in which we live is not a holistic totality
8
This structural description (which philosophers also call a phenomenology) is based on §§15-18. Of note:
Heidegger provides very little argument that the for-the-sake-of-which must be part of the description and that is the
crucial move he makes against the reductive anti-rationalists.
4
�of in-order-tos. The world includes final ends or, in Heidegger’s vocabulary, for-the-sake-ofwhiches (worumwillen).
In this description of daily life, we discover a holistic network of tools and activities in
which we can participate for the sake of something beyond the products of those activities.
Consider again these activities in relation to a for-the-sake-of-which. We do not engage in these
activities merely as free floating individuals without any prior entanglements. On the contrary, at
every moment we occupy at least one social role, whether we have chosen it or not. We are
children, parents, students, teachers, citizens, politicians, clients, lawyers, and so on. Each social
role brings with it a package of norms that guide the occupant toward the appropriate behavior
and away from the inappropriate. These norms manifest themselves in what an occupant counts
as satisfying the duties under that role and what others expect the occupant to do to satisfy those
duties. For the most part these expectations will overlap and be independent of the specific
personality occupying the role. Thus, we often express these norms via the impersonal pronoun,
‘one.’ For example, as a child, one heeds one’s elders. When entering a subway car, one waits
for riders to exit before entering. As a lawyer, one does not divulge private information about
one’s clients. In each of these cases, it would be inappropriate to act against the anonymous
expectation except in extraordinary circumstances. To do so would be a basis for censure from
anyone aware of the transgression (H.126-7). What one does, then, is general in two senses: I can
be the ‘one’ at any time and I can encounter the ‘one’ in others at any time. We can follow the
one’s norms without relating it to any for-the-sake-of-which because we can just mimic what
others do. But, at the same time, I can never be the ‘one’ simply. I can only be the ‘one’ via a
particular social role that establishes what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior for me at a
given time. Even as the ‘one’ I cannot do whatever others are doing and count as following the
social norms. I have always already followed certain paths rather than others.
Consequently, the ‘one’ is unstable. Social norms are not only the rules I follow but also
how I justify my actions. For example, as a teacher, if I am asked why I am granting a student an
extension when her hard drive crashes, I can cite the norm that teachers should not punish their
students for circumstances beyond their control. If I were asked that question and could give no
answer or merely cited what other teachers usually do, I would have failed to justify my
teacherly action. Similarly, if I am asked why I am a teacher rather than something else, I ought
to be able to respond with more than, “Someone told me to do it.” But when we are first
socialized into our social roles, that is the only answer we are prepared to give because up to that
point we have simply been learning how to be guided by the ‘one,’ yet the ‘one’ does not provide
the basis for an answer. Only a for-the-sake-of-which could. Precisely to this problem,
authenticity provides a solution.
Let us now turn to the passages at the heart of my interpretation of authenticity as the
basis for having reasons. The first passage concerns Dasein’s conscience, the voice that calls
Dasein back from its absorption in its everyday activities as the ‘one.’
In being a ground—that is, in existing as thrown—Dasein constantly lags behind its
possibilities. It is never existent before its ground, but only from it and as this ground.
Thus being-a-ground means never to have power over its ownmost being from the ground
up. This not belongs to the existential meaning of thrownness. It itself, being a ground, is
a nullity of itself. Nullity does not signify anything like not-being-present-at-hand or notsubsisting; what one has in view here is rather a not which is constitutive for this being of
Dasein—its thrownness. The character of this not as a not may be defined existentially: in
being its self, Dasein is, as a self, the entity that has been thrown. It has been released
5
�from its ground, not through itself but to itself, so as to be as this ground. Dasein is not
itself the ground of its being, inasmuch as this ground first arises from its own projection;
rather, as being-its-self, it is the being of its ground. This ground is never anything but the
ground for an entity whose being has to take over being-a-ground. (H.284-5)9
That passage contains a lot of thought to digest all at once. I will elucidate it for you shortly. For
now hold in mind these two key points. First, Dasein is a ground that it must take over. ‘Ground’
here could also be translated by ‘reason.’ And, so, we might interpret this to say that Dasein must
become a reason for itself. Second, Dasein never has power over this ground from the bottom up.
It lags behind its possibilities in two senses. It engages in certain activities rather than others
before it ever considers whether those activities matter to it. And it is not the source of those
activities. To become a ground then is precisely to struggle with which activities matter to it and
how it can also be a source of them.
The second passage comes from Heidegger’s analysis of death. As I mentioned above,
Dasein’s mortality enables it to become authentic by disclosing to it how to make a responsible
choice for what to do with its life. Here Heidegger clarifies the relationship between Dasein’s
death and its array of choices:
The ownmost, non-relational possibility [death] is not to be outstripped. Being towards
this possibility enables Dasein to understand that giving itself up impends for it as the
uttermost possibility of its existence. Anticipation, however, unlike inauthentic beingtowards-death, does not evade the fact that death is not to be outstripped; instead,
anticipation frees itself for accepting this. By anticipating and, thereby, becoming free for
its own death, Dasein is freed from being lost in possibilities that accidentally impinge
upon it with the result that becoming free for death allows Dasein to understand and
choose authentically, for the first time, the factical possibilities that lie upstream and
ahead of the one that Dasein cannot outstrip… As a non-relational possibility, death
individualizes but only in order to, as a possibility which is not to be outstripped, make
Dasein, as being-with, understanding of the capacity-to-be of others. Since anticipation of
the possibility which is not to be outstripped discloses also all the possibilities which lie
ahead of that possibility, this anticipation includes the possibility of taking the whole of
Dasein in advance in an existentiell manner that is to say, it includes the possibility of
existing as a whole capacity-to-be. (H.264)10
Again this passage might be overwhelming. So, again, I offer two key points to hold in mind.
First, the possibilities among which Dasein makes its most fundamental choice of what to do
with its life “lie upstream and ahead” of its death. In so far as Dasein understands death, those
possibilities transcend it, by which I mean they can last forever even if in fact they do not.
Dasein knows itself to be finite but does not know the same about its possibilities. Second, the
transcendence of the possibilities puts Dasein in authentic contact with others. By becoming
authentic, Dasein recognizes others as similarly capable of authenticity and able to share in
9
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. tr. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward, Harper & Row (New York:
1962), pp.330-1. I adjusted the translation to make it clearer.
10
Ibid, pp.308-9. Again, I adjusted the translation to make it clearer. I discovered this crucial passage thanks to a
comment in Page, Carl. Philosophical Historicism and the Betrayal of First Philosophy. Penn State Press
(University Park, PA: 1995), p.141. Like Page I understand this passage as undermining the common interpretation
of Being and Time, according to which Heidegger shows that eternal truths or goods are impossible. Unlike Page,
however, I do not interpret this passage to leave open the possibility that human beings could know or understand
anything as eternal.
6
�possibilities authentically with Dasein. Let’s now dig deeper into these thoughts and see how
they give rise to an account of reasons without a faculty of reason.
In the first passage Heidegger describes Dasein as both a ground for its existence and
having to take over its being-a-ground. Dasein, of course, is not the ground, like a self-caused
thing would be. Dasein is caused to be in a number of ways, including parentage and
socialization. Nevertheless, Dasein is one of those grounds. But a ground in what way? Part of
the answer to this question comes prior to this passage. Dasein’s conscience calls to it but says
nothing (H.272-4). Instead, it points Dasein to its ability to become authentic and to the implicit
choices it has not not yet owned. In turn, Dasein interprets the call as indicating its guilt.
Heidegger does not mean “guilty” in any of its ordinary senses. Dasein’s ontological guilt is not
original sin, moral wrongdoing, being the cause of certain events, or debts to others. Rather,
Dasein is guilty in the sense of being responsible for its choices, where ‘responsible’
(verantwortlich) takes on its etymological meaning: able to give an answer (H.280-8). By
heeding its conscience, Dasein takes over being-a-ground by interpreting itself as answerable for
its choices. Conscience brings Dasein into a discourse, albeit a merely internal one so far.
Intriguingly, Heidegger describes Dasein’s being-a-ground as a nullity. By this he means
two important things. First, Dasein does not give itself the factical possibilities for its existence.
And this goes all the way down. Conscience is silent because anything it could say would be
expressed in a public language that one speaks and remains inevitably ambiguous. Precisely here
we might expect that a faculty of reason could provide unambiguous content. But such a faculty
could only express itself in a public language, which needs interpretation in still further terms.
Second, Dasein negates possibilities. That is to say, Dasein is a ground for its existence by
eliminating factical possibilities for itself. Dasein chooses by means of exclusion rather than
invention. For the most part Dasein excludes without realizing it and, when asked, tends to defer
responsibility for its actions to some authority. When it becomes authentic, it alters its
relationship to the exclusions. It connects its exclusions to the pursuit of something worth it for
its own sake and ceases to defer responsibility for its actions to anyone else. In this sense we
should say Dasein alters its existence as a ground from being merely a cause of events to a
reason for them.
But we should not pass over these crucial and interesting claims without noticing how
counter-intuitive they are. Human beings are endlessly creative. From the slightest pun to the
inception of a whole new realm of activity (such as modern natural science), human beings seem
to be more than merely a nullity. We do not only negate possibilities we add them. What then
would justify Heidegger’s counter-intuitive claim?
The answer to this question lies in the second passage. In it, Heidegger is discussing the
relationship between Dasein’s anticipation of death and the factical possibilities on which it
resolves in becoming authentic. The concept ‘possibility’ as Heidegger uses it encompasses any
way that Dasein could be.11 At bottom, any description befitting of Dasein is a possibility for it.12
For our purposes, however, we should focus on the two kinds of factical possibility that are
fundamental to a life-path. The first are the social roles discussed above. Dasein occupies at least
one and usually multiple roles throughout its life, and these roles govern what it does daily as
According to Heidegger, when we use ‘possibility’ in other senses—e.g., logical possibility (not in violation of
the principle of non-contradiction)—we derive the meaning of ‘possibility’ from its meaning as applied to Dasein.
12
When we take note of history—the rise and fall of peoples, empires, and civilizations—we must distinguish
between live and dead possibilities. ‘is a samurai’ is a description befitting Dasein but not live for anyone today.
11
7
�well as how it organizes its weeks, months, and years. Moreover, these roles are the sort of
activity it can find enriching or fulfilling. They engage its capacities in a complete way. Dasein
knows this because the possibilities can draw it out of the stultifying fear that attends the
anticipation of its own death and they are worth pursuing unto death. They are not merely means
to other states of affairs. Rather, Dasein can engage in them until there are no more states of
affairs left to it.
We might conclude, then, that social roles are the factical possibilities that we pursue for
their own sake. But that would be imprecise. Social roles are constitutive of pursuing something
for its own sake, but what makes a given social role a for-the-sake-of-which is not the social role
itself. Instead, we find some aspect of the social role worth pursuing for its own sake. The social
role engages us in charity or requires lifelong learning or puts us in contact with some other
value or good that we take to be final. These values are only accessible to us through social roles
but they are not reducible to them.
These are the factical possibilities that Heidegger is discussing in the second passage:
social role and ultimate value combined. By anticipating death, Dasein no longer sees its
possibilities merely as means to other possibilities ad infinitum. Observe: although a given social
role can be constitutive of something worth pursuing for its own sake, it is not essentially so. For
example, I can choose a career as a mere means to supporting a loving, nurturing family. When
Dasein is inauthentic or “lost in its possibilities,” all social roles look like mere means. The final
goods that social roles can manifest remain hidden as long as Dasein ignores its own mortality.
But when it confronts that mortality, Dasein reveals that aspect of social roles to itself. It frees
itself for a choice by putting the social roles into a framework where a responsible choice
becomes possible. Specifically, it frees itself from the condition in which nothing appears worthy
of choice.
This brings us to the two crucial claims that ground a Heideggerian account of reasons.
First, the factical possibilities in question “lie upstream and ahead” of Dasein’s death. The
German reads “vorgelagert sind.” I’ve used the hendiadys “upstream and ahead” to render the
double-meaning of “vorgelagert.” The idiomatic German meaning of the adjective is “upstream”
or “off the coast,” but it is derived from semantic pieces that mean something like “to be camped
ahead.” So, we have here a metaphor for the conceptual and explanatory relationship between
Dasein’s factical possibilities and death. On the one hand, “lies upstream” suggests a common
philosophical metaphor for explanatory priority. If a is upstream from b then a explains b or
some aspect of it, while b explains no aspect of a. Thus, Heidegger is claiming that Dasein’s
factical possibilities explain some aspect of Dasein’s own death. On the other hand, the “lies
ahead” suggests that these possibilities are part of Dasein’s future and, indeed, extend into the
future beyond Dasein’s own death. But if the factical possibilities only become available for
authentic resolution through Dasein’s anticipation of its own death, how can those possibilities
explain any aspect of its death? And how could those possibilities transcend Dasein’s death?
The answer to these two questions comes towards the end of the paragraph where
Heidegger tells us that death, “as an un-outstrip-able possibility, makes Dasein…understanding
of others. Recall that Dasein develops its basic capacities as it is socialized by others. Of
necessity the socialization process subordinates Dasein to authorities who teach it the social
norms. As a result Dasein always starts out as inauthentic and sees inauthentically the factical
possibilities into which it has been socialized. However, when Dasein understands itself as
capable of authenticity, it also understands that others have the same capacity. It follows that the
socialization process offered more to Dasein than first met its eye. Dasein inherited factical
8
�possibilities that set its mortality in relief. Death too is a possibility; it is distinctive as nonoptional and final. Dasein’s factical possibilities can fit the finality of death, but they are not nonoptional. They present Dasein with a choice. Thus, the socialization process, in which Dasein
inherits factical possibilities, explains how Dasein understands death as a basis for making
meaning for itself and not just the cessation of its existence. Of course, the factical possibilities
cannot explain the fact that Dasein dies. Nevertheless, they can explain how Dasein can
distinguish death as a possibility that makes meaning possible, as opposed to impossible.
Furthermore, the factical possibilities on which Dasein can resolve are not limited by
Dasein’s death. Because Dasein understands them as inherited through the socialization process,
it also understands that others have engaged in these possibilities authentically. And just as
Dasein is the future to those who are no longer, so Dasein will hand down its authentic factical
possibility to future generations. Or what is the other side of the same coin, Dasein shares its
authentic factical possibility with others and knows that it can. Dasein’s authentic resolution
individualizes it but at the same time brings it into a community which stretches before its birth
and after its death. It commits itself to a common project with others with whom it works in
concert.
With this interpretation of the second passage in hand, I can now answer the above
question about creativity. The answer comes in two prongs. First, Heidegger can explain
creativity as a reshuffling of factical possibilities. When we seem to invent something new, we in
fact draw upon a pattern or patterns from one or more areas of life and apply them to another
area where the patterns had not previously applied (as far as we know). Even modern science, as
Heidegger shows (§69b), is derived from possibilities already available. Thus, Dasein can be
creative while merely negating given factical possibilities. Second, no factical possibility—
however new—gets its content from an individual Dasein alone because every factical possibility
is always already shared. Even the most innovative person offers her innovation to a community.
What that offering means and whether it is a success depends not on the will and intellect of the
individual innovator but rather on how the community takes it up. Thus, individual Dasein
contributes no irreducibly unique content to the possibilities in a community. By itself, Dasein is
a nullity.
Based on the foregoing interpretation, we can reconstruct a conception of reasons from
Heidegger’s conception of authenticity. A reason is a consideration in favor of forming a belief,
drawing an inference, or taking a course of action. But not just any consideration in favor of
something is a reason for it. I might have a desire to bash my neighbor’s mailbox with a baseball
bat but that is not, by itself, a reason for doing so. A reason requires further grounding. We have
to be able to trace it back to a source, a principle, a good. Unlike other considerations, a reason
has a pedigree. Even when I perceive my desire to bash my neighbor’s mailbox as a reason to do
it, it is a reason only if I can trace that desire to a principle that licenses satisfying it. (And I
doubt any pedigree exists for such a desire.)
We are subject to desires and impulses throughout our daily lives. Our thoughts, bodies,
and decked-out environments elicit them. In turn, we have to sort through which ones to satisfy
and which to suppress. For the most part we do this in an unconscientious way (which is not to
say unconscious). We follow the impulses and desires that align with our tasks and suppress the
ones that do not. When we reflect on what we are doing we perceive ourselves as having reasons
for sorting through our impulses and desires as we do. But we rarely trace the complete pedigree
of those purported reasons such that we verify them. This omission opens up the question
whether what we take to be our reasons are in fact reasons.
9
�One way that a consideration might fail to be a reason for a person—a way central to a
Heideggerian account—is that the person traces the consideration back to an external authority.
For example, when I follow a recipe, I defer to the authority of the chef who wrote the recipe.
The instructions for me are not reasons, as they are for the chef who can explain how and why
they produce the final dish. And should the recipe fail, the chef is prepared to examine what went
wrong and attempt to fix the problem. The chef, who takes responsibility for the success of the
recipe, has reasons with respect to making the dish whereas I merely have considerations.
Indeed, each step in the recipe, the dish, those whom the chef will serve, and the wider world of
expert food-making, all manifest reasons for the chef, whereas I do not have those reasons. The
world of mere in-order-tos is transformed by authenticity into a world of reasons. That
transformation takes place because the chef takes herself to be an authority, in the sense that she
is an author—albeit not the unique author—of norms governing proper food-making. Her
authorship, however, is in no way a creation from nothing. She always engages with the norms
that she has inherited, and is answerable to others who, like her, take responsibility for those
same norms.
The foregoing suggests a Heideggerian conception of rationality.13 According to it,
someone has a reason for a potential action—mental actions included—when the state of affairs
fits the norms governing a social role he authentically occupies. Accordingly, a reason is part of
a chain of in-order-tos that someone relates to an activity worth pursuing for its own sake. This is
the sense in which Dasein’s conscience makes it a ground for reasons. Its conscience calls it to
relate the states of affairs in the world to whatever can bring an end to a series of why-questions.
Heideggerian reasons, then, are always parts of lines of reasoning that reach a conclusive end. As
a part of a line of reasoning, Heideggerian reasons are discursive.
Moreover, Heideggerian reasons are constrained by publicly known norms. Since reasons
are parts of responses to why-questions, they can be exchanged with others as explanations or
justifications for actions or beliefs. And since the reasons are grounded by a resolution on social
roles, the reasons a person may offer must be shown either to accord with publicly known norms
for those roles—as, for example, a novel application of them—or improve on one or more of
them—as, for example, refusing to implement corporal punishment as a teaching tool. Not just
any series of statements offered to an interlocutor—even by authentic Dasein—qualifies as a line
of reasoning. Dasein’s autonomy is not unlimited, despite lacking the law of reason. Instead, it is
answerable to those from whom it has inherited its factical possibility and to whom it will hand it
down.
Heideggerian reasons are serially grounded, discursive and constrained. By contrast,
mere considerations are serial but not grounded and discursive but not constrained. Consider the
desire to bash a neighbor’s mailbox. I can connect that to a further consideration, such as venting
anger or getting revenge. But those further considerations do not bring an end to why-questions.
The considerations are ungrounded. Similarly, bare appeals to authority suffer the same defect.
They fail to end the series of why-questions because we must ask what justifies deferring to that
authority. Mere considerations are defectively serial. They also show a symmetrical defect with
respect to discursiveness. I can offer a mere consideration to someone else, and they can
recognize it as something that favors my action, in the way that desires always favor their own
If this Heideggerian account of reasons has reminded you of Kant’s conception of autonomy there is good reason
for it. In the concept of authenticity, Heidegger sought to retain the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy
without relying on a faculty of reason that gives the laws for being autonomous.
13
10
�satisfaction. But the consideration is unconstrained by any norms that would distinguish the
desire as licit or illicit. The interlocutor cannot share in endorsing the consideration. Again, the
same goes for appeals to authority. The interlocutor must wonder why the authority offered
should be binding on himself. Mere considerations offer explanations for actions but not
justifications.
You might be wondering why social norms offer justifications where mere considerations
do not? After all, social norms are positive phenomena, instituted by human beings.
Consequently, appeals to social norms seem like just another appeal to authority. Here the
double-aspect of factical possibilities plays a crucial role. The social norms that constitute the
social roles Dasein plays are always in service of the values that make the social roles worth
pursuing for their own sake. Justifications in terms of social norms always take for granted that
the norms continue to serve those values. If an interlocutor raises an objection that a norm no
longer serves that value, then that breakdown must be repaired either by dispelling the objection
or emending the norm.
A moment of reflection on values such as charity, friendship, equality, and liberty reveals
that they are multiple and not objectively prioritized. As Dasein pursues its factical possibility it
will have to weigh values against one another when they come into conflict. Heideggerian
reasons, then, are ultimately grounded in a choice for how to prioritize values. At this point, the
differences between Heideggerian reasons and the traditional account of rationality become
clear. As noted above the faculty of reason displays three central features: universality, unity,
and systematicity. None of these features apply to Heideggerian reasons. First, Heideggerian
reasons are not universal because they depend on a choice to prioritize values into a hierarchy
that is not itself rationally required. Even though an interlocutor can recognize that a reason is
binding for her friend, given his authentic resolution, the interlocutor herself, who resolves on a
different factical possibility, might find that his line of reasoning does not bind her because they
prioritize values differently. Heideggerian reasons, then, are not categorially universal, although
they encompass at least all those who share an authentic factical possibility. Second,
Heideggerian reasons are not unified: they do not trace back to any single principle. Whereas the
faculty of reason is unified by a principle embodied in a concept such as the good or the
unconditioned, Heidegger’s account of rationality is unified by Dasein’s ability to authentically
resolve on some factical possibility. This ability, as we saw, is conceptually contentless—it is a
nullity, the ultimate source of negation—and each person uniquely exercises it. The conceptual
content derives not from the ability to become authentic itself but rather from the possibility
adopted in its exercise. When Dasein reasons, it reasons back to its fundamental factical
possibility and then can offer no further reason, should a disagreement persist. Dasein makes a
Lutherian commitment in whose favor it can say nothing else. In Heideggerian lines of
reasoning, not all roads lead to Rome. Finally, since reasons are neither universal nor unified,
they cannot be systematic. It will always be possible that two lines of reasoning will be
ultimately incompatible. For example, two appellate court justices might sincerely disagree over
whether the norms of constitutional interpretation permit them to rule that every application of
the death penalty is a cruel punishment. That they disagree does not indicate that at least one of
them is mistaking what reasons they have. They each could exhaust the reasons they have
without reaching the same conclusion.
Since Heideggerian reasons are not universal, nor unified, nor systematic, Heidegger is
an anti-rationalist, as I defined it at the outset. However, Heidegger is not a reductive antirationalist. He does not reduce the appearance of reasons to causes. Although Dasein has moods
11
�and desires that inform its authentic resolution, its resolution is not reducible to psychological
drives or self-interest. In anticipating death, Dasein’s mood reveals what and who in the world
matter to it. Moreover, even if Dasein’s mood were caused by psychological drives, Dasein
accepts responsibility for its psychological make-up when it authentically resolves. By projecting
itself into a factical possibility, Dasein becomes answerable for who and how it is: it will not
excuse itself through its psychological make-up, even if that make-up plays a key role in
explaining or justifying its actions or beliefs. And it treats this answerability as a reciprocal
expectation among Daseins. Dasein does not privilege its own authenticity over the authenticity
of others. A condition of authenticity is that Dasein enables or at least refuses to impede other
Daseins’ ability to be authentic (H.122).14 Thus, the usual strategies for reducing reasons to
causes—power, economic interest, or psychological drives—are all rebutted by Heidegger’s
account of authenticity. In so far as Heidegger can treat the appearance of reasons as something
like what we expect a reason to be, Heidegger has an advantage over the reductive antirationalist accounts.
So far, I have sketched an interpretation of a Heideggerian account of reasons. The
interpretation remains incomplete because I have not addressed some key kinds of reasons—in
particular, theoretical reasons—that are not obviously assimilable to Heidegger’s account.
Nevertheless, we have enough of the interpretation on the table to consider what conception of
public reason the Heideggerian account grounds. First, anyone who has read Being and Time
knows that Heidegger is skeptical of the value of discourse in the public sphere (H.127).15 In the
public sphere, speakers pass along claims for which they themselves cannot vouch, offer
truncated lines of reasoning, and flit from one subject-matter to another without spending enough
time on them for anyone to acquire a useful understanding, let alone a reasonable one.16 Given
Heidegger’s account of reasons, it is no surprise that he would be pessimistic concerning the
value of public discourse. Clearly, not every participant in the discourse—and possibly few or
none—will themselves be authentic. Those who are not cannot offer their own reasons but can
only pass along reasons others have. As a result, members of the general public cannot decide
whom to trust on a matter that is important but not part of their own factical possibility.
Furthermore, speakers have a plethora of self-interested considerations in favor of manipulating
one’s audience rather than informing them or following lines of reasoning with them. Under
these conditions, we could be forgiven for suspecting that the speakers who have widespread
exposure in the public sphere are bad actors, whose speeches are better explained by the theories
of reductive anti-rationalists.
Although we could be forgiven, perhaps we should not let those suspicions govern our
interpretations of others in public discourse, especially those with whom we disagree. It is clear
that Heidegger, even if he endorsed the Heideggerian account of reasons I have reconstructed
here, would deny that it can support a conception of public reason. Heidegger himself would not
rescue us from the morass described by Latour. So, to Heidegger, myself and you all, I would
like to pose a question about the public sphere: is Heidegger’s pessimism inevitable? To be sure,
even if we conceive of an ideal public sphere, replete with authentic agents exchanging lines of
reasoning, we cannot imagine that the end result—even at the end of time—will necessarily be
Again, those familiar with Kant will recognize this as a Heideggerian version of Kant’s Formula of Humanity.
The word Macquarrie and Robinson translate as ‘publicness’ is ‘die Offentlichkeit.’ It is commonly used to refer
to the public sphere and rarely to the abstract property of being public.
16
These descriptions are a gloss on Heidegger’s conceptions of idle talk, ambiguity, and curiosity, respectively.
14
15
12
�universal consensus on the solution to every dispute. The need for public reasoning will never be
complete nor even approach an end like a hyperbola to its asymptote. This essential
incompleteness follows from the lack of universality and unity. Heidegger himself recognizes
this essential incompleteness, which is why he describes authentic politics as a kind of struggle
(kampf, H.384-5). When reasons inevitably run out, all that is left is non-rational means of
persuading others. It would be easy to assume that non-rational means of persuasion are, a
fortiori, violent in the sense that they require some people to submit to a power they do not
endorse by their own lights. This assumption seems all the more justified because, without a
universal conception of reason, it is unclear whether there are any norms of discourse that would
undermine a public discourse that oppresses authentic voices who have reasons to offer. If there
are no universal norms then we have a strong reason to believe there is no foundation for a public
discourse that can legitimate public courses of action.
It might seem then that Heidegger’s pessimism is inevitable. However, I would like to
close by offering initial considerations that would open up an optimistic line of investigation.
First, we must recall that authenticity requires reciprocity. It is possible that we could derive
universal norms of participation from the reciprocity that authenticity requires. If oppression
inhibits Dasein’s capacity to be authentic, then authentic Dasein cannot endorse norms that
oppress others. It would follow that an authentic public sphere would not prevent anyone from
participating in it. Second, authentic Dasein is aware that its own authentic resolution is just one
among many possible resolutions. Furthermore, it is aware that its own resolution puts it into a
particular, limited perspective. Dasein does not have authentic access to all matters of public
import. When it does not, it ought to be open to the reasons that others who do have to offer. By
heeding the reasons that others can offer from their own authentic resolutions, Dasein accepts
that rationality is not something given to us that we must discover but rather something at stake
for us that we must forge. An optimistic view of a Heideggerian conception of reasons takes
public reason as a collective challenge for us. And the question is: what resources does the
Heideggerian conception—or any other conceptions that are live to the problem rationality
poses—provide for us to meet this challenge?
13
�
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on June 29, 2016 by Lee Goldsmith as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.<br /><br /><span>Mr. Goldsmith is an instructor of philosophy at George Washington University. His talk is about the issue of reason and the criticism of reason in the thought of Martin Heidegger. Mr. Goldsmith particularly examines Heidegger's work <em>Being and Time</em> and illucidates the critique of Reason writ large and the larger "struggle" within Heideggerean theory. His talk concludes with a potential grounding for optimism about a project of critical reason coming out of Heideggeran "reasons" rather than Reason itself. <br /><br />Mr. Goldsmith earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and his B.A. from St. John's College Annapolis.</span>
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2016-06-29
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Reasons without Reason: Anti-rationalism in Heidegger’s Being and Time
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Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. Sein und Zeit. English
Existentialism
Reason
Philosophy
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
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~appho's "Hymn to Aphrodite"
[There are 3 parts: (1) a short introduction to Sappho, her dialect & her meter; (2)
reading, translating and parsing the poem rather hastily, for the benefit of those with
some Greek but not a lot; (3) some reflections on the form of the poem and how it works
on us.]
From what little we know, it seems probable that Sappho was the greatest woman
poet in the history of Western literature. Certainly the writers of antiquity refer to her
with the highest respect: There is an epigram attributed to Plato in the Palatine
Anthology (which I've reproduced on p. 2 of the handout), which says:
Some say the Muses are nine-but carelessly:
For look-Sappho ofLesbos is the tenth.
She was one of the nine great lyric poets, according to the ancient canon, and certainly
not the least of them. She may even be said to have invented the lyric, as we know it
today. But we have to wor~ with probabilities because only a tiny portion of Sappho's
work has been preserved-one reasonably complete poem (the one I'm going to discuss
tonight) and a frustrating set of fragments, some of several stanzas, some of only a few
words or even letters. We have them now because they were quoted as models by
ancient rhetoricians, or because they were miraculously preserved on papyrus fragments
in the recently excavated ancient garbage dumps of Oxyrhynchus, in the dry climate of
Egypt. Everything else has been lost. Plato, and even the Roman poets Catullus and
Horace, certainly had access to much more of Sappho's work than we do; the loss must
have happened later, during the period between the fourth and twelfth centuries of the
Christian era. But even for Plato, Sappho was a very old writer, as much before his time
as, say, George Washington was before ours. She lived in the late seventh and early sixth
centuries BCE-after Homer and Hesiod, but long before Aeschylus or any of the other
1
�Greek writers we read. She is "archaic" and therefore in certain ways mysterious; we
should have to expect that her way of feeling and speaking will seem somewhat alien.
It's therefore even more of a miracle that the little bits of her that survive seem to speak
to us so directly.
One thing that everyone seems to know about Sappho is that she was a Lesbian.
In the trivial sense of the word, this is obviously true: Except for an interlude of political
exile, she seems to have lived and died on the little island ofLesbos off the coast of Asia
Minor. (You can find it on the dialect map on p. 2 of the handout.) The Greek she wrote
and probably spoke was therefore in a different dialect from the Attic that you have
studied. On the map you.can see the distribution of various dialects: Doric was the
Spartan dialect and also the language of the great Theban lyric poet Pindar. To achieve
an effect of antiquity the Athenian dramatists often wrote their choruses in a composite
language with some Doric features. Ionic, the dialect ofHo~er and later of Herodotus, is
the one that became Attic, the Athenian dialect. Later, in a simplified form, it grew into
the so-called koine, the "common" dialect that was spoken everywhere in the Hellenized
part of the Mediterranean world; the Christian Bible was written in it. Sappho's dialect
was called Aeolic. I have enumerated a few of its general features on the left there, next
to the map. When we come to look at Sappho's poem, you'll see that many of the
spellings are different. I've tried to give the Attic equivalents for them in two pages of
grammatical notes, the handout's last two pages.
The island ofLesbos seems to have had a certain reputation in the ancient world
for the prevalence of female homosexuality. It's not clear whether Sappho and her circle
of highly cultured women friends were the reason for this reputation or whether it existed
2
�independently. We can see an allusion to this perception ofLesbos in a poem of
Anacreon, a slighly later lyric poet, which I've also put on page 2. I'll read it aloud:
[recite Greek version]
Once again pelting me with a purple ball
Golden-haired Eros
Invites me to play
With the girl with fancy sandals;
But she (for she is from well-built
Lesbos) condemns my
Hair (for it is white) and
Gapes after another-woman.
I especially wanted to mention this little poem because a few of its words or images are
also important in Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite." One is the word deute-de aute, "yet
again"-and another is the use of the word poikilos-"embroidered, multi-colored,
various, elegant, artistic, dappled, fancy, subtle, intricately wrought"-in a compound. A
third similarity is that the female identity of the loved one only appears late in the
poem-here as a surprise twist, in the grammatical gender-suffix of the word "another";
in Sappho's poem only in the gender ending of the word for "unwilling" (in line 24).
There is a tone of mock-epic ironiy here in the phrase "well-built Lesbos"-a quotation
from Book IX of the Iliad, where Agamemnon offers to indemnify Achilles, in part with
seven beautiful maidens captured on the day the Greeks took "well-built Lesbos."
I have been teasing you here by deferring what for some is the Big Question: Is it
not also obviously true that Sappho was a "lesbian" in the more modern sense of the
word, a woman who loved other women? Well, it has not always been acknowledged as
obviously true, and the few facts we have about her life make for a complicated picture.
She seems to have been married-though even this may be doubted, since the name of
3
�her alleged husband, Kerkulas, closely resembles a form of a word for "penis." But
Sappho herself, in two of her surviving fragments, refers to having a daughter, unless she
is speaking figuratively of one of her younger friends. She wrote a number of
epithalamia, or wedding poems, for heterosexual marriages. There are many legends and
traditions about her, such as Ovid's story that she pined for the love of the sailor Phaon
and hurled herself from the rock ofLeucas. She was even accused (long after her death)
of having been a prostitute. But none of these implications, some clearly false, of
heterosexual or at least bisexual activity can stand against the explicit, and ardent,
avowals of love for other women that we find in her snippets of poetry. Even so, without
a context it's hard to know how to take these; and there was a tradition in the maledominated world of classical studies, at least until the nineteenth century, to assume that
Sappho was a lover only of men. If the poems indicated otherwise, the texts must be
corrupt, and so there was a certain amount of creative emendation of the texts to try to
make Sappho's lyrics into family entertainment. Up into the twentieth century, a few
interpreters went to desperate, sophistical lengths in claiming that the poems somehow
"ventriloquize" the feelings of male lovers, or that the erotic content of Sappho's work
was merely a hyperbolic expression of sentimental friendship. (We have seen the same
kind of activity at work on the sonnets of Shakespeare.) Nowadays, of course, the
political climate is otherwise, and there are feminist scholars eager to find a kind of
militant sisterhood in Sappho's homoeroticism. I think we need to be a little careful here
as well: In speaking of Sappho's lesbianism, we can't be sure that the notion of sexual
preference or orientation may not be a construct that belongs to cultures far more modern
than Sappho's. Some commentators think that it is a very modern construct indeed:
4
�There is a book in the Navy Library entitled One Hundred Years of Homosexuality; its
publication date is 1990. It is of course true that Aristophanes' speech in Plato's
Symposium seems to isolate three separate species of lovers, and to give a comic account
of their origins; but this may be part of the mythic concreteness of the tale. It is
embarrassing to have to say it, but we don't know very fully what it meant to Sappho to
be a lover of women. (Peter Green's Laughter of Aphrodite is a wonderful historical
novel about Sappho, by a very eminent classical scholar, that gives a fascinating
imaginative construction of what Sappho's life may have been like. It's in our library-I
recommend it to you.)
The claim was often made, especially in the Renaissance, that it was Sappho's socalled immorality that caused the deliberate and systematic destruction of the texts of the
poems, at the hands of the Christian clergy during the Middle Ages. But there could have
been many other reasons for their loss. Lyric poetry has far less prestige than other kinds
of texts, and in a age of scarcity such slender productions may have seemed less edifying
and less worth the considerable effort ofrecopying. Furthermore, the unfamiliarity of the
archaic language, especially the dialectal difference, may have played a role. It is the
case that most of the early lyric poets survive only in fragmentary form. As one scholar
comments, "It is not so much the loss of a classical author's work that requires
explanation as its survival." [M. Williamson, Sappho's Immortal Daughters, p.41, my
emphasis] Having said all this, I still think it is generally true that the male poets, even
very ancient ones, by and large suffered a less drastic fate than Sappho. If you look at her
collected "works," it's a slightly eerie feeling to see a few Greek letters, beginnings or
5
�endings of words or lines, positioned on a page and surrounded by reams of commentary,
conjecture and emendation.
The only poem that has not required such restoration is the one we're about to
read, identified by number as "Fr. l" and usually known as the "Hymn, or Prayer, to
Aphrodite." It was probably the first one in the first of the nine books of poems that
Sappho is said to have written. All the poems of the first book seem to have been in a
meter now called the Sapphic stanza, since Sappho made it famous-though it was
probably invented by Alcaeus, a slightly older male contemporary poet, also from
Lesbos, who seems to have been a sort of friendly enemy of Sappho's. Before I read the
poem, I want you to have the meter in your ear, and for that purpose you should now turn
to page 3 of the handout. Here I've given the scansion of the Sapphic stanza, at the top,
in longs and shorts. The "x"' s are anceps syllables-they can be either long or short.
The cadence of the stanza will sound something like this, in Morse code:
Dah di dah dah I dah di di dah/ di dah dah (3 times)
Dah di di dah dah.
Like many of the lyric meters, this one is built around one or more instances of a foot
called a "choriamb"-dah di di dah, long short short long-in the center of the line, with
varying other stuff at the beginning of the line and at the end. Meters like this are known
as "Aeolic meters," after the dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus. Notice too that I've given to
alternative ways to write the stanza: The first and more traditional way is the way I've
typed out Sappho's poem and also the English ones, arranged in groups of four lines, of
which three are metrically identical: three so-called Sapphic hendecasyllables, elevensyllable lines, followed by a short five-syllable line called an "adonic." But some
metrical scholars have thought that the third and fourth lines are so closely related, and
6
�the fourth so short, that we should join them together and consider the stanza as only
three lines-two hendecasyllables followed by a third line of sixteen syllables. That is
the second notated version at the top of handout page #3. I apologize for getting a bit
technical here; as I will try to claim later, there is at least one interpretive issue in the
poem that may be affected by this graphical or typographical question.
All these taxonomic details will not help to get the pattern of the meter into your ear.
For that purpose, I am going to read some English sapphics. But bear in mind that
strictly speaking, there are no sapphics in English. English metered poetry is accentualsyllabic, made of an arrangement of stresses and a number of syllables (whatever "stress"
may be), while Greek poetry is quantitative, an arrangement of longs and shorts (rather
than stressed and unstressed), with the longs pronounced about twice as long as the
shorts. Incidentally, the syllables we normally stress in pronouncing a Greek work in
prose-that is, the syllables marked by accents-were in poetry indicated by pitch
variation: a fifth up for an acute accent, a fifth or some smaller interval down for a grave,
and up-and-back-down on the same syllable for a circumflex-all of this sort of
polyphonically counterpointing the variations in quantity. If you have ever heard Mr.
David recite Homer, you know what this sounds like; I can't do it. I'll now read the page
3 excerpt from Swinburne (the Turnbull at the bottom is just for fun); in doing so I'll try
to exaggerate a bit and make the meter sound almost quantitative.
[Read Swinburne aloud.]
Now with that pattern in your head, let's turn to Sappho, on the first page of the
handout. Let me read it:
[Read Sappho aloud, in Greek and then in English.]
7
�I'll recite it again at the end of my talk, so we can try to put the poem back together. It's
crucial to get a sense of the delicacy of the sound. This was proverbially one of the most
beautiful-sounding poems, and it's mostly to that fact that we owe its preservation:
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek literary critic who lived at about the time of the
Roman Emperor Augustus, included it whole in one of his books as an illustration of how
sounds fit beautifully together.
Now I am going to go very quickly through the grammar of the poem, parsing
frantically to try to show how we get from the left column to the right. You should refer
to the last two pages of notes. Since the handout is not stapled, you can pull them out and
glance at them while looking mostly at page 1.
[10-15 minutes of grammatical explication]
The first thing I want to observe is that even apart from its meter, the poem has a
traditional structure or form-the form of a prayer. There are three parts to a prayer,
which have been called the "Invocation," the "Sanction," and the "Entreaty." [Bowra,
Greek Lyric Poetry, pp. 200-201.] In the invocation, the god is ceremoniously addressed
by several appropriate names, sometimes standard epithets, listing the god's deeds,
powers or customary features. Why enumerate several names or aspects of the same
deity? Perhaps a god's different aspects are a little like avatars or personae-Zeus the
god of the thunderbolts may not be quite the same person as Zeus Xenios, the god who
protects hosts and guests. Apollo the god of the lyre may be distinct from Apollo the
patron of medicine, or Apollo the slayer of the Python, or the prophetic Apollo. In order
to induce the god to respond, perhaps we need to address her in the appropriate way, or
the way she wants to be addressed. Like a conjuror or magician, the speaker of the
8
�prayer needs to be a literalist about the correct verbal form of the spell or conjuration-to
call something by its correct name is to have power over it. What name is correct may
depend on the circumstances of the prayer, and the services sought for-which suggests
that at some point we should look carefully at the epithets here applied to Aphrodite:
"dapple-throned," "child of Zeus," "weaver of wiles." Some of these seem puzzling or
dubiously appropriate-I'll return to this later. But for now we can say that structurally
the invocation comes at the proper place: It occupies the first stanza.
The sanction, the second part of a traditional prayer, motivates the god to respond
by reminding her of benefits received or given. The supplicant might refer to a previous
life of piety, of sacrifices made to this deity, temples built or offerings brought. (An
example of this is the prayer of the priest Chryses at the beginning of Iliad I.) Or the
prayer might promise some such thing to be done in the future. In the present case, the
speaker of Sappho's poem (whom we will also call "Sappho") reminds Aphrodite not of
past favors received from Sappho but of past services rendered to her. There are many
analogous instances of this practice: Achilles' prayer to Zeus for the success of Patroclus
in Iliad XVI; the Chorus's prayer to Apollo in the Paro dos of Oedipus the King; and
especially a passage in Iliad V, in the "Diomedeia" or aristeia of Diomedes, which I
want to quote, since we be concerned with it again later. Diomedes prays to Athena as
follows:
"Listen to me, aegis-bearing offspring of Zeus, unwearied one,
If ever you also stood by my father with good intent
In destructive battle, now also be my friend, Athena:
Grant it to me to take this man, that he come to the thrust of my spear,
Who shot me beforehand and now boasts of it, and says that I shall not
Long behold the shining light of the sun."
[V.115-120; my emphasis]
9
�We see here the same kind of Sanction as in Sappho's poem: the god is reminded of past
benefactions. It seems that like Aristotle's great-souled man, the goddess prefers not to
be reminded of her indebtedness to others, but rather of other people's debts to her. But
apart from flattery, does Aphrodite's past service to Sappho obligate her, Aphrodite, in
some way? Even in the flashback at the center of the poem, the goddes humorously and
ironically uses the repeated word deute-"yet again"-indicating that even that time was
far from the first. "All right, Sappho, who is it this time? You've found Miss Right
again?
What am I supposed to do for you now?"
Notice that the tone of mock
exasperation does not prevent the goddess from promising the total and speedy
fulfillment of Sappho's desires. But of course, what is recounted in the flashback is
already past. That was last time-Now, at the time of the prayer-poem, it seems that her
desires have changed yet again. Sappho ironically portrays her own fraily and fickleness,
the Protean character of her successive infatuations. The Sanction part of the prayer
occupies the middle five stanzas; the largest part of the poem is a vista of a past in which
Sappho sought and prayed to the goddess again and again.
The Entreaty in the last stanza is straightforward: "As you helped me before, so
also help me now." Elthe moi kai nun, "come to me now again," picks up the word elthe
from the beginning of the previous section (line 5, as well as line 8). The word thumos is
also repeated from the first stanza, circling back to the beginning; so is the reference to
care or pam.
In Sappho's case the request, "Whatever my heart yearns to have
accomplished, accomplish it," is very general-not so much a request for a blank check
as an acknowledgement that the goddess already knows her innermost desires. Given this
10
�knowlege, why does Aphrodite ask Sappho the series of questions that begins at the end
of the fourth stanza? This is another problem to which I shall return.
If we look now at how the poem partitions itself to fit into the structure of a
prayer-invocation, sanction, entreaty-we see that there are breaks after the first and
before the last stanza. This 1-5-1 structure suggests that the poem is in a form dearly
loved by the Greek lyricists, a
ring composition-a circle that recurs upon itself,
symmetrically organized around a central point. What here is the central point? As I
have typed the poem, in four-line stanzas, it has an even number of lines, and the center is
at the break between lines 14 and 15. But if we consider the sapphic stanza as a threeline stanza, with the short adonic considered as an extension of the third line, then there is
an odd number of lines and therefore a unique middle line:
meidiaisais' athanat6i
pros6p6i, "smiling with your immortal countenance"-line 14 as it is printed here.
Around this central hinge of the poem-either the line itself or the space after it-the
middle five-stanza section breaks evenly into two pieces: the first describing Aphrodite's
descent from heaven, the second recounting her speech to Sappho.
The poem's
circularity lies not only in a return to its beginning point (both structural and situational),
but in an almost visual symmetrical arrangement around a center.
Circularity might
imply recurrence-Sappho's amatory predicament has happened many times in just this
way. But symmetry also implies a divine kind of order.
Though I'm not normally so much of a numerologist as to look always at the
numerically central location, line, page, stanza or whatever, in this case I think it
important that the central image of the poem is that haunting and marvelous line,
µat8iatcratcr' a8ava-rcot npocrcono:n, "smiling with your immortal countenance." Aphrodite
11
�is conventionally a smiling or laughing goddess-the Homeric epithet for her is often
philommeides, "smile-loving" or "laughter-loving."
But this picture goes beyond
convention. It is a portrayal of what in Greek statuary and painting is sometimes called
the "archaic smile," mysterious, curiously mirthless and clinical, somehow focused
inward or elsewhere, not necessarily in the least sympathy with the person smiled at. To
illustrate, here is a picture, probably of the head of the goddess Artemis, from the
museum at Delphi.
[show picture] I want to claim that the tone of Sappho's poem
depends on this central mystery.
Aphrodite-weaver of wiles, figure of poikilia,
complexity, elegant multiplicity or perhaps duplicity-Aphrodite has something to hide.
But on its face, the poem both as a traditional prayer and as a ring composition
projects an orderliness and formal coherence emblematic of benevolent gods and of a
cosmos that humans can control, or at least comfortably inhabit.
The goddess is
unearthly in her deathlessness, beauty and splendor-the elegance of her throne, the
emphasis on goldenness, the rapidity with which she arrives; but the speaker of the poem
is not obviously overawed by her coming. There is perhaps a touch of humor in the
picture of the sparrows frantically beating their little wings in order to draw her chariot:
Sparrows were proverbially associated with lust and procreation, but they are not a kingly
or powerful species. (In the more traditional iconology of Aphrodite's chariot, she is
drawn by doves.)
And when the goddess does arrive, she seems to speak to the
vulnerable, hapless "Sappho" in a tone of affection and intimacy, blended perhaps with a
certain amused contempt, but still basically reassuring.
The unusual informality of this epiphany might remind us of Athena's meeting
with Odysseus in Odyssey XIII, just after he arrives in Ithaca.
12
Not recognizing the
�goddess in her disguise, Odysseus spins one of his cunning cover stories about who he is
and what he is doing there. Homer goes on:
So he spoke, but the goddess, grey-eyed Athena, smiled,
And caressed him with her hand, and she took the form of a woman,
Beautiful and tall, and well-versed in splendid works,
And she addressed him, and spoke winged words:
"He would be a sly one, and a great scoundrel, who got past you
In any kind of wiles [doloisi], even if a god should oppose you.
You wretch, dapple-minded [poikilometa] ! You were not about
To leave off your wiles [dolon] and deceits, even though you are here in
your own land,
Nor your thievish stories, that are second nature to you.
But come, let us talk no more of these things, since we both
Are skilled in slyness-you by far the best among mortals
In counsel and in tak-telling, I among all the gods
Am famed for intelligence and slyness ... "
[XIII.287-299]
In response, Odysseus reminds Athena of her past kindness and reproaches her for recent
neglect, and then entreats her to help him again.
Aphrodite's bantering with Sappho in our poem reminds us of this episode in a
number of ways, but especially in this: Just as Athena and Odysseus are bound together
by a certain common character, so are Aphrodite and Sappho. Aphrodite is the patron
and inspiration of lovers, and Sappho portrays herself as the lover par excellence-one
who lives only to love, and who is thus utterly at the goddess's disposal.
Perhaps
Aphrodite alludes to this in her slightly sarcastic question, "Who, Sappho, is wronging
you? [adikeei]" This might mean not only "Who is your new beloved?"-.using the
language of injustice or aggression to describe the effect of the girl's beauty-but
also"Have I been unjust to you? Have I not given you what you asked for before, and
will you not get what you deserve of me now?" The justice that Aphrodite will restore is
expressed in the symmetry of the phrasing of these lines in the next-to-last stanza:
13
�yap at cpc:uyct, -rax,ecoc; otco~ci·
at Oc ocopa µ11 OcKc'r'' aA.lva 8cocrnt·
at oc µ11 cplA.et, rnxccoc; cptA.11aet
KCO 'uK c8cA.otaa.
Kut
For if now she flees, soon she will pursue;
If she does not take gifts, rather she will give them;
If she does not love, soon she will love
Even though unwilling.
The smoothness and balance of these lines might seem to express Sappho's own comic
self-forgiveness; in making the goddess grant her all that she desires, she transcends the
imprisonment in that desire of the trembling, vulnerable lover she depicts herself as. She
can see herself as the goddess sees her, and grant herself absolution.
• *******
So far I've been dwelling on the comic aspects of the poem, not only in the
narrow sense of "humorous," but also in the sense of "having a happy ending." If
tragedies end in death, frustration and the fall of cities, comedies end in marriage,
integration, reconciliation, the image of gratified desire. But to the degree that we see
the poem only in this way, we may lose that sense of the goddess's mystery figured
forth in the poem's central line. Perhaps we should go back and enumerate, not the
familiar, intimate and reassuring qualities of this epiphany, but the strange and
disquieting ones.
As I intimated earlier, some of the epithets used in the invocation of the goddess
are incongruous and surprising. It is not necessarily odd in itself to find Aphrodite
associated with poikilia-a sort of gorgeous piedness or variability, as we've seen.
14
�The first word of the poem is altered, however, when it is associated with doloploke,
"wile-weaving," in line 2. The image of artisanship (specifically embroidery) carried
by the word poikilos, is caught up again in the idea of weaving; but here artifice is
connected with deception. (Weaving, by the way, is often in Greek literature a
metaphor for the poet's art specifically; compare the idea of a "rhapsode," a stitcher
of songs.) Perhaps it is the possibility of deception that caused some scribes to copy,
not poikilothron', "dapple-throned," but poikilophron', "dapple-minded." As we saw
in the Odyssey passage, Odysseus is described in similar terms-poikilometis is one
of the standard epithets for him. These terms would clearly be more appropriate if
applied not to Aphrodite but to Athena, Odysseus' patron, who is also associated with
weaving and the useful arts. (Remember the story of Arachne.) Athena is also a
warlike goddess, as we see in the Iliad; Aphrodite, on the other hand, is pointedly
shown to be of little value as a fighter. In the passage I quoted from earlier, the
Diomedeia in Iliad V, Aphrodite is attacked and wounded by the Achaean hero
Diomedes, with the explicit approval of Athena. When she comes back to her father
Zeus to complain, Aphrodite is told:
"Not to you, my child, are given the works of war;
You must rather take your part in the yearnful affairs of marriagesLet all these other things be the business of swift Ares and Athena."
Later in the same episode, Athena is shown arming herself, yoking up her chariot and
venturing forth to confront Ares, who is fighting on the side of the Trojans. If Sappho is
in some way alluding to the Diomedeia, she deliberately conflates the roles of the
goddesses by portraying Aphrodite as a warrior, using words like damna, "to conquer,"
and summachos, "ally"; introducing military images like the yoking of the chariot in the
15
�third stanza and the mention of fleeing and pursuing in the sixth; referring to her own
thumos as mainola, full of the rage or wrath, menis, "mania," that is the first word and
subject of the Iliad; using epic diction in such phrases
as~
melainas-"the black
earth"-to evoke the Homeric poems as a presence in the back of the reader's mind. On
the other hand, we could point to another, contradictory tradition about Aphrodite. In
Iliad XIV, Hera comes to Aphrodite to get help in her plan to distract Zeus's attention.
She does not share all of her intentions, since Aphrodite is rooting for the enemy Trojans.
As Homer tells it:
Then with wiles in mind Lady Hera addressed her:
"Give me now affection and longing [himeron], with which you
Conquer [damna] all immortals and mortal men ... "
[XIV.197-99]
The word used for "conquer" is damna, as in Sappho's poem. Another illustration is
given by the Chorus in the Third Stasimon of the Antigone (admittedly written much
later):
Eros unconquered in battle, Eros who seizes all possessions,
Who sleeps in the soft cheeks of a maiden,
Who roams far beyond the sea, or to wild dwelling-places,
There is no refuge from you, not for the immortals
Nor for men, creatures of a day. Whoever has you runs mad,
You turn the minds of just men to injustice and outrage.
You hold this fight and wrangling of brothers here.
Longing proclaims its victory in the eyes of the blessed bride,
And sits from the beginning beside the great ordinances.
For the goddess Aphrodite, with whom none can fight, takes her sport.
[lines 781-799, emphasis mine]
So is Aphrodite the most warlike or the least warlike of the gods? Why even speak of
love in the terminology of war? After centuries of lyric poems addressing the beloved as
"my sweet foe," using the imagery of conquest or the taking of a fortified city, we might
16
�not even think the coupling of love and war is unusual; the convention is so well-worn.
Yet the two seem antithetical: Love generates life and war destroys it. But like Ares and
Aphrodite in the minstrel's poem in the Odyssey, the two are naturally, almost inevitably
coupled together: war as the highest excellence of the male and love as the highest
excellence of the female.
Sappho explores this question in one of her most famous fragments, which goes
like this:
Some say a host of horsemen, some footsoldiers,
Some say a fleet of ships is the fairest thing
On the black earth; but I say
It is whatever one loves.
And it is very easy to make this
Understood by everyone: She who surpassed
By far all humans in beauty, Helen,
Leaving the best
Man of all, went sailing to Troy,
And did not remember her child
Nor her dear parents in the least,
But she was led off the path ...
Here the text becomes just a few chopped-up letters, too few to conjecture what comes
next. But then the poem seems to end this way:
And remembering Anactoria, who is not here,
I would rather see her lovely walk
And the shining sparkle of her face
Than the Lydian chariots and
Full-armored infantry.
[Fr. 16]
17
�Here Sappho is using a form now called a "priamel," which first enumerates a list
of things others may choose, and then continues, "But I say ... " In setting up such a
comparison as a contest between the beauties of war and of love, she seems to be
questioning the traditional value of warlike manhood, arete, as the highest form of
excellence. The private world of individual passions and relations, from which women
are not excluded, can afford a higher value than the public, heroic world of Achilles and
Hector. Mischievously, Sappho offers a carefully-chosen, loaded example of the power
and value of love: Helen, whose voluntary elopement with Paris causes the expedition to
Troy. In this way, it seems that the Greek and Trojan heroes who fight for her are made
into involuntary witnesses to the truth of Sappho's contention. Yet this poem does not
cite the love ofMenelaus for Helen, but rather Helen's own love, whose object is not
even named. Love produces in Helen a kind of menis, a rage or frenzy which causes her
to forget and to behave irrationally; yet Sappho, the speaker of the poem, is remembering,
not forgetting her absent beloved. There is a double consciousness here, similar to what
we see of Sappho's self-portrayal in the "Hymn to Aphrodite." If a choice between love
and war is a choice between public and private, the privateness of individual choice is
bound to incline to the side of love. But in the hymn, we get more than a private and
individual affirmation of feeling: We get a quasi-epic or mock-epic, externalized
portrayal of Sappho's love-passion, using the Homeric device of the god's descent from
heaven. It's not clear to us whether the poet Sappho actually thought she had
experienced such an epiphany, or whether she is consciously using it as a metaphor of
some kind. But in making the goddess publicly visible, through the act of telling, she
allows us to see herself, Sappho, not just through her own eyes, but as seen by another.
18
�In the process, we can also view Aphrodite in a more balanced way-not just from the
perspectiver of Sappho's desperate need.
Sappho's prayer makes Aphrodite into a complex and problematic figure. When
she is asked to become Sappho's summachos, "fellow-fighter" or "ally," how are we
supposed to feel. According to one strand of Homeric allusion and tradition, Aphrodite is
of little value as a fighter or an ally; she is too weak, the most womanly and least warlike
of the gods. But we have seen that according to another way of looking at her, she may
be too strong and too universal a force to be confined in a personal alliance. She
embodies the raw power that can send wise men into a frenzy and make the just do
injustice, than can make even Zeus inattentive, and enslave gods and men alike. When
Sappho asks for her aid as an ally, she cites past times when the goddess has come to her
rescue; Aphrodite even seems already to know what is in Sappho's heart, whom she
longs for and what she most wants. But there is good reason for this: It must be the case
that the goddess has not invariably been Sappho's ally in the past. Who but Aphrodite
herself could have inspired Sappho with her present wretched, unrequited passion?
The goddess asks Sappho to say who it is that has wronged her, offered her
injustice. The temptation is to think that Aphrodite will restore justice and set things
right. But it is a strange "justice" that remedies one desperate, unrequited longing by
inspiring another. There is a grim twist in the last line of the sixth stanza: After
promising Sappho fulfillment, that she shall no longer woo but be wooed instead, the
goddess shows her raw power and sheer indifference to human preferences in the short
phrase k'ouk etheloisa, "even though unwilling." Note that the participle is negated here
with ouk and not me; there is no dispute of the fact that the beloved girl is now unwilling.
19
�But she will be made to love, even though it is against her will. Perhaps there is a veiled
threat her, directed at Sappho: What the goddess can do to another, in Sappho's interest,
can also be done-has already been done-to Sappho herself. What is more, if we look
closely at Aphrodite's promises, we notice that she nowhere indicates specifically that
Sappho will be the object of her beloved's love. "If now she flees, soon she will
pursue"-but whom she will pursue, we are not told. This could be a sort of wild justice:
To take retribution for Sappho's pain by causing its object to pine for some third person.
To some lovers, this sort of revenge might be a comfort; but if in her raging heart Sappho
most wants a happy ending-mutuality, fulfillment, the gratification of her lovepassion-then it is not altogether clear that she will receive it. The goddess's oracular,
equivocating reply leaves open the possibility that Sappho will be betrayed by her "ally."
It may be the goddess herself who is "wronging" Sappho. The Aphrodite we see here
reminds us of the goddess of Iliad III, who with harsh threats forces the unwilling Helen
to do her bidding and wait on the pleasures of Alexandros [III.390-420]. The reason she
is an unreliable ally in wars of love is that she always fights on both sides, or in the
interests of love itself. She is no respecter of persons-Athena may help her favorites,
Diomedes and Odysseus, but Sappho's Aphrodite beguiles and afflicts her favorites, like
Helen. As a goddess she is less like a person than like a natural force; you cannot expect
her not to do her will.
I am not claiming that this negative, disquieting reading of the figure of Aphrodite
is the truer, deeper reality, behind the appearance of beneficence. The calm, orderly,
powerful yet intimate affect, mixed with humor, that we first found in the poem ~ really
there. The poem holds together both sets of feelings and possibilities, reminding us that
20
�there is no self-knowledge without confusion and the experience of complexity. The
smile of the goddess expresses a kind of equipoise or ambiguity. She hides herself, not
because she has a decided malevolence or even indifference toward our desires, but rather
because she insists on withholding herself from finite human knowledge. She will do
what she will do; we are thrown back on our own ignorance and mortal limitation.
These are the wiles that Aphrodite weaves; this is the meaning of her archaic
smile at the heart of this great poem. But perhaps Sappho too is a weaver of wiles: In
putting herself into the poem, in showing us her self-knowledge and her distance from the
blindness of her own passion, she gains a kind of power even over her mistress,
benefactor and tormentor. Like Aphrodite, she displays poikilia and fights on both sides
at once, portraying her naked passion and yet ironizing it into art. And she too seems to
wear an inscrutable smile, daring us to pluck out the heart of her mystery.
[Recite the poem in Greek once again.]
21
�(1
-...._/~--
Sappho 1
'\ I
0
, )
/_ ,
I S:
)A
1tOtKt"'o0pov a. ava't ficppout 'ta,
I
I
I
1tat ~tac; BoA.o1tA.OKE, A.tcrcroµm cre:,
I
, )/
S:, )
I
S: I
µ11 µ a.crmcrt µllu ovtmcrt uaµva,
I
""
1tO'tVta, 0'U µo v,
Dapple-throned, deathless Aphrodite,
Child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I beseech you ,
Do not with cares and pains oppress,
Lady, my heart,
>
'-
But come here; if ever at another time,
Hearing my cries from far away,
You heeded them, and leaving the
[ ] home of your father,
[Golden] you came,
U
, )
~
I
I , )/
,
''
)
I
a.A.A.a 'tmB e:A.0, at 1tO'ta. Ka'te:pro'ta
' )/
"
,{
/
'tac; e:µac; a.'UBa.c; 'a.iotcra. 1t1lA.ot,
)I
I
'
I
I
e:KA. 'UE<;,, 1ta.'tpoc; Be: Boµov A.t1totcra
I
r,XP'U O" tQ V 11A.0E<;
I
,~
I
I
a.pµ 'U1tacr8e:'U;atcra· KaA.ot Be: cr ayov
JI
,...
"
"""'
I
mKEE<; crtpo'U0ot 1tEpt yac; µe:A.m vac;
I
I
I , )
, )
I
>1
1t'UKVa BtVVEV'tE<; 1t'tEp a1t ropavrot0E'
I
poc; Bia µe:crcrro,
"';:
<Xt:\lf<X
)/
'
..y'
8' e:;tKOV'tO' O"'U 8' , ro µaKatpa,
I
, )
I
I
µe:tBtmcrmcr a0avatQ) 1tpocrromp
,,
, '.>1
~
I
>.llPE O't'tt Bll'U'tE 1tE1tOV0a Kffi't'tt
-,..
I
Bll'U'tE Ka.A,11µµ t,
I
I
)t
Yoking up your [ ] chariot. Fair swift
Sparrows drew you over the black earth,
Thickly beating their wings from heaven,
Through the middle air,
And at once they arrived. But you, 0
Blessed One,
Smiling with your immortal face,
Asked what again I was suffering and why
Again I called you,
/
Kront µot µaA.tcr'ta 0t:A.ro ye:ve:cr0m And what I most want to befall me
I
I
I
'j\
I
µawoA.~ 0'Uµq?· 'ttVa 811'UtE 1tEt0ro
In my raging heart. "Whom must I again
-.1
"'
)
r.' cptA.otata; 'ttc; cr, r;,
' , ro
mv cr ay11v sc; r av
persuade
'Pdmp' , lx:BtK~e:t;
To take you back-again into her friendship? Who,
Sappho, is wronging you?
'
'
)
I
I
I
Kat yap at cpe:'Uye:t, 'taJ::t:roc; Btro;st ·
)'1,."
'I,>
I
at 8s Bropa µ11 Be:KE't, aA.A.a Brocre:t·
-.
'
'
I
I
1
at Be: µ 11 cptA.st, 'taxe:roc; cptA.11crn
> > I
Kffi'UK e:0e:A.otcra.
'I,.
n
'-
"
I
'
,.._
EA-0£ µot Kat V'UV, xaA.t:1taV Be: A.'UO"OV
/
)/
I
I
EK µEptµvav, ocrcra BE µot 'tEA.Ecrcrm
"
)
/
I
'
)1
0'Uµoc; tµsppe:t, 'tEA.t:crov· cr'U B' a'Ut o<.
I
>I
cr'Uµµaxoc; scrcro.
)
For if now she flees, soon she will pursue;
If she does not take gifts, soon she will
give them;
If she does not love , soon she will love
Even if unwilling."
Come to me now again, and free me from
harsh
Care, and whatever my heart yearns to
Achieve for myself, achieve it; and you be
Yourself my ally.
�WELL-BUILT LESBOS
Once again pelting me with a purple ball,
Golden-haired Eros
Summons me to play
With the girl with fancy sandals.
I.
~
•
)
'
'"·I•)
I
But she (for she is from well-built
Lesbos) condemns my
Hair (for it is white) and
Gapes after another- woman.
(EO"tlV yap CX7t £'\)K'tt'tO'\)
Aecrf3o'U) -tTiv µev ~µ~v Koµ11v
... ;'
,,
(Ae'UKT} yap) Km:aµeµq>e'tcxt,
1tpoc; B' aA.A.T}v i:wCi xacrKet.
T}
- Anacreon, # 358
Some say the Muses are nine- but carelessly:
For look- Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth.
-Palatine Anthology 9 .506, attributed to Plato
A FEW FEATURES OF THE
LESBIAN (AEOLIC)
DIALECT:
accent is recessive- except in
prepositions and a few other
short words
no rough breathings
digamma is used- ''w" sound
some endings different: e.g.
I
/
KcxAEco b ecomes KaA.11µµt
many vowel sounds different..a" sounds predominant.
WfM
/cnfr
~A
1:.2&1
(~
1·,.
'•
,4.-/r:rt:JH
ffr.:~i.J·CJpri'.111}
/)~rl:
· Fig. 4. The Distribution of the Greek Dialects
in the Alphabetic Peria~
�...
Meter: _ U _ x
I _U
U _
I
THE ENGLISH SAPPHIC
U _
(3 times)
uu
or: _
u _ x I _ u u _ I u __ (2 times)
_ U
_x
I_ U
U
_I
U
_x: _
U U __
From "Sapphics," by A.C. Swinburne:
•..Then to me so lying awake a vision
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,
Full of the vision,
Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
Saw the reluctant
Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
Shone Mitylene... (&c.)
Necrotalia (Lines for a friend who had asked me to translate a stanza of Sappho)
Since I sent the message that only Swinburne
Could compose in English a Sapphic stanza
Graceful, subtle, charming enough to call a
Worthy translation,
I have felt insidious change suffusing
All my being; greener I grow than grass is;
From the grass the sinuous S's slither,
Sidewardly, slewing-Soft they slide in sibilant susurration, .
M's and L's in languid embrace renewing ..
Melancholy moans of commiseration
Lost rhymes are ruing.
Paper now and pen they pervade and plunder,
Lilting, melting, murmuring, lisping, cooing,
While I watch, and wearily whisp'ring, wonder,
"What am I doing?"
Could he have been wrong about all the rivers,
~reserpine and peace and alliteration?
Has he lost his Eden; condemned to suffer
Reincarnation?
--Lucy Turnbull
�Notes to Sappho 1
,
.
.
I
,/
"th
II
1tOt.Kt.A.o0poY[E]-- case is vocative. from 7tOtKtA.oc; + epovoc;,
rone. Some editors emend
to 7tOtKtA.6q>pov·.
Cx0avcx't{B]-- also Vocative
l)oA.67tA.OKE-- vocative, from 8oA.oc;, "guile, trick"+ 7tA.faro, "weave"
ffcrmcn- from ~on, -ric;, "care, distress." Here in dative pl. with added t.
'ovtcx-- (= Attic ~v{cx) "pain, grief," also in dat • pl.
Bcxµvaro--tame, subdue, conquer, oppress
7t6tvtcx- "mistress, lady"
euµoc;- =Attic euµ6c; .
-rurB[E]-- "here, hither''
iA.6(B] -- aorist imperative of ~pxoµm
,,
"
CXt 1tOtCX = Bt 7tOtE
)
/
'- )
.,,
)
,
'"
xcxtBpo.rm = Kcxt £t£protcx (Bttprotcx, II a t ano th er t'1me,
,,
> ,
II
II.
I
Eµcxc; (= Eµcxc;)-- my in acc. p .
,,
, s:: ,
f
, s:: I II •
"
au8cxc; (= cxuucxc;)-- rom auun, voice, cry
/
atotcrcx (=tiiouocx) -- progressive active participle, fem. nom. sing. of al.ro, "hear"
1t~A.0t = Attic triA.o~, "far off'
£KAU£c;-- As opposed to
in the previous line, KA.-0ro means not only "to hear," but "to
heed." The two words share cl~8cxc; as direct object.
1t&tpoc; B~µov-- "the house of your father"; object of A.tnotocx
A.{1totcrcx= A.t1to~crcx. Aorist fem. nom. sing. participle of A.E(nro, "to leave"
xpucrtov- - Translators disagree about whether this acc. sing. adjective, meaning "gold, "
should be taken as masc., .modifying BO'µov, or as neut., modifying apµcx. My
solution is "both and neither''; it's so closely linked with flA.etc;, ''you came ,"that its
force seems to me adverbial.
ciico
>,
(,
.
..
)
'
c:Xpµa = apµcx, neut. acc., "chariot," object of U1tcxcr8£'UScxtocx.
\>7tcxcr8e'6l;mcra = \,1to~£~sacrcx, aorist fem: nom. particip. of 1>1to~£u'yvuµt, "to yoke up."
r.r,'H
.
cxyov= rirov, from ayro.
!(
,,....
>I
•
wK££c; = COKEtc;, mac. nom. pl. from roK'Uc;, "swift"
,..
I
I"\
otpoueot-- p ural of otpo'U9oc;, "sparrow."
/ h ere = U7t£p
~
.
1t£ptrac;= y~c;, "earth," in genitive with 1tep(
µBA.a{vac;-- "black," modifies yac;.
,.
I
·
J
1t'UKVCX- "thick"; here the neut. acc. pl. is adverbial, modifying BtVVEVtEc;
B{vv£VtEc;-- masc. nom. pl. of participle of Btvvriµt (=8w6ro), "to whirl, beat."
1tt~p[cx]-- 'wings," in" acc., object of B{vv£Vt£c;.
,
• .,
/
U
S:: '
""
,
• t
~
.
t
>
"f
h
II
a1t oopcxvroiec:poc; uta µEcroro= CX1t oupavou mec:poc; Bta µEoou. CX7t o'Upavou-- rom eaven.
,,
' .,,
mec:poc; Btcx µrnou-- ".through the middle air."
)f
...
t
)
,
atwa-- adv., "suddenly, immediately." .
3rd pers. p I. aons t o f £~tKvsoµai = aq>tKVBoµm, "t o amve.II
.
'i::.
~
>
~
.
~i::.'
E~t.Kovto- -
�(5
µax:mpcx- - fem. vocative of µcxx:ap1.0c;, "blessed, blissful, happy:•
µst8tcx(crma{cx]- - =µstBtno:cxacx, aorist fem. participle of µ£t~tcxro, "smile"
I'
1tpocrro,,;ov- - "face, coun tenance
It
11PE[o]- -aons t 2nd person sing. o f Epoµm, as k"
u
uttt= t i 'tt, ''wh a t"
o
'-;
...
t;\
•
Brrots= 8n cxut£, ''y e t again
1tBitovecx- - 1st person sing. perfect of mxaxro, "suffe~·
)I
°' U
KCOt'tt = 'KCXt Ott, an d wh\111
y
1
"'
'\"
KCXr..11µµ t = 'KCXr..£(1), ca II"
II
0
0
II
,,
II
11
II
~I
"Krotn= Kat l.t 'tt, an d w ha t"
o
, '\
"mos t"
µcxr..tcrtcx- eb"ro= £efaro, ''want"
yevscrem- -aorist infinitive of y{yvoµm, "come to be, happen"
µmv6)..~- -"raging, frenzied." In dative; gender is masculine-- modifies euµro
"
nvcx-- ''wh om "
,,;deco- - Here a deliberative subjunctive: "Whom am I to persuade ..."
~'V o'/J:ynv E<; fav cptAotma- - The text is apparently corrupt; this reading includes
editorial emendations. For example, the Mss. read crav, not Fav. In the text
•
'f
t::'.
'\ I
given here, CX'lf •1s again, er aynv= ers + cxyt:tv, sa rcxv cptr..otatct- - in to h er
friendship." .
'!'&itcp[ot]- - vocative of "Sappho"
~8tKft£t= cx8tK£t, 3rd. sing. indic., "to do injustice, harm, wrong."
.._
II
II
•
II
, I
• ''
I
II'
,) ) I
at= Et, "'f'
tcxx£roc;- - "swiftly, quickly, soon"
Bt©sst- - 3rd sing. future of 8tc6Kro, "to pursue, follow, prosecute"
B~KE't[m] = Bhs-cm, "accept, receive."
a)..)..a- -here adverbidl: "rather, on the contrary"
Broeret- - 3rd sing fut. of 8t8roµt, "give"
I
cptAEt = cptAEt
)
'
)
I
•
KCOUK = Kcxt ouK. Kcxt •1s here an • tens1'f1er: even
in
)
I
') I
•
• •
£9£Aotercx= £0e)..ouaa, ''wanting, w1lhng."
~
II
II
xcxA.£,,;cxv...µep{µvcxv- - These are genitive plurals, in an Aeolic form. µ£ptµ vex- - "care,
anxiety''
A.ucrov- - aorist imperative of a familiar verb. Implied object is µs. ·
)/
C..I
Ct
oacrcx (= cxttcx or cxnva) ''whateve~·
t~A.ecrcmt= 't£A£erm. aorist infinitive of 'tEA~ro, "complete, accomplish." In the next line,
i:£)..eaov is aorist imperative of the same verb.
I
"
/
•
tJ.!Eppet= ( iµetpet,. "d es1res, yearns f01 ,
,,,
'
I
autcx = cxutn
I
cruµµcxxoc;- - "ally, fellow fighter, comrade in arms"
~aero- - 2nd person sing. ir:nperative of etµt.
,)I
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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paper
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26 pages
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Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite"
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Tuck is a Tutor emeritus at St. John's College Annapolis. His talk consists of three parts: (1) a short introduction to Sappho, her dialect and her meter; (2) reading, translating and parsing the poem rather hastily, for the benefit of those with some Greek but not a lot; (3) some reflections on the form of the poem and how it works on us.
Creator
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Tuck, Jonathan
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Language
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English
Greek
Identifier
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lec Tuck n.d.
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ce1e16adc2e7155184cb9d375de06282.pdf
d277422ec3a431c978519196234a496b
PDF Text
Text
S!JOHN'S
College
A NN APOLI S • S A NTA PE
P.O. Box 28oo
SCHEDULE OF WEDNESDAY EVENTS
SUMMER2006
Wednesday 7 June
Agamemnon: film version, discussion to follow led by
Andrew Romiti, A'06. Note: this will take place in
the Hodson Room
Wednesday 14 June
All-College Seminar: Selection from Herodotus'
History (the battle ofThermopylae). (Book VII, ch.
172 - end). Photocopies of the reading will be
available in the Assistant Dean's office.
Wednesday 2 1 June
Bach's Suite for Solo Cello in E-flat major: a brief talk
and musical performance; Eric Stoltzfus, Music
Librarian and Tutor Note: This will take place in the
Hodson Room
Wednesday 28 June
"Brotherhood in Genesis" Joseph Smith, Tutor
Wednesday 5 July
Amor in Virgil's Aeneid; Louis Miller, Tutor
Wednesday 12 July
Flannery O'Connor; Joan Silver, Tutor
Wednesday 19 July
The Principle ofNon-Contradiction in Aristotle's
Metaphysics; a discussion led by John Verdi, Tutor
Wednesday 25 July
Oedipus Rex: film version, discussion to follow
Location to be announced
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
21404
4I0-1163-237I
FAX 410-626-2886
www. stjohnscollege.edu
Unless otherwise noted, these events will take place in the King William Room
at 7. 30 p.m.
�
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
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
1 page
Original Format
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paper
Dublin Core
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Creator
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Graduate Institute
Title
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Schedule of Wednesday Events, Summer 2006
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2006, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2006 Summer
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7d59ff3cb28a5e457767d6d367c47348.mp3
1424f8cd5793fbcc87c6a13c908a6c82
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
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Sound
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Original Format
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wav
Duration
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00:37:29
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Shakespeare’s Sonnet 64: What Can Be Said About a Poem, and What Should Be Said
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 11, 2018, by Elliott Zuckerman as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Creator
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2018-07-11
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this available online.
Type
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sound
Format
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mp3
Language
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English
Identifier
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LEC_Zuckerman_Elliott_2018-07-11_ac
Subject
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Sonnets
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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