1
20
50
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e1ecacb0e3e43a8e8e45e5813ea1e07e.mp4
0def74d543ce1b54f9b0582306498163
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
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Zoom video conference
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:03:34
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
Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture by Professory Chad Wellmon of the University of Virginia, held on June 23, 2021 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Professor Wellmon describes his lecture: "The humanities didn't come into their own, didn't become modern, until relatively recently, when scholars began to frame their previously disparate practices and ideals as a unique and unified resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. This new self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis, it justified itself in terms of crisis. The modern humanities are always in crisis because their defenders and detractors alike have needed them to be. <br /><br /><em>Permanent Crisis</em> is neither a call to action nor an apology. It is a work of historical scholarship and conceptual inquiry that shows how claims of crisis are not only older than we think, but also have played a crucial role in grounding the idea that the humanities have a special mission. In uncovering this history, <em>Permanent Crisis</em> highlights continuities and transformations that extend from early nineteenth-century Prussia to the twenty-first-century United States. It shows how the very processes that have allowed the modern humanities to flourish and attain social and institutional value—democratization, secularization, institutional rationalization—have also consistently imperiled them. In this talk, Chad Wellmon will offer an overview of <em>Permanent Crisis</em> and suggest why its story offers reasons for hope in what might otherwise seem like the twilight of liberal learning."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wellmon, Chad, 1976-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-06-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Signed permissions form have been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Humanities
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Langston, Emily
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wellmon_Chad_2021-06-23
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4cabaaa22f2b7a8daf6f7577170cca81.mp4
8463b49f6747370c2c00f258c2275054
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
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:26:57
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
Teaching Poetry, Revelation, Mathematics, and Respect for Truth
Description
An account of the resource
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hadzi-Antich, Theodore
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-07-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Langston, Emily
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hadzi-Antich_Ted_2020-07-08
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education, Humanistic
Community college teaching
Euclid. Elements
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d8bc5790f8efd7f772bfcf9119b24c95.mp4
9c322938f97a00bf754ecdf73a43bafc
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
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Zoom video conference
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:29:02
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
Community Colleges and Teaching in the Liberal Arts
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a panel discussion held on July 1, 2020 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Like St. John’s, community colleges are institutions devoted primarily to teaching and learning. They reach a broad and diverse portion of our country’s population. (In 2017–18, 38% of undergraduates were attending 2-year public colleges.) St. John’s collaborated with Anne Arundel Community College to bring together for this panel discussion faculty from a number of community colleges that have implemented discussion-based liberal arts education, including Austin Community College, Hostos Community College, Borough of Manhattan Community College and LaGuardia Community College.
The panelists include Andrea Fabrizio and Gregory Marks of Hostos Community College, Daniel Gertner of LaGuardia Community College, Holly Messitt of Borough of Manhattan Community College, Theodore Hadzi-Antich of Austin Community College, and Steve Canaday of Anne Arundel Community College. The panel was introduced by Emily Langston and moderated by Erica Beall of St. John's College.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fabrizio, Andrea
Marks, Gregory
Gertner, Daniel
Messitt, Holly
Hadzi-Antich, Theodore
Canaday, Steve
Beall, Erica
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-07-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Signed permissions form have been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Community college teaching
Education, Humanistic
Anne Arundel Community College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Langston, Emily
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PanelLecture_2020-07-01
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9a845f3d960726c7f87dfded218476d1.mp4
10e760de2f14ca041e7858e8eb964cf5
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
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Zoom video conference
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:03:38
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
Reading Plato’s <em>Meno</em> Online
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered on June 24, 2020 by William Braithwaite as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. The final minute of the recording (beginning at 01:02:00) is in audio format only. <br /><br />Mr. Braithwaite describes his lecture as follows: <br /><br />"Traditionally serving to introduce the study of Plato’s two dozen dialogues, the <em>Meno</em> raises questions about what virtue is and how it is acquired, about what knowledge is—both in itself and in relation to opinion, and about how teaching and learning are connected. <br /><br />I will offer a preliminary, or serious beginner’s, reading of the dialogue, with a view to opening one path to these questions: What are the conditions Plato suggests as ideal or best, indispensable or useful, for learning and teaching? How, and to what extent, are these conditions affected by the differences between face-to-face student-teacher meetings, and meetings among geographically-dispersed teachers and students, mediated by an electronic screen? What sort of community is an 'on-line' community?"
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-06-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audio recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato. Meno
Web-based instruction
Education
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Langston, Emily
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Braithwaite_William_2020-06-24
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/135c20fcbcde2e336feb00c808c7c1b7.mp4
186cb696b6a0c5276d4868c7e365f0fb
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
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
44:18
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
Ideas: America Rising, A Call for a New Great Awakening
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered on June 17, 2020 by David Townsend as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Townsend describes his lecture: "The idea of America, the ideal type American, and the Spirit of America depend on purposes and virtues. What are the virtues and texts that identify America and an American? Can a Great Awakening based on these principles free our minds?"
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Townsend, David L., 1947-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-06-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Townsend_David_2020-06-17
Subject
The topic of the resource
National characteristics, American
Americans
Ideals (Philosophy)
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2fc3d7c3d983c53ba7d927a6030727e3.mp3
e8c661366318a732f7ac170634fc0820
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
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
mp3
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:56:41
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
A name given to the resource
Euclid as Teacher
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 10, 2019 by William Braithwaite as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Braithwaite is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk centers on Euclid's role as an educator not just of mathematics but also of life. In particular, Braithwaite examines the ways in which Euclid's mathematical reasoning has applicability outside of what would be traditionally thought. Using examples from Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, and others, this talk deepens an understanding of Euclid as a teacher of logic, mathematics, and life.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-07-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audio recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Braithwaite_William_2019-07-10
Subject
The topic of the resource
Teaching
Euclid. Elements
Mathematics
Geometry
Education
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7d59ff3cb28a5e457767d6d367c47348.mp3
1424f8cd5793fbcc87c6a13c908a6c82
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
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
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:37:29
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 64: What Can Be Said About a Poem, and What Should Be Said
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 11, 2018, by Elliott Zuckerman as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zuckerman, Elliott
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College has been given permission to make this available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Zuckerman_Elliott_2018-07-11_ac
Subject
The topic of the resource
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Sonnets
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4524b8e28fe494dfa2ac324ca7f70bbd.mp3
1f2e5cd0d389eede68053513aefe60b4
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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Words and Things: Mystical Traditions of Reading Sacred and Secular Books
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on June 20, 2018, by Mark Delp as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Mysticism
Books and reading
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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 2018 Lecture Schedule
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 2018, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 2018 Summer
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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)
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Property, Belief, and the Barbarian in Montesquieu's <em>Spirit of the Laws</em>
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on June 13, 2018, by John M. Peterson as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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2018-06-13
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Permission has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689-1755. De l'esprit des lois.
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
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Text
·r he Power of the Likely Story
Peter I<alkavage
This material may be protected by
Copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Cooe)
.I would like to spea)c with you this evening about Plato's Timaeus as a whole. I
will not go into any great depth about anything. I will simply talk to you about
what .things the dialogue invites us to consider. I hope this lecture will serve as
an introduction to your reading of this altogether strange book.
The Timaeus is the Platonic story of return. It is about a homecoming of a very
special and complex nature. In the Republic, you recall, Socrates attempts to found
a just city in speech.
As the conversation goes on, Socrates' task of praising
justice becomes transformed into his praise of philosophy.
Socrates exhorts
Glaucon--and us indirectly--to lift our gaze away from sensed beauties to intellected
beauties, away from becoming and towards the precise realm of being (Rep. VI, 518c
4-22). In the Timaeus, Plato takes us back to the world of becoming, to everything
this world implies--our bodies and all their actions and sufferings, the visible
heaven and its motions, the structure of the four elements and their transmutations,
also the realm of political action and political history. The theme of the Timaeus
is the so-called "real world." The theme is also our inevitable membership in and
fascination for this world. Strangely enough, this "real world" with which we think
we are so familiar is presented in an extraordinary way. It is presented through the
power of ""!lyths or stories. As readers of the Timaeus, we are faced with several
great questions. These are (1) What is the structure and purpose of the world of
becoming? (2) What in particular is our place within this world? and (3) What can
we learn from the myths of the Timaeus about these pressing questions?
The high-point of the dialogue is the famous lik~ly story of Timaeus, the eikos
mythes.
This myth portrays and imitates the work it took to bring a cosmos into
being. It is a story that mixes the nature of artful production.· with the nature of
begetting. Like Socrates' effort in the Republic, the likely story tells of how a
regime is founded. But the Timaeus does not begin with the question of the cosmos.
It begins with the question of the best political order. The likely story does not
stand alone.
A dramatic prologue, concerned for the most part with politic al
questions, precedes the likely story and gives it its place. Before taking up the
likely story, then, we must look briefly at this prologue.
A casual glance at the men who meet Socrates at the start of the dialogue shows us
that the Timaeus is about worldliness. It is a cosmopolitan dialogue. Critias is
the Athenian aristocrat who studied with the sophists, wrote his own poetry, and
became one of the thirty tyrants. Hermocrates is the famous Sicilian statesman and
orator we meet in Thucydides' history. As for Timaeus, here is what Socrates says
about him: "Timaeus here, being from Locri, the best- regulated city in Italy, who
is inferior to nobody in these parts in substance and class, has managed the greatest
offices and honors in his city; moreover, he has in my opinion come to the peak of
all philosophy." In deed and in thought, Timaeus is a man of the world(Tim. 20al-5).
He combines the study of natural order--especially the order of the heavens--with the
·Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor in Annapolis.
He delivered this lecture, intended to
be an introduction to the Timaeus, to the January Freshmen in the summer of '83 .
18
�political life.
The central image that governs the Timaeus is the ;easting of Socrates. Yesterda·y
Socra~es played the host to Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates, and some unnamed fourth.
These men had asked Socrates what his views were about the best political order, and
Socrates gratified them. Today the tables are turned.
The former guests become
hosts who must now, in the interests of justice, pay Socrates back with a feast of
logos. They must give Socrates his rightful guest-gift. This provocative image of
feasting Socrat.es goes along with an extremely important fact about' the
dialogue--Socrates does not cross-question anybody or inquire into anything. Instead
he remains silent while his hosts entertain him with long speeches.
The Timaeus
presents us with a most uncharacteristic Socrates, a dressed-up Socrates who minds
his own business and silently listens. If the task in most of the other dialogues is
to penetrate Socrates' ironic questioning, the task here is to understand his silent
receptivity. What is it, one wonders, that fills Socrates' silence?
But Socrates is not completely silent.
He provides a disturbingly incomplete
summary of the Republic and then announces the task he has imposed on his hosts.
Socrates states this task in a two-fold way--in the form of a desire and of an image.
Like someone who beholds beautiful animals somewhere and desires to see them move and
strive with one another, Socrates beholds the city he has founded and desires to see
it engaged in what he calls a fitting war, a polemos prepon(l9b3-20c3).
Socrates' desire is the reason why the action of the Timaeus takes place. This
desire is not easy to understand and raises a number of difficult questions. Why is
it right to compare the just city of the Republic to a beautiful animal? Even if it
is true that the visio~ of a beautiful living thing begets in us the desire to see
that thing move, why must the motion take the form of warfare? What in us, exactly,
is gratified by such a vision, such a war-movie? Although it is difficult to
understand the true basis of Socrates' desire, this desire introduces a central theme
for the dialogue as a whole. It points to the desire to go beyond order simply to an
actual ~iving order, to go ·beyond mere speech to the world of deeds.
Socrates'
desire is the invitation to think together orderliness, life, and war.
Critias has just the story to gratify Socrates, a story about an Athens grown
young and ·beautiful. This Athens, according to Critias, is Socrates' own just city
brought to life.
Once upon a time, this young Athens fought and defeated the
insolent Atlanteans when they tried to. enslave the world. Critias says his account
is no mere myth--like Socrates' speech the day be:!=ore--but is "true in every way"
(20d7-31, 26c7d3).
Critias' story about Solon's trip to Egypt is about far more than Athens' heroic
past. It is also about the cosmic cycle of birth and death, the circle of time which
governs all men and cities. Not altogether unlike Timaeus' story of circular motion,
the story of Critias tells about the periodic births and deaths of great
civilizations, about how what· a civilization calls progress is in fact recollection,
recovery from the last destruction. Critias' story thus is an account of the eternal
look, the eidos, of cosmic history.
There are two things I want to mention about Critias' story. The first is that
the Egyptians are important for the stories of both. Critias and Timaeus. When we
first meet Solon in the story, he is showing off his memory. He tells the p:r;iests
stories about what he considers to be the oldest things. He 'even tries to count the
number of years ago all these things happened.
But Solon is corrected by an
extremely old priest.
"Solon, Solon," the priest says, "you Greeks are always
children • • • you are young in soul, every one of you"(22b4-8). The priest proceeds
to show Solon how old everything is in the Egyptian city, how everything has been
frozen in time, kept changeless through long-standing customs. Egypt is the land of
conscientiousness.
It is a land where the rulers are priests, scientists and
historians all rolled into one. In its political structure, the Egyptian city is a
bad likeness of the just city in the Republic. I t is something of a joke. The
19
�··Egyptian archives are loaded with stories about the past, stories of great deeds and
cosmic annihilations. But the Egyptian city itself experiences no real change and
has no history.
This city seems to be. that part of the cosmos that possesses
stability, order, memory, and scientific accuracy--all these things without life and
passion. The Egyptian city is a dead soul writ large.
The second thing I want to mention about Critias' story has to do with the history
of cities, especially Athens' history, and the circle of time.
Critias tells us
about the Atlanteans' fall from their once god-like condition. But he does not point
out how deeply relevant this lesson is for his present-day Athens.
The insolent
campaign of the Atlanteans surely reminds us of Athens' campaign in Sicily. We have
Hermocrates in the dial0gue to remind us of that event and its outcome. Closely
related to the end of the war with Sparta is the overthrow of the democracy in
Athens. Critias played a very large role in this violent event. In the Timaeus,
Critias reaches back in memory ·for Athens' first and best condition. As I read his
story, I think of men's attempts to reach back in time in deeds as well as in memory.
I think of the historical Critias' attempt to revive the rule of the few. There is a
great deal in the Timaeus to remind us of the fate of Athens. Perhaps no other
dialogue (with the possible exception of the Menexenus) points more beyond and
outside of its own mythes to the living deeds and speeches of history. If we say,
then, that the Timaeus is about the cosmos,-we must be careful that we refer to the
entire realm of becoming. That means the realm of history as well as the order of
nature. History and nature are put together in this dialogue. They constitute the
two dimensions of what we mean by time.
Timaeus' likely story, like the story of the Egyptian priest tells Solon, is about
the cosmic order which gives life and death to all things within it. It is about the
temporal space in· which men, gods, and cities have their being.
Cri ti as gives
Timaeus a piace in the feasting of Socrates. Since Timaeus is the most astronomical
of all of them, he must generate the cosmos down to the birth of human nature. At
this point, Critias will take over and give human nature its political stamp
(27a2-b6). But Timaeus may have designs of his own quite apart from Critias' attempt
to glorify young Athens. To see what these designs might be, we must look at the
likely story in its own terms.
Timaeus' story is about the founding of the cosmic regime. Timaeus reaches back,
much farther back than the memories of either Critias or the Egyptian priest can go,
to the truly first and oldest things, to the true archai. A divine craftsman or
demiurge is the hero of this story.
The world comes ta" be out of this god's
intelligent and generous nature. The god is not a grudging god. He wants all things
to be like himself as far as this is possible.
·
But the work of making a cosmos is also the gratification of a desire. Timaeus'
story gratifies the desire Socrates had--and which we ourselves might have--to see a
beautiful non-moving structure brought to life.
The demiurge gazes upon this
intelligible structure, this eidos of the world, and crafts a living image of it.
The cosmic order also has a medicinal or curing function. It corrects and tunes a
previous condition of disorder and noise.
In its being as Timaeus says "not at
peace," the pre-existing chaos resembles a city plagued by faction, a city out of
tune with· itself. For this reason, Socrates seems to be right when he calls the
likely story a nomos, that is, a law and a song(Tim. 29d4-6).
There are two matters of terminology I would like to address before I attempt to
lead you through Timaeus' speech. The first matter has to do with the word kosmos.
The second is about that all-important phrase, eikos mythes, "likely story."
· To get a sense of the word kosmos, we must remember this word's association with
beautiful arrangements of all kinds and with moral splendor. If a man is kosmios, he
acts and speaks in a fitting way on all occasions.
Aristotle speaks of
great-souledness, megalapsychia, as a kind of kosmos of the moral virtues.
(Nie.
Eth. IV,iii,1124al-2). And Homer tells us in the second book of the Iliad that the
20
I\
�loud-mouth Thersites knew ~ithin his heart many words but not according to a kosmos.
He is ou kata kosmon, that is, indecent(Iliad II,21~). Kosmos, then, means a great
deal more than the order of the physical universe. It points to the fact that human
beings are in love with ornament and display. At the same time, kosmos implies the
virtues connected with orderliness and decency.
In its dramatic form, the Timaeus imitates the various meanings of this rich word
kosmos. Plato gives our imaginations a sort of parody of this fondness in us for
what is showy and beautifully arranged.
The guest-gift Socrates is supposed to
receive certainly seems to be "just right." His hosts are perfectly suited (so we
are told) to play the part of philosopher-statesmen. Cri tias' story is just the
~hing for Socrates' desire and for the current Athenian holiday as well.
Timaeus is
just the man to give a speech about the cosmos. Socrates has even dressed up for the
occasion. He refers to himself as kekosmemenos(Tim.20c2). Of course, the absence of
the fourth host is a haunting omission from the dialogue's own kosmos. It is curious
that Plato's most formal, most artificial dialogue should also contain this emphatic
absence, that the Timaeus should begin with an embarrassment.
The sense of the phrase "likely story" is related to what I have been saying about
the word kosmos. Timaeus gives two reasons why an account of becoming must take the
form of a likely story. The first is that the cosmos itself has a likely mode of
being. It is an image. But Timaeus gives a second reason. He addresses Socrates by
name and reminds him that we have a human nature.
It is fitting for us, says
Timaeus, to accept the likely story and not to search beyond it. As Timaeus reminds
us, the likely sto.ry . belongs not t"o the region of Socratic inquiry but to the region
of trust, pistis. Timaeus makes his point with the language of proportionality.
Being, he says, is to becoming as truth is to trust(Tim.29c3).
The likely story is geared to our humanness and receptivity. It is addressed not
so much to our inquisitive selves but moreso to our very human selves who must at
some point stop searching and take a stand. The likely story is addressed to our·
spiritedness and not to a detached intellect. It furnishes us with a kind of shield
of moving images in which we may safely place our trust. The story is largely about
scientific matters--matters of physics, astronomy, and physiology. But it does not
intend to speak to that Egyptian part of the soul that craves o}?jectivity and factual
accounts. If we take the likely story on its own terms, we come to see that "likely"
does not mean "merely probable," that "story" does not mean "merely a myth." In its
very strangeness, the likely story has a peculiar form of power. Timaeus reminds us
at one point that we must guard this power, this dynamis(48dl-4).
What does this power consist in? One of the great feats of the likely story is
its ability to give us an image of things in their wholeness. Nothing in Timaeus'
story is cut off, abstracted from the life of the whole - not even death or disease.
Everything has place and therefore meaning. Even body, in its structure and motion,
is permeated with the meaningful constructions of arithmetic and geometry. Another
power lies in the way Timaeus presents the various sciences. .All the sciences,
especially music and astronomy, are closely connected by Timaeus with the good of the
cosmos and the good of man.
These sciences are shown to be moral aswell as
intellectual disciplines.
But. the greatest power of the -l.ikely story lies in its overall presentation of
orderliness. A world~order is not something we can take for' granted if we are at all
moved by Timaeus' speech. The world is the result of an extraordinary effort. The
demiurge must at one point force Same and. Other together in order to make the music
of the heavens. And the star-gods must wrestle with the great problem of joining the
best in us to the worst if we are to have birth at all. It is true that Timaeus
wishes to construct the best possible world in speech. But he fulfills this goal
through the meeting and overcoming of obstacles, . obstacles which exist not just
because the gods are not smart enough or powerful enough but because of the nature of
things. The greatest power of the likely story consists in this ability to show us
21
�what we are up against whenever we speak and act within the world of becoming. If
the story offers us a shield, a form of human safety,- it seeks no less to expose us
to ·the difficulties and risks within. thii;; world. Let us return now to the· stocy
itself.
The cosmos comes into being in this way--the demiurge decides that his product:
will be the best and most beautiful only if it possesses intelligence, nous. But
since intelligence cannot be placed directly in the body, god puts intelligence in
the so~l and the soul in the body(Tim.30 bl-cl). When Timaeus goes on to build the
soul of all things, what he constructs is the life of the intellect. The soul is
manifested in the circuitry of the heavenly motions.
These outwardly appearing
motions Timaeus identifies with the inner acts of thinking. They are the circles of
Same and Other.
The heavens, then, provide human beings with a magnificent and
trusty image of the innermost self. Since our truest and intelligent selves for
Timaeus originate in the stars, we may say that thinking--especially astronomical
thinking--is the human soul's homecoming.
Cosmos is a being in whom we see an image of ourselves. Like us the cosmos has
body, soul~ and intellect. But unlike us, it is a whole and not a part. As the
whole of all partial beings such as ourselves and the cosmos is not in need of
anything. It is a rotating sphere. It needs no hands or feet. It suffers neither
disease nor old age.
It is its own best friend.
The soul of the cosmos is
furthermore eternally active, always touching the whole of being and be.coming and
always engaged in giving accounts.
It is fitting that Timaeus would call such a
being a "happy god" (Tim. 34b8). With such a life as the cosmos enjoys, it is no
wonder that our human good should consist in imitating this god.
One point of great importance is the fact that the cosmos eternally gives accounts
of itself to itself. Logos in this way becomes a life-giving feature of the whole,
and our reflective activity is given its higher purpose. Men can give accounts
because account-giving goes on eternally though in silence. When a human being gives
an account, he taps and retrieves this silent eternal logos. He gives it voice. The
fact that human beings think and speak is not a matter of indifference ·to the nature
of things. Timaeus urges us to accept, to trust in a world which is fulfilled in its
being only in the act of its being known and spoken about. The cosmic logos has its
fruition in the human logos. Unless some human beings inquire into nature's.secrets,
the cosmos will not be a "happy god."
Looked at as a whole, the likely story is downward in direction. It takes us on a
journey from a changeless paradigm to a living cosmos. Once we are within this
cosmos, we travel from the star-gods to man and· from man to the various kinds of
beasts.
These beasts, like the sexual distinction, come into being because the
"first men" were either cowardly, unjust, or stupid. Education is the return to our
first and best star~like condition. But within the likely story's downward journey,
there is a radical break. Timaeus tells us that he left out the cause that most
physicists are constantly talking about. He left out the work of ananke, necessity,
the work of mindless bodily interaction. To remedy this lack, he says he must begin
all over again.
Timaeus' second beginning is the · most dramatic moment for the likely story.
Earlier in his speech, Timaeus had been victimized by necessity, by what he calls
"the form, the eidos, of the wandering cause." He constructed the body before the
soul, thus perverting the natural orde!r o.E first and second.
He apologized by
telling us that just as men's deeds are subject to what is chancy and random, so are
their words (34b10-35al). What Timaeus now uncovers is that it is wrong to speak ill
of necessity. For although it wanders and produces irregular untrustworthy effects,
this 'cause is necessary for the construction of the whole. The gods make our eyes
primarily so that we might gaze at the heavens and learn. decency from them. . But they
cannot make the eyes without giving them the actual power of seeing. Contrary to its
being simply identical with chance and chaos, necessity must be enlisted as a
22
�co-worker with intelligence in the making of a.world. Cosmos, says Timaeus, was in
fact
generated out of the systasis--the
standing-together
and conflict--of
intelligence an~ neces~ity(47e5-48a2).
•
What is it, then, that is finally responsible for the production of a cosmos?
What holds together the purposeful cause of intelligence and the non-purposeful cause
of necessity? Timaeus' answer is one that fits an account in the region of trust.
It is an answer that also fits a statesman's view of the world.
The bond between
intelligence and necessity is none other than persuasion.
Intelligence is said to
have persuaded necessity to b~ guided, for the most part, by the intellect's good
intentions(48a2-5).
Necessity, we see, is not entirely mindless.
Like the middle
part of the soul Socrates speaks of in the Republic, necessity can be made to heed.
reason even though it does not possess reason.
~~
Timaeus takes on a great number of very difficult questions in his long story of
necessity. One such question is "what is a body?" But the greatest question in this
part of the story, and the most provocative and difficult for the whole likely story
is this--What is the nature of space? What is that in which and out of which the
world of body and change makes its appearance?
What is that fluid and exciting
surface which causes the eidos of fire, for example, to be reflected? Timaeus calls
this principle of apparency the receptacle, the hypodoche.
It is, he says, the
mother and wet-nurse of becoming(49a4-6).
The word hypodoche comes from the verb hypodechomai. Two senses of this word are
of special importance for the Timaeus. The first is the sense of entertaining, being
receptive to, strangers. The receptacle take·s on form the way Socrates accepts hi.s
guest-gift and the way we are asked by Timaeus to accept the likely story.
The
second sense of hypodechomai is "to conceive or become pregnant." The receptacle is
the place-giver of all things that come to be.
It is their host.
But it is also
their life-giver.
Space is not a void for Timaeus.
Nor is it a merely passive
medium. It is the original womb that gives appearance, motion, and life to the eide
on which the demi urge gazes.
Timaeus tells us a story about how god schematized
space "by means of forms and numbers"
(53a7-b5). He constructs the regular Platonic
solids as the archetypes or perfect models of the four elements, fire, air, earth and
water. But he reminds us that these geometrical objects have their home in a living
order. He tells us that the pyramid for example is not only the element but also the
seed of fire(56b3-6).
It is wrong, then, to speak of a god who forced his will on chaos. The receptacle
is not merely the absence of order.
It is rather the potential for form.
The
receptacle, prior to the god's ordering, is filled with the traces of the four
elements (53bl-5). These embryonic elements belong in their own regions of space but
are constantly fighting for power in each other's territory. The receptacle is the
place of this battle, this ambitious and turbulent change of place. The mother of
becoming is endowed with a shaking or vibrating motion.
As the elements wander and.
lose their place, she attempts through this shaking motion to send them back home.
As the receptacle jostles the elements, she herself is jostled.
Timaeus' account of the elements' interaction is filled with. the language of
cities at war.
In the elemental strife, there are winners and losers, friends and
enemies. The same thing is true about our bodily substances. At one point Timaeus
tells us about the bad effects of bile on the whole body. If the body gets the upper
hand,. he says~ bile will then be t.hrown out of the body "like fugitives out of a city
in revolt" (85e2-86a2).
Throughout the likely story, there are similar efforts to
gratify Socrates' desire for a "fitting war." The war of elements is made fitting by
Timaeus' enlistment of mathematics.
In Timaeus' story of the receptacle, place and change of place are inseparable •
. The regions or topoi of space are fixed.
But one does not occupy a given place
forever.
Moreover, one cannot have place without holding on to one' s place.
In
order to maintain our bodily health, for example, Timaeus says we must con_stantly be
23
�.on the move. We must set up internal vibrations in order to withstand the attacks of
the external, all.en. world that seeks to destroy us. We must, he says, imitate the
'receptacle(88c7-89al). The entire life of becoming depends on circulation, and this
circulation in turn depends on the · warring elements.
Without the perceptual
instability of the receptacle and her contents, there could be no life in the cosmos.
It is a great mistake to think that the life of human beings or cities can ever nave
the permanence of a Socratic eidos. As Socrates reminds us in the Republic, eveb if
the best city came into being, it would necessarily degenerate on account of unlucky
marriages(546al-547a5). The story Solon brought back from Egypt stresses this truth,
the truth that the cosmos is the divine shaker of all civilizations.
In the likely
story, all things change place, souls as well as bodies. If a man lives a good life
and imitates the motions of the heavens, he returns to his first and best condition
as a star. If he fails 'to live such a life, he is reincarnated as a beast. All the
animals, says Timaeus, keep passing into one another with the loss or gain of
intelligence (Tim. 92cl-3).
Whenever anything in the world loses its place, the
receptacle makes the necessary adjustments.
Because of the receptacle, human life is ruled by the mysterious power of place.
It is important to our happiness that we have place. Also it is important that we
sometimes give up a place, that we change place. Ambition is the desire for a high
place in the world.
In the Antigone Creon curses the man who holds anything dear in
place of his fatherland. He says such a man is nowhere, oudamou
(Antigone 182-3).
Critias displays this political attachment to place by transforming the best city
into Athens, by making much of his own family, and by referring to the festival at
which the young become full-fledged members of the city. Timaeus' receptacle, along
with its elemental powers, does more than furnish the demiurge with building material
and tools. It is the power that constantly settles and unsettles human life.
After Timaeus tries to clarify the difficult and obscure eidos of space, he tells
a story about the mathematical structures that space was persuaded to take on. He
constructs four of the five regular solids (all but the dodecahedron) and assigns
them to the four primary bodies--earth, air, fire, and water.
Timaeus' mythical
physics, his putting together Empedocles and Pythagoras, is stunningly imaginative
and gratifying.
It is the counterpart to the construction of the soul out of the
musical ratios. Timaeus' story of body and change is only secondarily an attempt to
account for the actual phenomena.
Its primary goal is to transform the bodily into
the non-bodily, into the intelligible.
It seeks to persuade us that the world of
body could be imagined as a world of mathematical objects in motion. The story gives
the human intellect a home within the otherwise unfriendly region of body.
In the concluding portions of the likely story, Timaeus shows us how we were put
together by the gods. There are three things I want to say about this part of the
story. First, Timaeus builds us in such a way that our nature imitates the nature of
the whole to which we belong.
Second, our bodies are re-interpreted for us as the
outward show of inner invisible truths about us. And third, our nature comes to be
defined as the tension between intelligence and necessity I spoke about earlier.
This tension now takes on a specific form.
It is the tension between loving the
intellect and loving life for its own sake.
Timaeus will attempt to do justice to
both these loves.
The section· about our bodies is filled with stories that are both tragic and
comic. One such story concerns the neck. The neck was invented because the gods had
to join the best in us to the worst in the best possible way. They have to join the
head's di vine circuits to the mortal parts of the soul housed in our torso.
The
purpose of the neck is to join and to separate the god and the beast in us (Tim.
69d6-e3). The mouth too is defined by the cosmic dualism. It was made for the sake
of the best and most beautiful stream of speech that flows out and the stream of
nutrition that flows·in(Tim.75d5-e5). The story of hair is another memorable moment.
If the gods did not in some way protect the head, our lives would be in great danger.
24
�·But if they covered up the head with a great deal of flesh, we would become stupid
and insensitive(Tim~75e5-76d3).
Hair is the comBromise between long life and
intelligence. As such,· 1ike the mouth and the neck, it is a reminder of the riddle
that makes us who we are.
All the physiological stories. Timaeus tells us are
designed to show how the soul comes to be revealed through the nature of the body.
Timaeus shows us how immensely difficult it is to make a whole human being.
This
story of divine making in turn shows how difficult it is to be a whole human being.
I have spoken very generally and very inconclusiv~ly about this amazing ·book.
There is much that remains to be considered. The most important part of what remai~s
does not have to do with the likely story's intricate puzzles. What we must wonder
about finally is the likely story's silent listener. Has Socrates been gratified by
the likely story? There is much in the story to indicate that he would be pleased
with it. After all, Timaeus' speech does seem to gratify a desire Socrates had in
his youth and which he speaks of in the Phaedo(Phaedo97b8-99d3).
I mean the desire
that the good be invoked as a cause of becoming.
Before we can. understand Socrates' desire and possible gratification, we must
beware of thinking that the likely story is the ultimate story for Plato. There are
other stories in the dialogues, each one speaking in its own way about the cosmos and
human place.
I am thinking especially of the stories. about the soul's topoi in the
Phaedo and the Phaedrus. To a very great extent, Timaeus' story is about the virtues
of lawfulness and moderation projected into the nature of the cosmos.
It is about
that necessary part of human and.cosmic life that has to do with keeping one's place,
with being just.
The likely story is the sort of high-minded yet realistic speech
one would expect from a man who was an astronomer and a great statesman. But let us
remember. The recipient of the story is the erotic Socrates, a Socrates who asked to
hear speeches because of his desirous nature., his love of gazing.
In o't.p.er
dialogues, Socrates is feisty.
He is a troublemaker.
In the Timaeus, he':~-~·is
suspiciously well-behaved and kosmios.
Socrates' desire, the true center of t'.fie
T.imaeus, confronts us with an important question--whether the likely story, for all
its virtues and powers, is finally just to the nature of human desire, to the whole
of human nature.
I said at the beginning of this lecture that the Timaeus was the
Platonic story of return.
Is it a true and complete return to ourselves, a true
homecoming? We have the silence of Socrates to remind us of this question.
�
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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 Power of the Likely Story in Plato's <em>Timaeus</em>
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on July 29, 1983 by Peter Kalkavage. <span>Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is an overview of Plato's dialogue </span><em>Timeaus</em><span>. He invites his listeners to dwell in particular on the aspects of homecoming and return in the dialogue and discusses the </span><em>Timaeus</em><span> in conjunction with Plato's </span><em>Republic</em><span>.<br /><br /></span>(Reprinted from <em>Energeia</em>, Winter 1984)
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Kalkavage, Peter
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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1983-07-29
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FaFi-KalkavageP023 The Power of the Likely Story
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3808" title="Audio recording">Audio recording</a>
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Plato. Timaeus
Plato. Republic
Mythology
Homecoming
Socrates
Tutors
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~appho's "Hymn to Aphrodite"
[There are 3 parts: (1) a short introduction to Sappho, her dialect & her meter; (2)
reading, translating and parsing the poem rather hastily, for the benefit of those with
some Greek but not a lot; (3) some reflections on the form of the poem and how it works
on us.]
From what little we know, it seems probable that Sappho was the greatest woman
poet in the history of Western literature. Certainly the writers of antiquity refer to her
with the highest respect: There is an epigram attributed to Plato in the Palatine
Anthology (which I've reproduced on p. 2 of the handout), which says:
Some say the Muses are nine-but carelessly:
For look-Sappho ofLesbos is the tenth.
She was one of the nine great lyric poets, according to the ancient canon, and certainly
not the least of them. She may even be said to have invented the lyric, as we know it
today. But we have to wor~ with probabilities because only a tiny portion of Sappho's
work has been preserved-one reasonably complete poem (the one I'm going to discuss
tonight) and a frustrating set of fragments, some of several stanzas, some of only a few
words or even letters. We have them now because they were quoted as models by
ancient rhetoricians, or because they were miraculously preserved on papyrus fragments
in the recently excavated ancient garbage dumps of Oxyrhynchus, in the dry climate of
Egypt. Everything else has been lost. Plato, and even the Roman poets Catullus and
Horace, certainly had access to much more of Sappho's work than we do; the loss must
have happened later, during the period between the fourth and twelfth centuries of the
Christian era. But even for Plato, Sappho was a very old writer, as much before his time
as, say, George Washington was before ours. She lived in the late seventh and early sixth
centuries BCE-after Homer and Hesiod, but long before Aeschylus or any of the other
1
�Greek writers we read. She is "archaic" and therefore in certain ways mysterious; we
should have to expect that her way of feeling and speaking will seem somewhat alien.
It's therefore even more of a miracle that the little bits of her that survive seem to speak
to us so directly.
One thing that everyone seems to know about Sappho is that she was a Lesbian.
In the trivial sense of the word, this is obviously true: Except for an interlude of political
exile, she seems to have lived and died on the little island ofLesbos off the coast of Asia
Minor. (You can find it on the dialect map on p. 2 of the handout.) The Greek she wrote
and probably spoke was therefore in a different dialect from the Attic that you have
studied. On the map you.can see the distribution of various dialects: Doric was the
Spartan dialect and also the language of the great Theban lyric poet Pindar. To achieve
an effect of antiquity the Athenian dramatists often wrote their choruses in a composite
language with some Doric features. Ionic, the dialect ofHo~er and later of Herodotus, is
the one that became Attic, the Athenian dialect. Later, in a simplified form, it grew into
the so-called koine, the "common" dialect that was spoken everywhere in the Hellenized
part of the Mediterranean world; the Christian Bible was written in it. Sappho's dialect
was called Aeolic. I have enumerated a few of its general features on the left there, next
to the map. When we come to look at Sappho's poem, you'll see that many of the
spellings are different. I've tried to give the Attic equivalents for them in two pages of
grammatical notes, the handout's last two pages.
The island ofLesbos seems to have had a certain reputation in the ancient world
for the prevalence of female homosexuality. It's not clear whether Sappho and her circle
of highly cultured women friends were the reason for this reputation or whether it existed
2
�independently. We can see an allusion to this perception ofLesbos in a poem of
Anacreon, a slighly later lyric poet, which I've also put on page 2. I'll read it aloud:
[recite Greek version]
Once again pelting me with a purple ball
Golden-haired Eros
Invites me to play
With the girl with fancy sandals;
But she (for she is from well-built
Lesbos) condemns my
Hair (for it is white) and
Gapes after another-woman.
I especially wanted to mention this little poem because a few of its words or images are
also important in Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite." One is the word deute-de aute, "yet
again"-and another is the use of the word poikilos-"embroidered, multi-colored,
various, elegant, artistic, dappled, fancy, subtle, intricately wrought"-in a compound. A
third similarity is that the female identity of the loved one only appears late in the
poem-here as a surprise twist, in the grammatical gender-suffix of the word "another";
in Sappho's poem only in the gender ending of the word for "unwilling" (in line 24).
There is a tone of mock-epic ironiy here in the phrase "well-built Lesbos"-a quotation
from Book IX of the Iliad, where Agamemnon offers to indemnify Achilles, in part with
seven beautiful maidens captured on the day the Greeks took "well-built Lesbos."
I have been teasing you here by deferring what for some is the Big Question: Is it
not also obviously true that Sappho was a "lesbian" in the more modern sense of the
word, a woman who loved other women? Well, it has not always been acknowledged as
obviously true, and the few facts we have about her life make for a complicated picture.
She seems to have been married-though even this may be doubted, since the name of
3
�her alleged husband, Kerkulas, closely resembles a form of a word for "penis." But
Sappho herself, in two of her surviving fragments, refers to having a daughter, unless she
is speaking figuratively of one of her younger friends. She wrote a number of
epithalamia, or wedding poems, for heterosexual marriages. There are many legends and
traditions about her, such as Ovid's story that she pined for the love of the sailor Phaon
and hurled herself from the rock ofLeucas. She was even accused (long after her death)
of having been a prostitute. But none of these implications, some clearly false, of
heterosexual or at least bisexual activity can stand against the explicit, and ardent,
avowals of love for other women that we find in her snippets of poetry. Even so, without
a context it's hard to know how to take these; and there was a tradition in the maledominated world of classical studies, at least until the nineteenth century, to assume that
Sappho was a lover only of men. If the poems indicated otherwise, the texts must be
corrupt, and so there was a certain amount of creative emendation of the texts to try to
make Sappho's lyrics into family entertainment. Up into the twentieth century, a few
interpreters went to desperate, sophistical lengths in claiming that the poems somehow
"ventriloquize" the feelings of male lovers, or that the erotic content of Sappho's work
was merely a hyperbolic expression of sentimental friendship. (We have seen the same
kind of activity at work on the sonnets of Shakespeare.) Nowadays, of course, the
political climate is otherwise, and there are feminist scholars eager to find a kind of
militant sisterhood in Sappho's homoeroticism. I think we need to be a little careful here
as well: In speaking of Sappho's lesbianism, we can't be sure that the notion of sexual
preference or orientation may not be a construct that belongs to cultures far more modern
than Sappho's. Some commentators think that it is a very modern construct indeed:
4
�There is a book in the Navy Library entitled One Hundred Years of Homosexuality; its
publication date is 1990. It is of course true that Aristophanes' speech in Plato's
Symposium seems to isolate three separate species of lovers, and to give a comic account
of their origins; but this may be part of the mythic concreteness of the tale. It is
embarrassing to have to say it, but we don't know very fully what it meant to Sappho to
be a lover of women. (Peter Green's Laughter of Aphrodite is a wonderful historical
novel about Sappho, by a very eminent classical scholar, that gives a fascinating
imaginative construction of what Sappho's life may have been like. It's in our library-I
recommend it to you.)
The claim was often made, especially in the Renaissance, that it was Sappho's socalled immorality that caused the deliberate and systematic destruction of the texts of the
poems, at the hands of the Christian clergy during the Middle Ages. But there could have
been many other reasons for their loss. Lyric poetry has far less prestige than other kinds
of texts, and in a age of scarcity such slender productions may have seemed less edifying
and less worth the considerable effort ofrecopying. Furthermore, the unfamiliarity of the
archaic language, especially the dialectal difference, may have played a role. It is the
case that most of the early lyric poets survive only in fragmentary form. As one scholar
comments, "It is not so much the loss of a classical author's work that requires
explanation as its survival." [M. Williamson, Sappho's Immortal Daughters, p.41, my
emphasis] Having said all this, I still think it is generally true that the male poets, even
very ancient ones, by and large suffered a less drastic fate than Sappho. If you look at her
collected "works," it's a slightly eerie feeling to see a few Greek letters, beginnings or
5
�endings of words or lines, positioned on a page and surrounded by reams of commentary,
conjecture and emendation.
The only poem that has not required such restoration is the one we're about to
read, identified by number as "Fr. l" and usually known as the "Hymn, or Prayer, to
Aphrodite." It was probably the first one in the first of the nine books of poems that
Sappho is said to have written. All the poems of the first book seem to have been in a
meter now called the Sapphic stanza, since Sappho made it famous-though it was
probably invented by Alcaeus, a slightly older male contemporary poet, also from
Lesbos, who seems to have been a sort of friendly enemy of Sappho's. Before I read the
poem, I want you to have the meter in your ear, and for that purpose you should now turn
to page 3 of the handout. Here I've given the scansion of the Sapphic stanza, at the top,
in longs and shorts. The "x"' s are anceps syllables-they can be either long or short.
The cadence of the stanza will sound something like this, in Morse code:
Dah di dah dah I dah di di dah/ di dah dah (3 times)
Dah di di dah dah.
Like many of the lyric meters, this one is built around one or more instances of a foot
called a "choriamb"-dah di di dah, long short short long-in the center of the line, with
varying other stuff at the beginning of the line and at the end. Meters like this are known
as "Aeolic meters," after the dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus. Notice too that I've given to
alternative ways to write the stanza: The first and more traditional way is the way I've
typed out Sappho's poem and also the English ones, arranged in groups of four lines, of
which three are metrically identical: three so-called Sapphic hendecasyllables, elevensyllable lines, followed by a short five-syllable line called an "adonic." But some
metrical scholars have thought that the third and fourth lines are so closely related, and
6
�the fourth so short, that we should join them together and consider the stanza as only
three lines-two hendecasyllables followed by a third line of sixteen syllables. That is
the second notated version at the top of handout page #3. I apologize for getting a bit
technical here; as I will try to claim later, there is at least one interpretive issue in the
poem that may be affected by this graphical or typographical question.
All these taxonomic details will not help to get the pattern of the meter into your ear.
For that purpose, I am going to read some English sapphics. But bear in mind that
strictly speaking, there are no sapphics in English. English metered poetry is accentualsyllabic, made of an arrangement of stresses and a number of syllables (whatever "stress"
may be), while Greek poetry is quantitative, an arrangement of longs and shorts (rather
than stressed and unstressed), with the longs pronounced about twice as long as the
shorts. Incidentally, the syllables we normally stress in pronouncing a Greek work in
prose-that is, the syllables marked by accents-were in poetry indicated by pitch
variation: a fifth up for an acute accent, a fifth or some smaller interval down for a grave,
and up-and-back-down on the same syllable for a circumflex-all of this sort of
polyphonically counterpointing the variations in quantity. If you have ever heard Mr.
David recite Homer, you know what this sounds like; I can't do it. I'll now read the page
3 excerpt from Swinburne (the Turnbull at the bottom is just for fun); in doing so I'll try
to exaggerate a bit and make the meter sound almost quantitative.
[Read Swinburne aloud.]
Now with that pattern in your head, let's turn to Sappho, on the first page of the
handout. Let me read it:
[Read Sappho aloud, in Greek and then in English.]
7
�I'll recite it again at the end of my talk, so we can try to put the poem back together. It's
crucial to get a sense of the delicacy of the sound. This was proverbially one of the most
beautiful-sounding poems, and it's mostly to that fact that we owe its preservation:
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek literary critic who lived at about the time of the
Roman Emperor Augustus, included it whole in one of his books as an illustration of how
sounds fit beautifully together.
Now I am going to go very quickly through the grammar of the poem, parsing
frantically to try to show how we get from the left column to the right. You should refer
to the last two pages of notes. Since the handout is not stapled, you can pull them out and
glance at them while looking mostly at page 1.
[10-15 minutes of grammatical explication]
The first thing I want to observe is that even apart from its meter, the poem has a
traditional structure or form-the form of a prayer. There are three parts to a prayer,
which have been called the "Invocation," the "Sanction," and the "Entreaty." [Bowra,
Greek Lyric Poetry, pp. 200-201.] In the invocation, the god is ceremoniously addressed
by several appropriate names, sometimes standard epithets, listing the god's deeds,
powers or customary features. Why enumerate several names or aspects of the same
deity? Perhaps a god's different aspects are a little like avatars or personae-Zeus the
god of the thunderbolts may not be quite the same person as Zeus Xenios, the god who
protects hosts and guests. Apollo the god of the lyre may be distinct from Apollo the
patron of medicine, or Apollo the slayer of the Python, or the prophetic Apollo. In order
to induce the god to respond, perhaps we need to address her in the appropriate way, or
the way she wants to be addressed. Like a conjuror or magician, the speaker of the
8
�prayer needs to be a literalist about the correct verbal form of the spell or conjuration-to
call something by its correct name is to have power over it. What name is correct may
depend on the circumstances of the prayer, and the services sought for-which suggests
that at some point we should look carefully at the epithets here applied to Aphrodite:
"dapple-throned," "child of Zeus," "weaver of wiles." Some of these seem puzzling or
dubiously appropriate-I'll return to this later. But for now we can say that structurally
the invocation comes at the proper place: It occupies the first stanza.
The sanction, the second part of a traditional prayer, motivates the god to respond
by reminding her of benefits received or given. The supplicant might refer to a previous
life of piety, of sacrifices made to this deity, temples built or offerings brought. (An
example of this is the prayer of the priest Chryses at the beginning of Iliad I.) Or the
prayer might promise some such thing to be done in the future. In the present case, the
speaker of Sappho's poem (whom we will also call "Sappho") reminds Aphrodite not of
past favors received from Sappho but of past services rendered to her. There are many
analogous instances of this practice: Achilles' prayer to Zeus for the success of Patroclus
in Iliad XVI; the Chorus's prayer to Apollo in the Paro dos of Oedipus the King; and
especially a passage in Iliad V, in the "Diomedeia" or aristeia of Diomedes, which I
want to quote, since we be concerned with it again later. Diomedes prays to Athena as
follows:
"Listen to me, aegis-bearing offspring of Zeus, unwearied one,
If ever you also stood by my father with good intent
In destructive battle, now also be my friend, Athena:
Grant it to me to take this man, that he come to the thrust of my spear,
Who shot me beforehand and now boasts of it, and says that I shall not
Long behold the shining light of the sun."
[V.115-120; my emphasis]
9
�We see here the same kind of Sanction as in Sappho's poem: the god is reminded of past
benefactions. It seems that like Aristotle's great-souled man, the goddess prefers not to
be reminded of her indebtedness to others, but rather of other people's debts to her. But
apart from flattery, does Aphrodite's past service to Sappho obligate her, Aphrodite, in
some way? Even in the flashback at the center of the poem, the goddes humorously and
ironically uses the repeated word deute-"yet again"-indicating that even that time was
far from the first. "All right, Sappho, who is it this time? You've found Miss Right
again?
What am I supposed to do for you now?"
Notice that the tone of mock
exasperation does not prevent the goddess from promising the total and speedy
fulfillment of Sappho's desires. But of course, what is recounted in the flashback is
already past. That was last time-Now, at the time of the prayer-poem, it seems that her
desires have changed yet again. Sappho ironically portrays her own fraily and fickleness,
the Protean character of her successive infatuations. The Sanction part of the prayer
occupies the middle five stanzas; the largest part of the poem is a vista of a past in which
Sappho sought and prayed to the goddess again and again.
The Entreaty in the last stanza is straightforward: "As you helped me before, so
also help me now." Elthe moi kai nun, "come to me now again," picks up the word elthe
from the beginning of the previous section (line 5, as well as line 8). The word thumos is
also repeated from the first stanza, circling back to the beginning; so is the reference to
care or pam.
In Sappho's case the request, "Whatever my heart yearns to have
accomplished, accomplish it," is very general-not so much a request for a blank check
as an acknowledgement that the goddess already knows her innermost desires. Given this
10
�knowlege, why does Aphrodite ask Sappho the series of questions that begins at the end
of the fourth stanza? This is another problem to which I shall return.
If we look now at how the poem partitions itself to fit into the structure of a
prayer-invocation, sanction, entreaty-we see that there are breaks after the first and
before the last stanza. This 1-5-1 structure suggests that the poem is in a form dearly
loved by the Greek lyricists, a
ring composition-a circle that recurs upon itself,
symmetrically organized around a central point. What here is the central point? As I
have typed the poem, in four-line stanzas, it has an even number of lines, and the center is
at the break between lines 14 and 15. But if we consider the sapphic stanza as a threeline stanza, with the short adonic considered as an extension of the third line, then there is
an odd number of lines and therefore a unique middle line:
meidiaisais' athanat6i
pros6p6i, "smiling with your immortal countenance"-line 14 as it is printed here.
Around this central hinge of the poem-either the line itself or the space after it-the
middle five-stanza section breaks evenly into two pieces: the first describing Aphrodite's
descent from heaven, the second recounting her speech to Sappho.
The poem's
circularity lies not only in a return to its beginning point (both structural and situational),
but in an almost visual symmetrical arrangement around a center.
Circularity might
imply recurrence-Sappho's amatory predicament has happened many times in just this
way. But symmetry also implies a divine kind of order.
Though I'm not normally so much of a numerologist as to look always at the
numerically central location, line, page, stanza or whatever, in this case I think it
important that the central image of the poem is that haunting and marvelous line,
µat8iatcratcr' a8ava-rcot npocrcono:n, "smiling with your immortal countenance." Aphrodite
11
�is conventionally a smiling or laughing goddess-the Homeric epithet for her is often
philommeides, "smile-loving" or "laughter-loving."
But this picture goes beyond
convention. It is a portrayal of what in Greek statuary and painting is sometimes called
the "archaic smile," mysterious, curiously mirthless and clinical, somehow focused
inward or elsewhere, not necessarily in the least sympathy with the person smiled at. To
illustrate, here is a picture, probably of the head of the goddess Artemis, from the
museum at Delphi.
[show picture] I want to claim that the tone of Sappho's poem
depends on this central mystery.
Aphrodite-weaver of wiles, figure of poikilia,
complexity, elegant multiplicity or perhaps duplicity-Aphrodite has something to hide.
But on its face, the poem both as a traditional prayer and as a ring composition
projects an orderliness and formal coherence emblematic of benevolent gods and of a
cosmos that humans can control, or at least comfortably inhabit.
The goddess is
unearthly in her deathlessness, beauty and splendor-the elegance of her throne, the
emphasis on goldenness, the rapidity with which she arrives; but the speaker of the poem
is not obviously overawed by her coming. There is perhaps a touch of humor in the
picture of the sparrows frantically beating their little wings in order to draw her chariot:
Sparrows were proverbially associated with lust and procreation, but they are not a kingly
or powerful species. (In the more traditional iconology of Aphrodite's chariot, she is
drawn by doves.)
And when the goddess does arrive, she seems to speak to the
vulnerable, hapless "Sappho" in a tone of affection and intimacy, blended perhaps with a
certain amused contempt, but still basically reassuring.
The unusual informality of this epiphany might remind us of Athena's meeting
with Odysseus in Odyssey XIII, just after he arrives in Ithaca.
12
Not recognizing the
�goddess in her disguise, Odysseus spins one of his cunning cover stories about who he is
and what he is doing there. Homer goes on:
So he spoke, but the goddess, grey-eyed Athena, smiled,
And caressed him with her hand, and she took the form of a woman,
Beautiful and tall, and well-versed in splendid works,
And she addressed him, and spoke winged words:
"He would be a sly one, and a great scoundrel, who got past you
In any kind of wiles [doloisi], even if a god should oppose you.
You wretch, dapple-minded [poikilometa] ! You were not about
To leave off your wiles [dolon] and deceits, even though you are here in
your own land,
Nor your thievish stories, that are second nature to you.
But come, let us talk no more of these things, since we both
Are skilled in slyness-you by far the best among mortals
In counsel and in tak-telling, I among all the gods
Am famed for intelligence and slyness ... "
[XIII.287-299]
In response, Odysseus reminds Athena of her past kindness and reproaches her for recent
neglect, and then entreats her to help him again.
Aphrodite's bantering with Sappho in our poem reminds us of this episode in a
number of ways, but especially in this: Just as Athena and Odysseus are bound together
by a certain common character, so are Aphrodite and Sappho. Aphrodite is the patron
and inspiration of lovers, and Sappho portrays herself as the lover par excellence-one
who lives only to love, and who is thus utterly at the goddess's disposal.
Perhaps
Aphrodite alludes to this in her slightly sarcastic question, "Who, Sappho, is wronging
you? [adikeei]" This might mean not only "Who is your new beloved?"-.using the
language of injustice or aggression to describe the effect of the girl's beauty-but
also"Have I been unjust to you? Have I not given you what you asked for before, and
will you not get what you deserve of me now?" The justice that Aphrodite will restore is
expressed in the symmetry of the phrasing of these lines in the next-to-last stanza:
13
�yap at cpc:uyct, -rax,ecoc; otco~ci·
at Oc ocopa µ11 OcKc'r'' aA.lva 8cocrnt·
at oc µ11 cplA.et, rnxccoc; cptA.11aet
KCO 'uK c8cA.otaa.
Kut
For if now she flees, soon she will pursue;
If she does not take gifts, rather she will give them;
If she does not love, soon she will love
Even though unwilling.
The smoothness and balance of these lines might seem to express Sappho's own comic
self-forgiveness; in making the goddess grant her all that she desires, she transcends the
imprisonment in that desire of the trembling, vulnerable lover she depicts herself as. She
can see herself as the goddess sees her, and grant herself absolution.
• *******
So far I've been dwelling on the comic aspects of the poem, not only in the
narrow sense of "humorous," but also in the sense of "having a happy ending." If
tragedies end in death, frustration and the fall of cities, comedies end in marriage,
integration, reconciliation, the image of gratified desire. But to the degree that we see
the poem only in this way, we may lose that sense of the goddess's mystery figured
forth in the poem's central line. Perhaps we should go back and enumerate, not the
familiar, intimate and reassuring qualities of this epiphany, but the strange and
disquieting ones.
As I intimated earlier, some of the epithets used in the invocation of the goddess
are incongruous and surprising. It is not necessarily odd in itself to find Aphrodite
associated with poikilia-a sort of gorgeous piedness or variability, as we've seen.
14
�The first word of the poem is altered, however, when it is associated with doloploke,
"wile-weaving," in line 2. The image of artisanship (specifically embroidery) carried
by the word poikilos, is caught up again in the idea of weaving; but here artifice is
connected with deception. (Weaving, by the way, is often in Greek literature a
metaphor for the poet's art specifically; compare the idea of a "rhapsode," a stitcher
of songs.) Perhaps it is the possibility of deception that caused some scribes to copy,
not poikilothron', "dapple-throned," but poikilophron', "dapple-minded." As we saw
in the Odyssey passage, Odysseus is described in similar terms-poikilometis is one
of the standard epithets for him. These terms would clearly be more appropriate if
applied not to Aphrodite but to Athena, Odysseus' patron, who is also associated with
weaving and the useful arts. (Remember the story of Arachne.) Athena is also a
warlike goddess, as we see in the Iliad; Aphrodite, on the other hand, is pointedly
shown to be of little value as a fighter. In the passage I quoted from earlier, the
Diomedeia in Iliad V, Aphrodite is attacked and wounded by the Achaean hero
Diomedes, with the explicit approval of Athena. When she comes back to her father
Zeus to complain, Aphrodite is told:
"Not to you, my child, are given the works of war;
You must rather take your part in the yearnful affairs of marriagesLet all these other things be the business of swift Ares and Athena."
Later in the same episode, Athena is shown arming herself, yoking up her chariot and
venturing forth to confront Ares, who is fighting on the side of the Trojans. If Sappho is
in some way alluding to the Diomedeia, she deliberately conflates the roles of the
goddesses by portraying Aphrodite as a warrior, using words like damna, "to conquer,"
and summachos, "ally"; introducing military images like the yoking of the chariot in the
15
�third stanza and the mention of fleeing and pursuing in the sixth; referring to her own
thumos as mainola, full of the rage or wrath, menis, "mania," that is the first word and
subject of the Iliad; using epic diction in such phrases
as~
melainas-"the black
earth"-to evoke the Homeric poems as a presence in the back of the reader's mind. On
the other hand, we could point to another, contradictory tradition about Aphrodite. In
Iliad XIV, Hera comes to Aphrodite to get help in her plan to distract Zeus's attention.
She does not share all of her intentions, since Aphrodite is rooting for the enemy Trojans.
As Homer tells it:
Then with wiles in mind Lady Hera addressed her:
"Give me now affection and longing [himeron], with which you
Conquer [damna] all immortals and mortal men ... "
[XIV.197-99]
The word used for "conquer" is damna, as in Sappho's poem. Another illustration is
given by the Chorus in the Third Stasimon of the Antigone (admittedly written much
later):
Eros unconquered in battle, Eros who seizes all possessions,
Who sleeps in the soft cheeks of a maiden,
Who roams far beyond the sea, or to wild dwelling-places,
There is no refuge from you, not for the immortals
Nor for men, creatures of a day. Whoever has you runs mad,
You turn the minds of just men to injustice and outrage.
You hold this fight and wrangling of brothers here.
Longing proclaims its victory in the eyes of the blessed bride,
And sits from the beginning beside the great ordinances.
For the goddess Aphrodite, with whom none can fight, takes her sport.
[lines 781-799, emphasis mine]
So is Aphrodite the most warlike or the least warlike of the gods? Why even speak of
love in the terminology of war? After centuries of lyric poems addressing the beloved as
"my sweet foe," using the imagery of conquest or the taking of a fortified city, we might
16
�not even think the coupling of love and war is unusual; the convention is so well-worn.
Yet the two seem antithetical: Love generates life and war destroys it. But like Ares and
Aphrodite in the minstrel's poem in the Odyssey, the two are naturally, almost inevitably
coupled together: war as the highest excellence of the male and love as the highest
excellence of the female.
Sappho explores this question in one of her most famous fragments, which goes
like this:
Some say a host of horsemen, some footsoldiers,
Some say a fleet of ships is the fairest thing
On the black earth; but I say
It is whatever one loves.
And it is very easy to make this
Understood by everyone: She who surpassed
By far all humans in beauty, Helen,
Leaving the best
Man of all, went sailing to Troy,
And did not remember her child
Nor her dear parents in the least,
But she was led off the path ...
Here the text becomes just a few chopped-up letters, too few to conjecture what comes
next. But then the poem seems to end this way:
And remembering Anactoria, who is not here,
I would rather see her lovely walk
And the shining sparkle of her face
Than the Lydian chariots and
Full-armored infantry.
[Fr. 16]
17
�Here Sappho is using a form now called a "priamel," which first enumerates a list
of things others may choose, and then continues, "But I say ... " In setting up such a
comparison as a contest between the beauties of war and of love, she seems to be
questioning the traditional value of warlike manhood, arete, as the highest form of
excellence. The private world of individual passions and relations, from which women
are not excluded, can afford a higher value than the public, heroic world of Achilles and
Hector. Mischievously, Sappho offers a carefully-chosen, loaded example of the power
and value of love: Helen, whose voluntary elopement with Paris causes the expedition to
Troy. In this way, it seems that the Greek and Trojan heroes who fight for her are made
into involuntary witnesses to the truth of Sappho's contention. Yet this poem does not
cite the love ofMenelaus for Helen, but rather Helen's own love, whose object is not
even named. Love produces in Helen a kind of menis, a rage or frenzy which causes her
to forget and to behave irrationally; yet Sappho, the speaker of the poem, is remembering,
not forgetting her absent beloved. There is a double consciousness here, similar to what
we see of Sappho's self-portrayal in the "Hymn to Aphrodite." If a choice between love
and war is a choice between public and private, the privateness of individual choice is
bound to incline to the side of love. But in the hymn, we get more than a private and
individual affirmation of feeling: We get a quasi-epic or mock-epic, externalized
portrayal of Sappho's love-passion, using the Homeric device of the god's descent from
heaven. It's not clear to us whether the poet Sappho actually thought she had
experienced such an epiphany, or whether she is consciously using it as a metaphor of
some kind. But in making the goddess publicly visible, through the act of telling, she
allows us to see herself, Sappho, not just through her own eyes, but as seen by another.
18
�In the process, we can also view Aphrodite in a more balanced way-not just from the
perspectiver of Sappho's desperate need.
Sappho's prayer makes Aphrodite into a complex and problematic figure. When
she is asked to become Sappho's summachos, "fellow-fighter" or "ally," how are we
supposed to feel. According to one strand of Homeric allusion and tradition, Aphrodite is
of little value as a fighter or an ally; she is too weak, the most womanly and least warlike
of the gods. But we have seen that according to another way of looking at her, she may
be too strong and too universal a force to be confined in a personal alliance. She
embodies the raw power that can send wise men into a frenzy and make the just do
injustice, than can make even Zeus inattentive, and enslave gods and men alike. When
Sappho asks for her aid as an ally, she cites past times when the goddess has come to her
rescue; Aphrodite even seems already to know what is in Sappho's heart, whom she
longs for and what she most wants. But there is good reason for this: It must be the case
that the goddess has not invariably been Sappho's ally in the past. Who but Aphrodite
herself could have inspired Sappho with her present wretched, unrequited passion?
The goddess asks Sappho to say who it is that has wronged her, offered her
injustice. The temptation is to think that Aphrodite will restore justice and set things
right. But it is a strange "justice" that remedies one desperate, unrequited longing by
inspiring another. There is a grim twist in the last line of the sixth stanza: After
promising Sappho fulfillment, that she shall no longer woo but be wooed instead, the
goddess shows her raw power and sheer indifference to human preferences in the short
phrase k'ouk etheloisa, "even though unwilling." Note that the participle is negated here
with ouk and not me; there is no dispute of the fact that the beloved girl is now unwilling.
19
�But she will be made to love, even though it is against her will. Perhaps there is a veiled
threat her, directed at Sappho: What the goddess can do to another, in Sappho's interest,
can also be done-has already been done-to Sappho herself. What is more, if we look
closely at Aphrodite's promises, we notice that she nowhere indicates specifically that
Sappho will be the object of her beloved's love. "If now she flees, soon she will
pursue"-but whom she will pursue, we are not told. This could be a sort of wild justice:
To take retribution for Sappho's pain by causing its object to pine for some third person.
To some lovers, this sort of revenge might be a comfort; but if in her raging heart Sappho
most wants a happy ending-mutuality, fulfillment, the gratification of her lovepassion-then it is not altogether clear that she will receive it. The goddess's oracular,
equivocating reply leaves open the possibility that Sappho will be betrayed by her "ally."
It may be the goddess herself who is "wronging" Sappho. The Aphrodite we see here
reminds us of the goddess of Iliad III, who with harsh threats forces the unwilling Helen
to do her bidding and wait on the pleasures of Alexandros [III.390-420]. The reason she
is an unreliable ally in wars of love is that she always fights on both sides, or in the
interests of love itself. She is no respecter of persons-Athena may help her favorites,
Diomedes and Odysseus, but Sappho's Aphrodite beguiles and afflicts her favorites, like
Helen. As a goddess she is less like a person than like a natural force; you cannot expect
her not to do her will.
I am not claiming that this negative, disquieting reading of the figure of Aphrodite
is the truer, deeper reality, behind the appearance of beneficence. The calm, orderly,
powerful yet intimate affect, mixed with humor, that we first found in the poem ~ really
there. The poem holds together both sets of feelings and possibilities, reminding us that
20
�there is no self-knowledge without confusion and the experience of complexity. The
smile of the goddess expresses a kind of equipoise or ambiguity. She hides herself, not
because she has a decided malevolence or even indifference toward our desires, but rather
because she insists on withholding herself from finite human knowledge. She will do
what she will do; we are thrown back on our own ignorance and mortal limitation.
These are the wiles that Aphrodite weaves; this is the meaning of her archaic
smile at the heart of this great poem. But perhaps Sappho too is a weaver of wiles: In
putting herself into the poem, in showing us her self-knowledge and her distance from the
blindness of her own passion, she gains a kind of power even over her mistress,
benefactor and tormentor. Like Aphrodite, she displays poikilia and fights on both sides
at once, portraying her naked passion and yet ironizing it into art. And she too seems to
wear an inscrutable smile, daring us to pluck out the heart of her mystery.
[Recite the poem in Greek once again.]
21
�(1
-...._/~--
Sappho 1
'\ I
0
, )
/_ ,
I S:
)A
1tOtKt"'o0pov a. ava't ficppout 'ta,
I
I
I
1tat ~tac; BoA.o1tA.OKE, A.tcrcroµm cre:,
I
, )/
S:, )
I
S: I
µ11 µ a.crmcrt µllu ovtmcrt uaµva,
I
""
1tO'tVta, 0'U µo v,
Dapple-throned, deathless Aphrodite,
Child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I beseech you ,
Do not with cares and pains oppress,
Lady, my heart,
>
'-
But come here; if ever at another time,
Hearing my cries from far away,
You heeded them, and leaving the
[ ] home of your father,
[Golden] you came,
U
, )
~
I
I , )/
,
''
)
I
a.A.A.a 'tmB e:A.0, at 1tO'ta. Ka'te:pro'ta
' )/
"
,{
/
'tac; e:µac; a.'UBa.c; 'a.iotcra. 1t1lA.ot,
)I
I
'
I
I
e:KA. 'UE<;,, 1ta.'tpoc; Be: Boµov A.t1totcra
I
r,XP'U O" tQ V 11A.0E<;
I
,~
I
I
a.pµ 'U1tacr8e:'U;atcra· KaA.ot Be: cr ayov
JI
,...
"
"""'
I
mKEE<; crtpo'U0ot 1tEpt yac; µe:A.m vac;
I
I
I , )
, )
I
>1
1t'UKVa BtVVEV'tE<; 1t'tEp a1t ropavrot0E'
I
poc; Bia µe:crcrro,
"';:
<Xt:\lf<X
)/
'
..y'
8' e:;tKOV'tO' O"'U 8' , ro µaKatpa,
I
, )
I
I
µe:tBtmcrmcr a0avatQ) 1tpocrromp
,,
, '.>1
~
I
>.llPE O't'tt Bll'U'tE 1tE1tOV0a Kffi't'tt
-,..
I
Bll'U'tE Ka.A,11µµ t,
I
I
)t
Yoking up your [ ] chariot. Fair swift
Sparrows drew you over the black earth,
Thickly beating their wings from heaven,
Through the middle air,
And at once they arrived. But you, 0
Blessed One,
Smiling with your immortal face,
Asked what again I was suffering and why
Again I called you,
/
Kront µot µaA.tcr'ta 0t:A.ro ye:ve:cr0m And what I most want to befall me
I
I
I
'j\
I
µawoA.~ 0'Uµq?· 'ttVa 811'UtE 1tEt0ro
In my raging heart. "Whom must I again
-.1
"'
)
r.' cptA.otata; 'ttc; cr, r;,
' , ro
mv cr ay11v sc; r av
persuade
'Pdmp' , lx:BtK~e:t;
To take you back-again into her friendship? Who,
Sappho, is wronging you?
'
'
)
I
I
I
Kat yap at cpe:'Uye:t, 'taJ::t:roc; Btro;st ·
)'1,."
'I,>
I
at 8s Bropa µ11 Be:KE't, aA.A.a Brocre:t·
-.
'
'
I
I
1
at Be: µ 11 cptA.st, 'taxe:roc; cptA.11crn
> > I
Kffi'UK e:0e:A.otcra.
'I,.
n
'-
"
I
'
,.._
EA-0£ µot Kat V'UV, xaA.t:1taV Be: A.'UO"OV
/
)/
I
I
EK µEptµvav, ocrcra BE µot 'tEA.Ecrcrm
"
)
/
I
'
)1
0'Uµoc; tµsppe:t, 'tEA.t:crov· cr'U B' a'Ut o<.
I
>I
cr'Uµµaxoc; scrcro.
)
For if now she flees, soon she will pursue;
If she does not take gifts, soon she will
give them;
If she does not love , soon she will love
Even if unwilling."
Come to me now again, and free me from
harsh
Care, and whatever my heart yearns to
Achieve for myself, achieve it; and you be
Yourself my ally.
�WELL-BUILT LESBOS
Once again pelting me with a purple ball,
Golden-haired Eros
Summons me to play
With the girl with fancy sandals.
I.
~
•
)
'
'"·I•)
I
But she (for she is from well-built
Lesbos) condemns my
Hair (for it is white) and
Gapes after another- woman.
(EO"tlV yap CX7t £'\)K'tt'tO'\)
Aecrf3o'U) -tTiv µev ~µ~v Koµ11v
... ;'
,,
(Ae'UKT} yap) Km:aµeµq>e'tcxt,
1tpoc; B' aA.A.T}v i:wCi xacrKet.
T}
- Anacreon, # 358
Some say the Muses are nine- but carelessly:
For look- Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth.
-Palatine Anthology 9 .506, attributed to Plato
A FEW FEATURES OF THE
LESBIAN (AEOLIC)
DIALECT:
accent is recessive- except in
prepositions and a few other
short words
no rough breathings
digamma is used- ''w" sound
some endings different: e.g.
I
/
KcxAEco b ecomes KaA.11µµt
many vowel sounds different..a" sounds predominant.
WfM
/cnfr
~A
1:.2&1
(~
1·,.
'•
,4.-/r:rt:JH
ffr.:~i.J·CJpri'.111}
/)~rl:
· Fig. 4. The Distribution of the Greek Dialects
in the Alphabetic Peria~
�...
Meter: _ U _ x
I _U
U _
I
THE ENGLISH SAPPHIC
U _
(3 times)
uu
or: _
u _ x I _ u u _ I u __ (2 times)
_ U
_x
I_ U
U
_I
U
_x: _
U U __
From "Sapphics," by A.C. Swinburne:
•..Then to me so lying awake a vision
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,
Full of the vision,
Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
Saw the reluctant
Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
Shone Mitylene... (&c.)
Necrotalia (Lines for a friend who had asked me to translate a stanza of Sappho)
Since I sent the message that only Swinburne
Could compose in English a Sapphic stanza
Graceful, subtle, charming enough to call a
Worthy translation,
I have felt insidious change suffusing
All my being; greener I grow than grass is;
From the grass the sinuous S's slither,
Sidewardly, slewing-Soft they slide in sibilant susurration, .
M's and L's in languid embrace renewing ..
Melancholy moans of commiseration
Lost rhymes are ruing.
Paper now and pen they pervade and plunder,
Lilting, melting, murmuring, lisping, cooing,
While I watch, and wearily whisp'ring, wonder,
"What am I doing?"
Could he have been wrong about all the rivers,
~reserpine and peace and alliteration?
Has he lost his Eden; condemned to suffer
Reincarnation?
--Lucy Turnbull
�Notes to Sappho 1
,
.
.
I
,/
"th
II
1tOt.Kt.A.o0poY[E]-- case is vocative. from 7tOtKtA.oc; + epovoc;,
rone. Some editors emend
to 7tOtKtA.6q>pov·.
Cx0avcx't{B]-- also Vocative
l)oA.67tA.OKE-- vocative, from 8oA.oc;, "guile, trick"+ 7tA.faro, "weave"
ffcrmcn- from ~on, -ric;, "care, distress." Here in dative pl. with added t.
'ovtcx-- (= Attic ~v{cx) "pain, grief," also in dat • pl.
Bcxµvaro--tame, subdue, conquer, oppress
7t6tvtcx- "mistress, lady"
euµoc;- =Attic euµ6c; .
-rurB[E]-- "here, hither''
iA.6(B] -- aorist imperative of ~pxoµm
,,
"
CXt 1tOtCX = Bt 7tOtE
)
/
'- )
.,,
)
,
'"
xcxtBpo.rm = Kcxt £t£protcx (Bttprotcx, II a t ano th er t'1me,
,,
> ,
II
II.
I
Eµcxc; (= Eµcxc;)-- my in acc. p .
,,
, s:: ,
f
, s:: I II •
"
au8cxc; (= cxuucxc;)-- rom auun, voice, cry
/
atotcrcx (=tiiouocx) -- progressive active participle, fem. nom. sing. of al.ro, "hear"
1t~A.0t = Attic triA.o~, "far off'
£KAU£c;-- As opposed to
in the previous line, KA.-0ro means not only "to hear," but "to
heed." The two words share cl~8cxc; as direct object.
1t&tpoc; B~µov-- "the house of your father"; object of A.tnotocx
A.{1totcrcx= A.t1to~crcx. Aorist fem. nom. sing. participle of A.E(nro, "to leave"
xpucrtov- - Translators disagree about whether this acc. sing. adjective, meaning "gold, "
should be taken as masc., .modifying BO'µov, or as neut., modifying apµcx. My
solution is "both and neither''; it's so closely linked with flA.etc;, ''you came ,"that its
force seems to me adverbial.
ciico
>,
(,
.
..
)
'
c:Xpµa = apµcx, neut. acc., "chariot," object of U1tcxcr8£'UScxtocx.
\>7tcxcr8e'6l;mcra = \,1to~£~sacrcx, aorist fem: nom. particip. of 1>1to~£u'yvuµt, "to yoke up."
r.r,'H
.
cxyov= rirov, from ayro.
!(
,,....
>I
•
wK££c; = COKEtc;, mac. nom. pl. from roK'Uc;, "swift"
,..
I
I"\
otpoueot-- p ural of otpo'U9oc;, "sparrow."
/ h ere = U7t£p
~
.
1t£ptrac;= y~c;, "earth," in genitive with 1tep(
µBA.a{vac;-- "black," modifies yac;.
,.
I
·
J
1t'UKVCX- "thick"; here the neut. acc. pl. is adverbial, modifying BtVVEVtEc;
B{vv£VtEc;-- masc. nom. pl. of participle of Btvvriµt (=8w6ro), "to whirl, beat."
1tt~p[cx]-- 'wings," in" acc., object of B{vv£Vt£c;.
,
• .,
/
U
S:: '
""
,
• t
~
.
t
>
"f
h
II
a1t oopcxvroiec:poc; uta µEcroro= CX1t oupavou mec:poc; Bta µEoou. CX7t o'Upavou-- rom eaven.
,,
' .,,
mec:poc; Btcx µrnou-- ".through the middle air."
)f
...
t
)
,
atwa-- adv., "suddenly, immediately." .
3rd pers. p I. aons t o f £~tKvsoµai = aq>tKVBoµm, "t o amve.II
.
'i::.
~
>
~
.
~i::.'
E~t.Kovto- -
�(5
µax:mpcx- - fem. vocative of µcxx:ap1.0c;, "blessed, blissful, happy:•
µst8tcx(crma{cx]- - =µstBtno:cxacx, aorist fem. participle of µ£t~tcxro, "smile"
I'
1tpocrro,,;ov- - "face, coun tenance
It
11PE[o]- -aons t 2nd person sing. o f Epoµm, as k"
u
uttt= t i 'tt, ''wh a t"
o
'-;
...
t;\
•
Brrots= 8n cxut£, ''y e t again
1tBitovecx- - 1st person sing. perfect of mxaxro, "suffe~·
)I
°' U
KCOt'tt = 'KCXt Ott, an d wh\111
y
1
"'
'\"
KCXr..11µµ t = 'KCXr..£(1), ca II"
II
0
0
II
,,
II
11
II
~I
"Krotn= Kat l.t 'tt, an d w ha t"
o
, '\
"mos t"
µcxr..tcrtcx- eb"ro= £efaro, ''want"
yevscrem- -aorist infinitive of y{yvoµm, "come to be, happen"
µmv6)..~- -"raging, frenzied." In dative; gender is masculine-- modifies euµro
"
nvcx-- ''wh om "
,,;deco- - Here a deliberative subjunctive: "Whom am I to persuade ..."
~'V o'/J:ynv E<; fav cptAotma- - The text is apparently corrupt; this reading includes
editorial emendations. For example, the Mss. read crav, not Fav. In the text
•
'f
t::'.
'\ I
given here, CX'lf •1s again, er aynv= ers + cxyt:tv, sa rcxv cptr..otatct- - in to h er
friendship." .
'!'&itcp[ot]- - vocative of "Sappho"
~8tKft£t= cx8tK£t, 3rd. sing. indic., "to do injustice, harm, wrong."
.._
II
II
•
II
, I
• ''
I
II'
,) ) I
at= Et, "'f'
tcxx£roc;- - "swiftly, quickly, soon"
Bt©sst- - 3rd sing. future of 8tc6Kro, "to pursue, follow, prosecute"
B~KE't[m] = Bhs-cm, "accept, receive."
a)..)..a- -here adverbidl: "rather, on the contrary"
Broeret- - 3rd sing fut. of 8t8roµt, "give"
I
cptAEt = cptAEt
)
'
)
I
•
KCOUK = Kcxt ouK. Kcxt •1s here an • tens1'f1er: even
in
)
I
') I
•
• •
£9£Aotercx= £0e)..ouaa, ''wanting, w1lhng."
~
II
II
xcxA.£,,;cxv...µep{µvcxv- - These are genitive plurals, in an Aeolic form. µ£ptµ vex- - "care,
anxiety''
A.ucrov- - aorist imperative of a familiar verb. Implied object is µs. ·
)/
C..I
Ct
oacrcx (= cxttcx or cxnva) ''whateve~·
t~A.ecrcmt= 't£A£erm. aorist infinitive of 'tEA~ro, "complete, accomplish." In the next line,
i:£)..eaov is aorist imperative of the same verb.
I
"
/
•
tJ.!Eppet= ( iµetpet,. "d es1res, yearns f01 ,
,,,
'
I
autcx = cxutn
I
cruµµcxxoc;- - "ally, fellow fighter, comrade in arms"
~aero- - 2nd person sing. ir:nperative of etµt.
,)I
�
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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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Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite"
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Typescript of a lecture delivered by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Tuck is a Tutor emeritus at St. John's College Annapolis. His talk consists of three parts: (1) a short introduction to Sappho, her dialect and her meter; (2) reading, translating and parsing the poem rather hastily, for the benefit of those with some Greek but not a lot; (3) some reflections on the form of the poem and how it works on us.
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Tuck, Jonathan
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Annapolis, MD
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Tutors
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Text
.,,
On Finisfiing PCato's Symposium
--] onatfian Tuck
Though my title is "On Finishing Plato's Symposium," it might better be called "On
Not Finishing Plato's Symposium"--(with "on" meaning both "after" and "about")-- since
I'm going to claim that it is a particularly difficult book to finish. This is to say not onlythat the issues it raises are perennially perplexing, but also that the work itself is an open
structure of such a kind that it is hard to see what sort of closure or resolution its ending
could supply. I want mostly to share with you some of my confusions about this. As a
beginning, perhaps I can sneak up on the ending of the Symposium by telling you a few
things about the ending of another book which is less familiar to you, but perhaps almost
as wonderful.
That book is Il Libra del Cortegiano, The Book of the Courtier, written in about 1528
by a man named Baldassare Castiglione. It is a dialogue, set in the court of Urbino· at
a time when that small Italian city-state was in full flower. The court we see-~· and we
may hope that there is some truth in the picture-- is a witty, genteel gathering of
noblemen and ladies, courtiers and men of letters, presided over with gentle authority by
the Duchess Elisabetta of Urbino. As a recreation after supper, it is proposed that those
present speak in turn of the qualities that a perfect courtier must have. As it turns out,
that endeavor extends over four evenings and a great variety of topics. Much of the
courtier's perfection is not specific to his social role as we might narrowly conceive of
it; he must have many of the virtues of the ideal Prince, or even of the ideal man; he
must be a man for all seasons or, as the cliche goes, a "Renaissance Man." Certainly he
must be educated in all the activities that are helpful to soldiers and statesmen: both the
"gymnastic" arts like riding, hunting and swordsmanship, and the "musical" studies of
literature, singing, dancing, and graceful conversation. He must possess all the natural
virtues and all the acquired graces of civility. These requirements may seem rather
general, but the various speakers often enter into minute details, such as whether the
Courtier should pronounce certain words in a Tuscan dialect, or which musical
instruments he should play. (The wind instruments will make his face look ugly.) The
conversation lingers, for example, on the subject of what sort of jokes a Courtier should
tell-- and we are treated to the telling, with gusto, of many specimens of the sort he
should not tell! Two principles are paramount: First, this perfect Courtier-- or Court
Lady, for she too receives a lengthy scrutiny-- must never seem to expend effort in the
graceful mastery of all the appropriate activities. The Courtier is himself a work of art,
as it were, and the best thing for him is to use art in order to conceal its use: to cultivate
a kind of nonchalance, a sprezzatura or casual disdain, a leisured equilibrium that
�[Tuck--Symposium- p.2]
distinguishes the Courtier's skill from the vulgar strivings of the professional.
The second principle is that the Courtier should be a lover. Or should he? For the
various participants disagree. It is well into the fourth night of conversation, and Signor
Ottaviano Fregoso has just told eloquently of what virtuous counsel a Courtier must give
to his prince. But if he is to be thus wise and mature of judgment, it almost seems that
our Courtier must be an old man, and learned-- even a philosopher like Aristotle or Plato.
And if so, than it is not fitting or dignified for him to be in love. Indeed the freedom
from love's .compulsion is not only an advantage but a blessing. At this point, Pietro
Bembo speaks up-- Bembo, the shrewd and brilliant Venetian humanist, certainly the most
learned· person present. Bembo undertakes to show that old men can and should be
lovers, but first he must say what love itself is; The speech which ensues is probably the
most famous and popular exposition of Italian Neoplatonism, springing from the
Florentine Academy of Marsilio Ficino, the most erudite and subtle of all commentators
on Plato's Symposium. Love, says Bembo, is a desire for beauty. But the beautiful and
the good are necessarily one, born of God and transcending the particular attachment to
the physical beauties of individuals. Indeed the best lover will mount the steps of a
ladder, from the beauties of sense to those of the intellect, from the many to the one, the
true angelic beauty-- Beauty Itself-- passing beyond what is rationally expressible and
merging finally into the divine forever.
Having spoken thus far with such vehemence that he seemed almost transported and beside himself, Bembo remained silent and still, keeping his
eyes turned toward heaven, as if in a daze; when signora Emilia, who with
the others had been listening to his discourse most attentively, plucked him
by the hem of his robe and, shaking him a little, said: "Take care, messer
Pietro, that with these thoughts your soul, too, does not forsake your body. 11
"Madam, 11 replied messer Pietro, "that would not be the first miracle
Love has wrought in me. "
Then the Duchess and all the others began urging Bembo once more to
go on with his discourse: and everyone seemed almost to feel in his mind a
certain spark of the divine love that had inspired the speaker, and all wished
to hear more; but Bembo added: "Gentlemen, I have uttered what the holy
frenzy of love dictated to me at the moment. But now that it seems to inspire
me no longer, I should not know what to say: and I think that Love is not
willing that its secrets be revealed any further, or that the Courtier should
pass beyond that rung of the ladder to which he has been willing to have me
show him; therefore it is perhaps not permitted to speak further of this matter."
[The Book of the Courtier, tr. Charles Singleton, p. 357 .]
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.3]
At this point we get a little bit-~ a ~ little bit-- of comic byplay between the feminist
and the misogynist of the group: Can women rise to this same height in their loving:
The Duchess intervenes:
Signor Gasparo was on the point of replying, but the Duchess sai<;l: "Let
messer Pietro Bembo be the judge of that, and let us abide by his decision
whether or not women are as capable of divine love as men. But, as the
dispute between you might be too long, it will be well to postpone it until
tomorrow."
·
'
"Nay, until this evening," said messer Cesare Gonzaga.
"How, this evening?" said the Duchess.
Mes~er Cesare replied: "Because it is already day"; and he showed her
the 1ight that was beginning to come in through the cracks at the windows.
Then everyone rose to his feet in great surprise because it did not seem
that the discussion had lasted longer than usual; but because it was begun
much later, and, because of its delightfulness, it haci so beguiled the company
that they had taken no notice of the passing of the hours; nor was there anyone who felt the heaviness of sleep upon his eyes, which happens almost
always when we stay up beyond the accustomed bedtime hour. Then the
windows were opened on the side of the palace that looks toward the lofty
peak of Mount Catria, where they saw that a beautiful rosy dawn had already
come into the east, and that all the stars had disappeared except the sweet
mistress of the heaven of Venus that holds the border between night and day;
from which a soft breeze seemed to come that filled the air with a brisk coolness and began to awaken sweet concerts of joyous birds in the murmuring
forests of the nearby hills.
[p.359]
And there, in effect, the dialogue leaves us. Bembo's discourse takes only about twenty
pages in a hook of over three hundred; but all the other speeches, no matter how valuable
and memorable in themselves, must seem to us now to be somehow subsumed into
Bembo' s vision of the ladder of love. This is Castiglione' s Symposium, and his imitative
homage to Plato tells us quite plainly how he reads the older book. But as I shall argue,
Castiglione is not alone.
When we turn to Plato's Symposium, we can see a significant formal difference.
Socrates' and Diotima's speech in praise of love ends loftily at, or near, the top rung of
the ladder of love, where the true best lover may look upon Beauty itself, pure, unmixed,
"not infected with human flesh and colors and much other mortal nonsense"; where he
may beget true arete and win the friendship of the god. The speech ends here, but there
still remains folly one-fifth of the dialogue called Symposium-- and this, I think, demands
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.4]
an explanation. Plato's dialogues may or may not end in philosophic irresolution, but we
have ample evidence that Plato is capable of giving them a powerful sense of rhetorical
closure-- Take for example the endings of the Republic and the Phaedo. Clearly the
Symposium ends as it does, not through some authorial inadvertence, but by choice. This
is to say that by not ending with Socrates' speech, the dialogue deliberately passes up an
opportunity for the kind of sublimity and powerful generality that we saw at the end of
The Book of the Courtier.
Let's consider what the implication would be if the Symposium did end with Socrates'
speech. How might the denouement of the dialogue read? The other guests, suitably
dazzled, fall sil~nt for a brief space as Socrates finishes speaking. Perhaps the ardent,
boyish Agathon cannot restrain himself longer: He bursts out in enthusiastic praise of the
poem that Socrates has made; at least, that is what he calls. it, and Socrates does not
demur. Aristophanes contributes a brief quip to release tension, perhaps a jab at his usual
butt, the doctor Eryximachus, who points out in his reply that the dawn is breaking; they
. have talked all night. Wonder seizes the participants, and as the sun, visible emblem of
the Good, pours its effluence through the drawn-back curtains, the camera moves back
and the music comes up. We, the audience, are left as privileged observers of a kosmos
whose orderliness provides the ground and the validation of Socrates' discourse. The
effect of such a conclusion would be clear: We would feel strongly--or perhaps I should
say even more strongly, since many readers already feel this way-- that Socrates' version
of love is the true one, the valuable core of meaning that the dialogue seeks to commend
to us. And if so, what part would we say that the other speeches play? Surely they are
not merely ornamental, or "dramatic foils," whatever that phrase might mean. Rather
they must somehow be proleptic--dramatic foreshadowings, visions through a glass darkly
of the truth that Socrates brings to light. This reading would give a very ·satisfying
structural analogue, in the dialogue's form, to the ladder of progressively increasing
vision and fulfillment that is, in this reading, the central matter of the dialogue.
As putative evidence in favor of this way of reading, we do in fact find very many
points of correspondence between each of the five preceding speeches and the speech of
Socrates. Let me enumerate a few. Phaedrus says that Love is the cause of our greatest
human benefits, a motive for noble behavior and a means to the favor of the gods.
Socrates would surely agree with this formulation, as far as it goes. In the next speech,
Pausanias appears, at least, to be distinguishing between the shameful, "popular" love he
calls paiderastia --pederasty, love of young boys-- and the nobler, "heavenly" love he
associates with philosophia and other pursuits of excellence. He also gives a version of
Diotima's myth of Pores and Penia: The rich resources of the older, wiser lover supply
thepoverty of the youthful beloved, who has only his beauty to offer. What we may think
of the real motives or the larger purpose of Pausanias is quite another question; I only
�[Tuck- Symposium- p .5]
want to suggest that dramatically, he too is foreshadowing S~crates after a fashion,
introducing themes and images that Socrates will employ later. The case of Eryximachus
is clearer. In treating eros as a kind of harmony by which the cosmos is ordered, he
generalizes it into a physical principie that can be used to describe any motion toward an
object or goal. Socrates, similarly, would have us think that the word "love" is only very
partially applied to the romantic relationship between two people. Just as the word
"poetry" should be used to denote any act of making or generation, so should the word
"love" point to the common activity of pursuing a goal, some real or apparent good
which awakens desire.
I shall presently argue that the speech of Aristophanes is in its tendency the most
hostile to the cl~ims of Socr~tes and Diotima; yet even here we can find a few points of
contact. Aristophanes pictures each of us as a half-person, left incomplete by a past act
of rebellion against the gods. This is a forceful way of showing that love is of what one
lacks, just as Socrates also emphasizes. In another dialogue perhaps we could imagine
Socrates using something like Aristophanes' myth of the half-human as an image of our
relation to the eide: We find ourselves born incomplete-- That which is most of value
to us and which will make us happy is not within us but elsewhere. But we have a
memory of it-- perhaps an ancestral memory, or one from a former lifetime-- which may
serve to bring us to what we seek. The difference, of course, is that the thing sought for
is not, in Socrates' account, another person.
The tragic poet Agathon's rhapsodic tribute to love begins with a distinction: Others
have spoken of the acts and benefactions of the love-god; he, Agathon, will first address
what sort of being the god is. Here is a conspicuous point of correspondence with the
discourse of Socrates, 'Yho congratulates Agathon on these opening words at the start of
his own devastating cross-examination. Apart from their beginnings, Agathon and
Socrates have other common ground. Agathon claims that Eros is a poet himself and the
cause of poetry in others: Everyone, touched by love, becomes poetic, even if unmusical
before. He goes on to say:
And indeed, who will deny that the making [poiesis] of all living things is
Love's wisdom, by which all creatures are begotten and come to be? Again,
do we not know that in the workmanship of the arts [technai], the man whose
teacher this god is becomes well reputed and famous, while the man whom
Eros does not touch is obscure?
(197A)
Agathon appeals here to the generalized notion of "poetry," just as Eryximachus
generalized "love." Socrates agrees with both men, though he goes beyond either of
them in broadening both worqs and linking them together. Perhaps here, if anywhere,
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.6]
we could look for a truce in the war between Philosophy and Poetry that is one of the
implicit themes of the dialogue. But of this, more later.
So far we've seen that each of the first five speeches does proleptically participate, to use
a pregnant word, in the larger whole that is Diotima' s presentation by way of Socrates.
But of course a foreshadowing is still shadowy, and the points of similarity I've
enumerated give only an inkling of what is to come. In my thought experiment, the
speech of Socrates concluded the dialogue by commendin'g to ~s a true and universal
account of a hierarchy of value in human activities. By means of love we engage in these
different activities, since love in its broadest sense steers every action; but more
importantly we learn by means of love to redirect our actions. We learn by loving; but
what we learn is to love learning to love, until we apprehend the last best object of our
love and, by apprehending, attain it. The first five accounts fall short of recognizing this
truth because they are partial, in two senses of the word. They do not include enough,
but also they are not impartial-- Each speaker is limited by his narrower vision. For
example, each of the five shows a kind of guild solidarity, a commitment to other
sophists, lawyers, doctors, comedians or tragedians. Each speaker is also characterized-some of them rather fully-- so that we get a vivid sense of the fussy, humorless
Eryximachus or the shrewd sensualist Pausanias. Their several apprehensions of love are
tainted by the merely personal; but the theme of Socrates' discourse is that the merely
personal is exactly what we must get beyond. Recall this exchange: Agathon says," I
cannot refute you, Socrates; let it be so." And Socrates replies, "It is the truth, dear
Agathon, that you cannot refute; it is no great matter to refute Socrates." Implicitly
Socrates claims a higher validation for his assertions, higher than his personal authority
or even the authority of the mysterious Diotima, who as her significant name implies is
probably not a person at all. Socrates characterizes the love of a single person or a single
activity as a "mean, petty enslavement." Nor is he limited by any guild loyalty to his
"trade" of philosophy, for philosophy is not a trade at all. Rather it is the paradigmatic
human activity. It is true that some of the earlier speakers, especially Eryximachus and
Agathon, seem to make analogous claims for their own trades; but in our hypothetical
dialogue Socrates preempts their titles precisely ~ coming last. He. leads us to a height
from which we may survey the ground we have traversed; and like Dante in Paradise we
look back down on this vile threshing-floor, the earth, and smile in gentle contempt.
Thus if we imagine a Symposium which ends as Castiglione's book does, the action
of the whole dialogue is in the direction of transcending what is merely personal. The
earlier speeches, the incidental comic episodes of the drinking party itself, the special
radiant glamor of the occasion even as recounted many years later-- All these are
inklings, fruitful contrasts that prepare us for our eventual enlightenment. One particular
incident from the earlier part of the dialogue now assumes added importance:
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.7]
Aristodemus arrives at Agathon's house to find that he has left his companion Socrates
behind. For Socrates has withdrawn into a neighboring porch and stands there, unwilling
to go inside eveff at the invitation of Agathon' s servant. (In the completed dialogue
which we have, of course, Alcibiades recounts· a similar occasion during the campaign
to Potidaea.) This kind of abstractedness suggests Socrates' peculiar relation to the
corporeal world. We may plausibly assume that in such fits of ecstasy-- ekstasis,
11
standing outside 11 himself--Socrates contemplates the higher objects of human love.
From such a height there is a marked descent into the pleasantries of the drinking party.
Socrates' ironic disclaimers of wisdom must seem very disingenuous when he hopes to
be filled, like an empty vessel, with Agathon' s wisdom-- which he says is much brighter
and more potef\t than his own, paltry and wavering as a dream. In fact the Socrates who
delivers the ext~nded discourse is more assertive than questioning, and the form of his
speech suggests that his wisdom can be transmitted whole, by contact, as a teaching or
a religious initiation. It does not waver, though we may waver before it. Only in his
brief but trenchant examination of Agathon does Socrates here resemble the "torpedo
fish" of many other dialogues. Otherwise, emulating his five predecessors, he discards
the treacherous fluidity of conversation and gives a lengthy exposition, which perhaps his
hearers can simply assimilate from him as he did from Diotima.
The dialogue I've been describing is not the one that Plato wrote, but perhaps the
description was worth the effort; for I claim that this non-existent dialogue is nonetheless
present as a rejected possibility within the work we do have. Or to put it more strongly,
the dialogue that ends with Socrates' speech is precisely and conspicuously the one that
Plato avoided writing. Instead he jostles us abruptly from the sublime to the ridiculous,
as the drunken Alcibiades bursts into the party. (I intend to suggest later that this
characterization, "from the sublime to the ridiculous," may be quite misleading. But for
the moment, let it stand.) In a number of ways, Alcibiades' arrival signals the exact
reversal of the norms of the little ·kosmos over which Socrates had been effectively
presiding at the time of the interruption. The initial decision to send away the flute girl
is the first to be reversed; the notes of another flute girl are he.ard, along with other
noises of revelry. Next to go is the agreement to drink only moderately, and then
Alcibiades disarranges the seating order to which our attention was so pointedly called
by Socrates when he first came in.
By sitting down between Socrates and Agathon, Alcibiades seems to disrupt a·
pedagogical relationship of great significance in the foregoing part of the dialogue.
Agathon was celebrating the victory of his tragedy, but in this evening's contest the prize
has gone to Socrates. But we cannot simply regard Socrates' victory as a rejection of
Agathon and of the claims he makes for eros and poetry. After taking great pains to
interrogate Agathon about these claims, Socrates pointedly casts himself in the role of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.8]
Agathon, putting the young tragedian's erstwhile errors into his own youthful mouth as
he describes his own correction at the hands of Diotima. We might suppose that the
education of Agathon was the purpose that called Socrates to descend from his
philosophic ecstasy into the shadow world of the drinking party. This purpose Alcibiades
seems to frustrate, symbolically by interposing himself between the younger man and the
older, but more importantly by shifting the conversation back into the· realm of the ·
personal. What was once the praise of love becomes the praise of the praisers, first
Socrates but then conceivably others, as we gather from the by-play that follows
Alcibiades' speech. Although Socrates displays embarrassment for good and obvious
reasons, his unwillingness to be praised may also bespeak a concern for Agathon's
welfare: He has just been at pains to tell Agathon that it is the truth, not Socrates, that
cannot be refuted. It is a form of slavery for the· student to depend upon that particular
teacher from whom, or in whose presence, he receives enlightenment.
How do we as readers cope with the eruption of Alcibiades into the ordered sublimity
of Socrates' school of love? We might think that the pra~se of Socrates which follows,
though broadly ironic at times, gives added authority to his teaching. Even Alcibiades,
beautiful, brilliant and dissolute, is forced to pay a kind of homage to the teacher. It was
not an accident that Diotima's portrait of Eros resembles Socrates himself in Alcibiades'
portrayal; both these descriptions contribute to the raising of Socrates to a mythic status.
According to this way of reading, then, the strategy of the dialogue is to glamorize the
man above all, and his teaching as a consequence. In fact, the whole occasion is made
illustrious by its remoteness in times from the act of recounting it. There were giants in
the earth in those days, before Agathon left town for good,' before the treason of
Alcibiades and the disasters in Sicily, back when Athens could still regard itself with
some justification as the school of Hellas. And Socrates is the schoolmaster. As
Alcibiades makes clear, he loves beauty without extravagance and wisdom without
softness, in the words of Pericles; and he can even drink wine, lots of it, without
inebriation. He is a man for all seasons; his claim of expertise on the subject of eros
becomes , as eros is generalized, a justified claim of omnicompetence. And we, who
survive in these degenerate days, are left to wonder at him.
But we should be disquieted by this reading, if we hope by the heroic apotheosis of
Socrates to give greater weight and authority to the teaching he expounds. Even leaving
aside for a minute that teaching's argument against arguments from authority, if we are
to give credence to what is said because of the authoritative stature of the man who says
it, ought we not to worry that this praise of Socrates comes out of Alcibiades' mouth?
And isn't it alarming that he seems at times to have a very crude if not actually mistaken
sense of who Socrates is? We will be forced to say that Alcibiades spoke better than he
knew, while Socrates, also ironically, minimized his own powers unjustly in referring his
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.9]
own teachings to the authority of some fictive Diotima. And again, if we depend at all
on the figure of Socrates to validate the teaching of Socrates, th~t teaching is vitiated: we
are in the realm of the personal, and the doctrine that lived by the personal power of the
man Socrates may also die with him. This same dilemma goes far toward making the
Phaedo one of the most problematic of the Platonic dialogues. ·To the extent that the
narrative resembles a saint's life, the very reasons for canonization are paradoxically
called into question.
Let's entertain, for a moment, another possible response to the speech of Alcibiades.
Instead of supporting the Socratic teaching about love, perhaps Alcibiades in effect
undercuts it. Superficially he can do this just by being who he is: Alcibiades, the
paradigm of the· corrupted youth, the alleged desecrator of sacred images, future turncoat,
a· byword for license and extravagance. Furthermore, his view of Socrates is complex
and disquieting, planting seeds of distrust and cynicism in us. Lavish but barbed praise
is mingled with implications that Socrates has occult powers of which we should beware.
Even if this is no more than cheerful irreverence, it effectively breaks the former mood
of high philosophic transport. Socrates is an object of wonder, but also a slightly
grotesque figure of comedy. Along the same lines we get a first-hand view of Alcibiades'
effect on the tone of the gathering-- Doesn't it presage the fate of all such attempts at
transcendence, possibly including the fall of Athens itself? If we are radical Platonists
and humorless readers, Alcibiades is an unwelcome irritant; because we are virtuous there
shall be no cakes and ale. But even if we enjoy the revelry that he brings, our more
measured evaluation might be that there has been a fall from grace somehow-- or more
seriously yet, that the seriousness of the gathering was suspect from the start. Were these
ribald boozers ever worthy of Socrates and his invitation to raise our sights, out of the
muck of corporeality? And what about us-- If we've been chuckling at Alcibiades all the
while, mustn't we now pass judgment on ourselves? Perhaps no one is ready for the
message of Socrates, or at least the later, more ethereal part of it. Or perhaps the
message itself is thereby flawed.
The contrast between the sublimity of Socrates' discourse and the festive ribaldry of
Alcibiades poses these problems for our sympathies because it juxtaposes high and low,
noble and base, beautiful and grotesque, general and particular, .speculative and sensual.
We can see these same dualisms at work within Alcibiades' account of the man Socrates.
As a Silenus he is base and repellent on the outside but full of precious and attractive
things on the inside. The other eikon, of Marsyas the satyr, reverses this relationship:
The siren-like piping of Socrates is superficially alluring but actually a call to a high and
uncomfortable, even forbidding, way ofliving. There is a similar paradox in Alcibiades'
portrayal of Socrates as erotic. The account of the younger man's attempted seduction
seems to give us a Socrates who is outwardly sportive but truly and inwardly chaste-- a
teaser, as it were, though perhaps without intending it. On the other hand, much of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.10]
Alcibiades' jesting at Socrates' expense depends on exposing this outwardly sober
philosopher as actually motivated only by his penchant for a pretty face. Socrates himself
actually contributes to this impression by willingly participating in some of the bitchiness
and banter before and after Alcibiades' discourse. So the contradiction is replicated just
in the appearance, and replicated again just on the inside, at least according to Alcibiades.
All these are paradoxes referring to the person of Socrates, but as we have seen, the same
kind of paradox seems to complicate the issue of Socrates' person versus Socrates'
teaching. It is not clear whether the concluding focus on the man represents a descent
or an apotheosis.
Because as\eaders we find our responses suspended between these two poles, we
should not be entirely surprised by the way the dialogue concludes.
So Agathon was getting up in order to seat himself by Socrates, when suddenly a great crowd of revellers arrived at the door, which they found just
opened for some one who was going out. They marched straight into the
party and seated themselves: the whole place was in an uproar and, losing
all order, they were forced to drink a vast amount of wine. Then, as Aristodemus related, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and some others took their leave and
departed; while he himself fell asleep, and slumbered a great while, for the
nights were long. He awoke towards dawn, as the cocks were crowing; and
immediately he saw that all the company were either sleeping or gone, except
Agathon, Aristophanes, and Socrates, who alone remained awake and were
drinking out of a large vessel, from left to right; and Socrates was arguing
with them. As to most of the talk, Aristodemus had no recollectio11, for he
had missed the beginning and was also rather drowsy; but the substance of
it was, he said, that Socrates was driving them to the admission that the same
man could have the knowledge required for writing comedy and tragedy-that the fully skilled tragedian could be a comedian as well. While they were
being driven to this, and were but feebly following it, they began to nod;
first Aristophanes dropped into a slumber, and then, as day began to dawn,
Agathon also. When Socrates had seen them comfortable, he rose and went
away-- followed in the usual manner by my friend; on arriving at the Lyceum,
he washed himself, and then spent the rest of the day in his ordinary fashion;
and so, when the day was done, he went home for the evening and reposed.
(222B-223D)
Socrates, who embraces and subsumes contradictions within himself, is shown framed
symmetrically by a tragedian aqd a comedian, each presumably making a claim of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.11]
exclusivity. (We are reminded of the vocational chauvinism that the early speakers of the
dialogue displayed.) Our surrogate in the scene is Aristodemus; we have to suspect
ourselves of having nodded off and missed something. What is the relationship between
the philosophic issues that the dialogue has posed and this assertion about tragedies and
comedies? We are left with this question. And Socrates having succeeded in posing yet
another uncomfortable problem for us, walks calmly out of the dialogue and into the
world.
The relevance of Socrates' last argument may depend on how we take "tragedy" and
"comedy, wha~ associations we make with these terms. I have no wish to define either
of them; in most post-Aristotelian discussions of tragedy, in particular, the urge to define
is symptomatic of a touching but doomed faith in the power of legislation in criticism.
But perhaps we can think out loud for a minute, not about tragedy itself or comedy itself,
but about the use of them as a pair. When they are put together and set off in opposition,
it is usually because, roughly speaking, tragedies tend to end badly and comedies tend to
end well, tragedies in deaths and the fall of princes, and comedies in marriages and the
reappearance of lost children, tragedies in social disintegration and comedies in the festive
creation or restoration of a just city, tragedies in the recognition that we are hemmed in
by harsh necessity and comedies in the gratification of our deepest desires. It is in some
such way that Dante can entitle his poem Com media. (The divine part, by the way,
was a later addition.) Let us ignore for a moment the inconvenient fact that much of the
surviving corpus of Greek tragedy calls this way of distinguishing genres into question;
we have at least the authority of Aristotle that a tragic mythos or plot should present a
change of fortune from better to worse (1453al5). Presumably Aristotle's lost treatise
on comedy would flesh out this distinction by claiming that comedy is or ought to be
eucatastrophic-- that is, should have a happy ending. But I think that for this passage in
the Symposium we need a somewhat more complex view of the difference between
tragedies and comedies. Aristotle does remark in the surviving part of the Poetics that
tragedies represent men as better than they actually are, comedies as worse (1449a31).
To this we may add a social distinction: Tragic characters are aristocrats and comic
characters are low-born, even ludicrous and defective (l 449a31). Rhetorically speaking,
·a tragedy should be in the high literary style, avoiding crude everyday words or
colloquialisms; comedy, on the other hand, should suit its style and diction to its lowly
characters. Trying to pull even more out of Aristotle, we might be led to wonder what
the opposite of "catharsis" is; if he associates tragedy with a kind of purgation or
purification, would he be willing to say that comedy soils or taints us somehow? Or
would he claim, rather, that comedy brings about the catharsis of a different set of
pathemata or affections?
ti
ti
ti
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.12]
While I want to retain the Aristotelian emphasis on the social distinction between
tragedy and comedy, I particularly want to avoid a notion of comedy as exclusively
satirical or aggressively moralistic. It seems better to think instead of the high
Shakespearean comedies, with their final atmosphere of festive reconciliation and
forgiveness. If comic plots do poke fun at human foibles, they also seem in a certain
way to license them, or to extend to them a kind of charity. If a victim or scapegoat is
excluded or driven out at the end-- a Malvolio, a Shylock or.a Jacques-- it is because he
has shown a snobbish or mean-minded intolerance of the human failings of others. As
an audience, we are invited to consider and accept our own ~rdinary limitations and to
forgive ourselves; it may be that forgiveness is the high comic analogue to purgation.
If laughter is a mark which distinguishes our response to comedies, it should be laughter
with others at least as much as laughter at them, perhaps a laughter of wonder or of
innocent pleasure, but not merely the laughter defined by Hobbes as "sudden glory." It
might take an extensive critical wrestle with the works of the real Aristophanes for me
to be able to ground this notion of comedy in actual Athenian practice; but I am hoping
that the Symposium itself will eventually provide me with some justification for
introducing it.
Now if we apply these large, complexified terms, "tragedy" and "comedy," to what
has been happening in the Symposium, possibilities and questions abound. Aristophanes
the comedian and Agathon the tragedian have both given their own speeches, which at
first encounter seem appropriate to their callings. The myth Aristophanes tells certainly
contains grotesque and laughable elements, as well as the possibility of a final comic
reconciliation; while Agathon's speech is "tragic" in the rhetorical and stylistic sense:
self-consciously lofty and refined, in the style of Gorgias, as Socrates points out. (We
know by the way, that Plato is willing to use the word "tragic" in this limited sense. At
Meno 76E, to give one example, Socrates mocks his own definition of color "in the
manner of Gorgias" as "an effluence of figure commensurable with vision and
perceptible." He says of this definition, "It is a tragic [i.e., high-flown] answer, Meno--tragike gar estin. o Menon. he apokrisis -- and so it pleases you more than the one about
figure.")
So far, so good. It seems on this showing that our comedian has spoken comically
and our tragedian tragically. But unfortunately the opposite ·pairing seems equally
justified: The pathos of Aristophanes' story lies not only in our given human sense of
incompleteness but also in our limited ability to find wholeness and peace in another.
The offer of Hephaistos to weld the lovers together is mentioned only in a hypothetical
case; it is not a real option for us. Finally we are left tragically alone, at the mercy of
the gods and of necessity. Meanwhile, Agathon's speech, for all its posturing and claims
�[Tuck- Symposium- p. 13]
of high seriousness, might to an attentive ear have the ring of inadvertent self-parody.
The pretensions of .the speech are effectively punctured by Socrates in his response. Our
final judgment might be that the speech is comically inadequate, even though we are filled
with good will and forgiveness for the boyish poet who makes it'. Adding it up, each of
the two speeches seems to authorize a "tragic" or a "comic" reading in itself; this
ambiguity gives us a preliminary illustration of the truth of the claim that the same man
can ~rite both tragedies and comedies.
I have noted that the two poets are finally posed symmetrically around the enigmatic
Socrates, the walking paradox. It might seem that the two speeches can find some
reconciliation with each other in Socrates' discourse. It is noticeable that Socrates makes
use of each speech in order to refute the other. In his interrogation of Agathon, for
example,. he stresses the relational aspect of love: Love is of something, something
which is lacking. Therefore love cannot be good in· itself. A lover is a lover precisely
because he is incomplete-"" We are forcibly reminded of Aristophanes. But Socrates,
through words he attributes to Diotima, later turns on his erstwhile ally:
"And certainly there runs a story," she continued, that all who go seeking
their other half are in love; though by my account love is neither for half
nor for whole, unless, of course, my friend, this happens to be something
good. For men are prepared to have their own feet and hands cut off if they
feel these belongings to be harmful. The fact is, I suppose, that each person
does not cherish what is his own, unless someone should say that the good
is what is familiar and one's own, and what is bad is what belongs to another.
For there is nothing else that men love except the good."
(205E)
Here the emphasis is not on the love relation, but on the love object as definitive of love;
we might almost say, not on the lover but on the beloved (Cp. 204C2). And to say that
the good is the only object of love is to remind us that, speaking figuratively, eros
"confers benefits" and "fosters virtues"-- just as Agathon claimed. It is noteworthy that
Socrates disagrees so explicitly with the comical-tragical-mythological logos of
Aristophanes; for in principle as well as affectively Aristophanes is the greatest threat to
Socrates' own argument. (I have observed, for ·example, that many freshman seminars
have sought to promote Aristophanes' story at Socrates' expense.) Both men recognize
that human beings are seekers-- but what are we to seek? Will we find happiness in what
is our own, somehow familar even if never glimpsed before? This would give our search
the pathos of a homecoming and would validate our present pas'siions and frailties,
�[Tuck- Symposium- p. 14]
bathing them in a universal, calm charity. Or can we be happy only in striving for what
is other, self-subsistent, needing neither us nor anyone? This sounds sublime, but also
solitary and hazardous. There is a high mythic drama about both of these quests; but one
seems to make too small a concession to human frailty while the other might seem to
concede too much.
By using each of the playwrights as ammunition against the other, Socrates stakes out
a larger, more inclusive position. Now it is Socrates who can write both tragedy and
comedy, and both at the same time, though not perhaps in the same respect. Perhaps we
can see this dualism not just in his response to his two immediate predecessors, but also
in a more gen.era! difficulty about our response to his argument: Which are we to
emphasize in Sdcrates' doctrine, the union o.f high and low springing from the generality
of eros, or the hierarchical ranking of love objects which demands that we forsake the
less good for the better? It is often objected against Socrates (especially by the young)
that relationships between individual people are not sufficiently valued, since the merely
personal kind of love is supposed to point beyond itself. But with equal justice we could
shift the emphasis and rejoice that the ladder does have a bottom rung, that ordinary
human passions and experiences can find some place in the search for what is really
valuable. Each of these two ways of reading will find some justification in Diotima's
discourse. The "tragic" reading emphasizes the lofty, the noble, the purgative, and
implies that human fulfillment may not be possible in this world. The comic reading
heals us and makes us whole by containing and validating all forms of human activity,
from the bodily begetting of children up to the rapturous gaze upon Beauty itself. But
here a Platonist might object that we have our categories mixed up: The lofty reading
is the comic reading, for it alone can have a genuinely happy ending: immortality and the
friendship of the god. (Dante would say this, I think.) If so, then the more holistic,
earthier reading represents a failure to choose right objects for loving, or perhaps even
a hubristic attempt to remake the good in our own image, to assimilate the divine to the
human. If we heed this objection and reallocate the words "tragic" and "comic"
accordingly, we must make an adjustment of emphasis in the way we read the speech of
Socrates; but it's striking that the same dichotomies still apply to the speech, even when
the. two terms are transposed. The same man can make both tragedies and comedies-This principle persists, even though, embarrassingly, we are not too sure which of the
two he is making at any given time.
ti
ti
We have seen that it's possible to take Socrates' final, cryptic argument as a
programmatic or organizing statement about the structure of several parts of the dialogue.
We applied it in turn to the speeches of Aristophanes, of Agathon, and of Socrates in
subsuming the first two. And the same remark about tragedies and comedies also seems
to pertain to the problematic relationship we saw between Socrates' speech and that of
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.15]
Alcibiades. A Platonist reading would consider Socrates' description of the ladder not
only as the climax of the work (Hellenists, please pardon the pun), but also as the
valuable core of meaning for whose sake the dialogue is written. The remaining or
Alcibiadic portion of the dialogue would then probably have to be considered as a kind
of betray! or a tragic fall from good fortune into evil. But an "anti-Platonist" reading
would hold that entrance of Alcibiades signals the comic reassertion of the value of
earthly and even of earthy things, along with a comprehensive offer of benediction and
forgiveness for human beings, who cannot stay at the height to which Diotima calls us.
As things now stand, the man who can write both tragedies and comedies is not·
Socrates but Plato himself, subsuming all the previous oppositions into the felt coherence
of the whole dialogue. I say that Plato is this man, but you may be tempted to accuse
me of attributing to him tragicomedies and comitragedies that I myself have made. Has
this critical enterprise grown too perversely permissive? It is certainly worrisome that
the dialogue shows itself willing to fit into each of these dichotomous structures. Perhaps
we can agree on this: Socrates' last argument about tragedy and comedy is a resonant
one, virtually demanding some integration with the other themes of the dialogue.
Formally, the pair "tragedy" and "comedy" has the look of a universalizing doublet, like
"heaven and earth," "rain or shine," "young and old," "gods and men." All these pairs
by their neat contrariety imply that they are comprehensive; they seem at first glance to
cover the whole domain of choices to which they pertain. I'm speaking rhetorically now;
clearly in the world of mere facts, there is such a thing as middle age; there are other
metereological conditions besides rain and sunshine. As to my first and last examples,
it is in fact a claim of some momentousness in the Symposium that there is something in
between heaven and earth, gods and men, knowledge and ignorance, beauty and ugliness,
having and lacking. This intermediate ground-- to metaxu, the in-between-- is associated
both with Eros, bastard child of Poros and Penia, Resource and Poverty-- and with
Socrates, most erotic of men. But at the same time a certain ambiguity attaches to this
intermediate position when we regard it as a thing in itself. Viewed statically, it might
be some sort of mean which embraces the two extremes, reconciling them and
symbolically including them. Viewed dynamically, the metaxu is neither one extreme nor
the other, precisely because it is on the way from one to the other. The difficulty is
augmented if the extremes themselves refuse to hold still for us. Let me give two
examples.
Diotima claims that just as daimones, spirits, are intermediaries between gods and
men, so daimonic activities like love and, in particular; the loving of wisdom
(philosophy) are in the in-between between the human and the divine. But shortly
thereafter she argues that because all men desire the good, everyone is a lover and
virtually all human activity is erotic. If humans are then essentially daimonic beings, we
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.16]
have lost one of the poles of opposition that together define the in-between. Does it make
sense to say that human beings are always in between themselves and Something else?
And if it should turn out that humans can attain immortality in any unqualified way, we
will then have lost the other pole as well. So much for Diotima's assertion the "God with
man does not mingle" (203A2). My second illustraion depends 'on a lexicaf ambiguity.
Eros is said to be the child of Poros and Penia, "Resource" and "Poverty." "Resource"
is a perfect translation for the.Greek poros because it reproduces an important bifurcation:
Like poros, it can mean both the means to the procuring of some desired provision, or
it can mean that provision itself. The first meaning might by itself be rendered as
"contrivance" or "craft," the second ~.cerhaps as "wealth" or "p.lenty." {The usual
antonym of penia is ploutos, "wealth.". )Probably there is more backing for the first
meaning in ordinary Athenian usage, but the second meaning seems crucial to this
dialogue. Just as Socrates hopes, by virtue of mere propinquity, to be filled with the
overflow of Agathon's wisdom, so Penia is in fact filled with the overflow of the nectardrunk Poros. But if we do also retain the first meaning of contrivance or resourcefulness
--as I think we are obliged to by Diotima's subsequent explanation-- the structural clarity
of Diotima's myth is disturbed in a puzzling way. Poros the father is already as it were
a means; it is thereby harder to consider him as one of the polar extremes by which to
define his son Eros, the intermediary.
Such moments as these in the dialogue may license us to say that the Symposium is
interested in the notion of dichotomy or polar opposition and also, in how the human mind
copes with it. Thus the significant universalizing doublet of comedy and tragedy at the
dialogue's end alludes backward to a thematic pattern of other problematic pairings, such
as lover and beloved, harmony and discord, wholeness and partiality, object and relation,
lofty and base, human and divine ... (I could go on with this list a while longer.) The
point is not to identify any of these doublets with comedy and tragedy, although we have
seen that sometimes such an identification is suggested by one of our multiple readings.
Rather I have been claiming that the dialogue provides for us a number of bipolar
contexts in which to seek for kosmos and intelligibility. Initially these pairings are
provided as instruments to aid our understanding of some finite question about love and
other human activities. But by being problematic, the pairs themselves become the object
of our attention; sometimes, as I've tried to show, the poles can exchange positions, or
shift into the middle, or overlap with some other pair of categories. Eventually we as
readers have to consider independently the question of how our minds cope with the fact
of two-ness.
This issue is clearly relevant to the general topic of eros. Do we see love as making
one out of two, uniting things that are separated? Or do we see it as an activity of choice
�[Tuck- Symposium- p. 17]
and aspiration, concerned not with wholes but with a hierarchy of goods. These two
theories of eros correspond to alternative strategies for dealing with polar dualities. We
might call the first of them "both/and" and the second "either/or."
The "both/and" strategy, for example, would accept without further protest the
difficulty we noted before, that Socrates' speech-- or for that matter, the Symposium
itself-- might with equal ease be called "comic" or "tragic." There is no reason that it
cannot be both at the same time. Poetry, after all, need not, perhaps ought not to observe
the principle of non-contradiction; by some accounts that is the distinguishing mark of
poetry. We cal) view the work itself as an enveloping kosmos which holds such dualities
in its embrace. The ordering power of art officiates at a sort of festive marriage between
co!l)edy and tragedy, and the reader by giving his assent is drawn into this union. The
effect of Socrates' last argument, then, is to remind us that we are invited to this lovefeast, to implicate us in the atmosphere of reconciliation and acceptance. We need not
give up our particular attachments to the world of bodies and sensations; there is no final
contradiction between different kinds of loving, for cannot love itself bring about a
concord or harmony between one love and another? This strategy explains what many
readers have felt about the Symposium: That here, perhaps uniquely among the Platonic
dialogues, we find an acceptance of the wholeness and fulness of human life.
The other strategy is "either/or." Though Socrates says that the same man can write
both tragedies and comedies, nonetheless a tragedy is not a comedy. It is up to us to
distinguish the tragic from the comic in considering the dialogue in its various aspects and
parts, just as it is up to us to distinguish the high from the low, the better from the
worse. The activity of reading the Symposium, then, is like the moral activity of living
in the world. The artwork is not privileged; the effect of its complexity is to sharpen
issues for us and project us back into the same human condition of temporality and
limitation.
In describing these two strategies I have implied an association of the first with what
we've been calling "comedy" and of the second with what we've been calling "tragedy."
It is apparently not an accident that I was able to give two and only two ways of dealing
with two-ness or duality. I think it was White.head who said that there are two kinds of
people: those that divide things in two's, and the others. Clearly I am .of the first kind,
and so, I suggest, was Plato. But in prescinding from the more concrete pairs of
opposing terms into the level of strategies for dealing with them, we have not left our
dilemma behind. Can we somehow accept both "both/and" and "either/or" as ways of
dealing with the dialogue, or must we choose either one or the other? Put in this way,
the question sounds ridiculously derivative and hyperingenious; it doesn't seem likely that
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.18]
any normal person would worry about such a thing as he reads through the dialogue. But
perhaps I can put the question in a way that sounds more urgent. Can we or can we not
reconcile the "comic" "both/and" of poetry with the "tragic" "either/or" or ·philosophy?
Both the poetic act of inclusion and the philosophic act of discrimination subject us
as readers to a kind of compulsion or necessity. In the one case this compulsion appeals
to our passions to command our wills to assent: in the other case it appeals to our reason.
So, at least, the conventional wisdom holds; who knows?.:- perhaps it is even true.
Socrates, we remember, was last depicted compelling [prosanankazein] Agathon and
Aristophanes to admit that the same man could write both tragedy and comedy. (In
contrast we shm.1Jd think of Diotima's words to Socrates: "Do not compel [me anankaze]
what is not beautiful to be ugly, nor what is not good to be bad" [202Bl] .) Part of our
predicament in reading the dialogue is to find· a loving concord between these different
works of Ananke, Necessity-- since, as Agathon says, the works of Love have superseded
the works of Necessity among both gods and men.
It might seem strange to be claiming that in a Platonic dialogue poetry's appeal to the
passions could be set up in true equipoise against the claims of reason and philosophy.
The standard Platonist tack would be to subordinate the one firmly to the other. We can
see this attitude at work in the common explanation given for Plato's well-known
apparent self-contradiction on the subject of tragedy and comedy. In Book III of the
Republic (395A2) Socrates remarks to Adeimantus that the same man cannot imitate many
different things well-- not even the two forms of imitation that seem closest to each other,
that is, tragedy and comedy. Therefore, he continues, all imitative arts are inferior.
How do we square this with the end of the Symposium? The common explanation lays
stress on the wording in Symposium 223D-- What Socrates forced them to admit was that
the same man would have ~ scientific understanding (epistasthai) of the writing of
comedies and tragedies, that the man who writes tragedies with art (techne) must be able
to write comedies as well. Now, the argument runs, this must be the middle of a
reductio proof: Since we know that this result is impossible, it follows that poetry has
nothing to do with episteme or techne, but acts by divine inspiration. And therefore we
are back on the familiar ground of the Ion and the Meno: By relegating poetry to the
realm of inspiration, Socrates denies it the power of true knowing that philosophical
activity can offer.
The difficulty with this explanation is that, at least within the bounds of the
Symposium, it is not clear whether it is poetry or philosophy,' or even both, that we
should associate with divine inspiration. Socrates makes a point of portraying the
philosopher as daimonios, "spiritual," connected with divination and prophecy, in explicit
opposition to techne (203A7). Alcibiades too explicitly portrays Socrates himself as one
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.19]
who has the god within him and who is able to communicate its power. (The same word,
katechesthai [21506], that is used here is also used about inspiration in the Ion.) We
have also the endependent testimony of Socrates' ecstatic trances. Poetry, on the other
hand, seems to be ranked with the other trades in that Agathon and Aristophanes take
their places alongside Eryximachus and the earlier speakers in making their partial claims
for their craft or crafts. Agathon, in saying that Eros is a poet, begs leave to honor his
own techne just as Eryximachus did. Diotima herself applies the word·techne to poetry,
in her'generalization of poiesis: "Thus," she says, "the productions of all the technai are
poetries, and their craftsmen are all poets" (205Cl). --None of these considerations
denies the force of the more traditional view of Plato's relative valuation of poetry and
philosophy; for ·that view also there is ample evidence in the dialogue. But it is beginning
to look as though both philosophy and poetry can each be seen as both artful and
inspired, both rational and visceral, or either one or the other. It is getting harder to
differentiate the two forces of compulsion that sway our reading; perhaps their vector
resultant is perplexity and freedom.
The Symposium is simply there. It does not present itself to us a either a poetic or
a philosophic work, and at St. John's we pride ourselves-- rightly, I think-- on not
pigeonholing books that way. Nonetheless the "poetic" and the "philosophical" may have
a certain reality as categories, not only of books but of ways of reading. The dialogue
itself is self-conscious about this issue, as I have all along been ,claiming; and to read it
is to become self-conscious about how to read. For what we love and how we love it
may determine even what we perceive as there in the intricate, Protean, magical fabric
of the writing itself.
John Keats wrote memorably in one of his letters about the conflicting claims of
poetry and philosophy:
Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed
in it are fine; the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel-- By a superior
being our reasonings may take the same tone-- though erroneous they may be
fine-"'" This is the very thing in which consists poetry; and if so it is not so
fine a thing as philosophy-- For the same reason that an eagle is not so fine
a thing as a truth.
(Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 Feb.--3 May, 1819)
�[Tuck- Symposium- p.20]
There is great pathos in the spectacle of the youthful, doomed Keats offering up the thing
he loved best. Perhaps Plato may yet force us to that choice; but in the Symposium the
verdict is not clear. May there not be some truth in the eagle, some powerful, winged
grace in the truth? A person may love both the truth and the eagle. Which shall we
choose-- or must we choose at all?
*******
[Delivered as a public lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, Summer, 1986]
�
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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On Finishing Plato's <em>Symposium</em>
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Typescript of a lecture delivered in summer 1986 by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lectures Series. <br /><br />Mr. Tuck is a Tutor emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is about how to approach and to reapproach a reading of Plato's <em>Symposium</em>. He presents a variety of views from the dialogue as well as those of Castiglione and Dante to aid in diciphering Plato's dialogue on love.
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Tuck, Jonathan
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Annapolis, MD
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1986-07
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English
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lec Tuck 1986 Summer
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Plato. Symposium
Philosophy
Love
Tutors
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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 Power of the Likely Story in Plato's <em>Timaeus</em>
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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>.
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Kalkavage, Peter
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Annapolis, MD
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1983-07-29
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lec Kalkavage 1983-07-29
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Plato. Timaeus
Plato. Republic
Homecoming
Mythology
Socrates
Tutors
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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
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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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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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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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text
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English
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lec Tuck 2002-07-17
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St. John's College
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Greek literature
Epic poetry, Greek
Homer
Dogs in literature
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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Joe Sachs, draft of introduction to his translation of Aristotle's Physics
Delivered as a lecture for the Graduate Institute, August 6, 1983
1
INfRODUCTION
Philosophic writing
The activity known as philosophy did not originate among the ancient
Greeks. It is a permanent human possibility, that must have arisen in all
places and times when anyone paused in the business of life to wonder
about the way things are. But it was among the Greeks that it was named
and described, and began to be reflected in written texts. It was two
thinkers who wrote during the fourth centucy B.C., Plato and Aristotle, who
showed the world for all time the clearest examples of philosophic
thinking.
Plato's dialogues display the inescapable beginnings of
philosophy in all questions that touch on how a human being should
live~
and show that such questions must open up for examination all the
comfortable assumptions we make about the world. Aristotle's writings
trace an immense labor of the intellect, striving to push the power of
thinking to its limits.
Reading Aristotle, to be sure, is not at all like reading Plato. The
dialogues are beautiful in style, sensitive in the depiction of living and
breathing people, and altogether polished works meant for the widest
public. The writings of Aristotle that we possess as wholes are school texts
that, with the possible exception of the Nicomachean Ethics, were never
meant for publication. The title that we have with the Physics describes it
as a "course of listening." The likeliest conjecture is that these works
_-. . originated as oral discourses by Aristotle, written down by students,
.
corrected by Aristotle, and eventually assembled into longer connected
. arguments.
They presuppose acquaintance with arguments that are
referred to without being made (such as the "third
m~"),
and with
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examples that are never spelled out (such as the incommensurability of
.•
i"
the diagonal). They 'are demanding texts to follow, and are less interested
in beauty of composition than in exactness of statement. But in the most
important respect, the writings of Plato and Aristotle are more like each
other than either is like anything else. Both authors knew how to breathe
philosophic life into dead words on a page.
In Plato's dialogues, it is the figure of Socrates, always questioning,
always disclaiming knowledge, always pointing to what is not yet
understood, who keeps the tension of live thinking present. Despite the
efforts of misguided commentators, one need only read any dialogue to see
that there is no dogma there to be carried off, but only work to be done,
work of thinking into which Plato draws us. It may appear that Aristotle
rejects this Platonic path, giving his thought the closure of answers and
doctrine, turning philosophy into "science,"
but this is a distortion
produced by transmission through a long tradition and by bad translations.
The tradition speaks of physics, metaphysics, ethics, and so on as sciences
in the sense of conclusions deduced from first principles, but the books
written by Aristotle that bear those names contain no such "sciences."
What they all contain is dialectical reasoning, argument that does not start
with the highest knowledge in hand, but goes in quest 'of it, beginning with
whatever opinions seem worth examining. Exactly like Plato's dialogues,
Aristotle's writings lead the reader on from untested opinions toward more
reliable ones. Unlike the author of the dialogues, Aristotle records his best
~·, efforts to get beyond trial
and error to trustworthy ·conclusions. What
keeps those conclusions from becoming items of dogma? The available
translations hide the fact, but Aristotle devises a philosophic vocabulary
that is incapable of dogmatic ·use.
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This claim will come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the lore of
substances and accidents, categories, essences, per se individuals, and so
forth, but if Aristotle were somehow to reappear among us he would be
even more surprised to find such a thicket of impenetrable verbiage
attributed to him. Aristotle made his students work hard, but he gave
them materials they could work with, words and phrases taken from the
simplest contents of everyday speech, the kind of language that is richest
in meaning and most firmly embedded in experience and imagination. The
only trouble with ordinary speech, for the purposes of philosophy, is that it
carries too much meaning; we are so accustomed to its use that it
automatically carries along all sorts of assumptions about things, that we
make without being aware of them. Aristotle's genius consists in putting
together the most ordinary words in unaccustomed combinations. Since
the combinations are jarring, our thinking always has to be at work, right
now, afresh as we are reading, but since the words combined are so readily
understood by everyone, our thinking always has something to work with.
The meanings of the words in Aristotle's philosophic vocabulary are so
straightforward and inescapable that two results are assured: we will be
thinking about something, and not stringing together empty formulas, and
we will be reliably in communication with Aristotle; ·thinking about the
· very things he intended.
. We need to illustrate both the sort of thing that Aristotle wrote, and the
way the translations we have destroy its effect.
Consider the word
essence. This is an English word, and we all know more or less how to use
it. Perfumes have essences, beef stock can be boiled down to its essence,
and the most important part of anything can be called its essenceo It
seems to have some connection with necessity, since we occasionally
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dismiss something as not essential. By the testimony of usage, that is
about it. Essence is a relatively vague English word. If we know Latin, the
word begins to have some resonance, but none of the:it has crossed over
into English. So what do we do when we find a translation of Aristotle full
of the word essence?
We have to turn to expert help.
Ordinary
dictionaries will probably not be sufficient, but we will need philosophic
dictionaries, commentaries on Aristotle, textbooks on philosophy, or
trained lecturers who possess the appropriate degrees. In short, we need
to be initiated into a special dub; it may make us feel superior to the
ordinary run of human beings, and it will at least make us think that
philosophy is not for people in general, but only for specialists. Medical
doctors, for example, seek just those effects for their area of expert
knowledge by never using an ordinary, understandable name for anything,
but only a Latin derivative with many syllables. But did Aristotle want
such a result? If not, writing in such a style can hardly be presented as a
translation of Aristotle.
What did Aristotle write where the translators put the word essence?
In some places he wrote "the what" something is, or "the being" of it. In
most places he wrote "what something keeps on being in order to be at all,"
or "what it is for something to be." These phrases brlng us to a stop, not
because we cannot attach meaning to them, but because it takes some
·work to get hold of what they mean. Since Aristotle chose to write that
way, is it not reasonable to assume that he wanted us to do just that?
When the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes the line "Though worlds of
· · wanwood leafmeal lie," everything in his words is readily accessible,
though the pieces are combined in unusual ways. We recognize this sort of
word-play as a standard device of poetry, that works on .us through the
�5
ear, the visual imagination, and our feelings.
The poet makes us
experience a fresh act of imagining and feeling, at his direction. (Think of
all that would be lost if he had written "Notwithstanding the fact that an
immeasurable acreage of deciduous forest manifests the state of affairs
characteristic of its incipiently dormant condition.") Aristotle's phrases in
the present example do something that is exactly analogous to the poet's
word-play, but is directed only at the intellect and understanding. Other
words and phrases of his do carry imaginative content, but subordinated to
the intellect and understanding. Aristotle is not a poet, but a philosophic
writer, one who, like a poet, loosened and recombined the most vivid parts
· · of ordinary speech to make the reader ·see and think afresh.
Many
philosophers have written books, but few have worked as carefully and
deliberately to make the word be suited to the philosophic deed
Tra.nslati.on and tradition
A long stretch of centuries stands between Aristotle and us. The usual
translations of his writings stand as the end-product of all the history that
befell them in those centuries. For about five centuries up to 1600 they
were the source of the dominant teachings of the European universities; for
about four centuries since then they have been reviled as the source of a
rigid and empty dogmatism that stifled any genuine pursuit of knowledge.
One has to be very learned indeed to uncover all that history, but
fortunately for those of us who are interested only in understanding the
writings themselves, no such historical background is of any use. In fact it
takes us far away from anything Aristotle wrote or meant.
By chance1
when Aristotle's books dominated the centers of European learning, the
common language of higher learning was Latin. When in tum later
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thinkers rebelled against the tyranny of the established schools, it was a
Latinized version of Aristotle that they attacked. They wrote in the
various modern European languages, but the words and phrases of
Aristotle that they argued with and about came into those languages with
the smallest possible departures from the Latin.
Thomas Hobbes, for example, writing in 1651 (in the next to last
chapter of the last part of Leviathan), makes a common complaint in a
memorable way: "I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more absurdly
said in naturall Philosophy, than that which is now called Aristoteles
Metaphysiques...An.d since the Authority of Aristotle is onely current [in
the universities], that study is not properly Philosophy, (the nature
whereof dependeth not on Authors,) but Aristotelity...To know now upon
what grounds they say there be Essences Abstract, or Substantial] Formes,
wee are to consider what those words do properly signifie...But what then
would become of these Terms, of Entity, Essence, Essential], Essentiality,
that. ..are... no Names of Things... [T]his doctrine of Separated Essences, built
on the Vain Philosophy of Aristotle, would fright [men] ...with empty names
as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty doublet, a hat, and a
crooked stick."
The usual translations of Aristotle are concerned most of all with
preserving a continuity of tradition back though these early modem critics
of Aristotle. Richard McKean, in a note to a philosophic glossary, defends
this practice: "The tendency recently in translations from greek and latin
philosophers, has been to seek out anglo-saxon terms, and to avoid latin
derivatives. Words as clear and as definitely fixed in a long tradition of
usage as privation, accident, and even substance, have been replaced by
barbarous compound terms, which awaken no echo in the mind of one
�7
familiar with the tradition, and afford no entrance into the tradition to one
unfamiliar with it. In the translations above an attempt has been made to
return to the terminology of the... english philosophers of the seventeenth
century. Most of the latin derivatives which are used...have justification in
the works of Hobbes, Kenelm Digby, Cudworth, Culveiwell, even Bacon, and
scores of writers contemporary with them... ff]he mass of commentary on
Aristotle will be rendered more difficult, if not impossible, of
understanding if the terms of the discussion are changed arbitrarily after
two thousand years." (Selections from Medieval Philosophers, Vol. II, pp.
422-3., Scribner's, 1930)
The tendency deplored by McKeon has not made its way into any
translations of the writings of Aristotle known to this writer. There was
some hope of it when Hippocrates Apostle announced a new series of
translations, and included the following among its principles: "The terms
should be familiar, that is, commonly used and with their usual meanings.
If such terms are available, the use of strange terms, whether in English or
in some other language, adds nothing scientific to the translation but
unnecessarily strains the reader's thought and often clouds or misleads it."
(Aristotle's Metaphysics, p. x, Indiana U.P., 1966) This is a sentiment
worth endorsing, but Apostle respects it only to the minor extent of
avoiding such pretentious phrases as ceteris paribus (Latin for "other
things being equal"), and nothing in his translations would disturb McKeon.
But if Apostle's general claim is correct, and if in addition Aristotle never
used technical jargon in his own language, then surely to use such language
to translate him is to confuse Aristotle's writings with a tradition that
adapted them to purposes that were not his. And if that Latin tradition
distorted Aristotle's meaning and was untrue to his philosophic spirit, until
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all that remained was the straw man so easily ridiculed by Hobbes and
every other lively thinker of his time, then to insist on keeping Aristotle
within the confines of that caricature is perverse.
It is never possible to translate anything from one language to another
with complete accuracy, and it is especially difficult to translate an author
who takes liberties with common usage in his own language. But in this
case there is one simple rule that is easy to follow and always tends in a
good direction, and that is to avoid all the conventional technical words
that have been routinely used for Aristotle's central vocabulary. In fact,
virtually all those words are poor translations of the Greek they mean to
stand for. The word privation, for instance, will not be found in this
translation for the simple reason that its meaning cannot be expected to be
known to all educated readers of English. The commentaries on Aristotle
use the word extensively, but if the Greek word it refers to has been
adequately translated in the first place, you will not need commentaries to
tell you what it means. Here that Greek word will be translated sometimes
as deprivation, sometimes as lack, according as one or the other fits more
comfortably into its context. What matters is not whether Latin or AngloSaxon derivatives are used, but whether an understandable English word
translates an understandable Greek one. Accident is a perfectly good
· English word, but not in the sense in which it appears in commentaries on
·Aristotle; the Greek word it replaces has a broad sense, that corresponds to
our word attribute, and a narrower one that can be conveyed by the
phrase "incidental attribute." In this case again, Latin derivatives are
available which cany clear and appropriate meanings in English, since one
does not need to know any Latin to ferret them out. It is true that adcadere has a sense that could have given rise to the meanings we attach to
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the words "incidental" and "attribute," but it did not in fact transmit that
meaning to its English derivatives. There is some pedantic pleasure in
pointing out those connections, but to use the word accident in that sense
is to write a forced Latin masquerading as English, guaranteed to confuse
the non-specialist reader, where Aristotle used the simplest possible
language in a way that keeps the focus off the words and on · the things
meant by them.
But to undo the mischief caused by McKeon's third example, substance,
stronger medicine is required. Joseph Owens records the way this word
became established in the tradition.
(The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian 'Metaphysics', pp. 140-143, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1951) It is a comedy of errors in which Christian scruples were
imposed upon a non-Biblical theology, and a disagreement with Aristotle
was read back into his words as a translation of them. This translator
ignores the contortions of the tradition and without apology uses the
barbarous Anglo-Saxon compound thinghood. This is a central notion in
the Metaphysics, and in all Aristotle's thought, though it occurs rarely in
the Physics, and the word "substance" does nothing but obscure its
meaning. Lively arguments about substance go on today in the secondary
literature, but a choice must be made, and the primary texts of Aristotle
are better, clearer, richer, deeper, easier to absorb, and more worth
pursuing than the commentaries on them. · As it stands in the usual
translations, the word "substance" is little more than an unknown x, for
which meaning has to be deduced by a kind of algebra, while Aristotle
shows (Metaphysics 1028b 2-7) that just asking what the thinghood of
things consists in, and what is responsible for it, unlocks the highest
inquiry of which philosophy is capable. For the promise of such a return, it
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is worth risking a little barbarity. The barbarism of a word like thinghood
is just the fact that it falls far outside common usage in our language, and
not in a direction that needs any historical or technical special knowledge
to capture it, but in one that invites the same flexibility that poets ask of
us. We cannot read such a barbarism in a passive way, but must take
responsibility for its meaning. This in itself, in moderation and in welljudged places, is something good, and is an imitation of what Aristotle does
with Greek.
It has already been remarked that the present translation does not
always use the same English word for the same Greek one. This is partly
because no English word ever has the same full range of meaning as any
Greek word, so that such a range has to be conveyed, or unwanted
connotations suppressed, by the use of a variety of near-synonyms. It is
partly because a Greek word may have two or more distinct uses that
differ by context; in this way, the word for thinghood will often be
translated as "an independent thing." It is also partly because Aristotle
always paid attention to the fact that important words are meant in more
than one way. For him this was not a fault of language, but one of the
ways in which it is truthful. A word often has a primary meaning and a
variety of derivative ones, as a reflection of causal reiatlons in the world.
A diet can be healthy only because, in a different and more governing
-sense, an animal can be healthy, and there can be a medical knife only
because there is a medical skill. This array of difference within sameness
usUally cannot be lifted over from Greek to English, and has to be gotten at
indirectly. In the Physics, every kind of change is spoken of as a motion,
though the word for motion is gradually and successively limited until it
refers strictly only to change of place. This progression determines the
�11
main structure of the inquiry, but in English the path is not as clearly
indicated by transitions of meaning within a single word. And finally,
there are some words that have many translations that are equally good in
their different ways. In such cases, this translation rejoices in variety; this
again is an imitation of Aristotle's general practice. Where the traditional
translations are marked by rigid, formulaic repetitions, Aristotle loves to
combine overlapping meanings, or separate intertwined meanings, to point
to things the language has no precise word for. It is the living, naturat
flexible character of thinking that breathes through Aristotle's use of
language, and not the artificial, machine-like fixity one finds in the
translations.
This last point should not be taken as a promise of smooth English, but
just the reverse. Idiomatic expressions and familiar ways of putting words
together conceal unthinking assumptions of just the kind that philosophy
tries to get beyond. The reader will need a willingness to follow sentences
to places where meaning would be lost if it were forced into well-worn
grooves, and will need to follow trains of thought that would not be the
same if they did not preserve Aristotle's own ways of connecting them. As
far as possible, this translation follows the syntax of Aristotle's text.
Montgomery Furth has followed this same procedure in a translation of
part of the Metaphysics, and apologizes for the result as neither English
nor
Gree~
but Eek. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Books Vll-X, p. vi, Hackett,
1985} Furth does this because of an interest in following Aristotle's logic
faithfully, but he retains all the usual Latinized vocabulary of Ross's Oxford
translation, so that the resulting language might better be called Leek. The
present translation goes farther, in vocabulary and syntax both, beyond
the Latin and toward the Greek, and could be called Gringlish, but for this
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as well it comes before you without apology.
Furth violates English
sensibilities for the special purposes of graduate students and professional
scholars; this translation violates them for the common human purposes of
joining Aristotle in thinking that breaks through the habitual and into the
philosophic.
A philosophic physics?
Now it may seem odd to combine philosophic aims with the topic of
physics. It may seem that Aristotle had to speculate philosophically about
the natural world because he did not have the benefit of the secure
knowledge we have about it. In the current secondary literature, one sees
at least some scholars who think they might learn something about
thinking from De Anima, or about being from the Metaphysics, but articles
on the Physics seem at most to pat Aristotle on the head for having come
to some conclusion not utterly in conflict with present-day doctrines. This
kind of smugness is a predictable result of the way the sciences have been
taught to us. Conjectures and assumptions, because they have been part of
authoritative opinion for a few centuries, are presented to us as stories, or
as facts, without recourse to evidence or argument. Particular doctrines,
even when they stand on theoretical structures as complex and fragile as a
house of cards, or even when they presuppose a picture of things that is
flatly in contradiction with itself, tend to be prefaced with the words "we
know... " All the rhetoric that surrounds the physics of our time tells us
. that philosophic inquiry need not enter its territory, that here the
philosophizing is over and done, the best minds agree about everything,
and non-experts couldn't hope to understand enough to assess the
evidence in any case. Strangely, the physics of the twentieth century is
�13
surrounded by the same air of dogmatic authority as was the schoolAristotelianism of the sixteenth century.
But there are two kinds of support for the present-day physics that
seem to lift it above dogmatism. One is a long history of experiment and
successful technology, and the other is the greatest possible reliance on
mathematics. These are both authorities that cannot be swayed by human
preferences, and cannot lie.
Their testimony can, however, be
misunderstood, and can be incorporated into a picture of the world that
fails in other ways. But even if the current physics contains nothing
untrue, one might wish to understand it down to its roots, to unearth the
fundamental daims about things on which it rests, which have been lost
sight of in the onrush of theoretical and practical progress. To do this one
has to stand back from it, to see its founding claims as alternatives to other
ways of looking at the world, chosen for reasons. The earliest advocates of
the "new physics" did just that, and the alternatives they rejected all stem
from Aristotle's Physics. Martin Heidegger has said that "Aristotle's
Physics is the hidden, and therefore never adequately studied,
foundational book of Western philosophy." ("On the Being and Conception
of ct>U:U: in Aristotle's Physics B, 1," in Man and World, IX, 3, 1976, p. 224)
The physics of our time is inescapably philosophic, ifonly in the original
choices, preserved in it, to follow certain paths of thought to the exclusion
of others. To see that physics adequately and whole, we too need to be
philosophic, to lift our gaze to a level at which it can be seen to be one
possibility among many. Only then is it possible to decide rationally and
responsibly to adopt its opinions as our own.
But there is a second respect in which twentieth-century physics has
opened its doors to philosophy, and will not be able to close them. The
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physics that came of age in the seventeenth century, and seemed to have
answered all the large questions by the nineteenth, is limping toward the
end of the twentieth century in some confusion.
Mathematics and
technology have coped with all the crises of this century, but the picture of
the world that underlay them has fallen apart. It was demonstrated
conclusively that light is a wave, except when it shines on anything; then it
arrives as particles. It is shown with equal certainty that the electron is a
particle, except when it bounces off a crystal surface; then it must be a
wave, interacting with the surface everywhere at once. Just when atomic
physics seemed ready to uncover the details of the truth underlying all
appearances, it began to undercut all its own assumptions. A wavemechanics that held out an initial promise of reducing all appearances of
particles to the behavior of waves failed to do so, and degenerated into a
computational device for predicting probabilities. The most far-seeing
physicists of the century have shown that particles and waves are equally
necessary, mutually incompatible aspects of every atomic event, and that
physics, at what was supposed to be the ultimate explanatory level, must
abandon its claim to objectivity. The physicist is always describing, in
part, his own decisions to interfere with things in one way rather than
another; this brings along, as a causally necessary conclusion, the collapse
of the belief in causal determinism. When Hobbes laughed at Aristotle, he
.was certain that he knew what a body is. Today all bets are off.
But some physicists have been unwilling to give up their dogmatic
habits without a fight. Even Einstein, after he had taught the world to give
up the rigid Newtonian ideas of time, space, and mass, was unable to
suspend his unquestioned assumption that bodies have sharply defined
places, and cannot interact except by contact or by radiation. Niels Bohr
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and Werner Heisenberg had announced the most radical of revolutions,
requiring physicists to ask what knowledge is, and no longer to answer by
pointing to what they do. Einstein, in a famous 1935 collaboration ("Can
Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality be Considered Complete?",
Physical Review 47), tried to hold off this final revolution, saying in effect
"I know enough about the fundamental structure of the world to be certain
that some things cannot happen." Experiments have revealed that those
very things do happen, that the state of one particle is provably dependent
on whether a measurement is performed on a distant second particle, from
which no signal could have radiated. But a new and opposite tactic permits
some physicists to embrace this or any other seeming impossibility
without admitting the need for any philosophic re-thinking of the way
things are. Listen to these words of Richard Feynman: "We always have
had a great deal of difficulty in understanding the world view that
quantum physics represents. At least I do, because I'm an old enough man
that I haven't got to the point that this stuff is obvious to me...you know
how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it
becomes obvious that there's no real problem." (quoted by N. David
Mermin in The Great Ideas Today, 1988, p. 52) So if the discoveries of
quantum physics make you feel an urgent need· to re-examine the
presuppositions of physics, just repress that feeling for a generation or
two, and it will go away.
Perhaps more than any other reason for resisting opening physics to
philosophic examination, there is the plain fact that there is no need for it
to do anything differently.
Whatever happens can be described
mathematically, and new discoveries are readily incorporated into some
mathematical scheme, and then predicted. Technology aQ.vances no less
�16
rapidly in areas in which the explanatory ground has been cut from under
our feet, than in those in which its workings are intelligible. But the new
physics arose out of a desire to know, and has undeniably become a highly
questionable kind of knowing. Indeed, the very fact that its picture of the
world can collapse while leaving its mathematical description and practical
applications intact is a powerful stimulus to wonder. While wishing
physics well in all its dealings, some of us may simply want to understand
what it is and what it isn't. But we cannot see how its various strands
have separated without understanding what it was to begin with, so again
we are thrown back to the choices by which it came into being, and thus in
turn to the picture of the world that it rejected. From this standpoint,
though, that is more than a quest to uncover something past and
superseded.
It entails the risk of being convinced that the original
decisions of the seventeenth century physicists were not all worthy of our
own acceptance. It is possible that parts of Aristotle's understanding of
the world might serve to heal our own dilemmas and confusions.
The things that are
Where should an understanding of the things around us begin? It
might seem that there are plain facts that could serve as uncontroversial
starting points. What are some of the plainest ones? The stars circle us at
night, the sun by day. Rocks fall to earth, but flames leap toward the sky.
Bodies that are thrown or pushed slow down continually until they stop
moving. Animals and plants belong to distinct kinds, which they preserve
from generation to generation. The visible whole is a sphere, with the
earth motionless at its center. These are facts of experience, so obvious
that the only way to be unaware of them is by not paying attention. If you
�17
disbelieve any of them it is not because of observation, but because you
were persuaded not to trust your senses. No physics begins by looking at
the things it studies; those things must always be assigned to some larger
context in which they can be interpreted. Aristotle states this in the first
sentence of his Physics by saying that we do not know anything until we
know its causes. Nothing stands on its own, without connections, and no
event happens in isolation; there must be some comprehensive order of
things in which things are what they are and do what they do. Physics
seeks to understand only a part of this whole, but it cannot begin to do so
without some picture of the whole.
But it has been noted earlier that none of Aristotle's inquiries begins
with the knowledge that most governs the things it studies. We never
start where the truth of things starts, but must find our way there. That
means that we cannot dispense with some preliminary picture of things,
though we must be ready to modify it as the inquiry proceeds. What is
Aristotle's preliminary picture of the whole of things? It is one that
permits the plainest facts of experience to be just the way they appear to
us. We live at the center of a spherical cosmos as one species of living
thing among many, in a world in which some motions are natural and some
forced, but all require causes actively at work, and cease when those
causes cease to act. The natural motions are those by which animals and
. plants live and renew their kinds, the stars circle in unchanging orbits, and
the parts of the cosmos-earth, water, air, and fire-are transformed into
one another by heat and cold, move to their proper places up or down, and
maintain an ever-renewing equilibrium. This picture is confirmed and
fleshed out by Aristotle's inquiries in writings other than the Physics, but
since Aristotle never writes "scientifically," that is deductively, there is no
�18
necessary or right order in which they should be read. All those inquiries
stand in a mutual relation of enriching and casting light upon one another,
and the Physics is in an especially close relation with the Metaphysics.
It is not only a picture of the whole that is assumed in the Physics, but
also a comprehensive understanding of the way things are.
In the
Metaphysics, this latter is not assumed but arrived at by argument,
through the sustained pursuit of the question, what is being? Since being
is meant in many ways, Aristotle looks for the primary sense of it, being as
such or in its own right, on which the other kinds of being are dependent.
That primary sense of being is first identified as thinghood, then
discovered to be the sort of being that belongs only to animals, plants, and
the cosmos as a whole. For these pre-eminent beings, being is being-atwork, since each of them is a whole that maintains itself by its own
activity. For any other sort of being, what it is for it to be is not only
something less than that, but it is in every case dependent on and derived
from those highest beings, as a quality, quantity, or action of one, a relation
between two or more, a chance product of the interaction between two or
more, or an artificial product deliberately made from materials borrowed
from one or more of them. Life is not a strange by-product of things, but
the source of things, and the non-living side of nature has being in a way
strictly analogous to life: as an organized whole that maintains itself by
continual activity. In the central books of the Metaphysics, Aristotle
captures the heart of the meaning of being in a cluster of words and
phrases that are the most powerlul expressions of his thinking. · In the
usual translations-substance, essence, actuality, and actuality again-they
not only fall flat but miss the central point: that the thinghood of a thing is
�19
what it keeps on being in order to be at all, and must be a being-at-work
so that it may achieve and sustain its being-at-work-staying-itself.
Now the physics of our time adopts an understanding of being that is
exactly opposite to that of Aristotle, in the principle of inertia. The
primary beings are what they are passively, by being hard enough to
resist all change, and do nothing but bump and move off blindly in straight
lines. The picture of the world assumed by this physics is of atoms in a
void, so there can be no cosmos, but only infinite emptiness, no life, but
only accidental rearrangements of matter, and no activity at all, except for
motion in space. This is ancient idea, that goes back long before Aristotle's
time. Lucretius finds it appealing, as a doctrine that teaches us that, while
there is little to hope for in life except freedom from pain, there is little to
fear either, since a soul made of atoms will dissolve, but cannot suffer
eternal torment. There are reasons of two other kinds that make this
picture of things attractive to the new physics.
First, it makes it
unnecessary to look for causes. Just because everything is taken to be
reducible to atoms and the void, every possible event is pre-explained.
Mechanical necessity takes over as the only explanation of anything, so the
labor of explanation is finished at one stroke. And second, this picture
makes every attribute that belongs to anything, and every event that can
happen, entirely describable by mathematics. The glory of the new
physics is the power it gains from mathematics. The world that is present
to the senses is set aside as "secondary," and the mathematical imagination
takes over as our way of access to the true world behind the appearances.
The only experience that is allowed to count is the controlled experiment1
designed in the imagination, with a limited array of possible outcomes that
are all interpreted in advance.
�20
From its beginnings, mathematical physics moves from success to
success, but almost from the beginning its mechanistic picture of things
fails. Newton begins his Principia with the assumption that all bodies are
inert, but in the course of it shows that every body is the seat of a
mysterious power of attraction. Is this simply a new discovery to be
added to our picture of the world? Shall we say that there are atoms, void,
and a force of gravitation? But the whole purpose of the new worldpicture was to avoid occult qualities. And where do we put this strange
force of attraction? There is no intelligible way that inert matter can be
conceived as causing an urge in some distant body. Shall we say that the
force resides in a field? A field of what? The Principia shows that the
spaces through which the planets move are void of matter. How can a
point in empty nothing be the bearer of a quantity of energy? This new
discovery can be described mathematically, but it does not fit into the
world-picture that led to it, and cannot be understood as something added
to it. Something similar happens with light, which is discovered by
Maxwell to be describable as an electromagnetic wave. But a wave is a
material conception: a disturbance in a string, or a body of water, or some
such carrier, moves from one place to another while the parts of the body
stay where they were. So when it is shown that a iight-bearing aether
would need to have contradictory properties, electromagnetic radiation is
left as a well-described wave motion taking place in nothing whatever.
In the twentieth century, the mechanist picture underlying
mathematical physics has broken down even more radically, in ways that
have been mentioned above. Popularizations of physics usually tell us that
the ideas of Newton and Maxwell failed when they were applied on an
astronomic or atomic scale, but remain perfectly good approximations to
�21
the phenomena of the middle-sized world. But in what sized world can
matter be inert and not inert, and space empty and not empty? And the
middle-sized world is characterized more than anything else by the
presence of living things, which the atoms-and-void picture never had any
hope of explaining, but only of explaining away. Shall we at least say,
though, that we have learned that the world is not a cosmos? Let us listen
to David Bohm: "The theory of relativity was the first significant indication
in physics of the need to question the mechanist order... [I]t implied that no
coherent concept of an independently existent particle is possible...The
quantum theory presents, however, a much more serious challenge to this
mechanist order... so that the entire universe has to be thought of as an
unbroken whole. In this whole, each element that we can abstract in
thought shows basic properties (wave or particle, etc.) that depend on its
overall environment, in a way that is much more reminiscent of how the
organs constituting living beings are related, than it is of how parts of a
machine interact... [T]he basic concepts of relativity and quantum theory
directly contradict each other... [W]hat they have basically in common...is
undivided wholeness. Though each comes to such wholeness in a different
way, it is clear that it is this to which they are both fundamentally
pointing." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Ark, 1983, pp. 173-6)
According to Bohm, it is only prejudice and habit that keep the evidence
of the wholeness of things from being taken seriously. The contrary view
is not just an opinion, but one of those fundamental ways of looking,
thinking, and interpreting that permit us to have opinions at all, and to
decide what is and what isn't a fact. To abandon the ground beneath our
feet feels like violence, especially when no new authority is at hand to
assure us that there is somewhere else for us to land We
t~nd
to prefer to
�22
live with unreconciled dualities. Descartes notoriously makes the relation
of mind and body a "problem." Newton speaks in his General Scholium as
though gravitation were incapable of explanation by physics, a
supernatural element in the world. Leibniz speaks of two kingdoms, one of
souls and one of bodies, as harmoniously superimposed (as in Monadology
79). Kant tells us that we are free, except insofar as our actions are part of
the empirical world.
We sometimes speak of biology as something
unconnected with physics, as though what is at work in a tree or a cat is
not nature in its most proper sense. We have had the habit so long that we
consider it natural to regard ourselves, with our feeling, perception, and
understanding, as an inexplicable eruption out of a nature that has nothing
in common with us. Might it be possible to find a more coherent way to
put together our experience? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to suspend,
at least for a while, our notions of what can be and what it is for something
to be, to try out some other way of looking.
A non-mathematical physics
The world as envisioned in Aristotle's Physics is more diverse than the ·
world described by mathematical physics, and we must accustom
ourselves to a correspondingly richer vocabulary iil order to read it.
Motion means one thing to us, but irreducibly many kinds of thing when
Aristotle speaks of it, and the same is true of cause. We tend to use nature
as an umbrella-word, a collective name for the sum of things, while
Aristotle means it to apply to whatever governs the distinct pattern of
activity of each kind of being. It would be possible to use different English
words for these three ideas, to bring out what is distinctive in Aristotle's
meanings, but here it seems best to keep the familiar words.and push their
�23
limits beyond their prevalent current meanings. Nature, cause, and motion
are the central topics of the Physics, and come to sight first as questions; it
is important to see that Aristotle and the later mathematical physicists
were ultimately asking about the same things. Nature is mathematized not
as an interesting game, or to abandon a harder task in favor of an easier
one, but in order that the truth of it may be found.
In the Assayer, Galileo makes the famous claim that "this grand book,
the universe, .. .is written in the language of mathematics." Later in the
same book, in a discussion of heat, he explains why. "I suspect that people
in general have a concept of this which is very remote from the truth. For
they believe that heat is a real phenomenon, or property, or quality, which
actually resides in the material by which we feel ourselves warmed
...Without the senses as our guides, reason or imagination unaided would
probably never arrive at qualities like these. Hence I think that tastes,
odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object
in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the
consciousness.
Hence if the living creature were removed, all these
qualities would be wiped away and annihilated."
But shapes, sizes,
positions, numbers, and such things are not mere names, imposed on
objects by the consciousness of the living creature, because "from these
conditions, I cannot separate [a material or corporeal] substance by any
stretch of my imagination." (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Anchor,
1957, pp. 237-8, 274) The direct experience of the world has the taint of
· subjectivity, but the mathematical imagination captures the object just as
it is. Sadder but wiser physicists would no longer try to read themselves
out of physics; they too are living creatures, interpreting the experience of
a consciousness, with all the risk and uncertainty that accompanies such an
�24
activity. But our use of language may betray our second thoughts, and pull
us back to Galileo's point of view.
What is motion? Do you think of something like a geometrical point
changing position? What about a child moving into adolescence? Warmth
moving into your limbs? Blossoms moving out of the buds on a tree? A
ripening tomato, moving to a dark red? Are these other examples motions
in only a metaphorical sense, while the first is correctly so called? Are the
other examples really nothing but complex instances of the first, with
small-scale changes of position adding up to large-scale illusions of
qualitative change? For Aristotle, the differences among the kinds of
motion determine the over-all structure of the Physics, but they first of all
belong together as one kind of experience.
The kinds of becoming
correspond to the ways being belongs to anything, and being-somewhere is
only one aspect of being. A thing can also be of a certain size, or of a
certain sort or quality, and can undergo motion in these respects by
coming to be of another size, or of a different quality, by some gradual
transition. It can even undergo a motion with respect to its thinghood.
One thinks first of birth and death, but eating displays the same kind of
motion. A cow chomps grass, and it is no longer pa.rt of the life of a plant,
and soon it is assimilated into the body of the cow. This is no mere change
of quality, since no whole being persists through it to have first one, then
some other quality belonging to it. Something persists, but first in one,
then in another, kind of thinghood.
In any encounter with the natural world, it is the kinds of change other
than change of place that are most prominent and most productive of
wonder. Mathematical physics must erase them all, and attempt to argue
that they were never anything but deceptive appearances of something
�25
else, changing in some other way. Why? Because those merely local
changes of merely inert bodies can be described mathematically. But if the
testimony of the senses has a claim to "objectivity," and to be taken
seriously, that is at least equal to that of the mathematical imagination,
then there is no necessity of such a reduction. And in fact the reduction of
kinds of motion that is required is not just from four to one, but to less
than one. Aristotle has considerable interest in change of place, but such a
thing is possible only if there are places. Motion as mathematically
conceived happens in space, and in space there are no places. Underneath
the idea of motion that is prevalent today lurks this other idea,
unexamined and taken on faith, that there is such a thing as space.
Aristotle twice makes the argument that space, or empty extension, is
an idea that results only from the mis-use of mathematics. It is the exact
counter-argument to Galileo's claim that ordinary people project their nonmathematical ideas onto the world. Aristotle says that the mathematician
separates in thought the extension that belongs to extended bodies. (This
is sometimes called "abstraction," but the word Aristotle uses is the
ordinary word for subtraction.)
There is nothing wrong with this
falsification of things, which makes it easier to study what has been
isolated artificially, so long as one does not forget that the original
falsification took place. But some people do just that, and read this
extension, which they have subtracted from bodies, back into the world as
though it were empty and somehow existed on its own, prior to bodies.
Now, in the imagination, it is possible
~o
examine this "space" and
determine all sorts of things about it. It is of infinite extent, for example,
and since it is entirely empty, no part of it can have any characteristic by
which it could differ from any other part. If our impulse,. when thinking
�26
about motion, is automatically to give it a mathematical image, that is
because we have pre-supposed that the ultimate structure of the world is
space. But this supposition is laden with consequences and ought not to be
adopted blindly. Aristotle says that one of the reasons physics cannot be
mathematical is that the mathematician abolishes motion. Physics is the
study of beings that move, and motion is a rich and complex topic, but
within the constraints of "space" every form of motion disappears, except
for one which is diminished out of recognition. If it is in space that our
examination begins, nature will be nowhere to be found (but will survive
as a mere name) because space is, from the beginning, a de-natured realm.
Conversely, without the imposition of the idea of space, it is possible for
nature to be understood as part of the true constitution of things, because
motion in all its variety can be present. But since motion is not reduced to
the pre-explained realm of mathematics, it is necessary to understand
what it is. Aristotle says that, so long as we are ignorant of motion, we are
ignorant of nature as well. But how can one give a rational account of
motion? To assign it to some other genus would seem to make it a species
of non-motion. In fact, two of Aristotle's predecessors, Parmenides and
Zeno, had argued that motion is completely illusory. Parmenides argued
that any attempt to say that there is motion must
drum that what is-not
also is. And Zeno, in four famous paradoxes preserved by Aristotle, tried
to show that any description of motion involves self-contradiction of some
kind. It would seem that motion has to be accepted as a brute fact of
experience, from which explanations can begin, but which cannot itself be
explained But Aristotle, for the first and perhaps only time ever, did give
motion a place not only in the world but in a rational account of the world,
explaining it in terms of ideas that go deeper. The Parmenidean challenge
�27
is met by Aristotle primarily in the Metaphysics, where he shows that
being must be meant in more than one way. His response to Zeno's
challenge spreads over the whole of the Physics, and is concentrated in his
definition of motion.
Aristotle defines motion in terms of potency and being-at-work. In the
first book of the Physics there is a preliminary analysis of change that
discovers the ultimate explanatory notions available to the inquiry to be
form, material, and the deprivation of form. Material is described as that
which, by its own nature, inherently yearns for and stretches out toward
form. This should never be called matter, by which we mean something
that stands on its own with a determinate set of properties (has weight,
occupies space, preserves its state of motion in a straight line). What
Aristotle means by material, on the contrary, is (1) not inert, (2) not
necessarily tangible, (3) relative to its form, which may in tum be material
for some other form, (4) not possessed of any definite properties, and (S)
ultimately a purely "ideal" being, incapable of existing in separation, which
would be rejected by any "materialist." Form, in turn, does not mean
shape or arrangement, but some definite way of being-at-work. This is
evident in Book II of the Physics, and arrived at by argument principally
in VIII, 2 of the Metaphysics. Every being consists of material and form,
that is, of an inner striving spilling over into an outward activity. Potency
and being-at-work are the ways of being of material and form.
The usual translations render potency as potentiality, which might
suggest mere indeterminacy or logical possibility, which is never the sense
in which Aristotle uses it. What is worse, though, is the rendering of
being-at-work, and the stronger form of it used in the definition,
being-at~
work-staying-itself, as actuality. This has some reference, by way of Latin,
�28
to activity, but is a useless word that makes it completely impossible to get
anything resembling Aristotle's meaning out of the definition.
"The
actuality of the potentiality as a potentiality" becomes a seventeenthcentury joke, the ultimate example of the destruction of healthy common
sense by pretentious gobbledygook. Does it refer to the actuality that
belonged to the potential thing before it changed? That's not a motion, but
something that precedes one. Does it refer to the actuality that exactly
corresponds to the pre-existent potentiality? That's not a motion either,
but something left when the motion ends. Does it mean, though it would
have to be tortured to give this sense, the gradual transformation of a
potentiality into an actuality? That at least could refer to a motion, but
only by saying that a motion is a certain kind of motion. Perhaps it means
that motion is the actuality of a potentiality to be in motion. This is surely
the silliest version of them all, but respected scholars have defended it
with straight faces. An intelligent misinterpretation of the definition was
put forward by Thomas Aquinas, who took it to mean that the special
condition of a thing in motion is to be partly actual while partly potential,
and directed toward greater actuality of that same potentiality. But this
account would not distinguish motion from a state of balanced equilibrium,
such as that of a rock caught in a hand, still straining downward but
prevented from falling any further.
The account is subject to this
ambiguity because it focusses on an instantaneous condition, a snapshot of
a thing in motion, which is what an actuality is, but by no means what a
being-at-work is.
What Aristotle said was that motion is the being-at-work-staying-itself
of a potency, just as a potency. When an ongoing yearning and striving for
form is not inner and latent, but present in the world just as itself, as a
�29
yearning and striving, there is motion. That is because, when motion is
present, the potency of some material has the very same structure that
form has, forming the being as something holding-on in just that particular
motion. This does not mean that every motion is the unfolding of some
being into its mature form; every such unfolding can fall short, overshoot,
encounter some obstacle, or interact in some incidental way with some
other being. It does mean that no motion of any kind would take place if it
were not for those potencies that emerge of their own accord from beings.
Motion depends on the organization of beings into kinds, with inner
natures that are always straining to spill into activity. Only this dynamic
structure of being, with material straining toward form, and form staying
at work upon material, makes room for motion that is not just an
inexplicable departure from the way things are, but a necessary and
· intrinsic part of the way things are.
For example, consider the most uninteresting motion you can think of,
say the falling of a pencil from the edge of a desk onto the floor. What is
the potency that is at work, and to what being does it belong? The potency
is not that of being at that spot on the floor, and the being that has it is not
the pencil at all, since it is no genuine being. The potency at work here is
that of earth to be down, or of the cosmos to sustain itSelf with earth at the
center. No motive power belongs to the pencil as such, but it can move on
its own because there is present in it a potency of earth, set free to be at
work as itself when the obstacle of the desk is removed. And the motion is
not defined by the position or state in which it happens to end up, but by
the activity that governs its course; the former is an actuality, but is not a
being-at-work. Just as Newton's laws give a set of rules for analyzing any
motion, Aristotle's definition directs us in a different way to bring the
�30
structure of any motion into focus: first, find the being, and then find the
potency of it which the motion displays, or to which the particular motion
is incidental. No motion, however random or incidental, gains entrance
into the world except through the primary beings that constitute the
world.
Aristotle sometimes argues about a body A that moves from B to C. Our
first impulse may be to let A be represented by a point, the motion by a
line, and Band C by positions. But Aristotle always has in mind an A with
some nature, and a motion that may be from one condition to another
rather than one place to another. Even if a motion from place to place is in
question, those places would not be neutral and indifferent positions, but
regions of the cosmos, that might or might not be appropriate surroundings
for body A. The argument might be about something like continuity, so
general that the particular Band C need not be specified, but it makes all
the difference in the world that they represent motion in its fullest sense,
as spelled out in the definition. The mathematized sort of motion, that can
be fully depicted on a blackboard, is vulnerable to the kinds of attack
present in Zeno's paradoxes.
Motion as Aristotle understands it,
constituted by potency and being-at-work, deriving its wholeness and
.·
continuity from a deeper source, overcomes those paradoxes.
(The
particular arguments will be looked at in the commentaries on the text.)
It is evident from this account of motion that material and form are
understood as causes. The usual examples given for material and formal
causes, an inert lump of bronze and a static blueprint, miss the point, that
material meets form half-way, and form is always at work. And it is not
just motions that they cause, but everything that endures. We tend to
speak of causes as events that lead to other events, since that is the only
�31
kind of causality that remains possible in a mathematically-reduced world,
but Aristotle understands everything that is the case as resulting from
causes, and every origin of responsibility as a cause. Something called the
"efficient" cause has been grafted onto Aristotle's account; it means the
proximate cause of motion, like the bumping of billiard balls. This is
sometimes even used as a translation of one of Aristotle's four kinds of
cause, but not correctly. Aristotle speaks of the external source of motion
as one kind of cause, the flrst thing from which the motion proceeds. The
incidental and intermediate links, that merely pass motions around
without originating them, are not causes at all, except in a derivative sense.
All of Aristotle's causes stem from beings, and are found not by looking
backward in time, but upward in a chain of responsibility.
There is a fourth kind of cause, in most cases the most important one of
all, the final cause. This is often equated with purpose, but that is only one
kind of final cause, and not the most general. A deliberate action of an
intelligent being cannot be understood except in terms of its purpose, since
· only in achieving that purpose does the action become complete. The claim
that final causes belong to non-human nature becomes ludicrous if it is
thought that something must in some analogous way have purposes. What
Aristotle in fact means is that every natural being is··a whole, and every
natural activity leads to or sustains that wholeness. His phrase for this
kind of cause is "that for the sake of which" something does what it does or
is what it is. Does rain fall for the sake of the crops that humans grow?
No, but it does fall for the sake of the equilibrium of the cosmos, in which
evaporation is counter-balanced by precipitation in a cycle of
ever~
renewed wholeness. That wholeness provides a stable condition for the
flourishing of plants and of humans, in lives and acts that come to
�32
completion in their own ways. Aristotle's "teleology" is just his claim that
nothing in nature is a fragment or a chance accumulation of parts. To
grasp the final cause of anything is to see how it fits into the ultimate
structure of things. But surely there are fragmentary things and chance
combinations to be found around us. Aristotle finds it as strange that some
thinkers deny chance altogether, as it is that others think chance governs
everything. From Aristotle's standpoint, even chance always points back
to that which acts for the sake of something, since it results from the
interference of two or more such things. It therefore represents not an
absence of final causes, but an over-abundance of them, a failure of final
cause resulting from a conflict among final causes.
Because such incidental interactions lead to innumerable unpredictable
chance results, nature is not a realm of necessity, but neither is it a realm
of randomness, since the forms of natural beings govern all that happens.
Aristotle speaks of the patterns of nature as present not always but "for
the most part." His way of understanding the causes of things does not
need to do violence either to the stability or to the variability of the world,
but affirms the unfailing newness-within-sameness that we observe in the
return of the seasons and the generations of living things. It offers an
example of a physics that interprets causality without recourse to
mechanical necessity or mathematical law. Both the collision of billiard
balls and the co-variation of the two sides of an algebraic equation are too
random in their beginnings and too rigid in their consequences to . be
adequate images of the natures we know.
The shape of the inquiry
�33
It has been mentioned above that all Aristotle's inquiries are dialectical.
His writings have structures that are not rigid but organic, with parts that
are whole in themselves, but arranged so that they build up larger wholes.
In Book I of most of his works, he reviews what has been said by his
predecessors, and here that is combined with a preliminary analysis of
change, which concludes that it must always imply the presence of some
material that can possess. or be deprived of form. This first analysis of
everything changeable into form and material is then available as a
starting point to approach any later question. Next comes the heart of the
Physics, in Book II and the beginning of Book III, of which an account has
been given in the last section of this introduction. It begins with a
definition of nature that has all the characteristics Aristotle attributes in I,
1 to proper beginnings: it starts from what is familiar to us, is clear in its
reference but unclear in its meaning, and takes its topic as a whole and in
general, without separating out its parts or their particular instances.
Since it defines nature as an inner cause of motion, the first task is to
explore the meanings of cause and motion, not as words or logical classes,
but through disciplined reflection on our experience. The result is a
sharpened and deepened understanding of a way of encountering and
interpreting the world. This is a more sustained use of the kind of analysis
that took place in Book I, that dwells on a topic to unfold into clarity what
was already present in an implicit and confused way.
A second kind of analytic reasoning begins after motion has been
defined, a successive examination of conditions presupposed by the
presence of motion in the world. This occupies the rest of Books III and
IV. Zeno had taught everyone that motion presupposes infinity, and
Aristotle turns first to this.
He finds a non-contradictory way to
�34
understand the infinite divisibility of motion, but his conclusion that there
is no infinite extended body is incomplete as it stands. It depends upon
the claim that things have natural places, and so the topic of place must be
e.xplored next. Place is understood as a relation to the parts of the cosmos,
on
but this topic in turn dependsLthe next, since the exclusive array of places
in the world results from the impossibility of void. The e.xploration of the
idea of void completes this sequence, since the arguments against it stand
independently. But motion also entails time, to which Aristotle turns next,
finding that it is not in fact a presupposition but a consequence of motion.
Time is found to result from a comparison of motions to one another, that
can only be carried out by a perceiving soul. Like place, time is not a preexisting container, and not graspable by the mathematical imagination.
Each of them is an intimate relation amongs beings, intelligible only when
the particularlity of this world is taken into account.
The last four books of the Physics take up the kind of cause and the
kind of motion that are least central in Book II. The formal, material, and
final causes of a living thing are internal to it, and constitute its nature,
and it has parents that are external sources of its motions of birth,
development, and growth. But as Aristotle mentions at the end of II, 2,
both other human beings and the sun beget a human being. All life is
dependent upon conditions supplied by the cosmos, which seems to
maintain itself primarily through cycles of local motion. Books V through
VIII trace a complex argument up to the source of all change of place in
the world. In its broadest outline, that argument is reminiscent of the
structure of the Metaphysics. Though the Metaphysics is put together out
of a large number of independent pieces, it has perhaps the clearest line of
unifying structure of any of Aristotle's works. The meaning of being is
�35
pursued through four most general senses, to an eight-fold array of kinds
of non-incidental predications, to its primary sense of thinghood, to the
source of thinghood as form, to the meaning of form as being-at-work, to
the source of all being-at-work in the divine intellect. It thus culminates
in the discovery of the primary being that is the source of all being, and
gets there from the innocent question, which of the meanings of being is
primary?
A similar progressive narrowing of the meanings of motion takes place
in the Physics. In Book III, motion was said to be of four kinds: change of
thinghood, alteration of quality, increase and decrease, and change of place.
In Book V it is argued that motion properly understood is from one
contrary to another, passing through intermediate states or conditions. But
coming-into-being and destruction should be understood strictly as
changes not to a contrary but to a contradictory condition, abrupt changes
that have no intermediate conditions to pass through. Thus in a strict
sense there are only three kinds of motion. But in Book VI it is argued
that there is a certain discontinuity in every qualitative change.
If
something black turns white, it goes through a spectrum of intermediate
shades, but it can be regarded as still being black until sometime in the
course of the motion. In a change of quantity or place·; once the thing is in
motion it has departed from its initial condition, however much one might
try to divide the beginning of the motion. So in the still stricter sense of
being unqualifiedly continuous, there are only two kinds of motion.
Finally, it is pointed out in Book VII that quantitative change must be
caused by something that comes to be present where the changing thing is,
so that it depends always upon a change of place prior to it, and it is
argued in Book VIII that change of place is the primary kind of motion in
�36
every sense in which anything can be primary. The analysis goes one
more step, to the primary motion within the primary kind, which is
circular rotation. This is the most continuous of motions, so much so that it
alone can be considered a simply unchanging motion.
Though the definition of motion in Book III applies to all motions, its
application is most straightforward in the case of those motions most
opposed to the primary kind, those that involve the greatest amount of
change. Birth, development, and growth obviously unfold out of potencies
that are present beforehand, and these changes point most directly to the
inner natures of things that operate as formal, final, and material causes.
But at the opposite extreme of the spectrum of change there is changeless
circular motion. Because it moves without changing, it can be in contact
with a completely unvarying cause. The last step of the inquiry in the
Physics is the uncovering of a motionless first mover, acting on the cosmos
at its outermost sphere. It is a source of local motion that not only holds
the cosmos together, but contributes to the conditions of life by descending
through the lower spheres, including that of sun, to maintain the stable
alternation of the seasons. Nature is thus seen as twofold, originating in
sources of two kinds, the inner natures of living things and the cause
holding together the cosmos as the outer condition of iife. This is reflected
in a bi-polar relation of motion and change, in which the ascending scale of
motions· (leading to the first external mover), is also the descending scale
of changes (starting from the coming-into-being of new beings). The twodirectionality of the scale is all-important. Aristotle does not reduce
change to change of place, but traces it back, along one line of causes. But
the primacy of local motion in the cosmos does not abolish the primacy of
the opposite kind of change, spilling over out of potency, that guarantees
�37
that even changes of place will be wholes, not vulnerable to the attacks of
Zeno. The Physics has a double conclusion, displaying the continuity rooted
in potency as present in the limit of mere change of place, as a final and
deepest refutation of Zeno, which becomes one of the last steps in the
argument that uncovers the motionless cause of motion.
Acknowledgements
The interpretation presented here has been stewing for almost thirty
years, since my first college teacher, Robert Bart, opened my eyes to
Aristotle's definition of motion in particular, and to the whole project of
looking beneath and behind the presuppositions of modern science. Jacob
Klein's "Introduction to Aristotle" is printed here as an appendix to help
those who might wish to read further in Aristotle's writings; it was my
first guide on that journey. Klein had heard Martin Heidegger lecture on
Aristotle in the 1930s. This translation owes much to Heidegger's example
of the possibility of reading Aristotle directly, not through the language of
either the Latin tradition or the science of recent centuries. Heidegger
suffers in translation almost as much as Aristotle does, but a good English
version of his lectures on Book II, Chapter 1 of the Physics is cited earlier
in this introduction. He is too ready to see form
as presence-at-hand,
uninvolved in the joining of things and emptying of one thing into another,
and he is much too ready to talk about "the Greek idea of (whatever),"
when discussing an insight that may have been achieved by only one or
two thinkers, but as an antidote to the deadening effects of most
commentary on Aristotle he is hard to beat.
This translation was a gleam in my eye for about fifteen years, until it
was made possible by the generosity of St. John's College, the National
�38
Endowment for the Humanities, the Beneficial Corporation, and the Hodson
Trust. Students and colleagues at St. john's have read drafts of it in classes
and study groups. I am grateful for their conversation, and above all for
encouragement given to me in 'this work, shortly before his death, by J.
Winfree Smith. Whatever faults this translation may have, it had the
merit of giving delight to that good man.
The marginal page numbers, with their a and b divisions, are from the
standard two-column Bekker edition. The line numbers between them
match up with the lines of the Oxford Classical Text. Ross's text as given
there is followed with a few departures into his notes of variant readings;
in the first paragraph of V, 3, for example, Ross has needlessly scrambled
the text, and the translation follows the manuscripts in everything but the
placement of one sentence. The old Oxford translation by Hardie and Gaye,
outside of Aristotle's central vocabulary, was an invaluable aid to the
meaning of many words and phrases, and Ross's commentary was the
source of a number of references. Ordinary parentheses in the text contain
Aristotle's own parenthetical remarks; square brackets are used
occasionally for my own insertions, when these go beyond repeating an
antecedent of a pronoun. In one instance (at the end of IV, 8), curly
brackets are used around a passage that is not in th·e early manuscripts
but appears in some late sources. The text is interspersed with running
commentary, and preceded by an extensive glossary, intended in part as a
supplement to this introduction.
This translation is not intended to stand in place of Aristotle's inquiry in
pursuit of nature, but to draw you closer to it. If what you find in the
translation makes you want to go further, you should consider reading
Aristotle's own Greek. His grammar is elementary, and · his style is so
�39
repetitious that it doesn't take long to catch on to; the only difficulty in
reading him is the concentration required to keep his pronouns straight.
But if that route does not appeal to you, it is still possible to join with
Aristotle just by doing your own thinking about the questions he raises, in
the light of the broadened and deepened array of possibilities he leads us
to see.
Annapolis, Maryland
May, 1993
�
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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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39 pages
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paper
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Introduction: Philosophic Writing
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1983-08-06
Description
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on August 6, 1983 by Joe Sachs s part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Mr. Sachs is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is a draft of his introduction to his translation of Aristotle's <em>Metaphysics</em>. His talk compares and contrasts the writings of Plato and Aristotle and in particular the differences and similarities between the Platonic Dialogues and Aristotle's corpus.
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lec Sachs 1983-08-06
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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pdf
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Philosophy
Aristotle
Plato
Written communication
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Sachs, Joe, 1946-
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
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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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00:53:49
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Learning, Knowing, and Remembering in a Digital World
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 26, 2017 by Naomi Baron as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Baron, Naomi S.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-07-26
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Permission has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online."
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sound
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mp3
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English
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Baron_Naomi_2017-07-26
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
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Title
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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wav
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01:05:26
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From Nature to History: The Search for Fundamental Necessities in Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 13, 2017, by Charles Zug as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Zug, Charles
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-07-13
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Permission has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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sound
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mp3
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English
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LEC_Zug_Charles_2017-07-13
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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00:44:27
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A Tale of Two Theodicies: Kant and the Self-Contradictions of Leibnizian Theodicy
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on June 28, 2017 by Joseph Trullinger as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Trullinger, an assistant professor at George Washington University, examines Leibniz, Kant and the philosophers’ emblematic responses to the problem of evil. He also explores Kant’s critique of his predecessor and discusses what he calls “contradictions” in Kant’s arguments.
Trullinger received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Bucknell University in 2003; his master’s in philosophy from the University of Kentucky in 2006; and his PhD in philosophy from Kentucky in 2010. His dissertation was titled, The Hidden Life of God: Kant and the German Idealists on Ethical Purity.
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Trullinger, Joseph
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-06-28
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Permission has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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sound
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mp3
Subject
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Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804
Theodicy
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
Good and evil
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English
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Trullinger_Joseph_2017-06-28
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/adebd9578336ead2ee7f6538f6eb1189.mp3
d576aeffc79543c3b6fd759eef7dfca9
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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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00:47:24
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Why We Should (Still) Read Beauvoir
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 5, 2017 by Rebecca Goldner as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. <br /><br />Ms. Goldner is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. Her talk is about the importance and relevance of the work of Simone de Beauvoir. In particular, her talk focuses on de Beauvoir's seminal work <em>The Second Sex</em> and the perennial questions it asks. From what it means to be a woman, to how this question impacts debates over subject and objectivity, and the way in which we practice the liberal arts, Ms. Goldner's talk places these questions in the context of de Beauvoir's work and shows their relevance for the past and future of liberal education.
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Goldner, Rebecca
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2017-07-05
Rights
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Permission has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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sound
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mp3
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<a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/2617">Typescript</a>
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English
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Goldner_Rebecca_2017-07-05
Subject
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Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908-1986. Deuxième sexe. English
Feminism
Existentialism
Women
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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