2
20
50
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"
Summer 200:1
Le~turc
Schedule
May21
Sam Kutler
"Four Favorite Irrational Numbers:
The Differences between Modern
and Ancient Mathematics"
May28
Mark Sinnett
"From Measurement to Measure,
From Ratio to Real Number"
June 4
Robert Goldberg
On Aristotle's Politics
June 11
Gary Borjesson
'"Tis a point of friendship': Hal and
Falstaff in Henry IV''
June 18
Jacqueline Pfeffer
"The Family in Plato's Republic and
Statesman"
June 25
John White and
friends
A Conversation
July 2
Walter Sterling
"Some More or Less Obvious Thoughts
on Why One Should be Wary of Action
from Principle"
July 9
David Cohen, A87
"Erotic Geometries of Time, and the
Coherence of Spaces Between"
July 16
John Verdi
"Conversation and Community:
On the Phaedo"
All lectures will be given on Wednesday evening at 7:30 in the King William
Room, with the exception of David Cohen's lecture, which will be given in the
Conversation Room.
�
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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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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2003 Lecture Schedule
Date
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2003
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2003, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 2003 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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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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Dean's Office
CAMPUS MAIL
SUMMER 2007 LECTURES BY ST. JOHN'S TUTORS
BARR BUCHANAN CENTER/WOODWARD HALL.
KING WILLIAM ROOM
7:30P.M.
June20
George Russell
Plutarch's Alexander
June 27
Patricia Locke
Primordial Silence: The Silence of Chaco Canyon
July 11
Jonathan Tuck
Sons of Homer: The Post-Homeric Epic
July 18
Faculty Study Group
On Aristotle's Metaphysics
On the Metaphysics
July25
Daniel Harrell
Does Beauty Have a Place in Liberal Education?
August 1
Michael Weinman
"A divided sovereignty": Metaphysics, XII.lO and
the Echo of Homer
K/S/Lectures/SU07 schedule
�
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Title
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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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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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Office of the Dean
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Summer 2007 Lectures by St. John's Tutors
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2007
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2007, [sponsored by the Graduate Institute].
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Lecture Schedule 2007 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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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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S!JOHN'S
College
SUMMER 2008 LECTURES
7:30P.M.
ANNAPO LI S • SANTA FE
June 25
Jonathan Tuck
Plato 's Epitaph to Aster
July2
John White
On the Principle ofNon-Contradiction
(Aristotle's Metaphysics, IV.4)
July 9
Chester Burke, Flute
Leslie Star, oboe
Eric Stoltzfus, cello
Cynthia Lapp, soprano
Baroque Sonatas and Arias
July 16
Movie & Discussion
Rash omon
July 23
Faculty Study Group
On Kant's Third
Critique
Kant' s Critique ofJudgment
July 30
Christian Holland
On Bernard's Summation in Woolfs
The Waves
August 6
William Braithwaite
On Proving True Opinion
(Dred Scott Decision, 1857)
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
21404
4w-6z6-zsn
FAX 4I0-295-6937
www. ~jca. edu
The concert on July 9 will be held in the Great Hall. The movie on July 16 will be
viewed in the Hodson Conference Room. On July 23, the faculty study group will hold
their discussion in the Hartle Room. All other lectures will be held in the King William
Room.
�
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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1 page
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paper
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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2008 Lectures
Date
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2008
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2008, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2008 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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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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SUMMER2009
WEDNESDAY EVENING EVENTS
June 24
Joan Silver
A Reading from Flannery O'Connor's Artificial
Nigger, followed by discussion
July I
Matthew Linck
On Aristotle's Physics and Ethics
July 8
Greg Recco
Developing Emotions: Aristotle's Rhetoric II.2-ii
July 15
Marcel Widzisz
The Greatness of Early Rome According to Livy
July 22
John Verdi
Ambiguity in Art and Science
July 29
Louis Petrich
A Viewing of Kenneth Branagh's film of
Shakespeare's Henry V.
Followed by discussion
August 5
George Russell
On Lincoln
The movie on July 29 will be shown in the Hodson Conference Room in Mellon Hall.
All other events will be held in the Great Hall of McDowell Hall.
�
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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1 page
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paper
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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2009, Wednesday Evening Events
Date
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2009
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2009, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 2009 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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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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SUMMER2010
"LIFE OF THE MIND SERIES"
Wednesdays, 7:30p.m.
June 23
Matthew Linck
Some Questions about the Philosophy of Nature
June 30
Felicia Martinez
On Wallace Stevens' "Of Mere Being"
July 7
Jeff Smith
The Political Interstices of King Lear
July 14
Anita Kronsberg
A viewing of the film of King Lear starring Scofield
Followed by discussion
July 21
Matt Caswell
Michael Grenke
Henry Higuera
Michael Weinman
What is Philosophy?
July 28
Eric Stoltzfus
Five fables of La Fontaine, translated and set to
Elliott Zuckerman music by Elliott Zuckerman, and
performed by Eric Stoltzfus, tenor, accompanied at the
piano. With discussion.
Marcel Widzisz
A reading of Medea
August 4
& company
The movie on July 14 will be shown in the Hodson Conference Room in Mellon Hall.
All other events will be held in the Great Hall of McDowell Hall.
�
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.
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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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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2010 "Life of the Mind Series"
Date
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2010
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2010, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2010 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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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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SUMMER 2012
“Wednesday Night Lecture Series”
Great Hall
Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.
June 20
Jeff Black
“Everyone Sees How You Appear; Few Touch
What You Are: Machiavelli on Human Nature”
June 27
William T. Braithwaite
Anita L. Kronsberg
William Pastille
John Verdi
“What is ‘Political Speech’?: A Panel
Discussion of Some Recent First Amendment
Cases”
July 4
Michael W. Grenke
“The Problem of Socrates”
July 11
Steven Gimbel
“Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the
Intersection of Politics and Religion”
July 18
David Levy
“Eros and Rhetoric in the Phaedrus”
July 25
Paul Wilford
“A Look at Kantian Theodicy: Rational Faith
and the Idea of History”
August 1
Lise van Boxel
“Courage, Insight, Sympathy, Solitude: The
Genealogy of the Noble Type in ‘Part Nine’ of
Beyond Good and Evil”
�
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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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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2 page
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paper
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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2012 "Wednesday Night Lecture Series"
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2012
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2012, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2012 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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pdf
Relation
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June 20, 2012. Black, Jeff. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/10" title="Everyone sees how you appear; few touch what you are">Everyone sees how you appear; few touch what you are</a> (typescript)
July 11, 2012. Gimbel, Steven. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/26" title="Einstein's Jewish science">Einstein's Jewish science</a> (audio)
August 1, 2012. van Boxel, Lise. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/11" title="Courage, insight, sympathy, solitude">Courage, insight, sympathy, solitude</a> (audio)
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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___________________________________________________________________________________________
Summer 2013 “Wednesday Night Lecture Series”
St. John’s College Annapolis
Join us this summer for a series of informal lectures, sponsored by the Graduate Institute
Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Great Hall
___________________________________________________________________________________________
“The Very Pictures of Education: On Rousseau’s Illustrations in Emile”
Wednesday, June 19
Jeff Black, Director of the Graduate Institute, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“Equality of the Sexes in Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae (The Assembly of Women)”
Wednesday, June 26
William. Braithwaite, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“John Huston’s ‘The Dead’: A Film Screening and Discussion” (Reading the Dead from James Joyce’s
The Dubliners is highly recommended. Time and location to be announced.)
Wednesday, July 3
Louis Petrich, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“Miracles and Belief: Is Belief in Miracles Compatible with a Scientific Understanding of the World?”
Wednesday, July 10
Joseph Cohen, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“The Rise of the Private Self in Genesis One‐Three”
Wednesday, July 17
Amanda Printz, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Oglethorpe University
“On Courage”
Wednesday, July 24
Michael W. Grenke, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
Nietzsche, Hegel, and the Problem of History
Wednesday, July 31
Shilo Brooks, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Bowdoin College
___________________________________________________________________________________________
�
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
Text
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1 page
Original Format
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paper
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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2013 "Wednesday Night Lecture Series"
Date
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2013
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2013, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2013 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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Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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McGuire, Terry
From:
Sent:
Subject:
Waters, Taylor
Tuesday, June 10, 2014 1:15 PM
Wednesday Night Lecture Series
Summer 2014 Wednesday Night Lecture Series"
St. John's College Annapolis
Join us this summer for a series of informal lectures, sponsored by the Graduate Institute
Wednesdays at 7:30p.m., Great Hall
"On High Mountains: An Overview of Nietzsche's Perspectivism"
Wednesday, June 18
JS. Black, Director of the Graduate Institute, St. John's College, Annapolis
"Hume's Philosophy of Science"
Wednesday, June 25
James M Mattingly, Georgetown University
"On Reading Poetry Aloud: Some Lessons from Shakespeare's As You Like It"
Wednesday, July 2
William Braithwaite, Tutor, St. John's College, Annapolis
"Machiavelli and Absolution"
Wednesday, July 9
Stephen D. Wrage, United States Naval Academy
"Mastery, Freedom, Friendship: Tutor and Pupil in Rousseau's Emile"
Wednesday, July 16
Gianna Englert, Georgetown University
"The Relationship of Art and Truth in Plato's Republic"
Wednesday, July 23
Jamuna Reppert, Claremont Graduate University
On the Humanity of Thucydides' Demosthenes"
Wednesday, July 30
Andrea Radasanu, Northern Illinois University
1
�
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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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2014 ["]Wednesday Night Lecture Series"
Date
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2014
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2014, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2014 Summer
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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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
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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Text
Summer 2015 “Wednesday Night Lecture Series”
St. John’s College Annapolis
Join us this summer for a series of informal lectures, sponsored by the Graduate Institute
Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Great Hall
“The Problem of Absolute Knowing”
Wednesday, June 17
Abraham Jacob Greenstine, Duquesne University
“Why Can’t Gods Be Jealous? Aristotle’s Quarrel with the Poets in the Metaphysics”
Wednesday, June 24
Christopher Utter, Georgetown University
“Tocqueville’s American Odyssey”
Wednesday, July 1
Steven Crockett, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art”
Wednesday, July 8
Daniel Harrell, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“Crime, Suffering and Punishment: A Look at O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to
Find’”
Wednesday, July 15
George A. Russell, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis
“Sciene and Philosophy in Istanbul, 1650-1750”
Wednesday, July 22
Harun Kucuk, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
“Of Texts and Teachers: Writing and its Limits in Plato’s Laws”
Wednesday, July 29
Pavlos Leonidas Papadopoulos, University of Dallas
___________________________________________________________________________________________
�
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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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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2015 "Wednesday Night Lecture Series"
Date
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2015
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2015, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2015 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
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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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<a title="The problem of absolute knowing" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/9">The problem of absolute knowing</a> (typescript)
<a title="Tocqueville's American Odyssey" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/272">Tocqueville's American Odyssey</a> (audio)<br /><a title="Tocqueville's American Odyssey" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/323">Tocqueville's American Odyssey</a> (typescript)
<a title="The lost idea of a liberal art" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/275">The lost idea of a liberal art</a> (audio)<br /><a title="The lost idea of a liberal art" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/320">The lost idea of a liberal art</a> (typescript)
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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939646b6b90dc09cdecfc42c4e53fc6f
PDF Text
Text
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Summer 2016 “Wednesday Night Lecture Series”
St. John’s College Annapolis
Join us this summer for a series of informal lectures, sponsored by the Graduate Institute
Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Great Hall
___________________________________________________________________________________________
“Imagination and Leadership”
Wednesday, June 15
David Townsend, Tutor, St. John’s College
“A Good Answer: Comment on Exodus, Chapter 3”
Wednesday, June 22
Andre Barbera, Tutor, St. John’s College
“Reason without Reasons: Anti‐Rationalism in Heidegger’s Being and Time.”
Wednesday, June 29
Lee Goldsmith, George Washington University
“We Are, Nonetheless, Cartesians”
Wednesday, July 6
Anton Barba‐Kay, The Catholic University of America
“The Concept of Movement/Change in Ancient Chinese Thought and its Modern Application”
Wednesday, July 13
Brian Dougherty, The University of Maryland
All College Seminar
Wednesday, July 20
The Graduate Council, St. John’s College
“All in C Major: The Opening of Bach’s Well‐Tempered Clavier”
Wednesday, July 27
Elliott Zuckerman, Tutor, St. John’s College
___________________________________________________________________________________________
�
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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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Graduate Institute
Title
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Summer 2016 "Wednesday Night Lecture Series"
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2016
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2016, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 2016 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
Relation
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<p><a title="Reasons without Reason" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/762">Reasons without Reason: Anti-rationalism in Heidegger’s Being and Time</a></p>
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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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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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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website
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Summer 2018 Lecture Schedule
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2018, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Graduate Institute
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
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2018
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text
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pdf
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English
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Lecture Schedule 2018 Summer
Relation
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July 13, 2018. Peterson, John. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3940" title="Property, Belief, and the Barbarian in Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws">Property, Belief, and the Barbarian in Montesquieu's <em>Spirit of the Laws</em></a> (audio)
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
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Text
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
P.O. BOX 2800
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404-2800
FOUNDED
1696
AS
KING
WILLIAM'S
SCHOOL
SUMMER COLLOQUIA 1995
Instead of the usual summer lectures, there will be a series of six
collquia this summer, on Wednesday evenings at 7:30. Posters will
go up in advance of each colloquium as reminders.
Most of them
will take place in the King William Room of the library.
A member of the
A colloquium is less formal than a lecture.
faculty will give a short presentation, and the remaineder of the
evening will be spent in open conversation.
This summer's colloquia will be:
June 28
Thomas May
Christopher Wren and the Church of St. Stephen's
WaLbrook: Grandeur, Grace, and Geometry
July s
July 12
Henry Higuera
On Plato's Theaeteus
samuel Kutler
Ancient vs. MOdern Mathematics via Ptolemy's
"Menelaus Theorem"
July 19
Walter sterling
On Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics
July 26
Radoslav Datchev
On
August 2
Presocratic Greek Usage
Elliot Zuckerman and Eric Stolzfus
Beethoven: Sonata for 'Cello and Piano in A major,
qp.
69
TELEPHONE 410-263-2371
�
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.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
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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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Summer Colloquia 1995
Date
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1995
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 1995, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1995 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
A language of the resource
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/db4caa4fbabe01200fa6928f1b2b9354.pdf
e8b9c48b9ec8aad64fe32c090c483204
PDF Text
Text
Summer Lecture Slate 2004
S!JOHN'S
College
June 2
Jason Tipton
"Something Fishy in Aristotle"
June 9
Elliott Zuckerman
"Streams, Spinning-Wheels, and
Organ-Grinders. A Talk at the
Piano"
June 16
Joe Sachs
"On Aristotle's Poetics"
June 23
Christine Kalkavage On Vergil
June 30
Susan Paalman
" Galen, Nature, and
0 bservation"
July 7
Samuel Kutler
"Begitmings"
July 14
Jolm Verdi
"On Seeing Aspects"
July 16 (Friday!)
Will Williamson
Louis Petrich
"Othello' s Beginning, Middle,
and End"
July 21
Sriram Nambiar
"Formal and Informal Proofs
In Ancient and Modem
Mathematics"
ANNAP O LIS • SANTA PB
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.0. Box 28oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2I404
4I0-626-25II
FAX 4I0-295-6937
www.sjca. edu
All lectures will be held at 7:30p.m. in the King William Room, except for
Mr. Zuckerman' s performance/talk, which will be in the Hodson Room, and
the Friday-night performance/discussion of Messrs. Petrich and Williamson,
which will be in the Great Hall.
�Summer Lecture Slate 2004
June 2
Jason Tipton
"Something Fishy in Aristotle"
June 9
Elliott Zuckerman
"Streams, Spinning-Wheels, and
Organ-Grinders. A Talk at the
Piano"
June 16
Joe Sachs
June 23
Christine Kalkavage On Vergil
June 30
Susan Paalman
"Galen, Nature, and
Observation"
July 7
Samuel Kutler
"Beginnings"
July 14
John Verdi
"On Seeing Aspects"
July 16 (Friday!)
Will Williamson
Louis Petrich
"Othello's Beginning, Middle,
and End"
July 21
Sriram Nambiar
"Formal and Informal Proofs
In Ancient and Modern
Mathematics"
"On Aristotle's Poetics"
All lectures will be held at 7:30p.m. in the King William Room, except for
Mr. Zuckerman's performance/talk, which will be in the Hodson Room, and
the Friday-night performance/discussion of Messrs. Petrich and Williamson,
which will be in the Great Hall.
�
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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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.
2 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
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Creator
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Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Summer Lecture Slate 2004
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2004, [sponsored by the Graduate Institute].
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2004 Summer
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d9190e5c959097a4188f5ff469d07616.pdf
b3442839fcfe23fee8cd338d2076802d
PDF Text
Text
Summer Lectures (1979)
8 June
Michael Dink
15 June
Elliot Zuckerman
22 June
Jon Lenkowski
29 June
Samuel Kutler
6 July
David Lachterman
13 July
John White
20 July
ESSAYS DUE
27 July
Mary Hannah Jones
3 August James Carey
Friendship in Plato’s Phaedo
An Opinion about Major and Minor
On Definitions
Play and Seriousness
On Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Aristotle’s Poetics
Muθos in the Odyssey
Aristotle and the Problems of Intelligibility
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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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Summer Lectures (1979)
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Dink, Michael
Zuckerman, Elliott
Lenkowski, Jon
Kulter, Samuel
Lachterman, David Rapport, 1944-
White, John
Jones, Mary Hannah
Carey, James
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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Summer lectures
2005
June 1
Patricia Locke
and friends
Reading of Philoctetes
June 8
ZenaHitz
Aristotle on self-knowledge and
friendship
June 15
David Stephenson
"Mythos" and "Logos" (On the Poetics)
June 22
Suzy Paalman
Some Thoughts on the Book of Job
June29
Anthony Seeger
"Who Owns Music?"
July6
Tom May
"My true account:" A Tutorial
Discussion about Milton's Sonnets VII
"How soon hath time the suttle theef of
youth," and XVI, "When I consider how
my light is spent"
July 13
George Russell
On Republic I
July20
John Verdi
and friends
Seminar on Aristotle, Metaphysics,
Book I, 1-4 (980a21--985b22) and Book
II (993a30--995a20)
�
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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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Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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8463b49f6747370c2c00f258c2275054
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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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Teaching Poetry, Revelation, Mathematics, and Respect for Truth
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Video recording of a lecture delivered on July 8, 2020 by Ted Hadzi-Antich as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Ted Hadzi-Antich, chair of the political science department at Austin Community College, presents a talk about teaching the first book of Euclid’s Elements in the context of other works studied in the Great Questions seminar. This lecture includes some animated presentations of Euclid propositions, including 1.47.
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Hadzi-Antich, Theodore
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2020-07-08
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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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Langston, Emily
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Hadzi-Antich_Ted_2020-07-08
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Education, Humanistic
Community college teaching
Euclid. Elements
Summer lecture series
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This "'.laterial may be protected by
Copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code)
The Greeks and Their Dogs
-
Jonathan Tuck
[A summer lecture, given at St. John's College, July 17, 2002]
After his return to Ithaca, Odysseus is a party to a number of recognition scenes.
One of the most affecting involves his old dog Argos (the word means "shining"), who
now lies helpless, shinging no longer, in filth and fleas at the door of the palace. Though
he and Odysseus are both much changed for the worse, each recognizes the other
immediately. Argos wags his tail and drops his ears, but is too weak to move toward his
master. Odysseus, concealing a tear, asks his companion, the swineherd Eumaios, why
such a fine-looking dog lies here amid the dung. Eumaios, still ignorant of the identity of
Odysseus, answers that Argos was once a fine dog, but now no one cares for him, since
his master perished in a far land. The two men move past the dog Argos to enter the
palace; and the narrator tells us:
But the fate of black death took hold of Argos,
Having seen Odysseus again in the twentieth year.
(XVII. 326-7)
Clearly Argos dies of joy, at the sight of the man he has awaited for twenty years. No
one else, recognizing Odysseus, gives such clear evidence of pure faithfulness and
devotion. For that matter, no other human being penetrates Odysseus' disguise instantly,
without tokens or persuasion. Of those that recognize Odysseus on his return, the only
other character to see through his disguise is the goddess Athena, herself disguised, on
the beach in Book XIII.
�2
On the showing of this episode, we would likely assume that both Odysseus and
Homer hold dogs in high regard. But recall another moment of recognition, this one in
Book XXII: Having easily strung the bow and shot an arrow through the axeheads,
Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors by killing their leader, Antinous. Still, they do
not recognize him; but Odysseus puts them out of doubt, saying:
0 you dogs [~ K6vsc;], you thought I would never come again,
returning home from the land of the Trojans ...
(XXIl.35-6, emphasis mine)
[digression on the word K6mv, KVVO<;-(use the blackboard): A third declension
noun, the embarrassingly erroneous name ofthe women's soccer team ["K6vm x0rovtm"]
to the contrary notwithstanding; derives from Inda-European root kwon-; etymologically
related to cynic, cynosure, canine, kennel.]
Isn't it puzzling that in this moment of passion, the worst thing Odysseus can call his
mortal enemies, the faithless usurpers of his kingdom, his house and his marriage, is
"dogs"? Has he forgotten Argos so soon?
Now those among us who own both dogs and houses might argue that there is no
contradiction at all in claiming that dogs are, on the one hand, utterly faithful and selfless
defenders of the house, and on the other hand, utterly shameless, wanton usurpers ofit.
But it seems unlikely that Odysseus was referring to the cheerful fecklessness with which
dogs chew up valuable garments, destroy lawns and gardens and shed fur and other
excreta on every available surface. Admittedly, dogs are slobs, but such negligence
seems to be a far cry from the deep-seated malice that Odysseus attributes to the suitors.
When we look at other allusions to dogs in the Homeric poems, and elsewhere in some of
the Greek books we read, we will see that dogs are presented at best equivocally or
�3
ambivalently. In Homer, they get a very bad press most of the time. I will return to
Argos later; for the moment I only want to suggest that by looking at the Greeks and their
dogs we may learn something about our attitudes towards our own animals and our own
animality.
Perhaps the most surprising negative characterization of dogs involves a kind of
boldfaced shamelessness-surprising to me because many of the dogs I have known have
seemed to display the ability to feel a very human kind of shame. Homer uses the phrase
Kt>ov cioss~ - "fearless dog," in the vocative-as well as words like l(l)Vrom~-"dogfaced, or dog-eyed"-to refer to this brazen boldness. Helen uses the term of herself
twice, once in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey. It is also used by Hephaestus, referring
to the infidelity of his wife Aphrodite (Od VIII), and applied to Athena, Artemis and
Hera, as well as to the serving-girl Melantho, addressed by Penelope. A striking use of
l(l)Vcom~
comes in Odysseus' colloquy with the ghost of Agamemon, in the underworld
(Od XI). Agamemnon says of Clytemnestra:
She, bitch-faced, turned away, and did not stay to
close my eyes with her hands or to shut my mouth,
though I was dying and going to Hades. So there is
nothing else more fearsome [mv6rspov] or shameless
["doglike," Kt>vrspov] than a woman, who takes into
her mind such deeds as these: the ugly work she devised,
preparing death for her wedded husband.
One interesting thing about all these occurrences of "dogfaced," meaning shameless or
"bold," is that they are all applied to women, frequently in a context of sexual infidelity or
the immodesty of acting in a way unbefitting a woman, especially rebelling against
domestic subjugation (Clytemnestra, Hera). In Homer there is only one exception to this
rule: Achilles, in Book I, addresses Agamemnon as "dogfaced" (l(l)Vc01t11~) and latter
�4
accuses him of "having the eyes of a dog, but the heart of a deer." We can see that
Achilles' furious taunting of Agamemnon involves an implicit sexual reference; an
epithet is applied to him that is otherwise used only of women.
Outrageous boldness is also represented in comparative and superlative forms of
an canine-related adjective. In Book XX of the Odyssey, Odysseus is forced to restrain
himself and endure watching the women of the palace behaving wantonly. His heart
growls within him, the narrator tells us,
as a dog growls,standing over her tender puppies, seeing an
unknown man, and ready to fight.
But then Odysseus strikes his breast and exclaims,
"Endure, my heart! You endured a worse thing (1C6vi-spov-a
"doggier" thing, a more outrageously degrading thing) on the day
when the mighty Cyclops devoured my noble companions... "
(Od XX.18)
We get the superlative form in Iliad X, in the Doloneia, when Odysseus, after stealing the
horses of the sleeping Thracians, ponders what biggest outrage (6 n 1C6vi-awv, the
doggiest thing) he can do to them.
This is an etymological conjecture unsupported by Chantraine, but I think the
idea of dogginess might also be represented in the Greek word for a catamite, rivmoo~,
one who has the rLtOOO~, the shame, of a dog-that is, none. lCLVatOSia, the abstract noun,
is the word for ''unnatural lust" or "sexual perversion." But sexuality is not the only
physical drive connected with dogs. Odysseus says to the Phaiakians:
"But let me dine, even though I am grieving; for there is
nothing more shameless [1C6vi-spov, "doglike"] than the
�5
loathsome belly, which by necessity commands a man to
remember, even when he is worn down and holds grief in
his heart, as I do, and bids me always to eat and drink, and
to forget all that I have suffered... "
(Odyssey VIl.216f)
So the idea that dogs are particularly shameless seems to be connected with physicality in
general, both with sexual lust and with other appetites that we share with dogs and other
beasts, like the need for food and drink. This association of dogs with our corporeality
reminds me of some lines from the American poet May Swenson:
Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen ....
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
["Question," 11. 1-4, 11-15]
That dogs stand for physicality also means that they are connected with death. As
we saw, Argos' most eloquent action, the only tribute he can give to his returning master,
is to die--to die like a dog, as we still say. In one way the dog is our surrogate, the body
which dies; in another way the dog is purely other, a threat to the fate of our bodies after
we are dead. At the very beginning of the fliad, we are told that the rage of Achilles sent
the souls of many heroes to Hades, but made them themselves-that is, their bodies-a
prey for dogs and the delicate feastings of birds. Dogs are feeders on carrion. It is
disgraceful to become a prey for dogs, in the same way that death is disgraceful, only
more so. Both death itself and becoming a feast for dogs and birds represent being
reduced to mere physicality. Repeatedly, the threat of being eaten by dogs is used to
�6
urge men to fight harder, or to taunt them (e.g., lliadII.393, VII.379, XVIII.179,
XXII.339, etc.; Odyssey XXI.363). Ifwe care too much for the safety of our bodies, we
consider ourselves to be nothing more than our bodies, which becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy when the dogs and the birds get us in the end. Perhaps that is why both
Diomedes and Achilles use the epithet "dog" in accusing Hector of cowardice:
"Now once again you have escaped death, you dog,
but the evil came close to you; now again Phoebus
Apollo saved you. You must have prayed to him as
you went among the hurtling spears. But I will make an
end of you when I meet you later. .. "
(fliadXI. 362 f. and XX. 449 f.)
In similes, dogs are usually on the defensive, an undifferentiated group of faceless
antagonists for some brilliant lion or boar who attacks the flock. Almost always it is the
Trojans who are the dogs, serving as foils for some isolated Greek hero who becomes
briefly godlike. Sarpedon speaks of his Trojan allies as cowering before Diomedes, in his
aristeia, his moment of excellence, "like dogs around a lion" (fl. V. 476). Similarly, in
the fight over the body of Patroclus:
As when some mountain-bred lion, trusting in his strength
snatches from the grazing herd whichever cow is best, first
taking its neck in his strong jaws he breaks it, and then gulps
down the blood and all the innards, and around him the dogs
and the herdmen shout from a distance, but are not willing to
come closer, for pale fear seizes them; so the spirit of none of
them dared to go against glorious Menelaus.
(XVI.61-69)
We seem to have come quite a distance, from shameless boldness to shameless
timorousness. But if one class characteristic underlies these various instances, I would
say it is the degraded condition of dogs, the lumpish physicality that either does not or
�7
ought not assert itself. If humans are halfway between gods and beasts, the particular
beast that we are above is often the dog. For the Greeks ideationally, as for us
orthographically, "dog" is "god" spelled backwards; to be a dog is essentially to be
ungodlike, to be the gods' polar opposite (hence my whimsical, quasi-dyslexic title,
which Judy Seeger says was very difficult for her to type). I infer this pattern of
opposition partly from general experience. If the Homeric gods are complex, wild, free,
masterful and mysterious, dogs seem to be simple, domestic, slavish and transparent.
Think of Baudelaire's poem Les Chats, in which he portrays cats as divine in origin,
arrogantly beautiful, and sheerly enigmatic. A cat-god makes perfect sense. Could we
without laughter imagine such a poem about dogs? But in addition to general experience,
I can appeal to a number of details in Homer's text. I have already mentioned that there
are two recognition scenes in which Odysseus is recognized immediately, one with the
goddess Athena and one with the dog Argos. Athena herself is in disguise; Argos is
incapable of disguising his responses, but also too weak to express them openly enough
to be a danger. He is the only loyal member of the Ithaca household that dies, and that is
all he does. In all this he is the opposite of godlike. There is another episode to support
the claim that Argos and Athena form a pair of sorts, framing the other, human
recognition scenes. In Book XVI, Athena appears to Odysseus in the swineherd's hut in
order to urge him to reveal himself to Telemachus:
She came near, and she looked like a woman, tall and
beautiful of body, and skilled in beautiful works. She stood
against the door of the hut, appearing to Odysseus, but
Telemachus did not see her in front of him or recognize
her. For somehow the gods do not appear clearly to everyone.
But Odysseus saw her, and so did the dogs. They did not
bark, but with a whimper they went in fear to the far side
�8
of the farmstead.
(XVl.157-163)
Here once again Athena and the dogs are symmetrically positioned on either side of
Odysseus, excluding other humans.
Another illustration of the notion of dogs as ungodlike: The wild dogs who are
eaters of carrion are outside the human community: They are fuµocp<iym, raw meat eaters,
like the Cyclops, and as such not fit to live in cities. We remember Aristotle's dictum
that whoever does not live in a city is either a beast or a god. At the other extreme, the
gods do not eat the roasted flesh that is offered to them; they only smell the sweet smoke
of it. We humans, city-dwellers, in our medial position, we eat the cooked meat.
The only Homeric dogs that constitute a clear exception, in my view, are the
wonderful dogs in Phaiakia. As we hear in Odyssey VII:
On either side [of the door] there were golden and
silver dogs, which Hephaestus had made with skilful
cunning to guard the home of greathearted Alkinous;
They were deathless and ageless all their days.
(VIl.91-94)
This is the kind of exception that proves the rule. In magical Phaiakia, every aspect of
the natural order seems to be inverted: Ships steer themselves and trees bloom and bear
fruit together in every season. All the more reason to think that dogs as a class are the
opposite of these splendid specimens.
Speaking of dogs as the polar opposites of gods leads me straight to a
semidigression on the interesting topic of Socrates' oath, "by the dog." In a learned note,
E.R. Dodds, the editor of the Oxford edition of Gorgias, tells us that this oath was
�9
thought by ancient commentators to be a euphemism, coined by Rhadamanthus the Just
in order to avoid taking the names of the gods in vain. (It is thus almost exactly cognate
with our expression "Doggone it" instead of "Goddamn it.") 1bis humorous, colloquial
substitution of the name of dog for the name of god confirms my claim that dogs and
gods are polar opposites. Even in its simpler, un-Egyptian form, the oath draws upon this
opposition. "By the dog" is not peculiar to Socrates; Dodds cites a usage of it by a slave
in Aristophanes' Wasps. (In other comedies, characters swear "by the wild goose" and
"by the cabbages.") If the oath was euphemistic in origin, it does not seem to fill that role
for Socrates, since he is on many occasions not averse to swearing by Zeus, by Hera, by
Hercules, and so forth. I count ten uses of "by the dog," three in Republic, one each in
Phaedrus, Cratylus, Apology and Phaedo, and three in Gorgias, including one special
one I will come to in a moment. One might suppose that if we are right about the
opposition of gods and dogs, swearing by the dog might be an indicator of a tone of
pointed irony on Socrates' part, perhaps even a suggestion that he does not mean what he
is attesting by his oath. But on the contrary, most of the attestations seem to be both
sincere and emphatic, though qualified by a kihd of folksiness or a tone of mock surprise:
- By the dog! I said, we seem accidentally to have
purged the city that we said was luxurious!
(Republic 399 E)
... sinceby the dog, I think these tendons and bones
would long since have been in Megara or Boeotia,
carried there by an opinion about the best thing, if I
had not thought it juster and nobler to endure whatever
punishment the city might decree, rather than to flee.
(Phaedo 98E)
�10
The uses of "by the dog" often accompany a personal apostrophe to the interlocutor
Socrates is addressing; the oath is a gesture of familiarity, like clapping him on the
shoulder in a friendly way.
And by the dog, 0 men of Athens, for I must tell you
the truth, I experienced something like this: Those with
with best repute of wisdom seemed almost the most lacking.
(Apology 22A)
By the dog, Gorgias, to examine sufficiently how these
things are will require a lengthy conversation.
(Gorgias 461B)
The special usage that begs our attention most urgently is the notorious exclamation at
Gorgias 482B, "by the dog, the god of the Egyptians" or, as it is often rendered, "by the
dog that is god in Egypt." As Eva Brann tells us, the allusion is to Anubis, the dogheaded Egyptian god who served in the Egyptian pantheon some of the functions of
Hermes in the Greek one. Notably, and most relevant for our purposes, he was the
'1'1>X01t0µ1t6~,
the conductor of the souls of those who had recently died, who were being
brought into the underworld to be judged. Now it seems to me that ifthere is any validity
in a tradition of opposmg gods and dogs, our reading of the immediate context of this
oath in Gorgias may be enriched in a number of ways. I want to claim that this use of the
canine oath is not in continuity with other occurrences of "by the dog," but in pointed
contrast to them.
Recall that Socrates has been forcing his interlocutor Polus to concede that, since
it is worse to commit wrong than to suffer it, the wrongdoer should desire and seek
punishment as an expiation. Therefore, instead of using rhetoric to try to evade
�11
punishment, he could only use it to accuse himself with greater eloquence-or, if it was
an enemy who had done wrong, the rhetorician should try to punish his soul by pleading
that his body should be let off scot-free. At this point the politician and demagogue
Callicles breaks in to claim that Socrates must be joking. For, he says,
if you are being serious and if these things you say
tum out to be true, what else can we think but that
the life of humans would be turned upside-down and
that we do everything, as it seems, the opposite of how
we ought to do it?
(481C2-6)
In response, Socrates says it is one of his two beloveds, Philosophy, that speaks thus, not
he. She is more constant than the other beloved (Alcibiades), for her words are always
the same. Socrates concludes:
So either refute her about what I just said, show that wrongdoing
and remaining unpunished for it is not the ultimate of all evils, or if
you leave it unrefuted, by the dog, the god of the Egyptians, Callicles
will never agree with you, 0 Callicles, but will be in discord with you
for your whole life.
(482B3-8)
If the common opinion holds, and holds truly, that dogs are essentially and precisely not
gods, then the oath "by the dog," insofar as it is intended to be recognized as an ironic
euphemism, would endorse that common view. Thus it might be a suitable choice of
attestation to guarantee the view that our common opinions about crime and punishment
are valid ones. But Socrates, in putting forth a radically upside-down view of crime and
punishment (according to the common opinion), uses his oath to point out an analogous
upside-down case: In Egypt, contrary to the common opinion of the Greeks, a dog is in
fact a god. Not only that, but this very dog-god aids in the dispensing of otherworldly
punishments for crimes committed here. Callicles, if he does not make a rational
�12
argument but nonetheless persists in his common opinion, is not just in a state of selfcontradiction; he is, remarkably, committing a kind of impiety. BUT: He would be seen
as impious only in .Egym, which for Socrates is often the source of many crucial pieces of
exotic ancient wisdom. To muddy the waters even further, this dog-god, regarded in
Greece, where dogs are not gods, might seem to be in discord with himself, just like
Calli cl es. The use of the quaint and paradoxical oath, apart from suggesting that Socrates
feels a certain complacency about the point he has just forcefully made, seems to raise the
stakes of the argument. The entrance of Callicles, who will be Socrates' interlocutor and
antagonist for the rest of the dialogue, represents a critical moment in the discussion. At
the same time, I think I want to claim that the tonal ambiguity of "by the dog, the god of
the Egyptians" leaves open the possibility that Socrates will not carry the day.
End of Digression. I have been making the Greek case against dogs, that they are
not only ungodlike but quintessentially, shamelessly bestial. What, you may be thinking,
has happened to Man's Best Friend? The dog, after all, is the proverbial domestic
animal. We must beware of saying that dogs are the beasts that are unfit to live in cities.
In taking the wild carrion-eating dogs as paradigms for the whole species, we are
committing the error against which the Eleatic Stranger warns in Plato's Sophist. Let us
not, he says, confuse the sophists with dialecticians, lest we give them too much honor.
Young Theaetetus objects that the description just given seems very like them; but the
Stranger replies:
Yes, and indeed a wolf is very like a dog, the wildest thing
like the tamest. But it is necessary for the careful man always
to be on his guard [1[oU::icr0m niv q>uA.alcfJv] about resemblances,
for they are the most slippery kind of things.
(231A7-10)
�13
As the phrase "be on his guard" reminds us, dogs are the good guys who stand on guard
against wolves and sophists. We have already seen dogs guarding flocks and houses, not
only poor old Argos, but those very downtrodden dogs who served as spearcarriers in the
similes where the lions or boars played the starring role. And since every dog must have
his day, sometimes the dogs even get the top billing: In IliadX, for example, Nestor and
Diomedes go in the middle of the night to seek the other Greek leaders:
And when they came in among the guards who had
gathered together, they did not find the leading guards
asleep; but they all sat in wakefulness with their weapons.
As when dogs keep painful watch over the flocks in the fold,
hearing the strong-hearted beast as he comes down through
the woods among the hills, and there is a great cry against him
from both men and dogs, and their sleep is destroyed; so was
sweet sleep destroyed from the eyelids of the guards, watching
through that terrible night.
(X.179-194)
In ancient Greece, a domestic dog was a working dog; as Carl Page recently
reminded me, the Greeks didn't do pets. If they weren't guards or sheepherders, they
might be hunting dogs, who also figure in a number of Homeric similes. We can see that
these two household jobs draw to a great extent on the same doggy virtue. Dogs do not
initiate, but they do perseverate; it is not for nothing that they give their name to the word
"dogged," and proverbially the old ones don't learn new tricks. A guard dog is expected
to repel change from without, to preserve the status quo. He needs to endure, to keep on
keeping on. And so does a hunting dog, who in following a trail tries to keep the same
scent in his nostrils. Both of these roles are in play in the Oresteia of Aeschylus. As
early in the trilogy as the third line of the Agamemnon, the loyal watchman laments that
he has to sleep on top of the palace KUvoc; ~tld]v, "in the manner of a dog." (Later in the
�14
play, the Chorus uses the same phrase to describe Cassandra, sniffing out the terrible
secrets of the House of Atreus.) In her disarming flattery of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra
hails him as "the watchdog of the fold," the first of a string of effusively complimentary
epithets. Cassandra later describes this flattery as a bitch's fawning. In the Libation
Bearers, Electra complains that she is kept pent up in the house, like a dog. Later in the
trilogy, the watchdogs give way decisively to the hunting dogs: The Furies are
consistently portrayed as dog-like, both by themselves, by Orestes, and by Clytemnestra
(and her ghost). Of course, most of these canine comparisons are somewhat ambivalent.
It seems that a fawning watchdog can turn on its master; we recall that the ghost of
Agamemnon in the Odyssey described Clytemnestra as a shameless bitch. Here again,
the guardian of the house may also be its usurper. The Furies, in their tenacious pursuit,
illustrate the virtue of a good hunting dog (though we do first see them asleep on the job).
But they are complicated figures: deathless, sinister and threatening but also sort of
comically dopey. They are loathsome in aspect, hated and feared by gods and men. In
my problematized reading of the ending of Eumenides, it is not clear that these old
hunting dogs will be able to learn the new trick of keeping beneficent watch over the city
of Athens.
In the same way, the maenad chorus in Euripides' Bacchae, which are also
repeatedly referred to as hounds, are a kind of safety valve for the city's passions, but
also potentially destructive of the city. Just as a sheepdog may revert to wildness and tear
his own flock, a hunting dog may turn upon his master. The famous case, of course, is
the huntsman Actaeon, who was tom to pieces by his own hounds after inadvertently
seeing Artemis naked. Actaeon is mentioned in the Bacchae; Cadmus points out that
�15
Pentheus was killed on Mt. Kithaeron, the same place where Actaeon died. The usual
allegoresis of the story of Actaeon, in both ancient and modem times, has been that the
hounds represent the passions, which will destroy the person who is subject to them.
So even domesticated dogs, useful and even indispensable though they clearly
are, can revert to brutish wildness. We might ask whether the canine characteristic of
perseveration is better instantiated by a dog's remaining tame or by his reverting to his
wilder nature. When we domesticate dogs, are we merely diverting them temporarily
from a constant path? As tame dogs, they are our artifacts; we teach them to imitate us,
and we take pleasure in their resemblance to us, as we take pleasure in any imitation. But
a likeness is not fully assimilated to the thing it resembles. Dogs seem simple to usthey offer us a kind of trusting, unconditioned love, and hence we feel safe around them.
But should we? If the patina of domestication conceals an enduring nature in opposition
to it, then tame dogs are not simple but complex, and it is we that have made them so.
Perhaps this is the source of the complexity and ambivalence of the Greek response to
them. The possibility of a good dog gone wrong might lead us to wonder about how fully
domesticated we ourselves are, whether we have been educated enough to subdue the
bestial appetites within us. And by this route, we have come at last to the dogs in Plato's
Republic. Here the ambivalence toward dogs, the doubt about whether they are indeed
reliably tamable or educable, is thematized; and what is at stake is nothing less than the
survival of the city-in-speech.
Almost as soon as we leave the city of pigs, it is clear that the newly expanded
city will need warriors, guardians, as Socrates calls them. And almost immediately, these
guardians are likened to dogs-first through a pun (crK6A.a~, "puppy," is close to
cpuA.a~,
�16
"guard") and then through a consideration of the temperament required for a guardian.
Like dogs of good breeding, the warrior-guardians must have a high degree of 0uµ6~,
spirit, in order to be courageous in defense of the city. But can such a warrior also be a
safe presence in the city he is to defend? Socrates claims at 375D to solve the problem
through the likeness to dogs; he argues that since it is clear that dogs can be made tame
while retaining spiritedness, it is therefore possible for one nature to have both qualities.
But this supposed solution is almost immediately undercut. Socrates goes on to claim,
outrageously, that dogs are not only gentle and spirited but also philosophic:
Does it seem to you also that our future guardian will need,
in addition to the spiritedness in his nature, to be philosophic?
-How so? he said. I don't understand.-You will see this also
in dogs, I said, which is something in the beast well worth wondering
at.-What?-lfhe sees someone he doesn't know, he gets angry, even
if he has never suffered anything bad from him. But anyone known
to him he welcomes, even if he has never gotten anything good from
him. Haven't you ever marveled at that?-Not much, he said, I never
thought about it before now; but it's clear that he does it.-But it
shows an exquisite feeling in his nature, and a truly philosophic one.How?- Why, I said, in that he distinguishes a friendly sight from an
unfriendly one by nothing but having learned one and not recognizing
the other. And indeed, how could it not be a love oflearning, defining
what is akin to him and what is other by understanding and ignorance?It couldn't, he said.-But then, I said, aren't love of learning and
philosophy the same thing?-Yes, he said.
(375E-376B)
Where do we begin, in attempting to deconstruct this farrago of nonsense? In the first
place, pace Glaucon, it is by no means clear that this is how dogs behave. Our dog has
heard and smelled the same mailman every day for years on end; yet she never fails to
�17
hurl herself at the closed door with paroxysms of self-righteous barking. Or, if you prefer
authority to experience, we need look no further than "the master of those that know"
[Inferno N.131], Aristotle, who says in the Nicomachean Ethics:
But let us observe that a lack of restraint for spiritedness is
less shameful than a lack of restraint for desires. For spiritedness
seems to listen to reason to some extent, but to mis-hear it, just
as servants in a hurry, who rush off before hearing everything
that is said, get the instructions wrong, or dogs, before looking
to see if it is a friend, bark if there is merely a noise.
(tr. Joe Sachs, l 149A25-30, BK. VII. Chap. 6)
It's notable that the very question under discussion in this passage is the one Socrates was
embroiled in: whether 8uµ6c;, spirit, can be responsive to reason. I would even surmise
that Aristotle had the Republic passage in mind, and was answering it explicitly.
Aristotle would seem to be a more trustworthy guide than Plato (even if Plato were in
deadly earnest here) on questions of animal behavior. But let us grant, for the sake of
argument, that dogs do behave as Socrates describes. Still it is clear, as Allan Bloom and
other commentators have noted, that the example proves the exact opposite of what
Socrates wants it to prove. Dogs do not want to learn anything or anyone new; they bark
at the unknown instead of making it more known to themselves. They are masters of
perseveration and old tricks; they love not what is true or good, but what is their own. If
philosophy were the love of what we already know, Socrates' reasoning would be right;
but if Eros is philosophic, as Diotima says, then the philosopher's love must be for the
wisdom that he lacks. And it seems clear from the long quoted exchange between
Socrates and Glaucon that Socrates knows this full well. Otherwise, why would he even
�18
raise the question of whether it is the same thing to be cpiA.6crocpo~, a lover of wisdom, as
to be cpiA.oµaSfJ~, a lover of learning?
Though Socrates in this passage claims to believe that the domestication of dogs
is a success story that can be paradigmatic for the taming of the high-spirited warrior, he
returns to the topic later on, just after introducing the Noble Lie:
It is the most fearful and shameful thing of all for the shepherds
to train such dogs as helpers of the flocks, in such a way that
through dissipation or hunger or bad habit those very dogs raise
their hands against the sheep, to injure them, and instead of dogs
to resemble wolves.
(416A3-8)
Socrates goes on to reiterate the importance of education to prevent this scenario. But
there was really no need to raise it, out of the blue, unless it serves the dramatic purpose
of betraying a kind of insecurity that the previous argument did not dispel. The issue is
important enough for Socrates to go on worrying at it, as a dog gnaws away at a bone.
If dogs represent the thumoeidic in humans, we have seen that there is an ample tradition
of negativism about the possibility of making this brute impulse safe for the home or for
the city. It seeins likely that Socrates is deliberately evoking this tradition in choosing the
comparison of the guardians with dogs. What he may be implying about the attainability
of the best city or of justice on earth, I will not here conjecture.
I am almost finished with this cavalcade of canines, but I cannot resist adding an
epilogue about the Cynics. The question of whether dogs are philosophic might naturally
raise the question of whether philosophers are, or ought to be, doglike; the Cynics-the
K6viKm or dog-philosophers- said yes. The founder of this school is said to have been
Antisthenes, one of the most faithful followers of Socrates, according to Xenophon.
After the death of Socrates, he began teaching his doctrines of virtue in the Gymnasium
�19
called Cynosarges, or "white (or shining) dog." We remember poor old Argos-though
the name seems not to be an allusion to him, but rather to a white dog who carried off a
sacrifice which was meant for Herakles. Some information about Antisthenes is
available in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers; but it's a rather skimpy
account; one pregnant detail is that one of his lost treatises was entitled, "On Odysseus,
Penelope and the Dog." I wish it had survived; it would be interesting to see the Cynics'
reading of Argos. The real inaugurator of the Cynic tradition was a student of
Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, who became a revered and semi-legendary figure
among the Stoics and others; his name is often yoked by Epictetus with that of Socrates
himself. Diogenes Laertius gives a lot of space to the life of his namesake, Diogenes of
Sinope. It is an entertaining account full of anecdotes and vignettes, usually culminating
in triumphant one-liners by the crusty dog-philosopher. Whatever the origin of the name
of"Cynic," Diogenes clearly embraced the name with literalistic enthusiasm. He referred
to himself as a dog: The tale goes that Alexander once came and stood next to him,
saying,"! am Alexander the Great King," whereby Diogenes replied, "And I am
Diogenes the Dog." And when he was buried, the Corinthians erected a statue of a dog
over his grave, by the city gate leading to the Isthmus.
Why did Diogenes welcome the name of dog-philosopher? What elements of the
traditions I have sketched about dogs might have appealed to him? For one thing, the
brute physicality of a dog's life, which to a Homeric warrior might have seemed
shameful, was for Diogenes a laudable simplicity and self-sufficiency. He lived as a
beggar, slept out in his cloak and tried to have as few possessions as possible. He once
tried to eat raw meat, but could not digest it. When he saw a child drinking out of his
�20
hands, he exclaimed that he had been outdone in plainness of living, and then threw away
the drinking cup he had carried. He proudly claimed for himself a physical hardihood
due to plain living: Once he hugged a marble statue to show how easily he could endure
the cold. Another time, when people asked him what kind of dog he was, he replied:
"When hungry, a Maltese; when full, a Molossian. Most
people, while praising these, don't dare because of the labor
to go along hunting with them. In the same way, you are not
able to live with me out of fear of the discomforts."
(Diog. Laert., Lives, Vl.55)
At times this robust physicality seems to have gone over the line in its defiance of
convention: As the biographer tells us, once at a feast people mockingly threw bones at
Diogenes as ifhe were a dog. In response, he acted like a dog and peed on them.
Actions like these were not undertaken only in momentary fits of irascibility.
They were part of a program of "shamelessness"--hvaibcta-that served as a central
creed, almost a doctrine, for Diogenes. The very quality that was made a proverbial
reproach to dogs in the literary tradition is here considered to be a virtue, and I want to
conjecture a reason for this. Again and again we hear Diogenes raising the question,
"What is a man?" The story everyone has heard about him is that he went out in broad
daylight with a lantern. When asked why, he said, "I am looking for a man." (Not "an
honest man," as the misquotation has it.) When he was asked where in Greece he saw
good men, he said, "Men nowhere, but boys in Lacedaemon." Once he called out, "Oh,
people!" When people gathered, he laid into them with his stick, saying "It was people I
called for, not dregs [Ka8<ipµma]." Once he was returning from the Olympic games, and
someone asked him if there was a great crowd there.. "Yes, a great crowd, but few men,"
�21
he said. To Diogenes also is attributed the sarcastic throwing of a plucked fowl at Plato,
for defining "man" as a "featherless biped." This thematizing of the question "what is
man?" seems designed not only to humble our pride and preach fortitude; it goes beyond
that to ask what place we as humans occupy in the ranks of animate beings. Hamlet asks,
What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.
((IV.4.33-39)
But on the other hand, Diogenes wants to remind us that philosophy must not become too
abstract and speculative. If we try to deny our physical nature, we forfeit our selfknowledge. Once when Plato was discoursing about "tablehood" ['tpa7tss6'tTJ~] and
"cuphood"
[KUa86'tT]~],
Diogenes replied, "Table and cup I see, but no tablehood and
cuphood." lfwe get too fancy or lofty in our aspirations, we need to be humbled. In
common with the Stoics, the Cynics seem to stress the acceptance of mortal limitations.
The task of the philosopher is to prescribe an ethical way of living, teaching by example.
But even so, I don't think Diogenes would have wanted the Athenians in general
to emulate his doggy ways. In his public behavior, he was performing a kind of theatre
to challenge them, to raise issues. Epictetus makes this point explicitly about the Cynic
philosopher, quoting a passage from Plato's Chaerophon where Socrates is compared to a
tragic deus ex machina:
He [sc. the Cynic] should be prepared to mount the tragic stage and
speak the words of Socrates: "O people, where are you bound?
Miserable ones, what are you doing? You reel up and down, like the
blind. You have left the real path and are going off on another one."
�22
(Discourses, 3.22.26)
Such a performance requires an audience, in the same way that Socrates requires a
straight man to answer his prickly questions. Part of Diogenes' theatrical demeanor
seems to have sprung from a kind of cranky vanity that prompts him to rail at people for
no good reason. When someone asked Plato what sort of a person he thought Diogenes
was, Plato replied, "LmKpaTil<; µmv6µEVo<;, A Socrates gone mad." He seems to have
been an uneasy presence to have in the city. When asked why he was called a dog, he
said, "I fawn on those who give, I bark at those who don't give, and I bite the wicked."
This is not strictly true. Like the watchdogs Aristotle portrays, Diogenes barked at
everyone, at friend and foe alike. This unlovely trait is taken up by Shakespeare in his
comic portrayal of the Cynic philosopher Apemantus, in the late, unfinished play Timon
ofAthens; and the same crabbiness probably accounts for the way we use the word
"cynic" in ordinary language today. In his comment about himself as a dog that no one
cares to go hunting with, Diogenes acknowledges the ambivalence of people's responses
to him. It is a similar ambivalence to what we have seen expressed in the received
tradition about dogs: In his high-spirited attack on vice, Diogenes could have represented
a threat to the city, like Socrates, ifhe had not made himself into a figure of fun. It was
only centuries later that he was mythologized and given a heroic stature.
When in a moment of idle curiosity I embarked upon this investigation, I still
harbored, as I now realize, a number of sentimental notions about dogs. I might well
have agreed with Sir Walter Scott that "the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion
of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of
deceit." Or to put it in the less sloppy phrasing of Mark Twain, "If you pick up a starving
�23
dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference
between a dog and a man." But the bracing air ofHellas is a good antidote to
sentimentality: In different ways, a number of the Greek authors we have surveyed seem
to question the view of Scott and Twain. Is it that the dog is too stupid to be treacherous
or deceitful? Is our capacity for deceit and disguise inseparable from our godlike use of
reason? Or is the premise invalid-Will the dog turn on us, lose his patina of passive
domestication and revert to a wild beast, biting the hand that feeds him? And if he cannot
be made safe for the city, by discipline and education, are we sure that we can?
Resemblances are slippery things, but this is the question that has dogged us all night.
There must have been some dog in the monster Typhon, since he was the father of
Cerberus. So it is fitting that in the Phaedrus Socrates dismisses mythography, saying
I let these matters go, believing the customary things
about them, as I said. I examine not these things but
myself, asking whether I am a more complicated and
ravenous beast than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler
animal who has been allotted a nature that is humble
and godly.
(230Al-7)
********
�
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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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The Greeks and Their Dogs
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on July 17, 2002 by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Mr. Tuck is a tutor emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is on the Ancient Greek view of dogs through their literature. He surveys Greek works from the <em>Illiad</em> and the <em>Odyssey</em> down to Plato to attempt to uncover the place of the dog in Ancient Greek thought and literature.
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Tuck, Jonathan
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Annapolis, MD
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2002-07-17
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text
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pdf
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English
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lec Tuck 2002-07-17
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Greek literature
Epic poetry, Greek
Homer
Dogs in literature
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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1203b85896396eeb8ea821992b078f6b
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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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The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 8, 2015 by Daniel Harrell as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.<br /><br /><span>Mr. Harrell is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. His talk delves into the conversation surrounding the liberal arts education. In particular, he examines this argument through certain calls for "relevance" as well as the truth of the liberal arts in general. He further meditates on the relationship between the liberal arts and the world at large, and those tensions and rewards offered by a student of the liberal arts.</span>
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The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art
Daniel Harrell
July 8, 2015*
Contents
Introduction
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Acknowledgment
Introduction
The title of my lecture tonight, “The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art,” is meant to
express a worry I have about the future of liberal education. This puts me in a
sizable club. To have worries at all has become reflexive among those of us in
any way devoted to this education. And there is no end these days, it seems, to
prophecies, even pronouncements, of death. Type the words “death of liberal
education” into Google, and you get back such headlines as
Why Liberal Arts Education is Dying (or Already Dead)
Is the Four-Year, Liberal-Arts Education Model Dead?
The Death of Liberal Education
The Death of Liberal Education
Who Killed the Liberal Arts?
Liberals are Killing the Liberal Arts
Conservatives killed the liberal arts
In Our High-Tech World, Are the Liberal Arts Dead?
The Liberal Arts Are Dead; Long Live STEM
Jobs: The Economy, Killing Liberal Arts Education
The Liberal Arts Major: Would you like fries with that?
*A
lecture given on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College.
1
�All these headlines, I think, have one thing in common. While they may disagree about the threat to liberal education, they agree in distinguishing liberal
education from the threat, as if the threat were external. The headlines make
you think something else is killing liberal education, whether it be liberals or
conservatives or technology or the economy. And it is hard to envision a defense of liberal education without such a distinction, even if headlines draw it
simplistically, or even inaccurately. For if liberal education itself were somehow
the threat, then death might well be liberal education’s best defense, but in
defeat. No surprise, then, that those of us devoted to liberal education are wont
to conceive its threats as if they came from outside it. For this justifies a defense
that succeeds only if liberal education survives.
And there is no shortage of such defenses. Type the words “defense of liberal
education” into Google, and you will find one, it seems, for every headline predicting the death of liberal education. And not just in articles. There are books
to defend liberal education, most recently a bestseller by Fareed Zakaria, bearing the title In Defense of a Liberal Education.1 There are blogs to defend
liberal education, including one at St. John’s featuring regular posts by Christopher Nelson, the Annapolis president.2 There are campaigns to defend liberal
education, with slogans like Securing America’s Future: The Power of Liberal
Arts Education, to mention just one initiative, launched in 2012 by the Council
of Independent Colleges.3 And behind these campaigns are associations to defend liberal education, like the just-mentioned Council of Independent Colleges,
or the Association of American Colleges and Universities, or the Association for
General and Liberal Studies, or the Association for Core Texts and Courses, or
the American Academy for Liberal Education. There are so many defenders of
liberal education, in fact, that you can even find think-pieces pondering why
they seem to have failed, since liberal education remains in peril.
But what if the defenders have succeeded—by putting liberal education in peril?
What if the threat to liberal education comes from within? This is my worry.
Let the idea of a liberal art, for the moment, simply mean whatever it is that
distinguishes a liberal education from any other form of education—a technical
education, say. What if our many defenses of liberal education have made us
forget this idea? What if the idea of a liberal art is lost?
Back to top
1 Other books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael
S. Roth; and College: What It Was, Is, And Should be by Andrew Delbanco.
2 Other blogs include “The LEAP Challenge Blog,” sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities; and The Power of Liberal Arts “Blogs” page, sponsored by the
Council of Independent Colleges, that gathers blog posts defending liberal education.
3 Other campaigns include Liberal Education and America’s Promise, launched in 2005 by
the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
2
�Part One
Now in one sense, I think, the threat to liberal education must always come from
within. The fate of liberal education, after all, will not be decided in headlines,
but in choices made by each of us about the best education, once education
matters. Not the best education, then, in general, as such, per se; but the best
education for my daughter, or my son, or me. In having to make such choices,
those devoted to liberal education are no different from those dismissive of it.
And in this respect, the threat to liberal education can never lie outside it. To
pursue an education at all, liberal or no, is to have answered a question that a
liberal education obliges each of us to ask, and ask on our own behalf: What
does it mean to be educated? And we might well answer this question in a
choice against liberal education, even at the risk of its extinction, if the same
choice is made repeatedly. But this is perhaps the best evidence we have that
the question is real, and the threat to liberal education therefore intrinsic to
it. The death of liberal education, so understood, would similarly come from
within, in a proof of its life, and perhaps the only proof of life.
But again, those of us devoted to liberal education are unlikely to want this
death, especially just to show we were devoted to something rather than nothing.
And while the threat may be internal in this general sense, it is still external, I
think, in a specific sense. For if the threat to liberal education does come from
within, in a question it would have us ask for ourselves about what it means to
be educated, then while we may well answer this question in a choice against
liberal education, we may also answer the question otherwise, by choosing liberal
education. Liberal education would then be a second answer to the question,
opposed to the first. And insofar as one answer opposes the other, the threat
to liberal education would be external.
But if the threat is external, as one answer opposed to another, then we can
infer at least one thing, I think, about any defense of liberal education against
this threat. It will have to convince us that liberal education does provide an
answer, even for those who give a different answer. It will have to show us
that something is lost in a choice against liberal education, whatever might be
gained; and that the answer we give in such a choice, even if it turns out right,
risks being wrong. And showing this much, it seems, means showing there is
something learned in liberal education, that would otherwise go unlearned. To
show, in short, that liberal education has a subject-matter. Or, in a word:
content.
But what, then, is this content? What should we say is learned in a liberal
education alone? Traditionally, the content of a liberal education was identified
with a curriculum of seven liberal arts, a so-called trivium of grammar, logic, and
rhetoric; and a quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Each
of these arts was thought to wed a skill to a subject. And together, these arts
were thought to form a whole. This is why one could say there was something to
learn in a liberal education, rather than many things, or anything, or nothing.
3
�This is also what I want to say is contained in the idea of a liberal art: a skill
wedded to a subject, in a whole of such skills and subjects, that gives a liberal
education its content.
But one might also suspect that a liberal education has no content in this sense,
and that the liberal arts as traditionally conceived show us why. They were
learned, after all, by the few rather than the many—the leisured few, in that
sense already free from servitude. Perhaps the education they received was
‘liberal,’ then, not in liberating them, but in shaping them, stamping them, and
perpetuating them. And the same might be suspected of any content. For in
what sense could we be freed by it, rather than bound to it? What distinguishes
content, so-called, from dogma, or doctrine? What keeps it from closing the
mind that a truly liberal education is meant to open?
This suspicion of content can also come from the opposite direction, so to speak:
by what we take to threaten liberal education, or indeed any form of education.
For leaving headlines aside, this threat can seem to reflect a kind of triumph of
content over context, from college rankings and scorecards at the start, to tests
and grades at the end, making the very meaning of education a matter of datadriven results; and a choice against liberal education the answer to a question
never asked. Or we might conceive this threat in economic terms, reducing
education to just another a product with a price in the global marketplace.
Against all this, the first thing we might think to say in defense of education is
that products are not enough, results are not enough, answers are not enough,
content is not enough.
Defenses of liberal education, accordingly, have generally made education a
matter of context rather than content. And the most common way of doing this
is to locate learning not in a set of subjects, but instead in the self. Thus it is
said that “the maturation of the student—not information transfer—is the real
purpose of colleges and universities.” Or that “if we are to navigate skillfully
the turbulent changes of the twenty-first century, we must educate students not
only to process information effectively, but to think wisely and well.”
And talk of turbulent changes points to another way that defenses of liberal
education have made it a matter of context: by locating the self in an everchanging world. A good example comes from an address by President Nelson:
With boundaries among the disciplines vanishing, with job requirements and needs changing rapidly, we need citizens prepared for
change, prepared to adapt to jobs that do not yet exist, prepared
to enter an unknown world with a kind of fearless determination to
undertake whatever is required to succeed. We will need skills of
inquiry to enter a world we cannot yet even envision.
We can begin to see from this quote why making liberal education a matter
of context rather than content, means forgetting, more or less deliberately, the
4
�idea of a liberal art. For suppose we did live in a world that changes more than
it abides, where our freedom, to the extent this depended on skill, were a matter
of adaptation more than application. Any art that deserved the name ‘liberal’,
in that case, would involve a skill more likely divorced from any subject than
wedded to one; which is to say, a skill that can be applied to many subjects, even
to every subject. And suppose the number of such subjects to have multiplied
past counting, in one way the world indeed seems to have changed, since the
advent of modern science. If the liberal arts could still be said to encompass a
set of subjects, then it would seem better understood as a diversity than as a
totality.
So once defenses of liberal education make it a matter of context, it is unsurprising that they separate its skills from its subjects. The subjects, if they are
specified at all, are specified to give an impression of breadth, as if there were
many things one might learn in a liberal education rather than just one. The
current St. John’s website, for example, speaks of the college’s “wide-ranging, interdisciplinary curriculum,” where “areas of study include philosophy, literature,
history, mathematics, economics, political theory, theology, biology, physics,
music, chemistry, and languages.” Other lists of subjects are even more expansive. One from the earlier-mentioned Power of Liberal Arts campaign makes it
sound as if you might study anything:
You might be surprised by the kinds of subjects and majors that are
included in the liberal arts. They include much more than studio
art and English classes (though those are great!)—they range from
mathematics to Mandarin, from statistics to sociology. At liberal
arts colleges and universities students can study the sciences—such
as biology, chemistry, and physics—and social sciences—including
economics, political science, and psychology. Students can study
newer subjects, such as environmental science and neuroscience, and
traditional ones, too.
This same impression of breadth is given in the way defenses of liberal education
present its skills apart from subjects. You can indeed learn anything, then, in
learning how to learn. And this encompasses a range of skills similarly presented
apart from subjects: how to read, how to write, how to speak, even how to
think.4 St. John’s current way of putting this is to claim that its students “learn
to speak articulately, read attentively, reason effectively, and think creatively.”
In a similar vein, defenses of liberal education will call the liberal arts “transferable skills,” 5 , again against the backdrop of an ever-changing job market.
And “usefulness” has become a ubiquitous word to counter the opinion, and
4A
good example of this is found in Fareed Zakaria, “What is the Earthly Use of Liberal
Education.”
5 “Although modern liberal arts curriculums have an updated choice of a larger range of
subjects, it still retains the core aims of the liberal arts curricula maintained by the medieval
universities: to develop well-rounded individuals with general knowledge of a wide range
5
�the traditional conviction, that the liberal arts are useless. It is more generally
the habit in defenses of liberal education to talk of the liberal arts as if they
empowered us rather than enlightened us—the aforementioned Power of Liberal
Arts campaign being the most explicit example.
There are deeper strains in this line of defense, that try to reach beyond a
liberal education’s usefulness for any career, to the way it might be useful for
life, making the self, in sense, the subject of its skills. A liberal arts education can
be “truly, enduringly useful,” so one recent defense puts it, once it is “oriented
towards the question of how to live.” Or as President Nelson has written:
The primary purpose of college—contrary to the opinion of hiring
managers—is not to provide trained-up workers for business, nor
even to provide young people with the skills needed to make a living.
The primary purpose is to help young people develop the character
and the judgment to shape a life worth living.
In these appeals to the way a life might be shaped, defenses of liberal education
might be said to deepen the sense in which liberal education is a matter of
context, not content, by locating what is learned in a cultivated readiness for the
world, whatever the world may hold. Here is how a recent St. John’s graduate
puts it:
After my two-year commitment with Teach For America, I hope to
continue my work in the field of education. But really, I can do
anything. St. John’s has given me the tools: the ability to listen,
to think, to speak, to write, and ultimately, to act. I need only to
decide where to direct my passion, and the world is mine, thanks to
the incredible education I have had the blessing to receive here. 6
And there are ways to deepen this context still further; the most common being
to take this readiness for the world as an openness to the world, whether the
self so opened is described as curious, inquisitive, imaginative, self-critical, or
sympathetic. Thus we find Martha Nussbaum, to pick on a famous example,
defending liberal education insofar as it develops
1. The capacity for Socratic self-criticism and critical thought about one’s
own traditions.
2. The ability to see oneself as a member of a heterogeneous nation and
world.
of subjects and with mastery of a range of transferable skills. They will become ‘global
citizens’, with the capacity to pursue lifelong learning and become valuable members of their
communities.” http://www.topuniversities.com/blog/what-liberal-arts-education
6 This comes from Grace Tyson, “‘When You Know Better, You Do Better’: A Senior’s
Reflections on St. John’s. Parts of this address are also quoted in Christopher Nelson, Is It
Worth It?.
6
�3. The ability to sympathetically imagine the lives of people different from
oneself.
And as suggested by Nussbaum’s reference to Socrates, the sense in which a truly
liberal education opens minds rather than closes them has particular appeal at
St. John’s, where it would now sound antiquated to claim, as Scott Buchanan
did in the first catalog of the New Program, that the liberal arts put us in
possession of the truth.7 What we say instead is self-consciously Socratic. Thus
President Nelson will say that “liberal education is the best and quickest way to
become comfortable not knowing.” Or that “learning is grounded in recognition
and acceptance of one’s own ignorance.” Or as the same St. John’s graduate I
quoted earlier puts it:
I have learned that great questions lead to more and more questions,
not necessarily to answers, and I have learned that the greatness of
the human spirit shows itself in just this realization. As Socrates says
in Plato’s Meno: “We shall be better and braver and less helpless if
we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we
indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in
seeking to know what we do not know.” We must have intellectual
bravery, that is, the courage to push forward, to continue seeking
truth even in the face of doubts about its very existence.
It is this same Socratic self-consciousness that explains how St. John’s can make
even an all-required program of books, which might thought inescapably full of
content, into a matter of context. For anything written down, we might claim,
is simply doctrine, until a reader puts it into dialogue by questioning it rather
than assimilating it. And underlying this shift from doctrine to dialogue is
perhaps the deepest belief one can have about a truly liberal education: that
we are only able to learn, truly learn, insofar as we do this for ourselves. It
would seem to follow directly from this that what we learn is found indeed in
the self, or even the soul, rather than in a set of subjects. And the more liberal
an education becomes, so we could say, the more that what we learn is a matter
of how we learn, and who we become in learning it. Which at this college, at
least, means the more that any so-called subject is found in a book, which is
found in a reader of that book, who is found in a conversation about that book,
which brings the book to life, with all it may contain. And this conversation,
both with others and with oneself, might then be said to exemplify the sense in
which a liberal education is ultimately a matter of context rather than content.
For this is an education in selfhood rather than subjects, where the something
we finally learn is what it means to learn, and even what it means to love it.
The suspicion that a truly liberal education has no content, then, can be cast in
terms that encompass what many of us, I think, might say a liberal education
7 “The arts of apprehending, understanding, and knowing the truth are the liberal arts, and
they set their own ends.” (Bulletin of St. John’s College in Annapolis, 1937–38).
7
�finally is, and where any appeal to a number of liberal arts seems beside the
point. St. John’s even tried dropping any reference to the liberal arts, along
with any mention of liberal education, when it first launched its new website,
as if indeed to forget the whole idea. But it did this, I think, to locate the
place of a liberal education in the present rather than the past. It was only a
matter of months before the college restored these references to its website, since
there were prospective students still using such terms to find such things. But
St. John’s has otherwise remained embarked, like nearly every other liberal arts
college in the country, on a communications project carried out in images rather
than text, in the attempt not simply to say what a liberal education is, but to
show it, and capture something about the experience of a liberal education when
mere explanations are thought no longer enough. Gone are the days when the
college could package its education, as it were, in a brown paper wrapper, as if
the education were not only a matter of content, but the kind of content that
couldn’t be seen from outside. Even the first video St. John’s made of itself, back
in 1954, was mostly staged and performed in vignettes, retaining at least that
much separation from the ongoing world. But it is just this separation that is
now deemed better erased than preserved, leading to efforts that range from the
Summer Academy to the college’s Instagram feed, as if to give the impression
that what separates the college from the outside world is only a window, and
a window more often open than shut. At its worst, this project might be said
to pander or flatter rather than inform or educate; but at its best, it might be
said to make St. John’s finally look like a college rather than a cult. Or to put
the sense of this strategy more generally: it tries to defend liberal education by
locating the place of liberal education within the world rather than apart from
it. —And this is perhaps the most visible way that a liberal education is now
being made a matter of context rather than content.
Back to top
Part Two
By this point in my lecture, however, I think one could make an objection. For
I haven’t yet given any grounds for worrying about any of this. If we have lost
the idea of a liberal art, by making liberal education a matter of context rather
than content, then at most all I have shown so far is that we have lost this
idea deliberately, in what might be called an act of forgetting. So let me now
explain my worry, which the rest of the lecture will try to justify. My worry is
that in losing this idea, more or less deliberately, we risk another loss beyond
our control: which is to lose any way of giving a clear and compelling answer
to the question of what it means to be educated. —Which is to say, an answer
that distinguishes liberal education from any other form of education; and that
sheds any light, in turn, on what is lost in a choice against liberal education,
whatever might be gained. I worry, then, that once the idea of a liberal art is
lost in defense of liberal education, the defense is lost. And once the defense is
8
�lost, liberal education is lost.
To begin to see all this, I want now to revisit the various ways that defenses
of liberal education have made it a matter of context. For example: the basic
set of skills, again separated from subjects, that defenses of liberal education
claim are imparted by it. There is no doubt that learning how to learn, along
with how to read, write, speak, and think, are useful skills; and one might even
grant their necessity for a life lived in freedom. But it is hard to see how these
skills belong to a liberal education rather than to any education. And the more
indispensable these skills sound, the harder it is to conceive them as liberal
rather than remedial. Shouldn’t we already know how to learn, and read, write,
speak, and think, before we go to college?
There are, of course, ways to specify such skills, but they reflect another aspect
of the problem. To recall St. John’s way of doing this, in a liberal education
you learn how to speak articulately, read attentively, reason effectively, think
creatively. But are we we then to believe that you’ll be left speaking inarticulately, reading inattentively, reasoning ineffectively, or thinking uncreatively,
if you choose another kind of education—say, to pursue a degree in computer
programming? This is doubtful. But if so, then what again distinguishes a
liberal education from any education?
The same problem emerges from the attempt to distinguish a liberal education
on higher-sounding grounds. In one of his blogposts, for example, President
Nelson writes: “St. John’s College is the right fit for someone who is seeking
a special sort of education—an education in the arts of freedom, an education
in how to make learning and life their own.” But one could ask how such encompassing terms could distinguish a St. John’s education from any education,
or even from human experience as such. For isn’t the distinction between experience and innocence, or experience and endurance, found in just the kind
of learning, and living, that is necessarily one’s own? Or suppose we take our
bearings from Socrates, and claim that St. John’s will teach you intellectual
courage: how to persevere in the pursuit of knowledge rather than yield in the
face of ignorance. Perhaps St. John’s will, but so then will any field of research
one might pursue, it could be argued, that relies on science to reach its results
rather than superstition. And direct appeals to Socrates, as if the Enlightenment never happened, won’t be enough to distinguish St. John’s in particular,
or liberal education more generally, on the matter of intellectual courage.
But there is a whole other side to this problem. Insofar as it becomes hard to
distinguish a liberal education from any education when it is made a matter
of context, it becomes easy to make a choice against liberal education merely
by wanting an education with content. To consider this problem from one
angle, take the penchant in education nowadays for testing and ranking and
training and specializing. It may be good and even necessary to speak against
all this in defense of liberal education. But this risks the impression that a
liberal education is an education for dilettantes, providing an escape from being
challenged or judged or driven or dedicated. And what can be said to correct
9
�this impression, if in a liberal education, these virtues are matters of context
rather than content? Matters, that is, about which nothing more, really, can
be said, but only shown—where you see such students for yourself? Or even be
such a student yourself? For as one noted defender of liberal education, Andrew
Delbanco, has put it:
One of the difficulties in making the case for liberal education against
the rising tide of skepticism is that it is almost impossible to persuade
doubters who have not experienced it for themselves. The Puritan
founders of our oldest colleges would have called it “such a mystery
as none can read but they that know it.”
This way of putting the problem captures what is potentially self-defeating in
defenses of liberal education that make it a matter of context. For if the point of
any defense is to persuade people to experience liberal education for themselves,
then how can there be a defense that depends on such an experience to be
persuasive?
There are, of course, ways of trying to capture this experience in images, as
I earlier discussed in the case of St. John’s. But this same case reflects the
problem. If we make its education a matter of context, by showing a student
playing croquet, or reading a book on a bench near a tree, or even speaking
with passion and eloquence about how much her education means, we haven’t
yet distinguished St. John’s from any other college where such things might
be said or done—even though St. John’s is unique, in having renounced the
elective system and established an all-required curriculum. But St. John’s is
unique, then, as a matter of content, not context. And something similar by
way of distinction-erasing might be said of the defenses of liberal education more
generally. For if these defenses were products of a liberal education, one might
have expected them to reflect a diversity of views, or an originality of thought.
But so far as these defenses make liberal education a matter of context, and
speak of the kind of skills one needs to flourish in life, it becomes hard not
to speak in platitudes or commonplaces. And indeed these defenses more or
less follow a script: In an ever-changing world, now more than ever, we need
the truly useful arts of a liberal education. Even President Nelson hasn’t quite
managed to liberate himself from this script, even though I regard him as a
gifted writer, who is making the most of the script.
Still, I suspect that those of us devoted to liberal education will need more than
a script to survive. And if my lecture so far is right, this means finding what
we have lost, or recollecting what we have forgotten. So in the time I have left,
I want to sketch one way back to the idea of a liberal art.
Back to top
10
�Part Three
To take the first step back, I want you to imagine that we have shut every
window at St. John’s College, and drawn every curtain; as if St. John’s were
indeed a cult. Or to put this more generously: as if the place of liberal education
were not within the world but apart from it. But why would we believe this? We
would believe it, I think, because of something we believed about the freedom
promised by a liberal education. We would take this freedom to be important
enough, yet fragile enough, to protect its pursuit. We would regard this freedom
as invaluable, then, but not indispensable. A life could be lived, and even lived
well, without it. And this would be why its pursuit would need protection from
the outside world. For it would be a freedom that might well be forgotten in the
living of life; or even dismissed, or denied—for example, in the choice of another
form of education. Or in the quest for power, or the drive to succeed. The kind
of freedom that someone like Meno might not want, but that his slave-boy might
need, to be free at all. The kind of freedom, then, that might be possessed even
by those in chains, or in prison, or in poverty. The kind of freedom we can still
possess at the moment of death, when there is no life left to live. The kind of
freedom you can count on, then, not when you might do anything, but when you
can do nothing. At moments of life when you might be said to need a useless
skill, not a useful one.
But what kind of freedom could this be? The answer takes us a second step
back. For this would be a freedom, I think, that transcends the horizons of life,
and indeed be the freedom it is—perhaps the highest kind there is—in having
no horizons. But what does having no horizons mean? Here is one answer, and
to my mind the best answer: having no horizons means having the truth. And
a liberal education, then, would promise you the truth.
If this promise sounds ridiculous, then good. For if what I have so far argued
is right, then we are better off saying ridiculous things than obvious things in
defense of liberal education. But this promise, you’ll also have to admit, is
one way, and perhaps the simplest way, to claim that a liberal education has
content. And truth might be the only way to understand a content that frees
us rather than binds us. The promise of truth should also sound attractive,
at least if there is any chance to keep the promise. But perhaps you think no
liberal arts college these days would dare to make the promise. Well, you would
be wrong. At the time I write this sentence (which was yesterday), the college
whose curriculum most resembles St. John’s had the slogan “Truth Matters”
emblazoned across its home page. And this same college began its own defense
of liberal education by claiming that “to learn is to discover and grow in the
truth about reality. It is the truth, and nothing less, that sets men free.”
Now, I have to admit that the college in question is Thomas Aquinas. And
perhaps you would tell me their belief in truth is based on their belief in Christ.
I would agree, but hasten to add that St. John’s has a source of its own for
a belief in truth. Which takes us a third step back. For though we may not
11
�have to believe in Christ to believe in truth, perhaps we do have to believe in
Ptolemy.
But what do I mean by a belief in Ptolemy? To explain what I mean, and to
take yet another step back to the idea of a liberal art, I’m going to turn now not
to Ptolemy, but instead to Socrates; and indeed, a Socrates we are all familiar
with, from Plato’s Meno. I do this because if St. John’s can already be said to
believe in anything, it believes in this: you can only learn, truly learn, insofar
as you do this for yourself. But if Socrates’s myth of recollection to Meno can
be believed, then learning for yourself would be impossible, unless you somehow
already possessed whatever you might learn. Which is all but to say: unless
you somehow already had the truth. Of course, we might take this myth to
be merely myth; and one sign of its doubtfulness even at St. John’s can be
glimpsed in what I earlier quoted from a St. John’s graduate, when she claimed
that “We must have intellectual bravery, that is, the courage to push forward,
to continue seeking truth even in the face of doubts about its very existence.”
I think Socrates’s myth is meant to suggest, to the contrary, that all doubts
about truth’s existence are put to rest, as soon as we start to learn.
But I call this a suggestion, because the proof, I suspect, actually lies in
Socrates’s dramatic turn to the slave-boy, and a shift from myth to mathematics. Which brings me to my final step back. For it is in Socrates’s encounter
with the slave-boy, I think, that we can find the lost idea of a liberal art. And
to recover it, I now offer what I call a loose reading of this encounter.
The central question of this episode is: how long, exactly, is the side of an
eight-foot square? (Meno 82e) Now, as you no doubt know, because the line in
question is irrational, there is no answer to the question in terms of feet. But I
prefer to put this a different way. There is an answer, but only insofar as the
answer is made into a matter of research, with a divide-and-conquer approach.
And this is one way to describe the slave-boy’s initial stab at the question, when
he finds that the line in question is between 2 feet and 3 feet in length, before
giving up. (84a) But under one idea of intellectual courage, we could say, we
should not give up. And we could forge ahead, on the slave-boy’s behalf, in
further research, by dividing the 3 foot line even more. And putting the results
in suitably modern terms, we learn that the line in question is between 2.8
and 2.9 feet; then we learn it is between 2.82 and 2.83 feet; then we learn it is
between 2.828 and 2.829 feet. Or to put what we learn still more exactly: the
first number in the length of the line is 2; and the next is 8; and the next is
2; then 8; then 4; then 2; then 7; and so on. There would be no pattern in
the numbers thereby found, but this is what would make every number found
a genuine discovery, which carried us ever farther in truth, leading us from one
learned thing to the next. We could even say we were learning for ourselves,
and persevering in the pursuit of knowledge rather than yielding in the face of
ignorance. And I think this more or less captures the meaning of learning in
what I will call the idea of a field of research, which we have inherited from
modern science.
12
�But again, the slave-boy gives up on this approach at the very first number 2.
And Socrates doesn’t exhort him to keep at it, or show him how to divide the 3
foot line any further. Instead, Socrates says to the slave-boy: if you don’t want
to count the line out, then just show it to me. (84a) —It’s as if Socrates had a
different idea of intellectual courage, a different idea of learning, and a different
idea of how the question should be approached, forming a different discipline
from a field of research. And I think we can already say why. For while you
can certainly make the line in question a matter of research, you thereby put
it out of reach—as a matter of recognition. For there is no end to the numbers
you will find in the divide-and-conquer approach to the line in question. So
you are learning more and more about an object that you will never get to see,
and in that sense, never get to know. We will always be left, as it were, at the
first number we find, with an ever-expanding but never-vanishing horizon at the
latest number we find. Or more simply put, we will be seeking the truth, and
even advancing the truth, but never possessing the truth.
So what idea of approach does Socrates have in mind instead? We can see it
coming-to-be in the very next thing he does with the slave-boy. For the slaveboy is truly stumped, and can’t even show the line in question. For of course it
is not in front of the slave-boy yet; and in his mind, we might say, it is not yet
a matter of recognition, but still a matter of research, even though he’s given
the project up. So in perhaps his one outright act of teaching, giving birth, we
might say, to the very idea of a liberal art, Socrates simply draws the line in
question—erasing at once any remaining horizon of discovery, and showing we
are already in possession of the truth. (85a) And what he does in drawing this
line radically changes what it means for the slave-boy to learn. For this is no
longer to discover any more about the line in question, but instead to recognize
the line in question. Or perhaps I should say recollect the line in question. But
in either formulation, this means seeing that the line Socrates has drawn is
indeed the line in question. And the slave boy does this in yet another act of
recognition, when he sees that the figure Socrates draws, upon the line that he
draws, is indeed the eight-foot square in question.
But let me try to clarify this by generalizing it. Let us suppose that Socrates
has asked the slave-boy a more encompassing question. Such as: “Why do
the heavens move as they do?” One way to answer this question is again to
make it a matter of research, producing fields and even sub-fields of research,
in a divide-and-conquer approach to the question. But this risks putting the
matter beyond the reach of recognition. True, we will learn more and more about
heavenly motions in this approach; but there is no promise that we will ever learn
enough to finally answer the question. And this reflects one way to understand
learning, leading to one interpretation of “astronomy,” that we have inherited
from modern science. But there is still another way to understand learning,
leading to another interpretation of “astronomy,” that we have inherited from
ancient science, and that promises us an answer, in promising us the truth. And
a college like ours is committed to it, I think, if we believe that learning is a
finally a matter of recognition.
13
�So another way of answering the question “Why do the heavens move as they
do?” that we can still call “astronomy,” produces a liberal art. And in this
approach, strange as it may sound, we can simply answer the question, in already
possessing the truth. We don’t even have to stop at one answer: Ptolemy, as
I recall, gives us two—suggesting that the truth is more generous than frugal.
And we don’t even need any telescopes. All we have to do is draw lines just
like Socrates did, that allow us to see, or more exactly see again, the object in
question. Which in this more encompassing case is the motion of the heavens;
hence we have to draw the lines—circles, basically—that allow us to see again,
and in that sense to recognize, the very motions of the heavens we were asking
about. And in this way we can give a true account of these motions, since this
account allows us not simply to explain what we see, as if to move past it, but
to recognize what we see, in a recovery of it.
But now suppose we made the question Socrates asks the slave-boy allencompassing—something like: “Why is the world the way it is?” In one
approach—let us call this a technical education—we would be led into ever-more
numerous fields of research to answer the question, with no promise that we
will ever recover the world by the end, in an act of recognition. But in another
approach—let us call this a liberal education—we would be led to seven liberal
arts to answer the question, where this recovery of the world in an act of
recognition is precisely the point. And this is why, I think, these antique seven
arts might still be said to form a whole, that gives a truly liberal education its
content.
But let me say one final thing in this spirit of recollection on behalf of St. John’s
College. Let us suppose that the truth is very generous. So generous, that when
we ask the question “Why is the world the way it is?” there is not just one
answer, or two answers, or seven answers, but something closer to a hundred.
And let us suppose that the lines that might be drawn to produce this hundred
are drawn, not to form squares, or circles, but letters; and that the letters are
suitably arranged in words, sentences, paragraphs, to compose what we might
call “books.” Any of the hundred so-called books, in that case, would allow us
to recover the world in an act of recognition. And we could recognize the world
in such a book, by reading it with the same generosity possessed by the truth.
The book would be inescapably be full of content, in being inescapably full of
truth. These are the books I think we read at the college, and believe in. And
in being full of truth, they give, to any conversation at the college that brings
them to life, a purpose, and a point, beyond that life; proving there is more,
even to life, than life. Truth.
14
�Acknowledgment
Much of the thinking in this lecture is indebted to Barbara McClay. So I wanted
to thank her for that, and dedicate the lecture to her. For more on her own
defense of liberal education, which is much better than the defenses I discuss
here, see:
“In Defense of Liberal Arts”
“ ‘What is Liberal Education For?’: A Preview”
“We’re All Pinmakers Now: Liberal Education in a Specialized Age”
“With Friends Like These”
Back to top
15
�
Dublin Core
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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
Text
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paper
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15 pages
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Title
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The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on July 8, 2015 by Daniel Harrell as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Harrell is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. His talk delves into the conversation surrounding the liberal arts education. In particular, he examines this argument through certain calls for "relevance" as well as the truth of the liberal arts in general. He further meditates on the relationship between the liberal arts and the world at large, and those tensions and rewards offered by a student of the liberal arts.
Creator
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Harrell, Daniel
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2015-07-08
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. 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."
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Language
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English
Identifier
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Bib # 82742
Relation
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<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/275">Audio recording</a>
Subject
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Education, Humanistic
Education
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e0edbda775602f262bf4664c232ce9ff.mp3
a4f41520dc0d8ad92557ccd64ecc0fa0
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
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
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audio cassette tape (Tape 636)
Duration
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00:44:41
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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The Power of the Likely Story in Plato's <em>Timaeus</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 29, 1983 by Peter Kalkavage. <br /><br />Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is an overview of Plato's dialogue <em>Timeaus</em>. He invites his listeners to dwell in particular on the aspects of homecoming and return in the dialogue and discusses the <em>Timaeus</em> in conjunction with Plato's <em>Republic</em>.
Creator
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Kalkavage, Peter
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
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1983-07-29
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item 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 Kalkavage 1983-07-29
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3849" title="Typescript">Typescript</a>
Publisher
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St. John's College
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato. Timaeus
Plato. Republic
Homecoming
Mythology
Socrates
Tutors
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