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Berns, Laurence, 1928-
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Religion, enlightenment, and the American character
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1985-04-12
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Putting Things Back Together Again in Kantl
by Laurence Berns
(St. John's College, Annapolis)
Any study, including the study of philosophy, usually begins with
making distinctions, refining differences. With a comprehensive, precise,
philosopher, a philosopher with a system, like Kant, it seems as if one
could spend a lifetime just trying to work out the distinctions, without
ever coming around to bring together the things that have been
distinguished, that have been separated in thought. I would like in this
talk to try to account for how some of the major factors distinguished by
Kant come together and cooperate within the wholes that they constitute.
The lecture divides into two basic parts.
Experience and the sciences based on experience, according to
Kant, are based on two primary sources, sense intuition and conceptual
thought. Concepts without intuitions, he argues, are empty, and intuitions
without concepts are blind. How do they come together? The contrast
with Aristotle's treatment should be revealing. The fundamental
question behind this first part is: how to account for the cognition we do
experience, how to account for the partial intelligibility of our world?
The realm of nature, natural science and experience, according to
Kant, is determined strictly by necessary laws of cause and effect. The
realm of morality, on the other hand, proceeds in accordance with laws of
freedom. Like parallel lines, it would seem, the two realms never meet.
Kant speaks of the great gulf that separates these domains, that
"completely cuts off the domain of the concept of nature under the one
legislation, and the domain of the concept of freedom under the other
legislation, from any influence that each ... might have had on the other.''2
The question then naturally raises itself: how are the realm of nature and
the realm of morality related or connected in one and the same world?
lA lecture delivered at St. John's College, Annapolis, April 14, 2000.
2 Critique of Judgment, Pluhar translation, (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1987), Introduction,
IX, p. 35.
1
�In his long and difficult book, the Critique of Judgment, Kant
develops the concept of purposiveness, especially the purposiveness of
nature, that in some way is intended to bridge the gap between nature and
morality. I am not able at this time to do more than touch on that subject.
The purposiveness that Kant talks about is not found in nature, but
supplied by the reflective judgment of the investigator whenever the
investigator comes across phenomena like those of living organized beings
for which the laws of mechanical cause and effect do not seem adequate. A
purpose is defined by Kant as an effect that is possible only through the
concept of that effect, the concept that is itself the cause of the effect. Like
Thomas Aquinas, Kant argues that ends in nature only make sense when
they are thought of as intended by some intelligence. The intending
intelligence can be either in the being effecting the purpose or not. The
innumerable complexes of purposive activities operative throughout
nature, especially in animate nature, in beings not intending them,
require some other being that does intend them, namely, God.3 Teleology,
Kant argues, finds its consummation in theology. But, unlike Thomas, for
Kant this God is not to be assumed to have objective reality. The idea of
such a being is produced by us in order to satisfy the subjective needs of
our cognitive faculties. These purposive laws are to make sense of the
phenomena as if some intelligent cause, a God, had made them.
The realm of the reflective judgment also contains Kant's analysis
of the aesthetic judgment, the account of the beautiful and the sublime.
The pleasure derived from an object judged beautiful comes from
reflection on the free and harmonious play of one's own faculties of
imagination and understanding in its judging.
The reflective judgment sometimes seems to be a judgment that
possessing an indeterminate particular is on the search for the universal
or universal law under which the particular could be subsumed, which, if
found, would transform it into a determinate judgment. It evidently plays
a key role in a very important subject not extensively discussed by Kant,
concept formation. In his Logic he speaks of concept formation as based
3Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q. 40, A.3, and Q. 1, A.2. Cf. also I, Q. 2, A.3. Critique of
Judgment, §§ 75 and 76.
2
�on three logical operations of the understanding: comparison, reflection
and abstraction,
the essential general conditions of generating any concept
whatsoever. For example, I see a fir, a willow and a linden. In
comparing them with one another I notice they are different
from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves and the
like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in
common, trunk, branches and leaves and [then] I abstract from
their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.4
In this context reflection would seem to be the power in the Kantian
system that comes closest to the noesis, or intellectual intuition, of Plato
and Aristotle.
The gap between nature and morality also raises another question
which is both a theoretical and practical question, namely, how do nature
and morality coexist in one and the same human being?
Almost everyone who aspires to be generally educated in
philosophy reads Kant's The Foundations [Grounding] of a Metaphysics of
Morals, usually after reading his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics or
selections from The Critique of Pure Reason. His Metaphysics of Morals is
much less read. One is almost bound, it seems to me, to get a distorted
picture of Kant's moral philosophy from reading the Foundations alone. In
the Foundations Kant clarifies the ultimate principle of morality, the
categorical imperative, by distinguishing it from what others claim are the
sources of moral principle. The source of moral principle, he argues, is not
nature, not divine revelation, not moral sense or feeling, not pleasure. The
discussion usually takes the form of arguing why those plausible
alternatives are to be ruled out as sources of moral worth. Kant's view
appears as a noble, but narrow, inflexible, formalism: "so act that the
maxim of your action can be made into a universal law "-period.
The chief difficulty for those who have read only the Critiques and
the Foundations is to see how Kant applies the categorical imperative. In
ethical and political matters the meaning of principles usually does not
become clear until one sees how they work out in practice. The
4 See Critique of Judgment, Introduction (2),§4; and Logi,k, (Jiische), AK IX, 94-95; Logic,
English translation by Hartman and Schwarz, (Bobs-Merril, 1974), 100-01.
3
�Metaphysics of Morals is devoted entirely to working out how the
categorical imperative is applied within the varying circumstances of
human life. Despite the formalism, it reveals Kant to be a deep, wideranging student of human nature, who is very much aware of the
importance for morality of the sources that he rejects as ultimate sources
of morality. In the second part of this talk I propose to illustrate how, in
the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant tries to make sense out of morality; in
part by showing how the moral law comes together with some of the
alternative principles that were rejected in the Foundations.
I
Most discussions of Kant begin with his modifications and
deepening of doctrines inherited from Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke,
Berkeley, Hume and others whose philosophies can be associated with
modern mathematical physics. By emphasizing those modifications, the
premises which these thinkers all share, in particular those premises
formed in opposition to the classical Platonic-Aristotelian approach, are
taken for granted, and as a consequence, are both insufficiently questioned
and thereby insufficiently clarified.
If there is genuine knowledge, must not that which the knower has
be in some way the same as that which constitutes the object known? In
the Meno [72c] Socrates speaks of the form [eidos] as that through which
things are what they are and that towards which one looks in order to give
an account of what they are. Aristotle speaks of how in sense perception
the sense is receptive of the forms of sensible things without their
material just as the wax receives the mark of the signet ring without the
iron or the gold.5 As Joe Sachs put it, "the same form that is at work
holding together the perceived thing is also at work on the soul of the
perceiver."6
5De Anima, 424a 17-21. Aristotle joins Plato's Socrates' "second sailing", taking "refuge
in speeches [eis tous logous] to look in them for the truth about the beings" [Phaedo, 99C100A], by coming around to concentrate on the form [eidos] "according to speech" [kata
ton logon]. See Physics, 193a 31 and Posterior Analytics, lOOa 1-3, and the whole of
chapter 19 of Book II.
6Aristotle's Metaphysics, translated by Joe Sachs, (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Press,
1999), liii-liv.
4
�On the basis of what evidently lies in both prephilosophic and
philosophic experience, and on the supposition that genuine knowledge is
possible for human beings, Plato and Aristotle and their followers argue
that human beings are endowed by nature with two interconnected kinds
of intuition or insight, sense intuition and intellectual intuition [nous]
which open themselves correspondingly to two kinds of forms, sensible and
intelligible forms, the forms implicit in human speech as well as the forms
of sense experience. According to the analyses of Plato and Aristotle the
intelligible forms are understood to be primarily responsible for the way
the world and things are as they are. And accordingly they become objects
of the highest kind of inquiry, the study which came to be called
metaphysics.
The great early modern opponents of the classical tradition and its
medieval offshoots seemed to regard this presupposition of harmony
between the mind and discourse of human beings and the nature of things
as a na'ive, if not gullible, optimism. Nature is not a kind mother, she
deceives us: the cognitive equipment she endows us with conceals rather
than reveals the true character of things.
Bacon, in the first Book of his New Organon, especially his
treatment of the Idols of the Mind, devotes himself to "the refutation of
the natural human reason." That refutation includes a refutation and
account of those philosophies, especially the philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle, that "idolize" or even "idolatrize" natural human reason.7 The
continuity of his great project with that of Bacon is acknowledged by Kant
through his choice of a long excerpt from the Novum Organum as the
epigraph to The Critique of Pure Reason.
Thomas Hobbes was unrivaled for the lucidity with which he
stated his opposition to classical thought. In his The Elements of Law
(Natural and Politic)8 we read "whatsoever accidents or qualities our
senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there, but are
seeming and apparitions only." What we are led to think are the
characteristics of things in themselves are rather the effects upon
7Cf. Laurence Berns, "Francis Bacon and the Conquest of Nature", Interpretation 7, No.
1 (1978), pp. 1-12, especially note 5.
8Editor, Ferdinand Tonnies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), chap.
Il.10.
5
�ourselves of causes or things which in themselves are utterly unknown to
us. As for intelligibles, universals, Hobbes tells us that there is "nothing
in the world Universal but Names; for the things named, are every one of
them Individual and Singular."9 He often criticizes Aristotle for
mistaking discourse about our thoughts and the ordering of our thoughts
for discourse about things in themselves. Traditional metaphysics from
this point of view is absorbed by logic, if not by psychology.
Kant continued and developed this critique. We cannot know
things in themselves, he argues. Science, the study of nature, is concerned
only with what appears to us, with what lies in our experience and, as far
as we can know, lies only in our experience. We are led by nature to think
that what is present in our experience is of, or refers to, things that exist
independently of our experience. And when we speak about our experience,
especially in our use of common nouns, we speak as if we possessed a
power to intuit intellectually the intelligible natures of things in
themselves. But, Kant asserts, sense intuition is the only intuition
available to us, there is no such thing as intellectual intuition for human
beings. To emphasize both the denial and the temptation at the same
time, he defines the word noumenon (which he and his readers knew in
Greek means object of nous, object of intellectual intuition) negatively, as
a word to refer to that which we can in no way know, an unknowable x, the
unknowable thing in itself.
Kant seems to have never given an explicit and direct refutation of
the intellectual intuition he so emphatically rejects. Years ago I was
puzzling about this with the distinguished Kant scholar, Lewis Beck, and
Beck finally said that he guessed Kant must have thought that he has
given us everything valid that intellectual intuition was thought to have
supplied and with more adequate explanations of its grounds. Beck was
referring in part to the fact that although, according to Kant, we cannot go
beyond phenomena to things in themselves, we can have objective,
universal and necessary judgments about them, that is, about the
phenomena that constitute our experience. We can accept Hume's critique
and starting point without the burden of his skepticism. In fact, Kant
argues, objectively valid natural science, mathematics and moral law,
9Leviathan, chap. 4.
6
�now, on his basis, can be more adequately grounded than they have ever
been before. Kant's categories, the pure a priori concepts that ground
experience, his substitutes for Platonic and Aristotelian ideas or forms,
have no special purely intellectual objects of their own; they are valid and
meaningful only in application to human experience, meaning sense
experience. Reason, the ultimate source of understanding, and its
concepts is not intuitive, for Kant, but legislative: it provides rules for the
meaningful organization of sense experience, these rules we call concepts.
Despite these fundamental oppositions, there is a deep stratum of
concurrence in Kant's approach and the Platonic-Aristotelian approach:
both find the meaningfulness of ordinary sense experience fundamentally
dependent on what is primarily at home in thought, even in logic. Kant
might be thought of as, in his own way, joining Socrates' taking refuge in
the logoi.10 The same function of the mind that in discourse determines a
certain kind of judgment, as a category provides the necessary conditions
o. meaningfulness that determine particular objects, as objects of sense
f
experience.
Thus Kant can say paradoxically that ''Reason prescribes to
nature its laws." He must also have been thinking about how Newton in
his Principia presents mathematical reason prescribing its laws to
nature: that is, after working out different general mathematical force
laws for bodies traveling in different kinds of geometric orbits (in Book I),
some 200 or so pages later (in Book III) he determines the astronomical
"System of the World" in a few pages by simply setting down the
observational data, the phenomena, and seeing to which of those force
laws they conform. (As every history of these matters makes clear the
actual discoveries of the mathematical laws were made very much in
interaction with observations of the things governed by them.)
But Kant spoke of his critical philosophy and Newton's procedure
as part of the more general Copernican intellectual revolution of modern
science. Let us take the most important example: we see the sun rise,
move across the heavens and set each day. The Copernican hypothesis
accounts for the apparent daily movement of the sun by the rotation of the
earth, or more generally, by the activity and movement of the observer.
lOsee note 5, below and the Critique of Pure Reason, B 105 or A 79, B 107, and B 370.
7
�Kant accounts for the meaningfulness of sense experience in terms of its
conformity to the rules set by our own conceptual activity. Hitherto, he
argues, it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to
objects, but he reverses the priority by asking whether it is not rather that
we attain knowledge of objects when those objects, sense objects, conform
to the conditions that our concepts and understanding set for all objects of
experience. Experimental science too is seen as part of this intellectual
revolution: in the experiment reason approaches nature with fixed laws in
mind, and then creates conditions that would never occur in nature's own
ordinary course in order to force nature to answer reason's own questions
about which laws prevail.
I spoke earlier of how Kant cut off intellectual intuition as one
route from experience to things experienced as things in themselves; but
what about gaining access to the things themselves that are sensed
through sense intuition, the one kind of intuition that Kant asserts we do
possess? That avenue is cut off by Kant's notion of what it is that we
receive through our senses. Following Hume, Kant agrees that what our
senses present to us are impressions, or as later writers who follow this
approach say, sense data; not sense objects, but sensations, mere matter
for sense objects.11 Sensation for Kant is not yet sense intuition. For
sense intuition of sense objects to occur, the matter must be ordered or
formed into appearances and experience. The formative or ordering power
does not come from the object formed, but lies in the mind a priori, that is,
independently of all sensation or experience. "(T]he form of all appearance
must altogether lie ready for the sensations a priori in the mind; and
hence that form must be capable of being examined apart from all
sensation."12 The form of outer objects of experience is Space, the form of
inner objects of experience is Time. Space presents no properties or
relations of things in themselves; "it is the subjective condition of
sensibility under which alone outer intuition is possible for us."13 As the a
llTo what extent does this depend on Kant's "Boscovichian" ~eduction of material
"solids" to tensions of forces, especially repulsive and attractive forces? See his
Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaften, Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science, especially chapter 2 on dynamics, "Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der
Dynamik", AK IV, 496-535.
l2The Critique of Pure Reason, B 34.
l3Jbid. B 42
8
�priori form of inner sense, Time is the condition of possibility for any
intuition or experience of simultaneity or succession. If, as we shall
shortly see, all experience itself depends upon synthesizing activities of
the subjects of experience, taking place in time, then time is the subjective
condition of possibility for all intuition, for all experience and for all
cognition. "Time is the formal condition a priori for all appearances in
general."14
How, according to Kant, are intuition and concept brought together
to produce experience and knowledge? The crucial link is the imagination.
The pure imagination, Kant tells us, is
a basic power of the human soul which underlies a priori all
cognition. By means of pure imagination we link the manifold
of intuition, on the one hand, with the ... necessary unity of
pure apperception [the source of the categories], on the other
hand. By means of this transcendental function of the
imagination the two extreme ends, namely sensibility and
understanding, must necessarily cohere; for otherwise
sensibility would indeed yield appearances, but would yield no
objects of an empirical cognition, and hence no experience.
Actual experience consists in [1] apprehension of appearances,
[2] their association (reproduction), and thirdly their recognition;
in this third [element] (which is the highest of these merely
empirical elements of experience), such experience contains
concepts, which make possible the formal unity of experience
and with it all objective validity (truth) of empirical cognition.
Now these bases of the recognition of the manifold, insofar as
they concern merely the form of an experience as such, are the
categories.15
Kant also spoke about the difference between the "two extreme
ends", sensibility and thought, as the difference between receptivity, the
receptivity of blind sense impressions and spuntaneity, the source of all
thinking (transcendental apperception). The two are defined in opposition
to one another. Understanding, the ability to think an object of sensible
intuition is our spontaneity of cognition, that is, the ability opposite to
receptivity, the ability to produce mental presentations by ourselves, to go
14/bid. B 46, 49-50.
15Critique of Pure Reason, Pluhar translation, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), A 124-25.
Emphasis supplied.
9
�through, take up and combine mental presentations in acts of synthesis.
"By synthesis, in the most general sense of the term,'' he says, "I mean the
act of putting various presentations with one another and of comprising
their manifoldness in one cognition." Spontaneity, he asserts, is the basis
of the three-fold synthesis that brings sense intuition and conceptual
thought together. The three syntheses are called, 1) the synthesis of
apprehension in intuition, 2) the synthesis of reproduction in imagination,
and 3) the synthesis of recognition in the concept.
The first two syntheses are, if I understand them, under the aegis
of what Kant calls the productive imagination.16
What the first synthesis, of apprehension, accomplishes is the
taking together of the received impressions as existing in one ("my")
consciousness in time. The individual becomes conscious of a unity of
intuition in him or her self, as existing "in me." It is only when the
received appearances are apprehended and combined within a definite
consciousness that Kant will call them perceptions.
The next stage, the synthesis of reproductive imagination, depends
upon an association of perceptions brought together so as to produce an
image of an object. This depends on a power of the mind "to call over"
[herilberzurufen] a preceding perception to a subsequent perception to form
a series of perceptions. The objective ground of the association, Kant says,
is the affinity of appearances in the unity of apperception. A non-Kantian
might be tempted to ask, "Is this a surreptitious glance at the outlawed
thing in itself?" But, Kant argues, this process depends on the unity of
consciousness of original apperception and is an a priori synthesis,
thereby traceable to the action of the productive imagination.17
The third synthesis, synthesis of recognition in a concept, is more
familiar to everyone who has read about the pure concepts of the
understanding, the categories. Here there is·a recognition that the
manifold of former syntheses is a unity of syntheses according to a rule,
that is, according to a concept. We have now reached the pole of thought.
16Jbid. A 118. It can be argued that the second synthesis, as its name suggests, is not
under the productive but only the reproductive imagination. Imagination, in general, is
defined in the Critique of Pure Reason, B 151, as "the power of presenting an object in
intuition even without the object's being present." In the B edition the synthesis of
apprehension is called the figurative synthesis.
17Jbid. A 122 and 123.
10
�We now recognize the former syntheses of appearances, associated
perceptions and finally an image as unified according to a rule, a category,
under which they are subsumed and validated as conforming to the
conditions of possibility of an object of experience.
At the end of this account Kant is satisfied that he can now say:
Hence the order and regularity in the appearances that we call
nature are brought into them by ourselves; nor indeed could
such order and regularity be found in appearances, had not we,
or the nature of our mind, put them into appearances
originally .18
There are two other important accounts of imagination mediating
between sense and understanding that I can only mention briefly. Kant's
transcendental deduction of the categories culminates in his discussion of
the schematism. A schema is not an image, but a product of the power of
imagination, a rule of synthesis for the imagination that governs the
production of images that then will be suitable for subsumption under
concepts.
Another most important function of imagination is its provision of
a priori intuition, the foundation of mathematical knowledge, according to
Kant. Kant, like Newton and Hobbes, defines mathematical objects
operationally rather than theoretically as Euclid mostly does. A line is
what is generated by the path of a moving point, rather than a breadthless
length. The intuition is a priori, because we, through our imaginations
supply it, it is not derived from experience. In mathematics concepts are
constructed, that is the universals, the concepts, are operative as rules of
construction for the a priori images. The universal is found in the
particular .19 Construction of concepts is defined by Kant as the
18Jbid. A 125.
19Euclid, I.32, the proof that the three angles of any triangle equal two right angles,
provides a beautiful example: As soon as you supply the line parallel to one of the sides
of the triangle, (keeping in mind what you have just learned about equalities between
interior, exterior and alternate angles) the conclusion jumps out at you. See Critique of
Pure Reason, B 744-45. In B 745 this notion of a priori intuition is shown to embrace
also the "symbolic constructions" of algebra. Cf. Jacob Klein: "A new kind of
generalization, which may be termed 'symbol-generating abstraction,' leads directly to
the establishment of a new universal discipline, namely 'general analytic,' [algebra],
which holds a central place in the architectonic of the 'new' science." Greek M athmatical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra, translated by Eva Brann, (Cambridge, Mass.: MI.T.
11
�production and exhibition a priori, that is, in pure imagination, of the
intuition which corresponds to the concept. Because in his mind the
geometer produces a circle with every radius exactly equal, "he can
demonstrate by means of a circle which he draws with his stick in the
sand, no matter how irregular it may turn out to be, the attributes of a
circle in general, as perfectly as if it had been etched on a copper plate by
the greatest artist." The production in pure imagination of the intuition
corresponding to the concept Kant calls schematic in contrast to the
merely empirical intuition on paper or drawn in the sand.20
In the middle of Kant's account of the three-fold synthesis we have
just gone through a curious and revealing footnote appears.
That the imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception
itself has, I suppose, never occurred to any psychologist. This is
so partly because this power has been limited by psychologists to
reproduction only, and partly because they believed that the
senses not only supply us with impressions, but indeed also
assemble these impressions and thus bring about images of
objects. But this undoubtedly requires something more than
our receptivity for impressions, namely, a function for their
synthesis.21
This criticism of what is evidently a premodern notion of
perception seems to beg the question by assuming that what the senses
supply are atomistic impressions, which then would require some other
power to assemble them into representations of sensible things. Sensible
things, as Kant knows, are what most people think they are perceiving
through their senses. Kant was familiar with Aristotle's logic, but
Press, 1968), available now in a Dover Edition reprint, p. 125. Cf. pp. 117-25, 163-78
and 192-211.
20ttenry E. Allison, The Kant-Eberhard Controversy, (Baltimore-London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1973), p.111, especially Kant's note. (AK VIII, 191-92) Kant's way of
conceiving the object of mathematics is elaborately contrasted with the classical Greek
way in David Lachterman's The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity, (New
York and London: Routledge, 1989). Lachterman develops and builds on Jacob Klein's
Greek Mathmatical Thought and the Origin of Algebra; and "The World of Physics and
the 'Natural' World" in Jarob Klein: Lectures and Essays, edited by R. B. Williamson and
E. Zuckerman, (Annapolis: St. John's College Press, 1985), pp. 1-34.
21Critique of Pure Reason, (Pluhar), A 120.
12
�evidently not with DeAnima.22 Aristotle's account of these matters
seems to be much simpler, it remains very close to the ordinary and
general experience in which they are found. AB Joseph Owens put it, he
"lets things speak for themselves." Aristotle and Kant, it seems to me,
are considering pretty much the same phenomena, however differently
they account for them.
In the beginning of his Metaphysics Aristotle speaks of how all
animals by nature come into being with sensation and how, for some,
memory emerges from sensation which makes them more intelligent and
able to learn. He assumes that, of course, memory presupposes
imagination. An animal remembers by recalling an image of something
which has been perceived in the past and is no longer present, Kant's
reproductive imagination. And so, he, Aristotle, goes on,
the other animals live by imaginings and memories, but have
little share in experience, but the human race lives also by art
and reasoning. Experience arises out of memory for human
beings; for many memories of the same thing bring the capacity
for one experience to completion. And experience seems to be
almost like knowledge, or science, and art; and knowledge and
art come about from experience for human beings.
Experience is the link between memory and science and art. Experience,
then, arises from memories, when many memories of the same thing are
linked together in a unity: for example, this cured Smith, it also cured
Jones, and Green and Quinn, therefore it should cure Collins as well. The
doctor, thinking about Collins's illness is led by something to call up the
images of those former patients and their cures. The intelligible character
[ennoema]23 of the illness of the patient before him recalls that same
intelligible character he had noticed in the illnesses of Jones, Smith and
so on. The intelligible character of the illness is at work both in and
through the perceived patient before him and in the doctor's mind, as well
as in and through the images recalled of past patients.
22Nor with Thomas Aquinas' commentary on De Anima and what he wrote on
perception and imagination in his own name, cf. Summa Theologiae, I, Q. 84, AA 6 and
especially 7 and Q. 85, A 1.
23Metaphysics, 981a 6.
13
�Aristotle has a name for the kind of human imagination that
works together, that is, cooperates, with thought: he calls it rational
[logistike] imagination. It is distinguished from the kind of imagination
that human beings share with the other animals, sensible imagination.24
Let us recall, however, that experience is cognition of individuals. The
intelligible form is working away in the linkage and the unity of
experience, but it, so to speak, has not come into its own yet. In science
and art when one can say this kind of medicine cures this kind of illness,
the intelligibility of the form that was at work in experience is explicitly
and fully recognized in speech as a universal. This culminating
contemplation of the form as a universal is described by Aristotle in a way
that at first seems strange, he describes it as a coming to rest of the soul
out of its normal and natural disorder. But it is not the rest of inertia, it
is the very active and untroubled calm of natural fulfillment, the
gratifying fulfilling of a potency that was there from the beginning.25
The Kantian account is more technical and impressive. It tells us
about all sorts of processes that remained hidden until Kant explicated, or
invented, them. The imagination plays a larger role than it does for
Aristotle. The sense-data, for Kant, must first be assembled or
synthesized by the imagination before we can recognize them as
constituents of sense objects. The Kantian account describes a world, that
in its intelligible essentials is of our own making.
The Aristotelian account sticks much more closely to given
experience, the causal factors it invokes almost seem to be extrapolations
from the descriptions.26 It finds intelligibility, perhaps even intelligence,
in things and the natural world. We are instructed not so much to grasp or
construct it, as to open ourselves to it.
II
24De Anima, 433b 29-31.
25Aristotle, Physics, 247b 5-18 and Posterior Analytics, lOOa 6.
26Aristotle does distinguish objects of sense that are proper to a sense, like the visible
to sight, the audible to hearing, from incidental sense objects like "the white thing [that]
is the son of Diares". [De Anima, 418a 7-26] What that colored thing is, is incidental to
its simply being colored. But for human beings primary sense experience usually
includes the what that is part of what constitutes the object of perception as a sensible
thing.
14
�Freedom in the sense of autonomy, self-legislation, is the
fundamental principle of Kantian morality. Rousseau, whom Kant speaks
of as a kind of Newton of the moral world27, was perhaps the first to define
freedom as self-legislation, but the idea is already implicit in Hobbes's
theory of sovereignty and the social contract. We must obey the sovereign,
Hobbes argues, because each of us through the social contract has agreed
to allow his will to represent each of our wills. He is our representative.
His legislation, because of the social contract, is, legally considered, our
own self-legislation. Hobbes also formulated the more general principle
underlying this conception: "there being no Obligation on any man, which
ariseth not from some Act of his own; for all men equally are by Nature
Free."28 Obligation seems to be something like a contract with oneself.
This becomes even more explicit in Rousseau's doctrine of the
general will. Freedom in society consists in uniting oneself with all the
,.rest under the general will that declares the law, while at the same time
remaining free, that is, self-legislating, in so far as one has contributed to
the making of that law, either by taking part in the legislative assembly
oneself, or taking part in the election of legislators. The process that
makes the will general also makes it moral. Being compelled to express
one's will in such a form that it can become a general law, so that it can
coincide with the wills of all the others, moralizes the will. For example, I
don't like to pay taxes. If I generalize my desire into a law that no one
ought to pay taxes, I am compelled to see that then the police, public
schools, courts, the enforcement of contracts, and so on, would all
disappear. The irrationality of my original desire becomes manifest.
This idea is fully developed as a moral principle in Kant's doctrine
of the categorical imperative: so act that the maxim of your action can
become a universal law. The truly free or moral person, according to Kant,
bows only to the moral will or practical reason within him or her self, and
not to any standard coming from without.
The standard of autonomy, self-legislation, is opposed by
heteronomy, legislation by another. The two most powerful and prominent
27Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant and Goethe, Harper Torchbooks, (Harper and Row,
1963), p. 18.
28Leviathan, chapter 21.
15
�forms of heteronomy that are to be dethroned are the standard of nature
derived from philosophy and the standard of God derived from Biblical
revelation. Pure practical reason is the only source of moral law.
Anything, therefore, empirical or sensual in origin is disqualified as a
source or standard of moral worth: that rules out moral sense, moral
feeling and pleasure. It also rules out happiness as a standard, happiness
being understood by Kant as a kind of sum of satisfaction of empirical
desire, or as he puts it, of inclination. The rational principle of
heteronomy, the concept of perfection, at least does not, as the empirical
principles do, undermine morality, but by its emptiness and vagueness is
"altogether incapable of serving as its foundation."29 With this glance at
certain programmatic aspects of the Grounding [Foundations] of a
Metaphysics of Morals, we can now turn to the Metaphysics of Morals.
The book is divided into two parts that correspond to the
traditional division between political philosophy and ethics, the doctrine
of right and the doctrine of virtue. Duties of right are defined as externally
enforceable obligations, the external enforcer being a just, lawful, or rightprotecting political order. Duties of virtue, ethical duties, are internal
obligations. Duty is a necessitation or constraint of free choice through the
law. The constraint in ethical duties, then, is "self-constraint through the
representation of the law alone, for only so can that necessitation (even if it
is external) be united with freedom of choice."30 Free choice is not
indeterminate, free choice is that choice that can be determined by pure
reason.31 And just to wrap this up: throughout both parts of the book
"obligation" refers to "the necessity of a free action under a categorical
imperative of reason."32
But before we enter into some of the substance of the book, it is
time to clear up one fundamental point. Kant frequently speaks of the
29Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AK IV, 443.
30AK. VI, 380.
31This appears to be an echo, or variant, of Spinoza's conception of freedom.
Everything, according to Spinoza, is determined: freedom is the ability of the best
human beings to be determined by clear and distinct ideas. (If we are not determined
in our actions by clear and distinct ideas, we will be determined solely, or mainly, by
natural causes like instincts, emotions and inclinations.) For Spinoza and German
Idealism, as a whole, see Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religfon, (New York:
Schocken Books, 1965), Preface, pp. 15-17.
32AK VI ' 222 .
16
�unbridgeable gap between the domain of sensible empirical nature and
the domain of moral freedom, as our earlier quote illustrated. Those
statements turn out to be only provisional, to help us get clear about
where our different principles are coming from. Freedom is a kind of
causality. Although the natural causality of the sensible world cannot
determine the subject as a moral, supersensible, being,
yet the reverse is possible (not ... with regard to our cognition
of nature, but ... with regard to the consequences that the
concept of freedom has in nature); ... this possibility is
contained in the very concept of a causality through freedom,
whose effect is to be brought about in the world ....
Those effects manifest themselves as appearances in the world of sense.33
This causality of freedom is another way of talking about how pure
reason becomes practical: This can only happen when reason makes the
individuals' maxims (subjective principles of action) fit for becoming
universal law. And further, since we human beings are under the sway of
nature's causality as well as freedom's, that power of reason can be
exercised, Kant says, only by its prescribing the moral law in the form of
imperatives that command or prohibit absolutely.34 A divine being, with
no countervailing natural tendencies to oppose pure practical reason, acts
in accordance with the moral law as a matter of course, with no need for
any imperatives, any commands.
Since my general aim here is to illustrate how Kant's sensible
natural realm and supersensible moral realm come together in one and
the same world, I will concentrate on the doctrine of virtue. Because that
is where those sources of morality rejected in the Foundations as ultimate
principles of morality are done justice to, as important factors in moral
life.
An end, Kant explains, is an object of free choice, the object of
some action, and is thereby empirical. The traditional, or classical,
procedure of clarifying the rank order of one's ends and then setting one's
personal maxims of duty in terms of the rank order of those ends, violates
33See AK V, 195 and the note on 195 and 196.
34AK VI, 213-14; Mary Gregor translation (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp . 1314.
17
�the concept of duty according to Kant. Duty with its categorical ought is
rooted in pure reason alone, and thereby must be in control of the maxims
by which one sets one's ends. The ends to be sought in ethics then are ends
that are also duties.
Although both nature and the concept of perfection seem to have
been ruled out as fundamental moral standards in the Foundations, in
section viii of the doctrine of virtue we find the end that is also a duty to
cultivate one's own natural perfection. AB Kant also says in the
Foundations, ends that are necessary and objective ends for every rational
being, that is, ends in themselves, can serve as moral laws. Rational
nature, he declares, is an end in itself. It follows that human beings, being
rational natures, are obliged in their own person or in the person of
another to always treat humanity as an end, not a means. The end of
humanity in our own persons is linked to the duty to make ourselves
worthy of humanity by cultivating our natural capacities to realize the
ends set forth by our reason. Then Kant goes on, "That is to say, the
human being has a duty to cultivate the raw abilities of his nature by
which the animal first raises itself into a human being."
Happiness, we remember, was also excluded from moral goals, but,
Kant declares, the happiness of others is an end that is also a duty. The
argument here is rather interesting, it seems to ground itself on
universalizing a not very exalted natural and selfish principle. The reason
why we have
a duty to be beneficent is this: since our self-love cannot be
separated from our need to be loved (helped in case of need) by
others, we therefore make ourselves an end for others; and this
maxim can never be binding except through its qualification as a
universal law, and hence through our will also to make others
our ends. The happiness of others is therefore an end that is
also a duty.
Shortly thereafter Kant again puts his prodigious deductive power
in the service of his good sense by qualifying this duty. "How far it should
extend depends ... on what each person's true needs are in view of his
sensibilities, and it must be left to each to decide this for himself." For to
promote the happiness of another at the sacrifice of one's own happiness
18
�(one's own true needs) would be in itself a self-conflicting maxim, if one
made it into a universal law.35
In the light of the Foundations, section xii of the Metaphysics of
Morals is especially interesting: outlawed feeling and pleasure come into
their own. The subject is those "moral endowments" resting on feeling
that are required to prepare the mind to receive concepts of duty and to act
on them. There are duties to cultivate these right dispositions of feeling.
Moral feeling is "the susceptibility to pleasure or displeasure
merely from the consciousness that our action is either in agreement with
or is contrary to the law of duty." Shortly thereafter a remarkable
statement follows : "for all consciousness of obligation depends on this
feeling." It is this feeling that makes us aware of the constraint that lies
of
in the concept _ duty. There is no duty to have or acquire it, because every
human being (as a moral being) already has it. The obligation can "only
be to cultivate it and, through wonder at its inscrutable [unerforschlichen
cnot to be searched into] source, to strengthen it"36 To lack it is to be
morally dead. Kant continues, in appropriately passionate language, "and
if, (to speak in medical terms) the moral life-force could no longer excite
this feeling, then humanity would dissolve (as it were by chemical laws)
into mere animality and be mixed irretrievably with the mass of other
natural beings. "37
The other great source of heteronomy, both the Foundations and
The Critique of Practical Reason tell us, is the biblical God of revelation.
Kant ends the Metaphysics of Morals by speaking of religion as an integral
part of the general doctrine of duties, but says that considered as a
doctrine of duties to God it lies outside the boundaries of pure moral
philosophy. The necessity for religion is stated quite clearly: "we cannot
very well make obligation (moral constraint) intuitive for ourselves
without thereby thinking of another's will, namely God's (of which reason
in giving universal laws is only the spokesman)." This duty with regard to
God, he goes on, is really a duty to the idea we ourselves make of such a
being, it is really a duty of a human being to him or her self, "for the sake
35AK. VI, 391-94; Gregor translation, 154-56.
36AK. VI, 399-400.
37Mary Gregor translation, p. 160.
19
�of strengthening the moral incentive in our own lawgiving reason."38 Kant
hints that if we would really like to follow up this subject, we could
consider his book Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, where the
agreements between pure practical reason and the teachings of history
and revelation are explored. That book, like the Metaphysics of Morals, is
one of those rare places where Kant describes human beings as we know
them, whole human beings who are at one and the same time natural and
moral beings.
It may be fitting to end this talk with some brief remarks about
Kant's discussion of religion. The Critique of Pure Reason established,
according to Kant, that we have no knowledge. positive or negative,
concerning the existence of God. Religion, Kant argues, is unambiguously
subordinated to morality, to moral reason. "Pure moral legislation,
through which the will of God is primordially engraved in our hearts, is not
only the unavoidable condition of all true religion whatsoever, but is also
that which really constitutes such religion." True religion, he argues, "is a
purely rational affair."39 Religion within the limits of reason alone
establishes what in the absence of knowledge we are obliged to believe, in
order to strengthen our capacities to obey the moral law.
Kant had trouble getting his book on religion printed. Permission
to publish was withheld because of opposition from officials of the
theological faculties at the universities. Morals and religion, they argued,
fell under the jurisdiction of the theological faculty, not the faculty of
philosophy to which Kant belonged. (This jurisdictional issue was
probably not the deepest ground for their opposition.) Kant had argued as
early as The Critique of Pure Reason that moral theology in answer to the
question "What may I hope?" was an indispensable part of philosophy.
After a few years of rejection by some censors and acceptance by others,
Kant did get his Religion ... book published.· But the practical and
theoretical questions connected with the affair evidently led him to write
what became a part of his last book, The Confiict of the Faculties.
38Jbid., 229·30.
39Die Religi.on innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Religion within the Limits of
Reason Alone, AK VI, 104; Der Streit der Fakultiiten, AK VII, 67, The Confl,ict of the
Faculties, (New York: Abaris, 1979), translated by Mary Gregor, p.123.
20
�I bring this talk to a close with Kant's comments in that book on
the traditional idea that philosophy is the handmaid of theology, He
grants theology's "proud claim", but raises the question: Is she, however,
the handmaid that walks behind bearing her gracious mistress's train, or
the torchbearer that walks ahead to light the path?40
40AK VII, 28.
21
�
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Putting things back together again in Kant
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1~hls 1~ateriai n-iay- 1 6 protected by'
Copyright l;qw (Trtte ·17 !J S. Code)
FRANCISBACONAND THE CONQUEST OF NA'l'URE*
by Laurence Berns
The whole prospect and outlook of mankind grew immeasurably larger, ·and the rnul ti tude of ideas also proceeded at an
incredible rate. This vast expansion . was unhappily not accompanied by any noticeable advance in the stature of man,
either in his mental faculties or his moral character, but
it buzzed the more. The scale of .events .around him assumed
gigcintic proI:'ortions· while he remained cibout the same size.
By comparison therefore he actually became much smaller.
We no longer, had greatmen directing manageable affairs. Our
need was . to discipline an array of gigantic and turbulent
facts.
To this task we have so far proved unequcll.. Science be-:stowed immense new powers on man and at the same time created conditions which were largely beyond his control. While
he nursed the illu5ion of -growing mastery and exulted in his
new trappings, he became the sport and presently the victim
of tides and currents of whirlpools and tornadoes amid which ·
he was far more helpless than he had been for a long time.
_:...Winston S. Churchill
1
The so-called conquest of nature by modern science·, the science
associated with the names of Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Newton, has
transformed human life almost_beyond description.
The new dependency
of human life upon science, or its product, technology, pervades our
thinking as wel_ as our prac.t ical lives.
l
It might even seem, from
the recent suggestion to replace the term technology with the term
"technotronics", that logos too had become outdated.
*Base.don
1
Our awareness
a lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, April 25",1975.
.
.
Speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 1, 1949.
THE GATHERING STORM, Boston, 1948, pp. 38-42; "Mass Effects in Modern
Life" and "Fifty . Years Hence" in THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES, 1.932.
Cf.
�-2-
of the depth ' of this fundamental dependency should help us to avoid the
hypocrisy of indulgi.n g in loose anti-scientific talk • . .Yet the threat
of nuclear war, overpopulation, environmental pollution, the imbalance
and disappearance of nature in the wild, and so forth, have all made the
problematic character of the great project for the conquest of nature
increasin~ly
evident, even to non-philosophic thought.
But dangerous consequences can be dealt with in more than one way.
If the conception of nature underlying the cOI:iquest of nature by science
is sound, the remedies for the ills consequent .upon the sO-calied conquest · of nature· are to. be found not in less, but more science, or in a
fuller use of science to solve the problems inherent in the application
of_ science to practice-.
If, on the other hand, the dangers brought on
by modern science are natural consequences o.f fundamental defects in
the understandi.n g of nature presupposed by the project, we are directed .n ot
only to the correction or reform of modern science, but to a consideration of the fundamental' alternatives to it.
In
either case the funda-
mental problem turns out to be not only the problem of dangerous consequences, but rather unders.tanding the truth, . or adequacy, of the conception of nature underlying the notion of the conquest of nature.
The modern project, especially with Bacon and Descartes, was worked out in explicit opposition to classical philosophy and science.
is
~ot ' simply
historical accident.
This
The meaning of the conquest of na-
ture cannot be adequately understood ·without understanding the reasons
for rejecting the view of nature it was formed in explicit opposition
2
to, the classical, or Platonic-Aristotelian idea ~f nature.
The idea
of the conquest of nature cannot itself be adequately understood apart
from an understanding of the fundamental alternatives to it.
I
The first word of the first aphorism of
Bacon'~
NEW ORGANON is
"Man", · the . second "nature": "Homo, naturae minister'· et interpres, ••• ";
2 The common, Socratic, element in the philosophies of Plato and of Aristotle
is discussed in my "Socratic and Non-Socratic P?ilosophy: a Note on Xenophon's MEMORABILIA .1.1.13 and 14", THE. REVIEW OF METAPHYSICS, September,
1974, pp. 85-88.
�-3-
"Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, does just so much and
understands just so much of the order of nature as he has observeq in
the thing or in the mind: he neither knows nor is able to know more."
Man is the
~ervant
of nature in so far as
h~
can do or make nothing
except by obeying the . hidden chain of causes •. Man is tbe interpreter
of nature in so ~ar as he does not ·accept what ·he receives as self-evident,. but .rather · as results and signs only of t .h e hidden chain of
causes.
s.igns must be interpreted.
Man should distrust l:>oth his
natura·l faculties for judgement and the signs which nature on her own
provides. him.
It is in the third aphorism that we find the decisive phrase:
.
"For natu- e is · na·t conquered, except by being obeyed."
r
3.
The phrase ·
is on its .face .aosu~d~ or self-contradictory: the same thing .cannot
both be. conquered and obeyed.
Bacon too soiicits :interpretation.
The word nature here .is . being used . in two senses.
In his discussions
of natural history Bacon provides us with the distinctions which resolve the contradiction.
Natural history is divided according to
the three ·conditions . in which nature is found. - There. is 1) nature in
its-ordinary course, free and left to itself, as it presents itself to
the ordinary understanding in the normal movements of. heavenly and
terrestrial bodies, the normal generations of plants and animals; then
2)
there is nature wandering, or in .error . when prodigies and monstro,
sities are produced;. and finally 3) nature constrained and vexed,
forced out of her · "natural" state, pressed an.d moulded by the . art aritl.
hand of man. · It is from this third kind of ·history that. Bacon ·expects mqst. · "For just as in civil affair~ a man's disposition and
the secret sense of his mind and affections are better discovered
when he is troubled than at other times~ so likewise the secrets of . nature brin9 · themselves forward through the vexations. of art more .than
3unfortunately, in the· most widely read English translation, Spedding•s,
among ·other 'inaccuracies, vincitur, "conq.lered", is usually translated as
"conunanded". Spedding was probably misled by the ·imperatur of aph. 129.
See ·Library of Liberal Arts; THE NEW ORGANON, ed. F.H. Anderson, pp. 19,
lines 18 and 1 1 , 29, line 8, and 39; Modern Library, SELECTED WRITINGS ••• ,
ed. H.G. Dick, pp. 441, lines 21 and 22, 451, ·line 10, and 462.
�-4-:when the}' go their own way."
ill its ordinary course.
4
The nature to be conquered is nature
The conquest is . to be accompl{shed through .
the discovery of and obedience to the secret chain of causes hidden
withinand operative throughout nature; which are to be revealed by
experimental history and true interp.r etation.
What is given to .human cognition in its
ordi~ary
course, by nature
in itls ordinary course, does not provide the clue to the discovery of
natw:;e's fundamental structures and laws. · We cq.nnot assume, as the
'
ancients did, that·there is a natural harmony between the mind of ma,n
and the world, that science and philosophy are the refinement and perfection of the
~atural
cognition by· nature.
understanding working on what is given to human
Oil
the contrary, whaf is given by nature to or-
dinaxy cognition obscures and obfuscates man's way to the discovery of
i
the fundamental course of nature, to nature's fundamental laws.
The
first part, then, of the way to the conquest of nature is the "refutation of the natural human understanding."
This culminates in the
refutation of those philosophies that have been based upon this understanding.
.These are, most . notably, the philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle, which take as .their fundamental task thinking through the
. presuppositions and implications of the orientation of the natural
5
human understanding.
The refutation of the natural human understanding is set forward
most fully by Bacon in his discussion of the Idols of the Mind in
4NEW ORGANON,
5
(hereafter designated by" N.O.), I, aph • . 98.
The refutation, or rejection of the natural human understanding has been
tried in different ways. Cf. Descartes's "genium aliquem malignum" in Me-:ditation I: Hobbes's "feigning the world to be annihilated" in DE CORPORE,
chap. 7; ahd LEVIATHAN, chap. 13, where .it is shown why the "condition of
nature" is intolerable: John I.ocke,ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING,
Book I; and ESSAY CONCERNING CIVIL GOVERNMENT, chap. v, where the part
which nature (compared with labor) contributes to the value of things shifts
from !/10th to l/lOOth to l/lOOOth, to "the almost worthless mate:i;-ials":
Spinoza, ETHICS, Part I, Appendix: _ and G•.W
.F. Hegel, PHANOMENOLOGIE DES
GEISTES, Hoffmeister ed., 1952, Einleitung, pp. 66-68; Baillie trans., . pp.
l35~137.
Cf. _
Jacob Klein, GREEK MATHEMATICAL THOUGHT AND THE ORIGIN OF
ALGEBRA, M.I.T. ~ress, 1968, pp. 72-74 and 117-121; and Leo Strauss,
WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY?, Glencoe, 1959, "Political Philosophy and
History" and "On Classical Political . Philosophy".
�-5aphorisms 38 to 67 •
6
The idols are first mentioned in aph. 23 as
·"certain empty d_ grnas" in contrast to "the ideas · of the divine mind"
o
which are "the true s_gnatures and impressions ·made on creatures, as
i
they are · discovered."
What Bacon intends by "ideas of the divine mind''
is not at first .altogether clear • . The next aphorism, . as if in answer
.to the question, How is one to know what kind of. principles to. seek? 1
remarks that principles .c onstituted by arguments are not to be
relied ·u pon, since the subtlety of
!
nat~e
is
gre~ter
many times over
.
thaii the subtlety of argtiment.
.
dis~overy
Rather, principies that iead: to the
.
.·
.
.
.
.
of new works; new particulars, that render the sciences ac-
.tive, are to be
sought~
In the search for those true signatures and
impressions of the divine mind one is to look not for the divine ideas
s
themselves, as ideas, but as forces and laws, a_ it were, impressed
..
in and shaping and_·governing creatures.
This is not because Bacon
was more :interested in practice, power or useful inventions than he
was in theoretical
truth, but because he thought that the active
principles_ gdverning nature . are to be discovered primarily by determining what, how, .a nd under what; conditions things can be done, or produced.
A theory is not confirmed as true simply ·because it leads to
the production of new works, but new work;s are signs or pledges t J
-iat
one is · t least on the track of . truth.
a
Bacon's emphasis is on light-
bearing over fruit-bearing experiments, that is on discovering causes
rather . 1;.han on immediate usefu_lness.
He was fond of recalling "the
divine. procedure, whi_ in its first day's work created light only
ch
and assigned to it one entire day, on which it produced no material
.·
work."
i
Those who confine themselves too closely to practical utili-
ty, he a.r gties, defeat their own purposes in the long ·run; .for from . the
right kind. of light-bearing experiments and theories, not just occasional and isolated inventions will result," but whole "troops" of inventions.
gether.
The right kind of theory and inventions, or -works, go to8
6Aphorisms, Bacon wrote in DE AUGMENTIS ••• ,Book vi, chap. 2, represent
knowl~dge as fragmentary and incomplete, thereby inviti_ g. the reader to conn
tribute _
and supply what is .missing.
7 THE: GREAT INSTAURATION, Prefkce; and N.O., Boo~ I, apn. 70.
�-6-
Human reason as ordinarily used in the study of nature is
by Bacon "Anticipations of Nature,
call~d
(as a thing rash and premature)."
Anticipations of nature are contrasted with what he calls Interpretations
of Nature, human reason rightly used.
for rhetorical
lectic,
9
p~poses,
For gaining.assent, that is,
an ti.cipations and the "sciences" and dia-
or logic, based upon them are far more · powerful than Bacon's
art of interpretation.
They are more powerful as rhetoric pre- .
cisely because they base themselves on and merely refine those universally shared delusions, or radical errors, inherent in the primary
experience.s and notions of the native human understanding·.
The analogies
by which new '!=hings are related to old in philosophies based on anticipations,· like the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, lie in every
man's common experience; the way of interpretation, on the other
hand, must at fir·st sight seem forbidding and uncongeniaL
It re-
quires an initial suspension of belief about common· experience itself, and it? expositors must supply their own similitudes and compar'isons in order to gain passag·e to men 1 s minds.
What .they must most
rely on, hOWeVer r iS leading men tO particular things I Or faCtS I .themselves, or to those new experiences based on experiment which the understanding left to its natural inclinations would never come
to~
The first class of idols, or false notions, whi.ch are rooted in
the cbmmon natlire of 't he human mind · itself, Bacon calls Idols of the
Tribe, that is the tribe or race of men.
The human intellect is prone
to suppose there is more order and regularity in things than it finds
there • . It is more moved and excited by whatever agrees with and affirms opinions already a.dopted than by what negates them.
It is per-
meated. by infusions from the will and affections, and especially those
wants that foster superstition.
Without warrant it restlessly press-
es on beyond all ends or limits, on to the unconditioned, as Kant
would .say.
"But by· far the greatest bUpediment and aberration of the
8
Cf. Paolo . Rossi, "Truth and utility in the Science of Franc.is Ba:C-on•\', in
PHILOSOPHY, TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS IN~HE EARLY MODERN ERA, Harper Torchbooks, 1970, pp. 146-173; and Hans Jonas, "The Practical Uses of Theory",
in THE PHENO'MENON OF LIFE, Harper & Row, 1966, pp. 188-210, esp., sec. v.
9 Bacon's usua. term for Aristotelian logic is dialectic, usually rendered
by Spedding .... s "logic".
�-7-
human · intellect," Bacori'says . in aphorism 50,
0
proceeds ·from the dull-
ne.s s, incompetency and deceptions of the senses."
In his less popu...:
lar natural history, S~LVA SYLVARUM, . (paragraph 98), .there is an interesti.n g discussion of the subject of· this aphorism, given as "touching the secret processes of nature .• "
The knowledge . of man hitherto hath been determined by the
view or sight; ·So that whatsoever is invisible, either in.
respect of the fineness of the body itself, or the smallness
of its parts, or of the stibtilty of the motion, is little inquired. And yet these be the things that govern nature prin...:
cipally; 'and without whic:h yeti cannot make any true analysis
and indication of the proceedings of nature. The spirits or
pneumaticals, that are in all tangible bodies, are scarce
known~
Sometimes they take them for vacuum; wherea·s they are
th~ most active of bodies.
Sometimes they take them for air;
from ' which .they differ exceedingly, as much as wine from .wa- .
ter; and as wood from earth. Sometimes they will have them
to be natural heat, or a porti9n of the element of fire;
whereas some of them are crude . and cold. And sometimes they
will have them to be the virtues and qualities of the tangible parts which they see; whereas they are things by themselves~
And then,. when they come to plants and living creatures, they call them souls. And such superficial specu. lati<:ms .they have; like prospectives, that shew things inward, when they are but paintings. Neither is this a question of words, but infinitely material in nature. For spirits
are nothing else but a natural body, rarified to a proportion,
and included in the tangible parts of·bodies, as in an integument. And they be no ' less differing one from. the other,
than the dense or tangible parts; and th~y · are in all tangible bodies whatsoever, more or less; and they are never
almost at rest: and from them, and their motions, principally proceed arefaction, c;:olliquation, concoction, maturation,
putrefaction, vivification, and most of the effects of nature ••••
·Aphorism SO . in the NOVUM ORGANON goes on:
For the sense by itself is a thing infirm and erring; neither can instruments for enlarging or sharpening the sense do
much; but all the truer kind of interpretation of nature is
effected by instances and by experiments fit and apposite
wherein the sense judges the experiment : only,· and the .experiment nature and the thing itself.
�-8-
Distrusti.n g ordinary sense experience, one must by. careful thinki.ng and
plann~ng·subject
the
th~gs
of nature to conditions of all kinds: pres-
sures, · £orces, mixtures, . and so on, which would never be found in the
ordinary course of nature, in ord.er that nature's normally secret
operations "which are. too subtle for the sense" are forced to produce
10
"some effect comprehensible by the sense."
Given nature is contorted
and transformed under the. guidance of the notions the experiment is
devised to confirm; disconfirm or illuminate, iri order to produce the
kind of experience the experiment aims at.
And it is still the senses,
but the senses lawfully married to the rational faculty, that are our
sources for evidence about the nature of things.
Bacon's refutation of
the natural human reason is not meant simply to disparage the intellect.
The controlled experiment is to judge "nature and the thing itself."
And the
co~trolled
experiment is the product of mind, duly warned and
chastened, but also instructed and .even inspired • . .,A complete separa.:..
tion and solution, therefore, of nature must be made; not by fire in11
deed, but by the mind, .as if by a divine fire."
In his preface to
the second edition of the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON Kant speaks of this
"intellectual revolution" in natural science partly · discovered by and
partly inspired by Bacon. and carried on by men like Galileo, Torricelli and Stahl.
They learned that reason has insight only into that which it
produces according to a project of its own, and that it must
not ·allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature's leadingstrings, but must itself show the way ••• constraining nature
·to give answers to questions of reason's own dete.r mining •
••• ~like 7 an appointed.judge who compels the witnesses
to answer questions which he has· himself formulated.
Bacon takes the name ·Of the next class of idols, Idols of the
10:rHE WORKS OF FRANCIS BACON, (hereafter des.ignated . WORKS} Spedding,
. Ellis and Heath, eds., London, 1875, seven volumes, vol. iv, p. 412;
I
11
N.O., Book II, aphs. 16 and 7.
�-9-
· cave, from what .he once speaks of as Plato's ,exquisitely subtle allegory.
Buthe . s.peaks of our spirits being confined within "the caves
of our bodies" and r.estricts these idols to those innate tendencies
to error risi.ng from the special nature of individuals, and their
special
~age
habits~
education and accidental circumstances.
Plato's
of the cave, on the other hand, could be thought of .as encom-
passing the subject matter of all of Bacon's first three classes of
idols, idols of the tribe, of the cave and of the forum •
. The idols of the forum, or market-place, being partly innate
and
. partly acquired . from without are placed between idols th.a t are innate,
those of the tr:i1be and the cave, ·and those which are not innate, t .he
idols of the theater.
The idols of the forum are most troublesome of
all, they stem f;rom the way ·words and names are formed.
Words being
for the most part framed according to the capacity of the vulgar draw
the .intell~ct along the lines and divisions that seem most evident to
vulgar .intellects.
More .acute and diligent observers find words stand-
ing in the way of communication of what they have seen in nature.
The
prudence of the mathematl.cians in beginni.n g with carefully framed
.definitions is. good, but cannot cure the evil in dealing with natural
and material things.
What is required there are methodical and order-
ly arrangements of individual instances.
Men form names for things
which do not exist, like Fortune or Prime Mover; and they form confused names ori the basis of hasty and unskillful abstractions from
12
things.
The ·last of the four classes of ·idols; the idols of the theater,
are from the dogmas; or fable's I or plays of philosophy.
themselves innate, .that is, they depend upon the
They are not
acqu~sition
or accep-
tance ·of some philosophy; yet like everythi.n g else they have a natural
basis.
The peculiarities of the dif·ferent idols of the theater are to
be traced bac:k to different special combinations of effects derived
l2'In aphoi;isms 60 ·and 15 Bacon condemns the use of certain generally .
accepted.names and notions.
seems to have Aristotle;s categories
in mind. But 1ames and notions from the category of quaI?-tity are not
among those co tdemned.
He
�;..10..;.
, from the workings of the innate idols of the tribe and cave.
The idols
of the forum affect all the philosophie~.
Bacon speaks of three prominent types among the idols of the theater.
The first is the sophistical, which to ensnare the assent o.f the
greater number, bases itself upon common experience and common notions.
The 111ost conspicuous example is Aristotle,' who led by the idol of the
~
cave .mentioned in aphorism 44 corrupted his natural philosopt"iy arid his
!
metaJ?hysics with his favorite study, dialectic, or what Bacon also calls
the Vulgar, or common, logic, the logic of the "Old" Organon.
Aristo-
tle fashioned the world out of categories, he tried to account for
sensible differences and substances with words like entelechy and act
which ·are words which describe certain kinds of thoughts rather than
things.
Even when he did resort to experiment in his more specialized
physical and biol_ gical works he framed his questions in such a way
o
that his resort to experience was bound to confirm the positions he had
decided upon in advance, ·a procedure warned _ gainst in aphorism 49 of
a
the .idols of the tribe.
The second class of idols of the theater is the empirical school
of philosophy, those who on a narrow basis of certain experiments and
experience fly or leap up to universal principles and try to explain
everythi_ g else on the basis of the principles observed in their experin
ments.
With great foresight Bacon warns that if his admonitions are
heeded and ~en begin to leave sophistical philosophy, by which he
.means Aristotelianism, to devote themselves seriously to experiments,
this kind of idol could become a much greater hindrance to sound inquiry • .
The third class of idols of the theater, superstitious philosophy,
the corruption of philosophy by admixture of theology and superstition,
is far more wide.spread, in his times, at any rate, Bacon claims.
While
contentious Aristotelian, sophistic philosophy ensnares the inte·1 1ect,
this more poetical, more fanciful philosophy misleads it by flattery.
The natural anlbition of the intellect to fly beyond all limits, warned against in aphorism 48, and the susceptibility of the intellect to
�-11-
influences from the affections and imagination, warned against in
aphorism 49, are catered to and
flatte~ed
by this kind of philosophy.
All idols are riot of equal rcink, and, Bacon explains_, this kind of
idol is keyed to the. natural dispositions of more noble and lofty
spirits .
The most important example here is "Plato and his school"; 13
but. this "apotheosis of .error" shows itself in scholastic
Aristotelian~
ism as well, in the introduction of abstract forms,. final causes and
first causes.
This unwholesome mixture of religion and philosophy
i
must !be stopped, Bacon said, not only becc:i.tise it makes for fantastic
phil<;>sophy, ·b ut also because it leads to heretical religion.
Ef-
fecting .this separation seems to be one of the most incontrovertibly
successful parts of Bacon's project.
!
The. great failure · of ancient phiJosophy, however, a fa.i ling even
.
.
.
.
.
of the atomists whom Bacon praises as superior to ·Plato and Aristotle
in natural philosophy, is that they m~e the quiescent principles ·of
things out of which they are produced rather than the moving prin~
ciples through .which things are produced, the · objects · of their inquiries.
The six received Aristotelian, or vulgar, distinctions of
motion are merely popular c:i.nd make no penetration into nature.
Bacon .
gives fifteen and, later, nineteen different motions in his own pub- .
lished accounts of the simple motions: 4
s
The· ultimate or natural causes of the. e failures are dealt with
in the last of the particular idols of the tribe in apborism SL
The hWnan intellect is carried to abstractions ac'"".
cording to its own nature; and things which are· in flux
it feigns to be constant.
The fault of abstractions is that they feign things ·in flux to be constant.
In aphorism 52 Bacon provides a further clue to his meaning
where he speaks of this idol arising from "the mode . of the impression."
What he seems to have in mind is that the moving thing makes
13Cf. Plutarch Is LIVES ••• , Nicias, XXIII •·
1
'\n · Book III, chap. 4 of the DE AUGMENTIS •• • .I arid aph. 48 of N.O. I .Book II.
These aphorisms dealing with superstitious philoso,PhY and the failure ·. to
search. out the movi.n g principles of things are at the center of Book I (N .0.).
�-12-
.
the sense _ memory and intellect,
,
an impression or impressions which remain constant in what is
impre~sed,
.
that is,
~n
thereby suggesti_ g that
n
what caused it in . the thi_ng itself is also fixed, !Vhereas. it is rea_ly
l
.in motion.
The aphorism continues.
But it is better to dissect nature than to abstract; as
the school of Democritus did, which penetrated into nature
more than the rest. Matter ought rather to be considered
both in its schematisms andmeta-schematisms, and pure ac~,
and law of action or motion: for forms are figments of the
human spirit, unless you are willi_ g to call those laws of
n
action, forms.
Bacon uses . the word form to describe the ultimate .objects of science because that word had become so venerable for so many of
those he wanted :to lead down the path of his new scien~e; what he
means are iaws of motion •15 The intellect in deali_ g with. things
n
in flux moves towards the c_ nstant, but "in nature nothing truly
o
exists besides individual bodies producing pure individual acts
according to law. 1116 · The given compounded bodies of nature are
to be dissected down to the · latent schematisms of more fundamen- ·
· tal bodies constituting them, the schematisms, or meta-schematisms
of the more·fundamental simple natures constituting them are to be
·. studied especially with a view to ·the laws of action inseparable
from their existence.
The natural appetite of the intellect for con-
·stancy is to be satisfied by fixed modes, . orders, or laws of change.
15 In theVALERIUS TERMINUS, which was never published but evidently circulated privately, the equivalent, or corresponding term is "direction"r
WORKs, vol. III, pp. 23?-41. Cf . Ellis's Preface, ibid., pp. 201-05~
This may be the best place to study what Bacon means by the remark
-"that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the
rule." (N.O., I, aph.3.) Cf. Paolo Rossi, FRANCIS BACON, FROM MAGIC
TO SCIENCE, London, · 1968, pp. 193-201; and Mary B. Hesse, ''Francis Bacon", in A CRITICAL HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, ed. D.J. O'Connor,
Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, chap. 8.
16
.
N.O., Book II, aph. 2.
�-13...;
B_eginning with natur.a l history and the naturallY: given· forms of
the ordinary course of n_ature, like lions; oaks; . men and water, physics
studies their material and efficient causes, that is, their latent schema.tisms and latent processes, with a view to th:e discovery of the truly_
simple natures and motions out of which they are compounded.
What ·
simple ..natures are is not yet determinable, says Bacon, but he ·speaks
of them
as
being more abstract and general natures like heat and span::...
taneous rotation, attraction and magnetism. 17 .The s_ ggestion may be
u
that in the simple natures material ~onfiguration and simple motion
coalesce as two inherently connected factors of what we might call uni•tary orde~ed material dynani.isms. 18 However that may be, the simple natures. constitute the "alphabet of nature".
Met_ physics, in the literal
a
sense of "meta", after...;physics, begins with the alphabet and studies
its "gram:i;iar" , that i.s how the simple natures are
collected ·~
compounded
· and combined to form the bodies and to produce the operations of the
ordinary course of nature.
Metaphysics studies formal causes, that is
the laws of action of the simple natures, the laws which order and
constitute any simple nature in any subject matter susceptible of
that nature.
The operative part .of metaphysics Bacon calls ;,magic"
s_uggesting · by the term that on the basis of
the
new natural· science
men will be able to generate things ne:ver before seen in nature and of
such a character as to rival in power, fineness and durability the.
things
pro~uced
by natU.re in its regular course.
The term also suggests
that sue!) things · being alien to the ordinary course of nature could
17 .cf. on "simple natures", N.O., Book II, aph •. 5 and Descartes, RULES
FOR THE DIRECTION OF THE MIND (INGENII), Rule 12 •. For Bacon's influence on Descartes s.e e A. Lalande, "Sur quelques textes de Bacon et de
Descartes", REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE, May, 1911, pp. 296-311.
18
.
Cf. DE AUGMENT.IS ••• , Book III, chap. 4, on "Abstract Physics';. Cf.
Laurence Berns, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF FRANCIS
BACON ••• , Ph.D. Dissertation, University . of Chicago, 1957, Appendix and
pp. 175-78 and pp. 193-94. Cf. Rossi; ·£2._~ ·· cit., p. 202.
�-14seem to be of supernatural origin.
Bacon's use of the term meta-
physics, li~e his use of the term form, cannot be _
understood · apart from ·
considerations of his philosophic rhetoric, for it seems to have been
designed first to appeal to those who .might still be attracted by the
traditional name, but only in order to lead them toward a very different
notion of the thing.
.,
"All physics, " Bacon wr_ote, "lies in a mean between
natural history and metaphysics."
Metaphysics is "itself -a part of
physics or of .the doctrine concerning nature. 11 1 9 That is, physics, in
the broad sense of the word, beg1ns with -natural history _ nd ends in
a
metaphysics, with the laws of action of the simple natures.
Bacon knew
that there would be little left of traditional metaphysics, if his way
were followed.
A private letter of 1622, to a FatherBaranzano in Italy,
reveals his intention in part:
Be not troubled about Metaphysics~ When the true Physics
have been discovered there will be no Metaphysics. 'Beyond
true Physics is Divinity only.
"The human intellect," he wrote in the NOVUM ORGANUM, "must not be
supplied with wings, but rather with lead and weights. 1120
Are Bacon's "forms", his . laws of motion, forerunners of the
m.;ithematical formulas of Newtonian physics?
certain.
It is difficult to be
He did say that physics should end in mathematics.-
He did
not seem to appreciate what might be accomplished by framing one's
initial hypotheses . in terms that are representable by mathematical
syriibols~ 21 One might say that he foresaw what· the 9-c;>als of mathematical
physics were to be, without
bein~
clear about the mathematical means
19 oE AUGMENTIS .•• ; Book III, chap. 4, and Book "IV; end; in WORKS, vol.
rv, pp. 347 and 404.
20 Book I, aph. l04 ~ .
2lcf. Jacob Klein, op. cit., note 5, above, Part I, Introduction, and
Part II.
�-15to those. goals. 22
"Inquiries into· nature have the best result when they begin with
physics and. encl in mathematics."
The nearer one approaches simple
· natures, he .said, the easier and plainer everything becomes, as one
moves· from the inconnnensurable to .the comine'n surable, from surds to
rational quantities.
.A gain, . "everything relating both to bodies and
virtues in nature I should_/ be set forth {as far as possible)
bered, weighed, measured . and determined.
num:~
For we pursue· works not ·
speculations, and physics and mathematics well .mixed generate practice."
And most interesti_ngly, we must · "measure virtues, · /-forces_/,
"3.Ccording to the; quanti.t y of the · bodies- in which they subsist and show
how far the mode! of the virtue depends upon the quantity of the body
••• we must pro~eed to inquire what proportion the .quantity of° a body
bears to the mode Of its Virtue. II 23
However, the technique of representing physical 'e ntities by
mathematical sym1Jols, so as to allow what one already knows from
. mathematics to suggest undiscovered relationships between the r'epresented physical entities, was evidently not known to him.
1
Mathematics, he
.sai·d1 "should terminate natural philosophy, not generate or give it
birth." 24 He does not seem to have been very weli informed about the
.
.
.
history of mathematics or mathematical advances being made during his
22
.
.
.
.
But cf. Lalande, ~ cit., note 15, above, pp.
speaks of Descartes's announcement (in RULES ••• ,
geometrical interpretation of sensible phenomena
nearly word for .word a passage from theVAL:J?RIUS
309-311~ · where Lalande·
no. 12) of the method of
in words .which "reproduce
TERMINUS."
esp~ '4 7; Book I, aphs. 96 and 98;
and P:REPARATIVE£-PARASCEVE_/ TO A NAWRAL AND EXPERIMENTAL HISTORY,
aph. vii. _ Cf. Hans Jonas, "The Scientific and Technologic'al Revolu:..
tion", in PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS: FROM ANCIENT CREED TO TECHNOLOGICAL
MAN, Prentice-Hall, 1974, pp. 63-65. Cf. Henry . Pemberton·, {editor of
the third edition of Newton's PPJNCIPIA .•• ,), A VIEW OF SIR ISAAC
NEWTON'S. PHILOSO~HY, London, 1728, Introduction, where the iinportance
for Newtonian science of Bacon's critique of the prejudices and obstruc· tions impeding knowledge . and his treatment of induction are stressed.
· 23 N.O., Book II, aphs •. 8, 45, 46, and
24
N.O., Book I, aphs. 96 artd 80; and DE AUGMENTIS ••• , Book III, chap. 6.
�-16own times. 25
Yet the Baconian experiment seems to lend itself to com-
bination with the approach of symbolic mathematical physics.
Both
methods approach nature with a view to discovering the extent to which
nature is subject to ·1aws devised in advance by human reason.
Both
the Baconian experimenter and the mathematical physicist, in the .K antian
phrfi~e,
"prescribe to nature its laws."
Baconian influence can, of
course, be seen in other approaches to physics· and also in other sci,
;
enc~s, iike chemistry and biology.
However this may be, we now turn
our' attention to an· area where the extent of Bacon's influence is less
questionable: the new relation which was to be established between
science and _society.
II
The ·"Great Instauration", great renewal, of the sciences called
for a radical change in t:'.he way. science . and philosophy were to oarr1
on their affairs.
And then let them consider · what may be expected (after the way
has been thus indicated) from men abounding in leisure, and
from association of labors, and :from succession of ages ••• in
which the iabors· and industries of men (especially as regards
the collecting of experience) may wi~% the best effect be
first d.i stributed and then combined.
Bacon's way was "not a way over which only one man can pass at a time
(as is the case. with reasoning)."
His way required a vast new insti-
tutionalized science, coordinating the efforts of
m~y
men in acom-
pleX, hierarchical organization, that was meant to outlast any of the
individuals who were parts of it; th. t is, as we say, it was to become
a
. "historical" and progressive.
This vast enterprise would require far
greater suppori;. from society at large than science and philosophy had
'\
ever received .before.
There would come a time, Bacon hoped and
25see ibid. I and Ellis Is notes to the same in WO~, vol. I, p. 577.
-26
.
· ~' Book I, aph. 113.
�-17expected, when society's dependence on -science would be extensive and
obviou,s; but before that time came about, and if that time was to come
about,_ the
po~V"ers
that be, "who are but in very few cases even moderate27
.
ly learned,." · would have to be won over · to the ne\."1 cause. He· devoted a considerable · amount of thought and :writi_ g to this, his rheton
rical task.
To the extent that his project has succeeded, the need for, .and
the understanding of, his rhetoric has diminished.
Yet without some
understanding of that" philosophic rhetoric, what he accomplished, both
theoretically and practically, - can.not be appreciated.
He regretted
that· it was necessary for him, the architect of the new edifice of
\
science·, to become herald,
recruiter~
and even ordinary workman as
well.
We have already seen some of the consequences of his need to re. cruit new men of science in an atmosphere domi_ ated by Aristotelian,
n
Platonic and Scholastic learning in his use of the terms "form" and
"metaphysics".
In
one . of his _interesting unpublished writings, which
are often more open and less colored by classical terminology, he
speaks about how his plans must be conununicated and transmitted :
inveterate errors like deliriums of the insane must be subdued by art and by wit, and are aggravated by violence and
opposition. We must, therefore, use prudence and humor them
(as far as we can with simplicity and candor), that contraqictions may be extinguished before they are inflamed. 28
~onathan
Swift in his FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE FOUGHT LAST
FRIPAY BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN BOOKS IN SAINT JAMES '-S LI BRA.RY pays _ certain tribute -to Bacon in this r _ gard:
a
e
27N.O., .Book I, aph. 91.
28rHOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS,~OGITATA ET VISA), translated in the Montagu
American Edl.tion of BACON'S WORKS, Philadelphia, 1855, vol. I, p. 434;
original in WORKS, vol. III, 589 ff. Cf. F .H. _Anderson, THE PHILOSOPHY
OF FRANCIS BACON; Chicago, 1948, -P· 38 ·. The trans_
lation in Montagu is
more literal han the recent translation in THE ~HILOSOPHY OF FRANCIS
BACON, . Benjam: Q Farrington, Liverpool, 1964, which also contains translations of "TL= Masculine Birth of Ti.me" and "Refutation of the -Philosophies".
�-18Then Aristotle, observi.n g Bacon advance with a furious mien,
drew his bow to the head, and let fly his arrow, which missed
· the valiant modern · and went hizzing · over his head; but Des
Cartes it hit •••
'Evidently Bacon ducked.
In addition to those whom he called "true sons of science", to
whom "the lamp" · is
to
be handed on, a new army of assistan-t:s, managers
and administrators had to be recruited.
Appeals had to be made to men
who never before would have been connected with scienc.e , to induce them
to forsake their green fields, humble workshops and profitable businesses to become partners iq the hitherto too fastidious, or too exalted,
quest for truth.
·Bacon encour.a ged them with the par.tial· truth that "our
way of discovering sciences almost levels · men's wits and leaves but
little to individual excellence," just as a man with a compass can draw
a more perfect c.i rcle than anyone else, no matter how excellent, who
uses his hand and eye alone.
There will be a vast array of new tech-
nical and mechanical activities that will leave little to special
.intellectua.l excellence; but B aeon was more aware of the difference
between ordinary men and men of talent and genius than those who criticize him for ignoring it.
Some four pages after his statements about
levelling in the NOVUM ORGANUM, he remarks that what he is attempting
"cannot be brought down to the apprehension of the . vulgar . except by . effects and works only."
29
This should be considered also in connecJ
tion with the question about the relative iinportance
of fruit, works,
or power, on the one h,and, and light and truth, on the other, for the
Baconian ·philosophy.
The new institutionalized science of the future, Bacon saw, required a new relation between science and political life.
Throughout
his long and eminent political career he .tried to gain official support
for his projects.
He was ·mu:ch more successful after his death·, as Abra.-
ham Cowley's ode "To the Royal Society" of science, written in the
29t.J.o., Book I, aph. 128.
�-19middle 1600 1 s, indicates.
From these and all long Errors ·of the Way
In which our wandering Pred~c~ssors went,
And like th' old Hebre~s mariy:'o: Years did stray,
· ::i;:n ·oesarts but of small Extent,
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren Wilderness he past,
Did .on the very Border stand,
Of the bless'd promis'd Land
And .from the Mountains Top of his exalted Wit,
Saw it himself, and shew'd us it.30
Bacon's success, . and that success being taken . for. granted, has made
it more difficult for us to see the problem as he saw it.
The
relation between political society and science and philosophy is
always a delicate one:
for, .he wrote, there , is no form of polity or
society that does not have "some · point of contrariety towards human
knowledge."
And conversel:y, the arts and sciences· are always somewhat
suspedt ·from the point of view of civil society:
For surely there is a great distinction between. civil affairs
and the arts: for the danger from new motion and new light
is not the same. In civil affairs, truly, even a change for
the better is supected as likely to bring on disturbances;
for civil affairs rest on authority, consensus, fame and
opinion, not demonstration. But in the arts and sciences,
like metal mines, there should be a clamor of new operations
. and further progress. 31
· Altha.u gh Bacon wrote extensively on political sub.jects and working
one's way through the labyrinth of his political thought can be a fascinating enterprise, 32 . we must·confine ourselves here to his specifical. ly scientific politics.
A most important part of his treatment of that
3oTHE WOP.KS OF MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY, London, 1721.
cap~ 26, in WORKS, voi. III~ p. 252: and N.O., Book I, .
aph. 90. Cf. Aristotle, POLITICS, Book II, chap. 8; Thomas Aquinas, S.T.,
I-II, Q.97, A. ·2; and Strauss, op. cit., not~ ·S, above, pp. 221-222; . et al.
:3] VALERIUS TERMINUS,
32 See Berns, op. cit., n. 18, above; and Howard B. White, PEACE · AMONG THE
WILLOWS: THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF FRANCIS BACONt Nijhof, 1968.
�-20subject is found in one small book, the fable, or scientific -µtopia, .
entitled the NEW ATLANTIS.
But there too Bacon's views are not simply ex-
posed to view, but become accessible only to a certain art of interpretation.
For · as he says in the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING beginning his
treatment of government:
it is a part of kriowledge secret and retired, in both those
respects in which things are deemed secret: for some things
are secret because they are hard to know, and some because
they are not fit to utter.
And in the expanded Latin version of this book he begins his discussion
of civil or pol;itical science by telling an . old . story:
that many philosophers being met ·together in the presence of
the ambassador of a foreign prince, each endeavoring to give
a sainple of his wisdom, that the ambassador might be able to
make a . report of the wonderful wisdom of Greece; one of them
remained silent ••. the ambassador tur1J.ing to him, said, "What
have you to say for me to report?" To whom he answered, "Tell
your king that you have found a man in Greece who knew how to
hold his tongue ....
Bacon .goes on to speak of an "art", even an "eloquence in silence" on
these matters.
There is also
a
simpler reason for the indirectness of
the political discussion in the NEW ATLANTIS.
If it is the case that
the scientists control politics in the New Atlantis, · Bacon is in effect
asking the great political men of his own times to contribute to the
'founding and support of institutions which were intended eventually to
deprive
~hem,
or men like them., of any real political power.
Bacon had
surely read; but did not need, the advice tendered by Machiavelli, that
if you intend to kill a man and you want his weapons, you should not
say, "Give me your weapons, I want to kill you."
say, "Give me your weapons." 33
3 '.brscoµRSES ••• , Book I, .chap. 44.
It is sufficient to
Cf • .Ro·ssi, op. cit., pp. 109-116.
�'-21-
Baconis NEW ATLANTIS is written in . explicit correction of Plato'sCRIT!.
AS;_ both works are formally incomplete. 34 The old Atlantis in the CRITIAS, a. luxurious.; technol_ogical, or mathematically organized, society
•was destroyed by earthquakes; the New Atlantis goes back as _
far, but
thanks to .its science does not fall prey to· cycles of natural catastrophe as do all societies in Plauo's account.
-as Zeus is about to speak; what formally
The CRITIAS ends just
cor~esporids
to Zeus's speech
is the completed speech of· the ·Father from Salomon's House, the great
new scientific institute of the future, '"the noblest foundation ••• that
ever was upon the e?rrth; and the lanthorn I or as elsewhere, "the
very eye"_/ of this kingdom."
The speech is a description of Salomon's
House, - or as they also call it, the College of the Six Days Works~
The
soc_iety of Bensalem, for so ;it is called ?5 in the language of the na....,
tives, enjoys prosperity, all kinds of health~producing fruits and
foods, good health and medicines surpassing anything in Europe; and
most natural, most chaste and most pious customs.
Salomon's House, it
seems, is · the source of all their greatest blessings.
Science is de- ·
voted to the twin aims of findi_ g out the true nature e>f things, to
n
the_ ·greater glory of God, and the relief and prospering of .man's .estate.
The island is Christian, havi_ng received both Old and· New Testaments
through a special revelation, which was confirmed by a witnessing Father
from Salomon's.House as a true miracle.
But Jews, _Persians, Arabs, Chal...;
deans and Indians· also live there and are. left to their own·· religions,
and they··.too love and respect the ways of the nation of Bensalem~ 6
34cf. White, op. cit., note 32, above, the chaps. entitled, "Of Island
. Utopias II I esp-:-for the comparison with the TEl1PEST I and "The Old and the
New Atlantis"; see al.so White's chap.·, "Francis Bacon" in HISTORY OF POLITICAL PHIL.OSOPHY, eds. Leo Strauss and Jos~ph Cropsey, Rand McNally, 1972.
35Is it in contrast to Hierusalem, (the way Jerusalem is . spelled in the
NEW ATLANTIS) the good-peace in contrast to the holy-peace (from the
Greek hieros)?
3 6.:rhese things.are said explicitly only of the Jews.
�-22It is a Jew with the interesting name of Joabin who arranges the meeting
of Bacon's narrator with the Father from Salomon •'s Hous·e . · Salomon's House
itself was founded by Solamona, .the . great law-giver of Bensalem, who
reigned. about · 300 ·~B.C.
Although the founding of Salomon's House de-
pends upon the political act of a great king, and Bensalem is called a
· king;dom still, by the time Salomon's House . has come into its own the
power of the king is scarcely visible.
Orders are given to the visi-
)
tor~
not in the name of the king, but in the name of the "state".
When
I
the Father from Salomon's House makes his procession .into the.city, the
first such visit .i,n twelve years, his chariot, described in detail, reminds one of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament.
He, as Je-
sus is often characterized, "had an aspect as if he pitied men."
i
Fif-
.
ty attendants of his own precede his chariot, and two others directly
pr~:cedi.ng
hook.
bear, one a cross, the other a pastoral staff like ·a sheep-
All political and other officials walk behind his chariot . . "He
held up his hand as he went, as blessing the people, · but in silence."
In some of the factories of Salomon's fiouse, the Father reports in a
private meeting with the narrator, they have all kinds of ordnance and
instruments of war, flying.machines of a sort and submarines.
There
are thirty-six Fellows of the College, under them are novices and apprentices and "a great number of servants and attendants, men and women."
The Fellows decide which of their inventions and experienqes should be
published and which not.
They "take all an oath of secrecy, for the
.•
concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret:
tho.u gh some of
those we do' reveal sometimes to the state, and some not."
What all this. indicates is that the ultimate rule both of the
state arid religion, ("which has most power over men's minds 1137 ), is
in the hands of the Fellows of
Salo~on's
House, the philosopher-scien-
tists.
Bacon envisaged a vast expansion of 'human power . as a consequence
of science's conquest of nature.
He evidently thought that these powers,
powers for evil as well as for good, were not. to be put into the hands
37
N.O., Book I, aph. 89.
�-23.;..
of mere st.a tesmen; control · was to be kept in the hands of those who
would be expected to comprehend them, the most powerful and highly
trained philosophic and scientific minds.
While the arrangement of : a
marriage between .science and society clearly forecast a new era bf mutual interest and concern between the parties, rule by the wise was
regarded as the condition for success.
The leaders . of science apparent_.
ly . were also meant to become masters of statecraft, of human philosophy,
to guarantee that the newly discovered powers would fall into hands
fit to use them well.
In aphorisms 127 and 80 of Book One of the .
NOVUM ORGANUM Bacon makes clear that he is speaking about perfe_ ting
c
not only natural philosophy in .the narrow sense, but the sciences of
·1
logic, ethics and politics as well; they were all to be nourished by,
and brought to perfection alo_ g with, natural philosophy.
n
The new
38
science, in its inception, was meant to be a universal science.
The failure to develop the expected human philosophy would seem to
be the most conspicuous failure of Baconian philosophy. · Can any philosophy or science which does not take the orientation of pre-scientific and
cognition seriously ever be adequate for understanding human things?3 9
pre~philosophic
38 More than 350 years after the publication of the NOVUM ORGANUM Maxwell's
and Rutherford's successor, the Cavendish Professor of Physics writes,
.,Phy~ics, indeed, should recognise that it is not in any useful sense the
fundamental science, since that peculiarity which makes it fundamental, the
fact that its laws are, we believe, applicable in principle to the systems
which other sciences investigate, is achieved by adopting an attitude of exclusive . concentration on cer.t ain approved aspects of the phenomena, such as
prevents the development of a scheme by which principle can be translated
into practice." Indeed, the claim of fundamental physics that it is "seeking out the Basic Truth of the Universe" is found to be ,;slightly pretentious". See _
A.B. Pippard, F.-R.S., "Reconciling Physics with Reality," an
Inaugural Lecture, Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 35 and 37.
. Old questions seem to be opening again. Is the very quest for a fundamental sdience now even more than "slightly pretentious"? (Cf. F. Nietzsche,
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, aph. 205.) Or is the way opening for new, and, perhaps, even old contenders?
:39 cf. Leo Strauss, op. cit., note 5, above, pp.23-25, and "An Epilogue"
in LIBERALISM ANCIENT AND MODERN, Basic Books, 1968.
�-24Howeve~
this may be, Baconian science wins the support of society
and the people at large by catering to their fe9-rS and desires_, as
they understand those desires, that is, by providing them with protection _ gainst injury from man and especially from nature, with prosa
-
perity, with .comforts and new pleasures and especially with stronger
and healthfor bodies.
The latent, and riot always · latent, antagonism
between science and philosophy and society is not to be bridged -by
mere words, by the flimsy art of the GORGIAS, by the consolations of
philosophy, by exhortations to virtue, but rather by the .tangible comforts of Baconian charity. · Consolation for and bowing to the ravages
of fortune are not as good as conquering fortune; for in trut?~ Bacon
says, fortune is a name for somethi_ g whic_ does not exist, just · as
n
h
the theoretical presupposition of the notion of fortune, variable and
unstable matter, does not exist.
The ancients produced theoretical ex- ·
cuses, blaming their ·f ailure to . radically improve the estate of man,
on the nature of things, rather than on their own _gnorance, especiali
.
40.
ly their ignorance of the forms, or fixed laws governing all matter. ·
The -depreciation of nature, at least of given nature, or nature
in its ordinary course, implicit in the idea of the conquest of nature
is a, or the, corrnnon theme of mbdern phiiosophy.
In Kant and Hegel
it cUlm.inates in a thorough disqualification of nature for
..
sion of ethical and political standard$.
Or, . in
oth~r
the . provi~
words, Kant and
Hegel found the nature uncovered by modern science, the natu+e which
Bacon said is to be obeyed, altogether incapable' of supplying man with
ethical .and political standards.
As a consequence, for Kant and Hegel
moral and political principles ' must be traced to some other non-natural
sources: . freedom, pure practical reason, spirit and history.
Some-
thing which anticipates, or corresponds to; the later development
occurs also in Bacon, as can be seen by considering the following
40cf. Bacon's use of the ambiguity of the word fortune in his "architecture of fortune", (ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, Book II), and his attack on
the classical subordination of art to nature, its breeding "a premature
despair in htunan enterprises." WORKS, vol.. IV, pp·. 294-95. Cf. also N.O.,
Book I, aphs~ 75 and 78.
�-2.5-
difficulty.
Men, like lions and oaks, are not fundamental, but rather
compounded forms of nature in its ordinary course.
But one of these
ordinary, compounded forms is to become the conqueror and master of all
_the forms of nature in its ordinary
course~
There must be something
speci_ l, or fundamental about this one of those non-fundamental forms,
a
man.
B~con'
s division of all
philosophy (apart from natural theology)
into natural and human is a kind of tacit ackri.owle_ gement, ·insufficient
d
though · it may be, of the new special status of man in hfs philosophy.
Yet, unlike Kant and Hegel, Bacon .still looked to nature and its funda. mental laws in order to di_ cern the principles of moral:i,ty. 41
s
Sometimes . he claimed to share the ethical goals of the ancient
philosophers, adding only the teaching they neglected about how to · attain those goals; but that position is not long maintained.
The dis-
courses of the ancients on ·morals and politics, he said,, are beautiful
a.pd lofty, like "the stars, which give little light because they are
so high." 42 Bacon, following Machiavelli (THE PRINCE, chapter 15),
lowered his goals in order to guarantee actualization.
to understand the so-called conquest of fortune.
~hat
This is one way
A Baconian might reply
goals which can almost never be put into practice cannot be re-
garded as serious practical goals.
In his widely read ADVANCEMENT
OF LEARNING Bacon divides ·the "Platform of the Good" into two basic divisions, Individual or Self Good; which concerns its.e lf with ·virtue, and
the Good of Communion, or Social Good, which concerns itself with duty.
Individual Good is subdivided into Passive Good and Active Good, and
Passive Good is subdivided finally into Conservative Good and Perfec_
tive Good.
The first division -is . explained as a.rl appetite imprinted in
· everything toward a twofold nature of good, the one as everythi_ g is a
n
totality in itself, the other as it is a part of another body:
Iron
moves toward the lodestone in individual sympathy, but if it exceeds a
41 Cf. also DE AUGMENTIS. ~ • , Book IV I chap. 1.
42 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING . Book II.
1
�-26-
certain quantity, like a good patriot, it moves to .the earth, the country .of its connaturals.
The conservation of the more general form, the
good of communion, controls all, the . lesser inclinations, as is emphasized by the Christian Faith, which more than any other sect or philo. sophy exalted the good of communion and depressed the private or particular good.
"All other· excellences
-·.t y adni.i tteth no excess. "
are subject to excess: only chari-
This also decides the question concerning
.
.
whether the contemplative or the active life is to be preferred, against
i
Aristotle.
· te~plative
For all the reasons he brings forth in favor of the
life are private.
con~
As far as the private pleasure and digni-
ty of a man's self is concerned, Aristotle is right.
;But men must know that in thi·s theater of man's life it is
reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on ••• for
contemplation which should be finished in itself, without
casting beams upon society, assuredly divinity knoweth it
not.
In
his much less reserved and unpublished, . but privately circulated,
VALERIUS TERMINUS, these same divisions of good are discusf;)ed with no·
admixture of Christian theology or classical terminology, as appetites,
desires, and motions operating throughout material
nature~
He begins
t.his discussion with the remark, that uif the rnor.a l philosophers that
·have spent_ such an infinite quantity of debate touching Good, . and the
highest good, had cast their eye abroad upon nature," to see the "quaternion of g.ood" which he presents as laws _ motion, then they might
of
have"saved and abridged much of their long and wandering discourses of
pleasure, virtue, duty and religion."
In the expanded version of the
ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING,. the DE . AUGMENT IS~ •.• , . the section oil physics,
.
in the discussion of simple or elementary motions, these same motions
with still different names and no obvious connection to morality show
up in the central place·s .
sics.
gre~t
mod~rn
Morality, it seems, is to be reduced to phy-
It is in Bacon's tha.ight rather than Hobbes's that those two
powers of modern thought, Machiavellian political .morality. and
natural science, are first bro_ ght t _ gether. · The · Machiavellian
u
o
�-26a-
.Platform or Exemplar of the Good
*
Social, or Good
of Communion
Duty .
Indiv~dual or Self Good -- Virtue
Passive .Good
Perfective Gocid
Conservative Good
----~------
----------------
-------------~-
Quaternion of Good
----------------- ----------**
. Motion
of enjoying.
or fruition
of approach _
or assumption
of affecting
or operation
of consenting
or proportion
*. From the AD\ ANCEMENT OF LEARNING, 1605: and the DE AUGMENTIS
SCIENTARiuM, j 323
**
From the VALERIUSTERMINUS, est. 1603.
�-27principles, however modified, are found by Bacon to be operative not
only in human nature, but throughout nature as a whole.
But let us try to understand how this works out in hUI!lan terms by
tryi_ g to see what the bes;t, or h:i,ghest, way of life would be for Ban
con. The Active Good of extending and mqltiplying oneself, in conformity with the Social or Communal Good takes precedence over the
fective Good and the Preservative Good, that is, pleasure.
Per~
Internal
perfection, contrary to Plato and Aristotle, is secondarY: to acting ·
upon and relating to others in and for society.
Foreign policy, as
it were, takes precedence over domestic policy.
In his most popu-
lar book, the ESSAYS, · (No. 55) Bacon assigns the highest place of
honor. to found"Srs of empires, states and cormnonwealtlis, like Romulus,
Cyrus, Caesai:_ : Ottoman and Ismael.
,
In the NOVUM ORGANUM, however,
in disti,n guishi_ g three grades .o f ambition, the highest political ambi-:
n
tion is assigned the second place.
The first place goes to him who
would "endeavor to instaurate and extend the power and empire of the
human race itself over the un_v_ rse of things" thro_ gh the sciences .
i e
u
and the arts.
"And yetr to speak the whole truth," Bacon says later
in the same aphorism . " ••• the very beholding of the l _ght is itself
i
a more excellent and fairer thi_ g than its many uses: so surely the
n
very contemplation of things as they are without superstition or imposture, error or confusion, is in itself more worthy than all the
fruits of inventions."
And at the end of the First 'Book of the
ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, .
We see then how ~ar the monuments of wit and .learning are
more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands
·••• the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books,
exempted from the Wrong of time and capable of perpetual
.renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images,
because they generate still and cast their seeds in the
minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actic:ms and
opinions in succeeding ages •••• letters ••• -as ships pass
through the _vast seas of time, and make ages so distant
to participate of the wisdom, illmninations, and . inventions, the one of the other •••
Apparently E lcon did conceive of contemplation .as the highest
perfection
o
man, but a kind of politic contemplation, contemplatidn
�-28-
of the most far-seei_ g pr'a ctice, or actiqri,. the theory which disclos.es
n
knowl€;dge of "all possible operations", the theory productive of the
most lo_ g range practice.
n
He evidently envisaged a .complete coincidence
of private and social good on the .highest level.
.
Ambition in the highI
.
est sense, the ambition of the founder of the empire of man over nature,
whq is that founder because he is the first discoverer of the cosmological truth, becomes at the same time the performance of the highest
of iduties.
The ambition of the founder of the greatest of all em-
pires is the highest form of the active or extensive good, it is
· realized by means of the highest perfective good, contemplation.
Since
i~
is aimed at securing the maximum of relief_
,·
for mankind as a whole, it
~lso
constitutes the highest of
as 'Bacon defined duty, the action of
an
of society.
and power
~i1
duties,
individual with regard to the
.
well~being
cornfo~t
.
In the ver_y last entry of his natural history
it is difficult not to think that Bacon had himself in mind~
The delight which men have in popularity, fame, honour,
Submission and subjection of other men's minds, wills,
or affections (al though these thi_ gs may be desired for
n
other ends), seemeth to be a thing in itself, without contemplation of consequence, grateful.and agreeable to the
nature of man. This thing (surely) is not without some signification, as if all spirits and souls of men came forth
out of one divine limbus; else why should men be so much affected with that which others think or say? T~e best temper
of minds desireth good name and true honour: the lighter, pop~
ularity and applause.: the more depraved, subjection and tyranny; as is seen in great conquerors and troublers of the world;
and yetmore in arch-heretics; for .the introducing of new
doctrines is likewisean affection of tyranny .over the understandings and beliefs of men.
As this quote indicates, the lowest of Bacon's classes o:t: good, the
conservative good, or. good of enjoyment, will also be fulfilled for the
founder of the empire of man over nature, through the pur_e delight
men have in fame, honor and the subjection of other men's minds.
The "
Father from Salomon Is House "had an aspect as if he pi tied men."
As. Bacon says elsewhere:
�-29-
There is implanted in man by nature itself a noble and
excellent spirit of compassion, that extends itself
even to the brutes which by the divine ordinance are
subject to his command. This compassion, therefore, has a
certain analogy with that of a prince towards . his sub~
jects. Moreover it is most true; that the more4 ~orthy a
soul is, the more objects of com:i;>assion it has •.·
The true temper of Baconian charity, of the Baconian
scientist~
evi-
derttly must combine the spirit of compassion with the spirit of domi.:..
nation.
A synthesis of these qualities along with Herculean, Prome. 44
thean courage
would seem to constitute . something like the grand pas-
~ion of generosity discussed by besc~rte~ in . hi~ PASSIONS OF THE SOUL •
. Both Bacon. and Descartes believed that the vast expansion of
.
powers to be wro.u ght by the new science would have to be matched by
corJl=espondinglY: great resources of courage in .the souls of those men
·who were to release and administer those · powers.
But moderation ·, the
ancients tell Us, is the core of almost all the virtues.
without moderation is rashness.
And courage
The beneficence of the project for
the conquest of nature has not measured up to Bacon's expectations
for · it.
Was it reasonable to think tha.t it woiild?
St. John's College,
Annapolis
43
wom<s, vol. I, p. 758.
.
44
See Bacon's WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS, No. - 26.
�
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Berns, Laurence, 1928-
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Francis Bacon and the conquest of nature
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1975-04-25
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Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626
Philosophy, Modern
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3874" title="Sound recording">Sound recording</a>
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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GRATITUDE, NATURE, AND PIETY
IN
KING LEAR
LA.tJRENCE BERNS
Revised VersionOf
AFomal Lectlll"e Delivered At St John.'s: College
�27
GRATITUDE, NATURE, AND PIETY IN KING LEAR
LAURENCE BERNS
And they go to trial on a charge on account of which men hate each other most,
but go to trial about least, that is, ingratitude. And him who they know to be able
to return a favor, but does not return it, they also punish severely. For they think
that the ungrateful would also be most neglectful about gods, about parents, about
country, and about friends; and what seems to follow upon ingratitude most of
all is shamelessness, and it is this indeed which seems to be the greatest leader towards every baseness.
-Xenophon, Cyropaedeia [1.2.7]
I
In the fourth act of King Lear the cruelly blinded Duke of Gloucester
is saved and guided by a man disguised as a mad beggar. The strangeness
of beggar guiding duke is compounded by the fact that Gloucester's unknown guide is his son Edgar, who had assumed this wretched disguise
to escape the sentence wrongfully laid upon him by his gullible father.
Edgar serves not only as his father's eyes, he becomes his provider, the
nurse of his broken spirit, his teacher, and the saviour of his life. He saves
him from Oswald's murderous attack and from a more formidable foe,
despair. He concocts what for Gloucester is a divine miracle, to arouse
within him the strength to live ; and he preaches the lessons that enable
Gloucester to avail himself of that strength. Edgar fulfills parental offices,
and more, for his father. The once masterful father, helpless as a babe, is,
as it were, fathered , sustained, and educated by his own son. This unsettling reversal of normal stations is pitiful and thought-provoking.1
Small debts of gratitude can be paid without much difficulty. But what
recompense can be made to those who are the very sources of one's being?
Does not every recompense fall short, is not every recompense simply disproportionate to what is owed? Since one is always in their debt, the
command "Honor thy father and thy mother" can be invoked almost
without any reservations.2 Although this debt of gratitude is normally
impossible to discharge, Edgar either did discharge it or came as close
This article is a revised version of a lecture presented at St. John's College, Annapolis, May 1969.
Laurence Berns is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
l Oedipus in a questionable way assumes his father's position through violence.
Shakespeare's Edgar behaves as a father to his father with perfect justice. Cp. the
beginning of this scene, 4.6, with Matt. 4.5-11, and with Prospero's "miracles~· in
The Tempest.
1 Cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1161a 20 and 1163b 12-29.
�28
Interpretation
Q.J;;;_ I 'I 'T «,
to doing so as any man could. The story of Edgar and his father seems
to have been designed to show what would be required for such a debt
to be paid in full.
The mercantile aspect of the language of gratitude~ebts, payments,
owing-is vaguely offensive, but apparently unavoidable. Lear, raging in
the storm, calls out:
... Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: .. . [3 .2.14-181.
The hunted Edgar, consoling himself with the thought that "The lowest
and most dejected thing of Fortune/Stands still in esperance," goes on to
say:
.. . Welcome. then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace:
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts [4.1.3-9].
Nothing good received, nothing owed.3 But what i(just being itself is good?
Although we prosecute and punish those who buy or borrow and do not
pay, such offenses do not evoke the gravest condemnations. But "sharper
than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." And ingratitude
is a "marble-hearted fiend, more hideous when thou showest thee in a
child than the sea-monster." The seriousness of the wrong can also be
reckoned roughly by its effect. Kent speaks of "how unnatural and bemadding a sorrow" is the filial ingratitude that Lear suffers. When that sorrow
has nearly done its work, Gloucester addresses Lear as "O ruin'd piece
of nature."
Gratitude is akin to grace and graciousness, as their etymologies indicate. 4 Capacities or incapacities for gratitude seem to be direct reflections
of character; the obligation when regarded as genuine is self-incurred.
It becomes suspect when external compulsion is in the background, when
it does not "come from the heart." To pay one's bills grudgingly is not
gracious but does not violate the spirit of commerce. Can gratitude be
paid grudgingly? Coming from within, it seems to be a natural movement
in the sense of the Aristotelian distinction.5 In this way it is akin to love.
Gratitude might be thought of as being between justice and love. Like
a Cf. 2.4.179 ff. and .252, 3.4.20, and Regan's (!) morally indignant words to
Gloucester, "Ingrateful fox" (3.7.28). She probably means that he is ungrateful to his
country: he is referred to as a traitor twelve times. All line numbers are from the
Arden Ed., ed. Kenneth Muir, Harvard, 1959.
' Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1385a 16-b 11, Cope ed., Vol. II, pp. 87-93.
6 Cf. Aristotle Physics 192b 7-23. Cf. 215a 1-5, 230a 19 ff., and 254b 12 ff.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
29
commutative justice, which seeks arithmetic equality in exchanges of goods
and services, gratitude involves an element of calculation. 6 Gratitude
should be proportionate to benefits or favors bestowed. 7 But unlike the
demands of commutative justice, these obligations are unenforceable, at
least by any human court. Unlike commercial and contractual obligations,
here there is no explicit promise to return an equal value for what has
been received. s What occurs depends entirely upon the grace of the benefactor. The beneficiary cannot be forced to pay this kind of debt, which
is also a debt that he was in no way responsible for incurring. Whether
he pays or not depends upon the kind of man he is. Is he to be held
responsible for the kind of man he is? Gratitude then, in so far as its
payment is unenforceable, in so far as it must be rendered willingly, and
in so far as it reflects the character of those engaged in it, is like love.
Where benefits causing- gratitude and where love depend essentially on
the personal merits of the benefactor or the beloved, distributive justice,
which concerns itself with the proportionality of rewards to personal
merit, comes into consideration.9 Despite their connections or parallelism,
gratitude and love, at least noble love, may be distinguished. Lear's failure
to appreciate this difference seems to have been an important part of what
led to his downfall.to
II
Lear introduces what has been called his love test with the following
words:
Tell me, my daughters,
(Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state)
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge11 [1.1.48-53].
8 Xenophon's Socrates defines ingratitude as a certain kind of pure injustice:
Memorabilia 2.2.3. See also King Lear 1.1.183.
1 Cf. Aristotle NE 1163a 10-24.
s In circumstances where either rejection or acceptance is possible, acceptance
could in some contexts be understood as implying such a promise.
9 Cf. Aristotle NE 1160b 23-62a 9, 1163a 24-63b 27, 1167a 15-22, 1167b 16-68a
27. The subject abounds in difficulties. Cp., for example, 116la 20-23 and 1162a
4-9 (where it is shown why, in accordance with justice, children, like subjects in
relation to their kings, should love parents more than parents should love children),
with 116lb 18-30 and 1167b 16-68a 27 (where it is shown why, generally speaking,
parents love chil.dren more than. children love parents). Cf. Eudemian Ethics
124la 35-b 11; and Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica 1-11, Q. 100, A. 5, ad 4.
Cf. also Plato Republic 330c, 457c end-458b, 462a-e, 463c-465c, 472b 3-6.
1° Cp. Kent's love for Lear with Cordelia's. The love between Kent and Lear seems
inseparable from "service." Cf. 1.4.4-7 and 1.4.92-93.
11 The last line is difficult. Nature here could refer to filial or to paternal
affection; merit correspondingly could refer to good deeds, that is, obedience and
�Interpretation
30
He will give most, he says, to that daughter that loves him most, and
the implication is, each daughter will receive a share of bounty proportionate to her love for her father. If Lear intended to test or to measure
the amounts of his daughters' loves by their speeches, he would have
waited till each daughter had spoken and each speech could have been
compared with the others before making his distribution. But after each
speech, before hearing those remaining, he disposes of a share in accordance with what appears to be and is once explicitly referred to by him
as a prearranged plan (1.1.37-38). Moreover, the plan, which had been
discussed with, or at least presented to, his advisors and council, seems
to have been a sagacious one.12 The love test then may first have been
thought of by Lear as a mere formality, staged for the sake of a public
ratification of a well-thought-out succession scheme. The question as to
why this form was used still remains. It is through Cordelia's actions that
the love test becomes decisive for Lear and for the play as a whole : For
Cordelia's love and being sure of her love were, more than he knew, overwhelmingly important for Lear. Cordelia's experience in scene 1, in important respects, prefigures Lear's.
The Duke of Burgundy and the King of France are in Lear's court to
sue for the hand of Cordelia, Lear's favorite daughter. When Lear strips
Cordelia of all her inheritance, of her dowry, and of his paternal favor ,
the difference between Burgundy's and France's loves becomes plain.
Burgundy will take Cordelia only with the portion first proposed by Lear.
Lear says:
. . . Sir, there she stands:
If aught within that little-seeming substance,
Or all of it, with our displeasure piec'd.
And nothing more, may fitly like your Grace,
She's there, and she is yours.
Burgundy replies, "I know no answer." Lear intensifies his condemnation and urges France not even to consider his former suit. France
wonders what Cordelia's offense could have been. She replies; and he
addresses himself to Burgundy:
... My Lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? Love's not love
conformity in ratification of the settlement Lear here proclaims, or simply love of
Lear. According to Muir, nature means "'paternal affection' and merit, in the
context, means 'filial affection' " (Arden Ed., p. 6).
u 1.1.3-7. Cordelia and her consort, with Lear so long as he is alive, are to
occupy the larger strategic center, balancing Goneril and Albany on the north and
Regan and Cornwall on the south. Cf. Harry V. Jaffa, "The Limits of Politics:
King Lear, Act One, Scene One," in Shakespeare's Politics, Allan Bloom and Harry
V. Jaffa, Basic Books, 1964, pp. 118 ff. This present essay is, in a number of important respects, an attempt to develop points first stated by Harry Jaffa.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
31
When it is mingled with regards that stand
Aloof from th' entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.
After Burgundy applies to Lear again for her dowry, is rejected, and
withdraws his suit, Cordelia says:
Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respect and fortunes are his love,
I shall not be his wife [1.1.247-49].
France speaks again:
Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful, I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflam'd respect.
"Inflam' d respect" might well serve to characterize noble love.13
After being stripped of the accoutrements of power, wealth, and favor,
Cordelia does learn who loves her for herself, for herself and her virtues,
as France puts it, and who loves her for what she possesses, whose love
"is mingled with regards that stand/ Aloof from th' entire point." The
dismantling of "so many folds of favor," including the favor of gods and
fortune, not only reveals the qualities of her suitors' loves, but, more
importantly, reveals what she is herself, reveals her lovability. France, as
Kent conjectures (3.1.28-29), may have some political reasons for wanting
to marry Cordelia: these, however, need not be incompatible with those
manifest reasons that lead him to love her for her own sake. To believe
that she could have deserved the condemnation she received from Lear,
France says, "Must be a faith that reason without miracle/Should never
plant in me." Positively put, reason without miracle confirms Cordelia's
virtue and her lovability. France's love then could be described as a
kind of rational faith based on what he has learned about her character.
It is not easy for a king, a princess, or anyone with large and evident
powers to bestow benefits and ills, to learn what people truly think of
them. Lear finally learns who loves him and what those about him think
of him, but like Cordelia, he must be stripped and must strip himself of
the trappings of majesty first.14
u In Cordelia's speech (1.1.248) respect probably means "looking again" or
"looking back," respectare, to something else beside herself, to her fortune, that is,
comparison and calculation. In France's speech (1.1.255) the word means honoring or
esteem, but also involves an element of "looking," .of calculation, or estimation, of
personal worth. The sense of distance suggested by the admiration, estimation, and
deference usually associated with "respect" makes the unusual conjunction with
"inflam'd" all the more poignant. Cf. also 2.4.24.
14 Cf. 4.1.19-21, and n. to I. 20, Arden Ed., K. Muir, ed.
�32
Interpretation
III
Private and public interfere with each other for Lear: The very proposing of a love test evidences a certain confusion about the properly public
and the properly private. To command public declarations or testimony in
the execution of one's office is certainly appropriate for a judge, magistrate, or king; but Lear seems to have tried, as it were, to absorb the
private into the public, to have confused what can be demanded and
enforced by right of law and majesty with what can only arise naturally,
what is beyond all external command or control. 15
However one conceives of the Lear of the love test, 1 6 his vulnerability
with respect to Cordelia is crucial. Lear deserved gratitude from his
daughters, perhaps especially from Cordelia. And gratitude, or thankfulness, should be proportionate to how much one has to be thankful for.
But Lear demands professions of love. He fails to appreciate how demeaning it would be for Cordelia to allow her love to seem to be proportionate
to the magnitude of the fortune he bestows on her. The preciousness of
her love is tied necessarily to its proud independence from mercenary
influences or threats. It cannot be bought, not with fortune, power, sensual
pleasure, protection, or anything else less than virtue . Cordelia's refusal
15 See notes S and 9 above. Cf. Immanuel Kant, "The End of All Things," in
On History, ed. Lewis W. Beck, Library of Liberal Arts. 1963, pp. 81 -84. Ausgewiihlte kleine Schriften. Taschenausgaben der Philosophischen Bibliothek, pp.
89-92. [The end of the second paragraph, p. 82, Beck ed., should read: "for it is
a contradiction to command someone not just to do something but also that he
should like to do it" (auch gem tun solle).] Should not the "love" referred to by
Kant, p. 84, 1.5, be, more strictly, gratitude?
19 There is great division among the commentators. We may distinguish four
alternatives:
1) Lear is a weak, senile, old man in his dotage. Can this be reconciled with the
deep and powerful Lear of the rest of the play, with the man whose favorites had
been Kent and Cordelia, who wisely favored Albany over Cornwall, who killed the
man (probably a captain, 5.3.27) hanging Cordelia?
2) Lear is a sagacious, though not a wise, king. He is not altogether incognizant
of his elder daughters' characters and hypocrisy : he never accuses them of violating
their love oaths. He could have regarded the love test at first as primarily a
ceremony to ratify and to sanctify the succession; but being particularly vulnerable
in relation to Cordelia, he allowed "her most small fault" to wrench his "frame of
nature from the fixed place." It was this vulnerability, he rebukes himself, "that
let thy folly in, and thy dear judgement out." Why then did Lear in Act 2 seem
to think that he could rely on his elder daughters?
3) Shakespeare sim_ ly took over the old story and did not concern himself with
p
consistency here.
4) There is no inconsistency: A man can be .a weak, foolish dotard and under
great suffering reveal heretofore untapped great depths of passion and powers of
insight.
The argument of this essay is most compatible with the second of these alternatives.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
33
to participate in Lear's ceremony, her disobedience (and Kent's also), is
correctly diagnosed by Lear as rooted in pride.1 7 Lear, however, fails
to see how that pride with its occasionally offensive honesty, necessarily
goes along with the Jove for which he craves. In its critical pride such
a Jove reflects the lover's estimate of the intrinsic merits of the beloved.is
If Lear had succeeded in humbling Cordelia, he might have destroyed
what he loved most.
Lear never accuses Cordelia, as he does his other daughters, of ingratitude. Her love, or certain evidence of her l~ve, is what he wants. He loved
her most, he says, as if this gave him the right to command her to love
him most. But even if love, or noble love, could be deserved, it cannot
be commanded. There does not seem to be any court competent io grant
compensation for the "pangs of dispriz'd love."19 Lear, it seems, needs
Cordelia's love because it would be evidence for himself (and for others)
of his own excellence. If he were a wise man or a philosopher, he would
"know himself" and perhaps not need such confirmation.20 But Lear is
not a philosopher. Regan is not the best witness, but she is not entirely
wrong when she says of Lear, "He hath ever but slenderly known himself" (1.1.294, cf. 1.4.238 and .260). In commanding, or expecting love
where he could only rightly expect gratitude, in thinking that he could
simply disclaim "Propinquity and property of blood," in expecting full
honors of kingship, after having relinquished power and responsibility,
Lear presumes upon an intrinsic authority and self-sufficiency that he does
not, and perhaps no man could, possess.21
IV
"In none of the fifty or sixty versions of the Lear story in existence
before Shakespeare's play does the old king go mad."22 Gloucester and
Lear suffer most in this play. Reflecting on the madness of the king,
Gloucester says to himself:
Better I were distract:
So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs,
And woes by wrong imaginations lose
The knowledge of themselves.
It may be that her fault is "small" only when compared with ingratitude, for,
as Don Quixote says, "There are those who will tell you that one of the greatest
sins man can commit is pride, but I maintain that ingratitude is worse." Part 2,
ch. 58, Putnam trans., Viking, p. 889. See also Ulrici, in Variorum Ed., ed. Furness,
p. 456.
18 Cf. Aristotle NE 1159a 22-25, 1167a II 21, 1170b 8-14, 1172a 10 14.
tt Cf. Don Quixote, Part I, ch. 14.
20 Aristotle NE II 77a 12-79a 32; and Jaffa, op. cit., pp. 133 ff.
r1 Jaffa suggests that "In proclaiming love of himself as the principle of distributive justice," Lear was "pretending to the attributes of divinity," op. cit., pp. 132
and 133. Cf. George Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist: Notes on the First Amendment, Southern Methodist University Press, 1971, p. 791; and 2.4.252.
" Kenneth Muir, Arden Ed., Introduction, p. xliii, n. 1.
17
�Interpretation
34
And yet the contrast between the two shows rather how much more
pathetic Lear's suffering in the mind is:23 The loss of eyes-the wayfinders for physical movement, the conditions for independent actionis not so pathetic as losing the light of reason, the intellectual guide that
lets us grasp the general meanings of things.24
There is a connection, it has been observed, between pride and
madness.25 Proud men do not like to justify and explain themselves. Their
rectitude, they feel, should be taken for granted. They balk at the
inferiority, or equality, implicit in being required to explain themselves,
for example, Lear before Albany, Kent before Cornwall, Gloucester and
Regan, and Cordelia before the court (1.4.248 ff., 2.2.61 ff., and 1.1.87
ff.). The proud see or feel themselves to be within a definite hierarchical
order. They prize their place within the order and, accordingly, the order
itself. They are most sensitive to insult and most prone to the passion
most consequent upon insult, anger. Anger, unlike grief, contains within
itself a desire to strike back. And, most importantly for our argument,
the desire to strike back for most men, if not for all men, exists even when
there is nothing to strike back against. Men derive relief from cursing
the table or bench they have knocked against. When loved ones suffer
some grave and irremediable illness or misfortune, men can speak, not of
misfortune, but of "affliction," thus, as it were, striking back in speech
against the causes of the suffering. All the affections of what is poetically ·
called the "heart"26 may tend to personify, and thus obscure, the difference between the living and the dead, but anger seems peculiarly prone
to personification. Something similar often happens in love. It seems that
men desire what they love, or what they think they love, to love them in
return, whether such love is capable of being returned or not. Hope rises
from desire. Hope and desire find fulfillment in fact or in fantasy.
Cf. 3.4.6-25.
Cf. 4.1.27-28 .
u Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviarhan, ch. 8, Everyman's Library Ed., p. 59, and
Elements of Law, ch. I0.9-11; and G . W. F. Hegel, Enzyk/opiidie d .p.W., III. Die
Philosophie des Geistes, § 408, Zusatz, fJfJ), "die eigentliche Narrheit." Cf. inter a/ia,
Sophocles Ajax; and Euripides Herakles.
ze The word heart occurs rather often in King Lear (about fifty times). In
general it seems to refer to what is responsible for coordinating men's appetites,
passions, desires, thoughts and wills, their loves and hates. Cp. Dante's "animo"
in Purgatorio, Canto I 7. The word heart enters into Thomas Aquinas' discussion in
the Summa Theo/ogica, usually when citations from the Bible or Church authorities
need explication. Sometimes he interprets it as practical reason or conscience (e.g.,
II-I Q. 94, A.6. Cf. A.5 ad I, A.2, and I, Q. 24, A.I) and frequently as will
(e.g., 11-1, Q. 4, A.4; Q. 6, A.4 ad I; Q. I9, A.8 ad I, A.IO ad 1 sed con; Q. 24,
A.3). Nonmetaphorically he speaks of the heart as that organ that initiates all
bodily, all vital movement, the "instrument of the soul's passions" (e.g., I, Q. 20,
A.l ad l; 11-1, Q. 17, A.9 ad 2; Q. 37, A.4 ; Q. 38, A.5 ad 3; Q. 40, A.6;
Q. 44, A.I ad l; Q 48, A.2-4). Cf. Plato Republic, the discussion of E>uµo~
439e-442d; and Timaeus 69d end-72c 1.
{L 'lt.~L+-_'.,_
'"L ~~
1:J .......___ J 1.18 -J.~.
13
u
s-.
q ..
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
35
In some of its extreme forms this personification is what is called
madness. Lear insists that it must have been the unkindness of Poor Tom's
nonexistent daughters that brought him to such lowness (3.4.48 ff.). He
will take a joint-stool for his daughter and Poor Tom and the Fool for
Justices, if that is the only way he has to bring his daughters before the
bar of justice (3.6.20 ff.). Lear's pride, his self-respect, his sense of where
he belongs in the hierarchical order of things, is, so to speak, the point
of origin for his orientation in the world. As his self-respect is assailed,
he finds it increasingly difficult to be objective, as Edgar says to Gloucester,
to "Bear free and patient thoughts," that is, thoughts free from the presumption that everything that happens in the world has been personally
directed with a view to its effect upon himself. His pride and his love of
justice lead him to refuse to accept the existence of the world where his
worth is denied. He will try to see the world as it is only if the world makes
place for his pride. And yet one of the measures of his worth is the intensity with which he struggles to save his sanity. lf his pride did not have
some basis in truth, even his own love of truth and justice, his madness
could not be as significant as it is.
v
In the early acts of the play Lear swears by those specific divinities,
the sun, the night, Hecate, Apollo, and Jupiter; he also calls on the heavens
and calls nature goddess. He seems to see himself and his kingdom as
part of one grand natural and divine order, a just hierarchical order, with
the heavenly powers, the gods, especially Jupi~er, at the summit of the
cosmic hierarchy and himself correspondingly at the summit of that subordinate order, his kingdom. When his daughters, his ~ol, and his shame,
the correlate of his pride, destroy his self-respect, "abuse," "subdue,"
"oppress," "ruin," and "bemad" his nature, what is bemadding is that
at the same time they are destroying the basis of his orientation in the
world, driving his soul into a storm of questions, doubts, and partial insights too heavy for his patience and judgment to bear.27
The disorder in the moral and political world is associated in Act 3
with tumult in the cosmic order, the rage in Lear's soul with the raging
! 7 Cf. Robert B. Heilman, This Great Stage, Image and Structure in King Lear,
University of Washington, 1963, pp. 72-74. Cf. also Laurence Berns, "Aristotle's
Poetics" in Ancients and Moderns, Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy
in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. Joseph Cropsey, Basic Books, 1964, p. 82. In that
essay the division on p. 82 should be marked "Epilogue"; part II begins on p. 72
and part III on p. 79; p. 70, last line, first paragraph, "man" should read "men"
and "his" should read "their"; p. 72, eighth line from bottom, "Book" should read
"chapter"; p. 80, 11.7 and 23 shonld each have a comma after "for the most part";
p. 85, n. 16, 1.6, "flow" should read "flaw"; p. 86, 1.14, in n. 16, "what lies bcnea:h"
should be inserted between "civilizing" and "politics"; p. 86, n. 23, 1.2 "Politics"
should read "Poetics."
�36
Interpretation
of the heavens. The gentleman who meets Kent speaks of how the
"impetuous blasts with eyeless rage" catch Lear's white hair in their fury.
But for Lear lightnings are "thought-executing fires," and the elements
are addressed as seeing and thinking beings. At first he bids them, "Let
fall your horrible pleasure." They owe him no subscription. However, that
soon changes:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. 0, ho! 'tis foul.
His outrage seems to tum toward the gods themselves.. But his faith
is not yet entirely destroyed. He realizes that patience is what he needs.
Perhaps his suffering is some divine affliction, later to be redeemed? He
calls out as if the storm were herald to a day of judgment when justice
and honesty will prevail and he will be revealed as a man more sinned
against than sinning.
Let the great Gods,
That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipp'd of Justice; hide thee, thou bloody hand,
Thou perjur'd, and thou simular of virtue
That art incestuous; caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Has practis'd on man's life; close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinn'd against than sinning 28 (3.2.49-59] .
Later, after he has agreed to enter a nearby hovel, he says, "I'll pray
and then 111 sleep." But he does not pray, if praying means addressing
divinities.29 He directs his words not to the high, to the gods, but to the
poor, the wretched and the low:
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O! I have ta'en
Too little care of this. Take physic, Pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
. And show the Heavens more just [3.4.27-36).
zs Cf. Kent's speech preceding and Mark, 13, esp. 13.12; see Variorum Ed., ed.
Furness, p. 339; cf. Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus, 11.266-67.
n Cf. 1.5.47-48, 2.4.192, and 2.4.273-80.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety m King Lear
37
Like thoughts are expressed later by Gloucester, as he gives a purse
to the man he believes to be Poor Tom:
Here, take this purse, thou whom the heav'ns' plagues
Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched
Makes thee the happier: Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough [4.1.64-71).
Lear's statement goes further: The very justice of the heavens is called
into question. 30
The decisive point in this process is reached when Lear strips off his
royal garments, after he has encountered Poor Tom, the exemplar of
human wretchedness in the extreme.31 Gratitude, its bonds, its cosmic
and divine implications, have proved snares and delusions for Lear. Here,
with Poor Tom as his model, undeceived by a groundless reliance on
gratitude and the flattery of pomp and majesty, he thinks that he can see
the truly fundamental situation of man.
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the
beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume .. .. Thou art the thing itself;
unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou
art. Off, off you )endings! Come; unbutton here [3.4.105-12]. 3 !
Tom owes the worm no silk because he has no silk, the sheep no wool
because he has no wool. Lear takes Tom, the unaccommodated man, as
the "natural man." But does Tom have nothing? He has his life and
he has his misery; and as gratitude is one of the chief roots of natural
piety, so fear and wretchedness can theologize and moralize as well. Tom
has his catechism:
Take heed o' th' foul fiend. Obey thy parents; keep thy word's justice; swear not;
commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array
[3.4.80-83].
Each of these six commandments corresponds to one of the Bible's Ten
Commandments: the last most tenuously to the Bible's Tenth, Tom's fifth
to the Bible's Seventh, his fourth to the Bible's Third, his third to the
Bible's Ninth, and his second to the Bible's Fifth.33 Lear has proclaimed
ao "And show the Heavens more just" is the last line Lear speaks before madness
overcomes him. See 3.4.48. In Aristotelian terms this is the point at which the
reversal, or peripety, occurs in King Lear; Poetics 1452a 21-52b 13. Cf. also Laurence Berns, op. cit., n. 27 above, pp. 75 and 82.
11 The extreme must include madness.
at Cf. 2.3.7-9.
11 Tom's replacement of the Fifth Commandment's "Honor thy father and thy
mother" by "Obey" corresponds to a replacement of gratitude by fear.
�38
Interpretation
twice in this play that "nothing can be made out of nothing."34 If nothing
comes from nothing, everything that does come to be must come from
something, something which itself does not come to be, that is, is unchanging. It is not altogether unreasonable for Poor Tom and anyone who
would take him as the man himself to regard what most men call God,
the ultimate source of his misery, as a foul fiend. Tom's first commandment
corresponds to the Bible's First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no
other gods before me."35 The question about filial gratitude, about what
children owe to their parents, to the sources of their being, is here extended
to the limit: What is owed, or due, to the guiding principle, or principles,
of life as a whole, to the sources, or source, of all being?
When Lear strips himself of his royal garments, those "\endings," he
tries to strip himself of every vestige of royalty. When Kent asks him,
"How fares your Grace?" he does not even acknowledge that the term
could be meaningful and replies, "What's he?" His divestment of his royal
garments is the outer sign of his soul's divestment of its former protections and supports, of those beliefs and convictions that heretofore had
sustained and guided his activity in the world. He thinks that now he is
in a position to come to know man, to know himself, to philosophize
(1.4.238 and .259). But the conditions required to make him want to
philosophize are those that he declared earlier would make a truly human
life impossible. "O! reason not the need," he replies to his daughters'
questioning his need for attendants of his own:
our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need.You Heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!-38 (2.4.266-73].
Not only does Poor Tom become the representative of humanity for
Lear, but because he of all men is least likely to have been blinded by
gratitude or flattery, he becomes after Lear's divestment the philosopher
for Lear_ "First," before accepting fire, food, and shelter, "let me talk
u See 1.4.134-39, 1.1.90, and 1.2.31-35. Shakespeare's presentation of the
"Angstphanomen," Lear's "eye of anguish" (4.4.15), seems to have been unnoticed
by Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit , Niemeyer, 1957, p. 190; cf. n. on 199.
35 Exodus 20.1-17, Deuteronomy 5.6-21, and King Lear, 3.4.80-83. The statement
following the Second Commandment tells of God visiting the iniquity of fathers
upon their children; Shakespeare, less mysteriously with a view to considerations of
justice, visits the iniquity of children upon fathers. See 3.4.74-75. Cf. A. C. Bradley,
Shakespearean Tragedy, Macmillan, London, 1961, pp. 222 ff_
18 Cf. 3.6.4-5. Edith Sitwell suggests that these lines were written under the
.infh1ence of Plato's Phaedo 64d-e 1; A Notebook on William Shakespeare, Macmillan, 1965, pp. 75-76.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
39
with this philosopher," he says. His first question is: "What is the cause
of thunder?" Shortly before divesting, he apparently had no doubts about
the cause of thunder, that is, Jupiter.
I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,
Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove [2.4.229-30].
But now such questions have become open. He never addresses a god
by a personal name again. During all the time of his madness he speaks
of the divinities ("Gods," 4.6.128) only once. Lear seems now to be in a
position to see deeper into the nature of things than he ever was before.
The word nature and words with nature as their root are used fifty
times in what has come to be the generally accepted text of King Lear.
The word unnatural occurs seven times, more than twice as often as it
occurs in any other play of Shakespeare. Lear uses words with nature as
root more than twice as often as any other character in the play.37 These
usages could be classified under five, not always clearly distinguishable,
headings. Nature sometimes means (1) the general order of the social,
political, and cosmic whole within which the activity of any one person
or group can only be a part; (2) the constitution, or character, of an
individual as a whole, that is, the unity arising from both endowment and
habit; (3) the original endowment of an individual with the powers
directed, though not necessarily compelled, toward definite ends, or purposes. This is the meaning expressed most often by Lear. Nature also
means (4) the original endowment of an individual with powers supplied
to be used howsoever their possessor wills. This is the meaning expressed
most powerfully by Edmund. (5) Nature is twice personified as goddess:
once by Lear conflating meanings 1 and 3, and once by Edmund conflating meanings 1 and 4. The play has often been understood as presenting the world as a great arena where the principles of ethical and unethical nature contest for dominion over the whole.38 The disagreements
of the commentators are just one more reflection of the fact that Shakespeare has been far more explicit about raising the question of nature,
Nineteen times. Gloucester is next with nine times. (Unnaturalness occurs once.)
Cf. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, Meridian, p. 179; E. K. Chambers,
Shakespeare: A Survey, Hill and Wang, pp. 240 ff. and esp. pp. 215-16; D. A.
Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, Sands, revised and enlarged ed., p. 185;
John F. Danby, Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature , A Study of King Lear, Faber &
Faber, 1949, pp. 15-19; and esp. Robert B. Heilman, op. cit., n. 27 above, chs. 4
and 5, and pp. 115, 133-34, and 179-81.
Heilman's careful work is a fundamental book, perhaps the fundamental book,
for any serious study of King Lear. By carefully and searchingly tracing out and
relating the amazingly intricate patterns of imagery in the play, Heilman lets
Shakespeare's philosophy speak for itself. The book's deficiencies, deficiencies
generally shared by critics of pre-nineteenth-century literature, stem from an
insufficient understanding of certain key notions of classical philosophy, especially the
notion of natural right (see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago, 1953,
chs. 3 and 4) and the notion of "intuitive reason," that is, nous (see Jacob Klein,
37
38
�40
Interpretation
raising the question about the relation between nature and morality, than
he has been about presenting any definite solution.
There is more clarity, however, about who is wrong: The transgressions
of Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall lead ultimately to their own
destruction. Nature repels simple viciousness. And about the meeting of
Lear and Gloucester in Act 4, scene 6: "What could better point the
transcendent issues Shakespeare has developed . . . than this encounter of
the sensual man robbed of his eyes, with the wilful man, the light of his
mind put out."39 Royal Lear's understanding of how morality is effected
within nature is certainly not adequate. He conceives of the relation between morality and nature as being more organic than it is (3.4.14-16); he
overestimates the power of law; he is insufficiently attentive to the limits
set by nature to what authority and law can command. He relies overmuch
on divine enforcement of nature's directives, and consequently is unaware
of the extent to which the accomplishment of nature's purposes is left
to chance and, on the basis of the conditions provided by nature and
chance, to human prudence. In other words, the substitution of divine
intervention for chance leads to an underestimation of the possibilities for
evil and an insufficient awareness of the need for prudence. Lear's faith in
the rightness of the divine and natural order is shattered by his suffering.
But what does his shattering experience open him to?
VI
In his madness Lear becomes estranged, not only from the divinities
he swore by before, but from nature as a whole, especially from nature
as the source of generation.40 From the outset in Lear's mind the themes
of generation, gratitude, and justice are intertwined. In his first great
storm scene he bids the thunder, as if it were a divinity with authority and
power over nature, to:
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world!
Crack Nature's moulds, all germens spill at once
That makes ingrateful man! [3 .2.7-9].
Destroy the world's pregnancy, he cries: Destroy nature's means for
producing man, who shows by his failure to appreciate rightly the sources
"Aristotle, An Introduction," Ancients and Moderns, Essays on the Tradition of
Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. Joseph Cropsey, Basic Books,
1964). Thus Heilman tends to identify · "reason" with calculation, so that insight
and the perception of "value," that is, the good according to nature, are attributed
to a "non-rational" imaginative awareness. See pp. 161, 170, and King Lear,
4.6.132-33, .177, n. 13, and pp. 30-31 above.
at H. Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, quoted in Edith Sitwell, op. cit.,
n. 36 above, p. 47. In later editions Granville-Barker has apparently substituted,
less aptly in our view, "despot" for "wilful man."
.'° Cf. 4.6.115-16.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
41
of his being how undeserving he is of the gift of life. What Edmund can
speak of as "the lusty stealth of nature" is, for Lear, associated with:
hell . . . darkness,
... the sulphurous pit-burning, scalding,
Stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
To sweeten my imagination [4.6.129-33).
Mad Lear comes to a view of nature somewhat similar to Edmund's,
nature as the primitive, undeveloped beginnings of things. But his anguish
and revulsion indicate how much more he originally expected from nature:
He feels and suffers the absence of what he can no longer believe in.
Like Jesus he speaks against the Old Testament sentence for adultery.41
He goes to extremes and, as if all possibility of redemption were lost,
declares: "Let copulation thrive." Jesus was more sober: After delivering
the adulteress from condemnation, his last words to her were "go and sin
no more" (John, 8.1-11). Lear, however, condemns women generally,
confounding sex with Biblical, mostly New Testament, images of hell.
In his condemnation of the world's justice, Lear cries:
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener [4.6.162-65).
Again we are reminded of the New Testament: "But I say unto you,
That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her already in his heart" (Matt. 5.27-28) and "He that is
without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John 8.7).
Yet universal sainthood failing, decency requires that offenses be
punished whether the intentions of the punishers be pure or not. Should
thoughts and actions be equally punishable? Do men have as much control
over their thoughts and desires as they do over their actions? Are others
harmed by thoughts directed against themselves when those thoughts are
neither divulged nor acted upon? If in the New Testament, as some would
claim, these are deliberate rhetorical exaggerations, Lear seems to have
lost the capacity to make the required qualifications.
In a farmer's dog chasing a beggar, Lear says:
There thou might'st behold
The great image of Authority
A dog's obey'd in office.
Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
u Lev. 20.10. He "pardons" an adulterer rather than an adulteress. Cf. 2.4.12933 and .233-35.
�42
Interpretation
Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none, I say, none; . ..
If none does offend, and consequently none can rightly accuse, at least
none who are not themselves spotless, perhaps none could ever rightly
accuse: "Judge not, that ye be not judged."42 Edgar's commentary on this
speech is: "O! matter and impertinency mix'd; I Reason in madness." An
attempt should be made to separate some of the reason from the madness.
The farmer's dog does often chase away the thief, but the dog cannot,
unfortunately, distinguish between villainous and innocent, not to speak
of undeserved, lowness.
Authority and law are usually more rigorous with the poor and weak,
partly because they are less capable of protecting themselves, and partly
for less simple reasons. Wealth, power, and authority usually go together.
And just as the unsuccessful can exaggerate the part played by chance
and accident in human affairs, so the successful can flatter themselves
by exaggerating the extent to which their good fortune is owed to their
merits. By reasoning obversely about the misfortunes of others, they can
allow themselves to become obtuse and callous to the miseries of the
unfortunate, smothering charity in self-complacent rigor.43 Such is the
man "that will not see I Because he does not feel . . ." When Gloucester
in the fourth act asks the disguised Edgar who he is, Edgar replies:
A most poor man made tame to Fortune's blows;
Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,
Am pregnant to good pity.
The sufferings of Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar would seem to be the
remedy for this, the occupational disease of greatness. 44 Yet if suffering
of such magnitude is required, the price of sufficiently educating authority
in mercy or equity is hopelessly high. Few can do as much, perhaps, as the
educator Shakespeare, who by his art, his presentations of feigned experiences, has made it possible for some to feel, without fully suffering,
what they might need to feel in order to see.
Lear's suffering, however, and the perspective he has come to adopt,
have not prepared him for governing more responsibly, but rather ·for a
renunciation of the "world." His suffering has completely destroyed him
as a political man. Perhaps the most poignant expression of Lear's death
as a political man is his reception of Kent in the last scene. Kent's affection
for Lear is never severed from a political context. He always approaches
Lear, even in defiance and in death, as servant to master, never simply as
man to man. 45 At the end, although other explanations are possible, Lear's
u Romans 3.1 -18; cp. 3.10-12 with Psalms 14; and Matt. 7.1-5. Lear is open to
the charge the Apostle Paul said was made against himself, loc. cit. 3.8.
" Cf. Laurence Berns, op. cit., n. 27 above, pp. 75-77.
" For another approach to the problem see I Henry IV, 1.2 and 3.2; and
Henry V, 4.1.
" Cf. n. 10 above.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
43
cold reception of Kent indicates that Kent and what he stands for have
faded into almost complete insignificance for Lear. Yet his renunciation
of the world is not complete. The desire for vengeance remains: "And
when I have stol'n upon these son-in-laws, I Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,
kill!" (4.6.188-89).
VII
When Lear awakes after his long sleep, "Our foster-nurse of Nature"
(4.4.12), "the great rage," the doctor reports, " .. . is kill'd in him"
(4.7.78-79). Clad in new garments, the images Lear uses are resurrection
from the grave and entry into a new life, a life characterized by the
interchange of blessing (from Lear) and forgiveness (from Cordelia) and
mutual love.46 After the battle and their capture, Lear is given over
almost entirely to love, the love of Cordelia.
Come, let's away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
.
•'\s if we were Gess spic1r aAd we'll wear e1d,ati~ ~, o-J...
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
~~~
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God-s"sPies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, pacts and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.
Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The Gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes [5.3.8-23].
Lear seems to be perfectly fulfilled. He has no lingering regrets. The
worth of being reconciled in love with Cordelia is beyond price: It cannot
be measured by any of the measures Lear used in the first scene. No
sacrifice, be it rule, extent of territory, honor, even freedom itself, seems
too great, or even comparable with what Lear has gained. And with his
love and the prospect of love's joy that he holds before himself has come
patience. His patience and his love go together with his renunciation of
the world. His desire for revenge is as dead as his pride. When Cordelia
proudly says:
For thee, oppressed King, I am cast down;
Myself could else out-frown false Fortune's frown.
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
Lear answers, "No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison." And at the
•a Cf. also 4.6.33-80.
�44
Interpretation
moment of his death, with the dead Cordelia before him, it is clear that
Lear can live no longer in the world where even these last hopes are
dashed. He dies in a vision of reunion with Cordelia living once again.
There has been extensive debate about whether these scenes are to be
understood in a Christian sense or not.47 Was Lear's moment of joy at his
death "based on an illusion"?4S Or, was it the triumphal culmination of
his purgatorial, his redemptive suffering, a loving glimpse into that better
world to come where all righteous hopes will be fulfilled?
What we have been describing is the development of attitudes and a
perspective that Shakespeare has presented in terms that are recognizably
Christian. 49
This development in King Lear, however, is presented as a natural
development. What was Shakespeare's perspective, as distinct from Lear's?
The dramatic poet does not speak in his own name. His perspective can
be inferred only from the play as a whole. "Hard were it for me, as if
I were a god, to tell of all these things," says Homer.50 The poet stands
as a god over the world of his play, but a god limited to what nature
leaves to possibility and to chance: For nature, or the poet's understanding
of nature, provides the framework. "ls there any cause in nature," Lear
asks, "that makes these hard hearts?" (3.6. 78-79). Shakespeare seems
to have asked: "ls there any cause in nature that makes these Christian
hearts?" Nature, or the problem of nature, as articulated by classical
philosophy, we suggest, provides the framework for King Lear.51
The major classical philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, of course, never
elaborated an answer to what we suppose was Shakespeare's question. This
could be due to historical accident. The serious question is: Are the
principles and the framework they first articulated adequate to comprehend such an account? Must not the rise and triumph of Christianity be
explained? Can the decision about the best way of life be compelling
unless all fundamental alternatives have been examined? It is incumbent
upon classical philosophy to try to see whether the revealed religions and
the souls formed by them can be rendered intelligible to natural reason.
Shakespeare seems to have been exploring this possibility, especially in
King Lear.
Yet, it could be argued, nature has its place also within the Christian
41 See K. Muir, Arden Ed., pp. Iv ff.; Barbara Everett, "The New King Lear," in
Shakespeare: King Lear, Casebook Series, ed. F. Kermode, 1969, pp. 184 ff.; G.
W. Knight, op. cit., pp. 187 ff.; and Susan Snyder, "King Lear and the Prodigal Son,"
Shakespeare Quarterly, Autumn 1966.
48 K. Muir, loc. cit., p. lix.
" Cf. Heilman, op. cit., p. 78; n. 11, p. 309; and esp. n. 1, p. 331.
'° Iliad XII, 1.176.
11 Aristotle NE 1134b 18-35. Cf. Leo Strauss, "The Law of Reason in the
Kuzari," Persecution and the Art of Writing, Free Press, 1952, pp. 95-98; Allan
Bloom, op. cit., 11- 12 above, Introduction; . and Howard B. White, Copp'd Hills
Towards Heaven: Shakespeare's Classical Polity, Nijhoff, 1970.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
45
cosmos. Could not Shakespeare have been showing rather how God's
invisible law might, "from the creation of the world," have been written
by nature in men's hearts? Might he not have been showing what would
have to be endured by a "natural man," that is, a man with no knowledge
of Jesus Christ and the Bible, for that law to begin to become visible
to him?52
If the issue were to be put in terms of the primacy of compassionate
love as compared with the primacy of insight, Shakespeare may have
provided a clue to his own opinion in Act 4 of King Lear. An unnamed
gentleman describes Cordelia's tears while she reads of her father's sufferings as "pearls from diamonds dropped." "Tears of compassion are
pearls; eyes are diamonds ... ": Tears of compassion are compared to
rare and precious stones, but eyes, that is, insight, are more precious
still. 53
"Hath not God," wrote the Apostle Paul, "made foolish the wisdom
of this world?"54 For Paul the "foolish" of faith possess a wisdom far
deeper than anything accessible to natural reason. Is this what Shakespeare suggests by echoing this language about wisdom and folly in his
articulation of the problem of morality and justice in King Lear? The
Fool tells Kent:
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the Fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly:
The knave turns Fool that runs away;
The Fool no knave, perdy [2.4.78-85].
In this play the word fool moves through a range of meanings.
The official Fool in motley is "foolish," funny, and privileged because
he seems, or is licensed to pretend, not to know the most ordinary conventions.
In general, a fool is a man who does not know what every man is
expected to know. Somewhat less generally, assuming that in everything
a man chooses to do, some benefit to himself is intended, a fool is a man
who does things that harm himself, who lacks judgment about what
benefits himself. This is the elementary meaning of the word in the play
that is presupposed by the four meanings following.
The honest fools, best exemplified by Gloucester and by Edgar of the
Cf. Romans l.20, 2.14-15; and I Car. 2.14.
Heilman, op. cit., pp. 155-56. Cf. King Lear, 5.3.189-90 and l. l.56.
5• I Car. 2.20 and ibid. chs. 1-4. But cp. A Midsummer Night's Dream, 4.1.1026: and cf. ibid., 4.1.218-21 with I Car. 2.9: ibid. l.2.22-99 with I Car. 9.22: ibid.
1.2.8,15; 3.1.1-81; 4.2.30-end with Galatians 2:11 ff.: also ibid. 5.1.195-96, 311,
and 360-62.
52
53
�Interpretation
46
early scenes, are overtrusting and, as in Gloucester's case, overcredulous
about heavenly influences on human actions. They fail to understand
people unlike themselves, to understand vice and malice. They are easily
gulled by those clever and unscrupulous enough to exploit and betray their
trust.
The loyal and dutiful are "moral fools ." So Albany is regarded by
Goneril and Kent spoken of by the Fool. The same could be said of the
servant who mortally wounds Cornwall and is killed by Regan. Lear in
acting on the expectation that his elder daughters would be bound by filial
gratitude and duty is another kind of "moral fool." The moral fools tend
to act as if moral laws were as inviolable as natural laws, as if moral
laws were natural laws. They are regarded as fools by the "worldly wise"
for not appreciating sufficiently the arbitrary and conventional factors
in morality, the bestial elements in human nature, and for not appreciating
sufficiently how self-seeking usually masks itself in moral guises. For the
worldly wise self-seeking is the only kind of seeking sanctioned by nature.
What the moral fool senses or sees and the worldly wise are blind to is
the extent to which the humanity of any one man's life is a function of the
larger moral, social, and political orders of which that individual life can
only be a part.
Examples of what we might call the "noble fool" are France, the Fool,
Edgar, Cordelia, and Lear: those capable of being touched and moved by
noble love, by "inflam'd respect."55 By their willingness to risk themselves and everything that could be subject to calculations of worldly
success, they exhibit their own conviction, and rouse admiration and
hopes, in those capable of appreciating them, that mankind is capable
of attaining states of being that are simply good in themselves. The
worldly wise are blind to this possibility.
In the light of what the moral fool and the noble fool see, the knavery
of the worldly wise reveals itself as the final folly. By their blindness to
what raises man above the beasts, the "wise" knaves finally bring themselves down with those whose justice they violate. By their blindness to
what directs men toward the divine, to what is good in itself, they are
deprived of nature's graces, the love and friendship of the noble.
But do the love and insight that Lear and Gloucester attain fully
redeem what they have suffered? What is to be inferred from the disproportion between their sins and their terrible suffering?
"We glory in tribulations," wrote the Apostle Paul,
knowing that tribulation work.eth patience; and patience experience; and experience,
hope. And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. [Romans 5.3-5].
And from the Apostle James:
Be patient therefore brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold the husbandman
waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he
11
Cf. section II above.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
47
receive the earlier and the latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts:
for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
It is Cordelia, her love, "The holy water from her heavenly eyes"
(4.3 .31), that near the end sustain Lear's patience. The gentleman describes how she read Kent's letters recounting Lear's ordeal:
Ay, sir; she took them, read them in my presence;
And now and then an ample tear trill'd down
Her delicate cheek; it seem'd she was a queen
Over her passion; who, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o'er her.
"O! then it mov'd her?" Kent asks.
Not to a rage; patience and sorrow strove
Who should express her goodliest. You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once; her smile and tears
Were like, a better way; those happy smilets
That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd. In brief,
Sorrow would be a rarity most belov"d,
If all could so become it [4.3.12-24].
Later Cordelia prays:
All bless'd secrets,
All you unpublish'd virtues of the earth,
Spring with my tears! he aidant and remediate
In the good man's distress! [4.4.15-18].
In the reconciliation scene, Lear asks, "Be your tears wet?" He answers
himself, "Yes, faith." These scenes too are often taken as argument that
"King Lear is a Christian play about a Pagan world .... "56
Sunshine and rain, however, suggest natural growth, that Cordelia's
smiles and tears were· nature·s means for curing Lear's abused heart. It
does seem, however, to be a most Christianlike use of nature. But, unlike
Lear, Cordelia, whose patience is so movingly described, is proud to the
end. She never asks for forgiveness. She is prepared to "outfrown false
Fortune's frown. " Is she prepared to live out her life "in a walled prison"?
She has not renounced political life: She calls Lear king and queenlike
puts down her rebel passions. She is ready to confront her sisters: "Shall
we not see these daughters and these sisters?" Yet what is perhaps most
significant, though obvious, for the question of Christianity in King Lear
is that there is no promise or expectation "for the coming of the Lord."
The word patience is ambiguous. In the Christian sense it seems to mean
bearing tribulations in the loving faith that their promised miraculous
reversals will surely come to pass. In the classical, or stoic, sense of the
58
I. C . Maxwell, quoted in Muir, op. cit., p. lvi.
�48
Interpretation
word it seems to mean endurance: endurance that does not anticipate
miraculous change, that accepts evil in the world as a necessity, that bases
itself only on rational hopes and the conviction that what is itself good
deserves loyalty whether that loyalty receives any other reward or not.
The unforeseen mischances of the world that bring down the just and
innocent too often with the guilty, in the classical view, engender the
wish for particular providence at the same time that they constitute
evidence for its absence. It is not incompatible with the love of truth to
respect the love of justice that is the father to that wish.
VIII
Who is the paradigm of virtue m this play? The gentleman says,
addressing himself to absent Lear:
Thou hast one daughter,
Who redeems nature from ·the general curse
Which twain have brought her to.57
Why then was Cordelia killed? Cordelia's honesty, her proud refusal
to join her sisters in their demeaning hypocrisy, precipitated the catastrophe of this play. Her death raises the question about what the moral
limits of proud honesty in an imperfect world might be.58 Pisanio and
Cornelius in Cymbeline avert tragedy by, as they put it, being false (to
the bad) in order to be true (to the good) (1.5.43-44 and 4.3.42). In Sonnet
94 those "who rightly do inherit heaven's graces I And husband nature's
riches from expense" are also those "that have pow'r to hurt and will do
none, I That do not do the thing they most do show." This last line could
never apply to Cordelia.
Edgar is the character in King Lear who most of all does not do the
thing he most does show. He successfully assumes six different guises
in the play. During the play from
a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms
That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
the practices of a confirmed villain ride easily, he develops into a model
of virtue armed and resourceful.
Edgar seems to be a mean between his father and his bastard brother.
Their opinions about heavenly influences over human affairs are at
opposite extremes. The father is overcredulous, Edmund undercredulous.
17 Does this indicate that ingratitude more than prideful disobedience is chiefly
responsible for the "general curse"? See n. 17 above.
58 Cf. Ulrici, Variorum Ed., ed. Furness, pp. 456 57. See also Gervinus, ibid.,
pp. 459-60, on the significance of her leadership of the invading army for the
question of her death. Cf. H. Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, Botsford,
1970, pp. 23-24 (277-78) and 51 (305) on Cordelia's silence.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in King Lear
49
Both are perhaps equally at fault intellectually, but the moral fault is
clearly more the son's.59 In Shakespeare's world he who scorns all idea of
heavenly influence on human affairs rarely comes to much good. Edgar's
speech to his dying brother gives the last word of the play on the adultery
theme and constitutes an answer as well to Gloucester's "As flies to wanton
boys, are we to th' Gods; I They kill us for their sport."
The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us;
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes [5.3.170-73].
Edmund replies, "Th' hast spoken right, 'tis true. I The wheel is come full
circle; I am here." Edgar spoke of the gods, but Edmund speaks of
fortune 's wheel. Lear preaches to Gloucester, drawing lessons from man's
beginnings:
Thou must be patient; we came crying hither:
Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry . ...
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools• 0 [4.6.180-85].
Edgar preaches to his suicidal father on the same theme:
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all [5.2.911].
This sermon is more adequate because it is more comprehensive. It
considers not only the beginnings but the middle and the end as welJ.61
Man's chief concern, the image suggests, should be not with what happens
when the fruit falls and dies, nor especially the beginnings, but rather
with coming to fullest maturity in the world.
IX
King Lear is based on two stories, the Lear story and the Gloucester
story. Critics have long been concerned by the apparent lack of complete
unity between them.62 The unity of King Lear comes to sight on the
level of reflection, reflection on the one philosophic theme underlying both
stories, of which both stories are necessary and complementary parts:
58
Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Rea·on , B 857 58.
All the world's a stage in Shakespeare for him who, like Lear, Jaques, and
Antonio, is coming to feel himself to be an "exile in 'this' world." Macbeth (5.5.25)
is a special case.
61 I am indebted for this observation to Hilail Gildin of Queens College, N .Y.
62 Cf. Bradley, op. cit., pp. 118 ff. ; Heilman, op. cit., p. 32 and n. 28, pp. 298-99;
and "The Unity of King Lear" in op. cit., ed. Kermode, n. 47 above, pp. 169 ff.
60
�50
Interpretation
namely, that nature, while constituting the ground and limits of convention
and law, requires in man the cooperation of law and convention for its
fulfillment.
Lear in trying to command love and gratitude fails to see that the
natural growths of noble love and gratitude are beyond the control of
law and political authority. The Lear story illustrates the natural limits
of legal and political authority and the tensions that arise between nature
and law when those limits are not rightly observed.63 The Gloucester
story, the adultery theme, and the stories of Lear's elder daughters
illustrate the other side of the same coin: how certain natural passions and
powers, most manifestly the power of procreation, need to be controlled
by conventions, laws, and authority.64 Ordinary love and passion, not to
speak of base love and passion, need to be controlled by law and authority. Being conceived outside the "order of law" (1.1.19), Edmund was
banished from the family circle. He is, not altogether "unnaturally,"
devoid of family feeling. As the bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought
in, the dying Edmund exclaims, "Yet Edmund was belov'd: I The one
the other poison'd for my sake, I And after slew herself." Goneril and
Regan as well as Lear seem to have died for "love."
How would nature and convention, or law, be related when cooperating
harmoniously? Nature provides the materials, the human materials and
powers, and ordains, or manifests to natural reason, what purposes and
ends would perfect the materials and fulfill the powers. But the accomplishment of nature's purposes is left to chance and to men: On the basis
of the conditions provided by nature and chance, the responsibility for
forming the materials and developing the powers so as to function in
accordance with those ends is left to men themselves through custom,
habituation, training, law, art, and education .65 Human nature is so
constituted as to require the formation of conventions and laws for its
fulfillment.
Edgar does represent the natural man in this play, not as the poor,
bare, forked animal Lear saw, but as he is in himself, the man of many
disguises, the educable man, whose heart does not enslave his mind and
whose mind does not silence his heart,66 whose heart and mind remain
sound no matter bow his outward trappings change. He is the natural
man, not in that sense of nature that means only primitive beginnings,
but where "nature" includes fulfillment, "ripeness."67
ea Cf. Jaffa, op. cit., p. 131.
14 The control is, of course, guided by other natural powers, such as reason and
judgment. France, the king, acknowledges the law's authority even over his noble
love for Cordelia (1.1.253).
u Cf. Plato Meno, esp. beginning; and Aristotle NE Book ii, ch. 1.
H Cf. Leo Strauss, in Jason Marvin Aronson, Three Funeral Addresses, University
of Chicago, University College, December 6, 1961, p. 8.
17 Cf. Aristotle Physics Book. ii.
�Gratitude, Nature, and Piety in lGng Lear
51
The same consummate irony that led him, correctly, but for the wrong
reasons, to be called "the thing itself," that is, the natural man, by Lear
may be at work also in his being called "philosopher."68 Edgar, though
not the most tragic, nor the most pathetic, character in the play, is the
true hero of patience in King Lear.
es This is not contradicted by the fact that Edgar is the only major character
in the play who never uses the word nature or any word with nature as its root.
Cf. n. l, above.
�
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Berns, Laurence, 1928-
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Gratitude, nature, and piety in King Lear
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1969-05
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Friday night lecture
Tutors
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Text
RArIONAL ANILlAL - l'OLlflOAL ANIMAL:
.
.
· Natur- and uonvention 1.n auma.n Speeoh and Politics•
bJ Laure.noe Berna••
In tne beginning of his Poli tioa Aristotle argues the. t "man
ia b7 nature a politioal animal." .· In faot man ie more a politioal
animal than a111 bee or a.n;v
herdin~
anim!il, for "man alone of the
uimala ha• apeeob, 11 "man alone of the &nimala baa reason," "man
alone of the an1JD$la haa loaoa."
A word should be said about this
word logo1, whioh oan be translated ae ward. speeoh. aooount,
•
araument, rat1Q, or reaaon.
Logos ie oonneote~ to the verb l~,:2
whioh mee.na to 1peak .and to piok out, to seleat, to oount.
·words oolleot, aeleot, and eleot are oonneoted with the
Our
a~me ~erb.
Logos la aeleoted, eleoted, and ohoaen speeoh, meaningful apeeoh,
thoughtful B.Pe•oh.
'When people •peak of Arie totle' s definition · ot
man aa the rational animal t hey are referring to hie statement that
man alone of the animala poaaesaes logos, possesses thoughtful spee r«·.·
~riatotle
goes
o~
to say:
Uow voiae funotions us a aign of pa i n ~nd pleasure ~nd
thereforo is possessed by the other animale too (for
their naturehd& gone ~s far as having eenaat1on of
*"'
leoture diven at ~t. John's College, Annapolis. May, 19'10.
••1utor, St. John's uollege, .&\nnapolia;
Clliougo.
ot
Ph.D., 195'1. rhe University
�2
pain u4 pltaaure ·Uld 1lgnifJ't111 tb9•• thing• to • •
e.noth••). a.s h&D. i• to• aald.q ol• u th• a4••'aa•ou•
a.n4 the h&l'lltul~tllereto•• •1•• th0 jaat and th, un-
ju1t. Por thia_ l• a.,.oial to • • alo~• 019pare4 wlwl\
·t h• otbar entaala; h• alont has 1.u ,~ tioa. or soo4 ci:;. 4
1
bad. and. jut an4 • j u t and tba Uk•. 4D4 th• o~t7
et th••• tbtq• ...... a houa•hel.11 UMl a 1IJ.&•...
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ot tlbat ' 1• 1004 tor
. . . •4 llhat 11 bd, 1d11•h tor Qilatotl·• ,. ..., 11bat la in &o,or4
,
.
I
.
With nat••• --·~ ·11atue, an4 11bat l• .oontr..,. to :natwa·• ·
f'bla
a~p.,l .ill rouab~. apeeoh1 uul ;Mqbthl 11Wt~ -.tai~a
aw..euaa la
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.
.
th1ak1ag aboUt bw .• at la.. abar•4 la · toi.be 411tr1bu.ted., .
.
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.
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how tll• a4Ta.nta1••• 1n4 th• h&Ntu1
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o
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•~lht 4tatrlbutlon ot a4nntaa•• &n4
ati•• or authoritatiYe, in eaoh. 1
. ..
.
t•• baM io
I
Moat of *1; -·· '~~ 1'al'31 ••l4, J; h-1e>1, S.• nt~ .
ua4er1tand. •. Bu.tabO'lll.4 "'not b• bothered. l>J at lea1t
k•~ t•l'N ~u~' ~J•f.P4T .
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..
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I• ·not th• b1atote11Q oonoeption ot natue obaol•t•T Do·•'* •' not
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tean what nature
tPCm 11•4.e rn n&ttµtal aoiene••, aDd traa·
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�.3
the aooial aaienc•a t hat model themselves on them?
But before
taking up the theme natur• and Ari•totl• 1 a unde:rstan41iag
trr
Ntture
we should, perhapa, explain wh7 we oonoern oUl'a•lves with Aristotle
I sball try to deal with taat queation under t'j.ve heada,
at all.
41aouaaed ·in 1nor•aa1ng order ot importance • .
1)
Ariatotl•'• a;pproaoh to nature and philosophy- was t he
approach oppo1ed by th• found.era ot the modemaoientitic approaoh.
a1 •••ing
what they ••r• reaoting againat, what they rejected,
we come to underatand better the point ot view dominating our
tb•usht an4
O\U'
tlm••;
we aoa• . to under1tand ouraelvea b&t.t e:r,
Pi'em thia point ot view we approach Ariatotl•'a philosophy aa a
hiatorioal datu..
2)
Aooording to the view
~hich
trie• to understand modern
lit• in 1uob • vay,; ·they olaim, as 11 appropriate to the unique-
ness
o~
our situation, the Exiatentialiat, or HistoriQal Relativist,
or Radical Hiatorioi•t, or Heideggerian view, world views are pri-
marily creative projeets ot ditterent ages or different men in
4itteNnt
as••·
True openness, openness to determine the way which
would ba the
•ut~entia
impoaed upon
~·
were •oat
way tor ua, requires treadom trom the blind.er1
bf our tradition.
deol•i~•
in torming the
A.r1atotl• wa1 &DlOng
tr~ditiQn.
thoe ~
To clear out.
who
~he
cobv•ba, to liberate Oiu'aelvoa :rrom th• ti-adition fn ourselves.
since it la a tradition of thought, requires µnderstending it. _
Liberation from the · tradi.t ion, baaed on undars tariding 1t, ia require.,
in order to · open ourselves to the broader perapeotivas that a unititH
planet requ1rea.
3) · There· ia what oan be called the
of the Modern View
or
Nature.
Cr~sia
of Modern Science,
That is, modern scienoe, the :m.odern
�4
vl•v et aatuae ••- . te b• ua'91• to aaJI• liqae ot .._
...-u •t
th••• 111d.ll9• wbl•h uaa moat :•o ua,t i.-.'betn1•t 1•04neaa • batl.a:aa·a , ~d.Jia••• • uafalNe••• n•1Dl1U•J,•
bu.uaa, be1.11117 • ql.:ia•••• _. ·aeten•l•tie •••ial ••i..o• ••-b'-b uazdq, ol
po•t• that ••1entitlo
r'
~·
••U• •._otJ •••"•~la•• "•due juq--~~.•
..
. Inatea4 ot r•ti..-1 J•l••ipl•• et aatt.. guitaaoe
ar 'WUlea••• ·•
J.a1•*•t1•'• v:l.•-ot
I•• 111• l•
·
abtuil4""•• to wul•• ; _
at .be•t1 wo ,.u.:Ltl••
ot 9~•41•97·
••._.and. JnilU. t:.&.9••
•"'•1•
th91e 4!atln•"1•• nieh.v• flD4 ......... uaad.neJWl. t • . .
pr•.. ••'•'itt.o ·1•aottea1
'between go04l · U14 ba4,
,souild
view
li•••· •taillaetlcma
•
•*• aeue.
·o t h"taail Jit•
v•
1111• th• 41ataw'l•·
~ itJt.• ...., _.., .upporwtq a
look t~ ••• it pel'bapa AIPl~tMl•'•
viev. ot ria,ua 1• aet to lte alt•s••h• Ua Q
i:teti
I·
•'
t•'··
.
'Qll:der the h•a4 ot tlb8 C-S"i•i• · ot IH4-. · ••ii.ea•
.
th•~• l~.
'
..i.e
~~ prob1• of tshe lntelli..,lli'r . et mo••• •tlb...atl.oal Pbl'•ioc,
011
••••ta41na
tlbat . 1,,.......
au 1111.at
ltj --~d· p .......... .
ot und.w.1tan4tng.how it »olatea .t o ou.· lu4.._11d •"l>•l•o•.
~
a •lp, 'but OlllJ'
tlh• clullioal
••tan,
•f
'1b.at ·• • .,... •••
~-t
U. oout•e
Oza•• WGl'4 ,_ •o'•··· ft1p,ti'ilt\:. . IP'•tw'i 4P••
·
aaaa •Oien~·., but ic alilo lile.a JmoW1e4a• . and ude•1faanitl.q • .
Theugbtt\ll 1tdu.ta ot oluaiaal O.ei.k nOlf uattat4' :b•tOll'• tliUltt•
lat;" •Ri•tilli wtth tU wo1'14 aoien••• beeau• ·to ua. 1oien::lai· ·
uuall,- uana _.. . ••tenoe, pr•-.t.••ntl7
~t.thematiloal ~•1••··
I.DA .,hla aoi~n•• d••• 8" • • • to 1>• n.e......s.17 acoc..,anle4 "'
lllJ.dat-atandtng.
4)
Some look to u11totl• with a Yia·E to tM aeed
OQ!ll'•eh•naiv• natu.iral pb.iloaephJ' llhleh aoul.,,t u b
•11puation ot ae4•ftl .
r.. a
•en.a• a.tt
ot the
••t.ao• hCli 'ih• vu14 ot tnaan uaalag b7
�s
relating both within a unified view ot th• natural vorld. 1
.$)
We atu47 Plato and A.riatotl• beoau•• we auapect that
th.~y
may have articulated and claritled moii• ad•quatel7 than •llJ'On•
•l•• the preauppoaitione and prinoipl•• ot tbenatUl'al human
underatandlng, that ia, pre-aoientitio or pre-pbiloaophio thinking, . that order ot un4eratancl1ng with vbioh ·•very aan muat begin
all ht• thinking, that order ot underatanding which the ditterent
ot,
kinda ot aoi•nt1t1o thinking are neoeaaarllJ aoditic·ationa
that order ot understanding ot thing• Wb.ioh la :r•••aled through
our 41acou:r1e about th• object• ot ordinar1 experlenoe.
..
.
.
'I'hat aen
.
ue oampell•d to think about .thiqa · in certain preaorib•d va7a .
;
doea not ••tal:tli•h that th• tliqa thought abou• ln th. .elv••
are, or are not, •• they are thought to be.
It ve want to a9'o14
dogmatic t14ei.am (th• unp•tloaophioal faith
tpat~ t~nga
a• ju1t
a• ve experienoe them) or 4opatic •o•ptioi•• (th• dOf!'Pl& that we
know that thing• 1n th ... elv•a cannot .be u
v• e.q>erienoe th•)
a mu.oh more povertul dogaatlam . .ong· the lea.med ot our
ve au.at be open
a~ · ieaat
to the poeaib111tJ
tha~
tilll•••
th• orientation
ot the natural human understanding e.nd h\llllan diaoowae ma1 be
that inatrum•nt ot 1.•arning, underataDiing m d oaamnm.icaticm. ·
ope~
emplo7ed by vhat ia perhapa th$ only animal
and to the eaaeno•• ot things.
to the whole
Ve turn to Plato and Afl•totl•
tor help in exploring thi• po1aibilit7.
Ariatotl• take• hu.mftn
ap•eoh very aerioual7 becau1• the ••aning .of, th• · lmplioationa qt,
ordinary apeech, properl7 refined, aore . than an7thin; •l•.• ,
aooordins to hia, aoJte, ••Y• than a,.ltelio 11atlh. .atsics,
.
-.-.-g-..
.
.
.
••7 lead u•
--.2..- ."!""uf"""
...
....
.
J. A. W•i•ll•ipl~. . , . , "R'l Jl!:t•\ lfeio,.
M&linua L:yo••• BJ.••~ ~··~· Ill. t 9SJ, ·
· .
I
Al,.bertu11
�The 14•• ot nature hu . al~•J• opcn1pl•«S1 a, it not·
th• ·~
k•f
position in Wbat we o~l th• •••t;•r" tr-41tion ot thollgbt •.
.
·.
.
..
.··
. . .. ·
at v•at•:rn
Tbroug1lout tbe ·h111i91"J
,
.
thC)\lpt tbe ~-enta.). la fuel
v•r• ~su•4 in t•"'8 ot oppo11itlpu
ela•:
Hat'Ul"• an4
~aoe,
~Jtw-_. · and aoa,t).l.inc_
b•tw••
.
.
.
Jfatiire an4 Supernatui-e, th• nat11zt,i
~
·
the 41vine; b•tv-.i.1 Hatur• all4 AJ-t; b•tv••n JI'~~- and Con••ntiPlll
. between NatUJ'•
anA- Pr•,4Qll; between
~ft~•
an4 Spt;1,, ·an,4
~•twf•D
BatUJ1• and Hi•to17. 3
•ons
ocm.e, l~to th•
.
~- tact Aria1io11••
eno•. thema•lv••
.
;
other•, f~f•1;• .,hi~~aoptiJ ~d r;o!-
world
.
vfth
the
4l•oov•l"J ot ~·~\11'•.4
There . v•r• and. at1ll ~· . P•OPl• Who hav.- ~ ,,.. 4l•t1not ~d~a.. "of ' D.~'W'P·
.
..
•. , .
.
.
. . . -.
.
. .
. . . ,. .....
...
.
~
.
'
.
'
I
.'
•
•
••
.
'
•·
,
'.
'
.
'
•
'
•
The_10or41 nature . an4 nat\11" ~. ( Gre.-k Vi{.~l• and . $J•llf~~ 4() 110~ ·
.
oootQ" in th•
Ol~
.'
.
.
.
.
Teat. .nt, or in the ao,pel'.
-~•f oooQI'. t~~,\·~~
thl•• in th• l•tt•r• ot th• mo•~ aophl.i;io-tecl ~~ 'h-.
••nt vritera, th• .J.po1~le
th• lf•V
fa\ll_ ·a¥
,
~'1
in
T•ilt~ent.5
He;.
tf v•·o1;her
'l'~:JtiJ• . ·
pl$<fGf1 iJl
Betol'e nature vu 411oove:r•d, vh•ii _Q,ouahttul m•n von4eed
t
an4 ·41•oourae4 mbout
about th• soda~
logoi. ·
The
why
thin&•
The theoiosot.
are tbe ·vai th•7 are, tb•J talk•d
th• gt!}olo.ot. - ~r•o•ded
gods ordered and oomand•d thing• to wallc : o~ . to go 1:'::
th•il' ouetom..PJ'
W&J'8•
The word way_ (4erek) oooura over: 1700
3-• . The iut··:·~••
~•t1.ll"al 1foieno• -'d
4~
tu -~1!0t~
·oppo1:it:Loti• ·Pl'.•\\PP~•~ -tb~~aatur.• -. .,t .ao4••·
oQ~•ot•4 wt~la
_"o•c"•~t ot J'latw..Y~." .
~1• . diaouaa:l.on.: .la ~u.ad '. pbt*P11f \on; :th• cllaoua•lon in' IA•
o•
"1'.'•·
Strau••a Hf!t!p!J. Rlftf P4£!'tlf,(041o.~J -1953),. oh.~. _. .
S. · miese ·:. en•••~ ena, ,. ;I) '.i4 : _,iii - qw t.t: i1HQ1t\1fl.· Otnttr•
J
!.mo•
to the Bibl• • . ll!ePdaana,· (1955).
.
�7
....a th• 014 teataaent ·and (ho4oe) ••·leu•: 83 time• in the lev
ut.it.
~••t
Th• god1 ordained that tire ebould bura. olouda gi'W'• rain,
that th• earth ahould bri,.ng ,.torth crop•• that voaen .a:t).ould bear
ohildr•n. that aoae 1hould · ot eat pig ••at
n
~
others ahou14 not
kill oowa, that ••• ahould bury tb•ir .dead &n4 that other• •hould
bUftl th-, that . 'JltbdU'era •hou.14 b• put to death, or that th•J
should pa7 thett- vlot1• 1 • relatives at lea.at one ox.
the gods -ver• deli••red to tba
The oomwan.4• o:t'
anoe1tora· who were, oloaer ·to th• an4
tranaaitted by elder• to th•i:r ott1pring bJ word ot ·mouth or b7 . writt"
:reporta. Authority went v1th age, Vltb nearn•aa
t•
the
Of
IOUl'O.
authority •.
At a certain polat ••• eui-1·eu.a uut thouP,•.flUl. aaa
11111•.
ll•••
not1oe4 that . •o•• th.tn11 an• aome wa1• are alva71 ••• ••• ao 1Utta. . .
still oth••• would var7 hca tilll• to ttae
thea h11ppen th• ••• · wa7.
between th•
.n•o•••&PJ" and
t•- 11.m• tao ti.at
--
:
' what any one doe1 aluM.1t th-, an4 eth••• v..,
.ao•e
if
aen
B• b•1in1 ii• be•Qll• •'-a»•
th•
aooidea~al. th•
aa4 ·
,.
dU
or
110·
1
ll&1M
the 41a.ttr ,~ ti ·
a•o•••U7 an4 tllle
cu.;.
tcnary, and the n•o•••UJ ·and th• urat:flioial.
••Z-• to beocae .a .tra.v•ler, lit•
&l.•o notice hov •*• wa:ya are tho . _ . •••l'J
It the .... ·aanor one like bia
Herodotua, h• then von14
Vb•••• -tor u-.ple, ti•• b'lirna tb•••• ••7 -both b-1'• and in P•Mia.
ud other va7aYar7 1'P• plao• t• plaoe ua4h1111 -uibe, to ~,lbe
•
. ·..-
What •1U1.t . hav• be•Q. laQJ.~ . •~r1k.1q , at tt:rat; b,t c•q•· th•J' uat
oontradiet ·
••ov
••J• ". '11ii-e
th• wa.7a that
•UJ' trait tribe to
tribe, the way• :that depend aoat on d•oiaiona aacl op1rl1Qna ot ,,,.,~;
�8
beeau1e th• optnlou ..n hold about the wa7• *hat VUJ .t'!'ca plaae
t~
plaoe
oont~a41•t
eaoh others ·••I•, the deacl au.at be b•l•dJ theJ
au1t not be burl••• but bUJ!"ll•d·
!b••• oontra•iotion•
l•a4 to even
•o:re 1\md•ental oontradiotOl'J' opin1on1, oono•rning the veP, originl
ot th• 1041.
on•
JlrQI
poi~t
ot view one lea.ma th• truth about auoh aatt•••
.
'
.
li•t•nini obed11tntl7 to th• aqthor1tat1v• voio•• ot the -.1dem1
~,.
1
tram an'ther
o~• l,~arn•
aoa~
alv.,-1 in
th• . t"'-th l»J
aat,•r• hav• aad.• a 41ati.Qat1on
•v14•n•• and •••1"1 tor on•••lt.
that eat one oan~;·~•1iie .: '.· b• :
•an•at an4.
•••inc t• on•i•lt.
tund.-~-al .
.
au
••naient an4 , 4••1•&t1-.e.
~·~v••n
h•ertaJ
'lb:• ,u1plolol\ .b4tlim to a1••
•••.,.•I'• •• ,_. '" Dl!it\df,
•tla•• tkW•
tba- ilbe
" .
1_
0
•••* i-•~ •••-.4.ti ~1'£n1•
J\~th•r-, 0'1~
ditteitent, P•rllap1 tb•ir •o
V~~~t.
»•r-
&Jt• ••aon4~,
o•• their ••i•t•ao• te t•r•ihoupt1 £! la• nqa\•Q4d•
u•
Han aut
•ti •
...- .· t~•ir
-.a1•
••1•tl•no1 '•
lo••"'
Thq1e illlin11, wh:\cala • • eya""'*•ltl t)t• ,._., tda1oh i i
not •vi,•ntly dep•nd ppoa 4eo1atona ot •an ••119 t• do ¥ha• tq••
do b7 th•••lve1, thPough e<m• internal power ot th.air own.
I
aan Who h•• b•oOlle ·aware ot
IUi•b betwe•n
that
th••• dlatinotiona begin•
Th•
.• '
vbJ.~h
01.11"
W&7
11 riS)lt
and !bl· V&J1
.~
the
W&J
to 41stln·
aooording to nature,
food· in it••lt beoaus• it i• in aooord
with nature and that wb.$.oh 11 rigt:lt and goo4 beoauae it ·bd been
in1tltute4, l•sialat•4 etr ooma111d•d b7
. Th•l'e.tor•. to
IU9lll'i&e,
o~
on the bMili
autborit1ea •
or
the dletinotiona
between that wh1oh 11 ever,t.here th• • _. and that which varios
from place to plao• and trca time to
t.w
and trom tribe t o tribe,
�9
l»oitv•• W.at • • .IM .•••
.
. ..
.
.
.-.
'·:
·
-
-
;e-4• on
Qn•••lt U\4 vb.at one Jl.•u• trcm authoii-
tQI"
'
-
Q..'\ totion• qt
4eo1•i~
>
i;o ••• in11o an4 r-..J.p. :ln
.
,1~ts 'f•f ·~~J~ -- Oll· th• bull
-.~
-
•
b•i1:11 1 bet.'-!~en qur 4'14 ••7 MA 1;~
.
. Qt th••• 4i•t!Ji•tj,on1
th-.
~~1,ll•Yd q4'tiot)
tu
t~.a.
~O. ·~i.~nt;l•t a, ~tl1• t~. 'tbJii1':
!~1J••Qnµ
-.••••ltr,
·ozt
-
ll7
In
·~ol\)V,l\t18'' • -
u'••• ••• ·~ nft · ~Wq iao•1i n••cltul~
bt pt\M'• a:n4 •at 1• ·_
·4o~v•:ntlon.; good ~'''-~'
Oi'\J.O~al
it JI po•it•f• q.t~ - po:l.~t,,.qtl •
tthi~rJ.
Plato•• ll!z!blio, 1n 'th• - great-· debate abCll t th{'!
,,
nature and worth ot
juatioe~
.
ia truly good -arid what tnl.7
C\9epit• peat 411as:r•-•nt1
..
·
in acooaMllo-•vith nature,
oonventiona an41ava tr• thil
point
l&OJ'•
are
ot view
'
...
llhat
•ha• th•
Humu. ooBAuota
evaluated not -in
.
oo~ona .Ol'
ab~·::.
,apeo1.tioa117; :i.a _that
or goQd b7 nature.
.
terma t.t Vheth•r tb•J'
'·
bu, all th• interlooutora
premi•• that the good, Wh•t•v•r it •1 be
whioh ia
Qt •••~• or v~ 1• ,.,11t
tbat ~kno•l•4&• f't thia 11t.ppuaatl7
l•s1•1•'''' b,•.,....
leld down, or
.philosophy.
.
•.
,_. o,.. ,o .b• 'al.1~4 ~wa·o~-·
_
'l'h• 4i•ti.U,.~1Q~ -ll•tvetii 1')1.a.~ ~· - goq4
gQ04 ._J l•lf,
•
.
.-,.t""-'•' t , aq. 1iht qr•• h~, . ~d
nD~1... •t
6
' o_ th• ot-... • · 0•1'taia -JND1
n
up i~to
·
-
.
11
'
-
not 140 di.vine iav, but
are in aooord with, •• agi.in•t, nature;· aln b•o••a
1"'.!:>:~tha th.,-
p~v•ra:t~.
Philo,ophy, b-qma th1• po~t of ,vlfli, beo~,. - ~e •f~ .,~iO\d
ot _ -lwll.4 Pu.l"•ult,. - But . w~t-•v•r 1illare - ~• ~h~loeopb'r'' a clua
all
vhichcan lJaolll4•
•r•l!1$ p~~P•~•••
~lltr• •~f'l' , t~ at-1~~ ~tatora,
or - magea, ot ·pi,J.1o8QpAe,a, ••ii 'llho Ar~ •W~• At tb• 41,at~potion
i
between l\.tQJ'e
and
Q(m\'Jl91\tion, l>ut
.6. L. · Straua•, . ~· o\t. tJ
P•
·*Q ~·v•r ·~ti.c~·n~l.1 ~~t,).eot on
90.
�10 .
·oan
th• rea•ona tor th• oonventiona; tlho tail to under•tand hov it
be natural !or aen to live in aooordano• with oonventiona.
Suoh ..
••n, oall•d aophiata or int•llectuala, abua• th• diatinotlon between
nature and oonventlon ao aa to und•l'min•
undel'mine ord.1D.U"J 4•e•o7.
undepatood 1D thi•
••'1•
a ~,l
oonventloaa, ao u
to
On• peraaaentt••k ot philoaopft7, then,
th• Sooratio va7, I believe, voul4 b• to 4•-
tend · ordlnar7 pre-philoaophio practioal ·w1a4-· h'Gm ~:Qphlatlcal at•
tack'; to pr.par•, it n•o•e••l'J'• a theeretiea1 4•1'•noe e:' ~•t1u~197 4$.;.
o•noy agai]\at 1e:phlaticai aolenti•• .·~theraere, Plate'• 4t.ale8"••
voul4 ••ea to auggeat that vh•r• there 1• 11toorru,pt1on ot the 701UP)l,"
aophiata produce lt, but both aophiat• an4 philoaophera pa7 tor it.
One task ot politloal philoaoph7 then wuld b• W.
edtatt••
philoiaoph7
trait the opprobrium brought upon it bY its 1.aitatora.
II
Ve r•turn to 0\119 thtm•;
ality, hi• having
~~goa,
In hil di•cuaaion
ot
~b••-,o~eotiQD.
~at\ir•
and hia being by
th• •ooial and
between
eOC)DOL- 1!. 0
-.ii'•
:ration-
a political
a~1mal.
preoon41tiona ot polit• ·
lcial 11t.e .&J'ia·totle ret•r• . twioe to tba Oyolope ator7 in
bo~
U.•.o'
Tb• Cfclop• 1toi-y migh~ be thought ot •• Bom•~,••
the : 04>•••1· 7
anticipation ot Karl Marx • .
••11•4 on,
'l'h•noe ••
8J'i•v•4 at heart, and we cam• to
th_ land ot th• C7olopea, an overv•en1ng .c d 1.awl••• .
•
tolk, Vho, trusting in th• illlnortal god.a. plant noth1ns
with their _ an4• nor plough; but all _th••• thing• apring
h
up tor th• without ·~11ing or ploughing, . Wh•at,e.and . ·
barley, and vine.a, 'Whloh bear the rio~ oluater ot wine,
~ the rain ot Zeua g1vea tb . . increase.
Heither ......
bliea ~or oouncil have they, new appointed lava, but tba7
dwell on th• peak• ot lofty m.ountaina 1n hollow oavea;
and. eaah one la lawgiver to .·b1a . ohildren arid hi• vlvea,
.
.
.
7• . fo11tlot.
.
1252
b
22 ..: 23 and 12.S.3
.
.
a .S.
·
�11
u
"'4 ~•J
n~t t;.-.,b~_•
kn.ow~
047•••ua not
a,t;4!)•t • • ~9t~~· - _ I
th._•lv••
(11. 105-11, .. ) .
al.l that yet want• "to go and JU.k• trial ot
tho•• aen, - to l•un 1dlether·th•7 are both inaolent uid wild and
not juat. or 'tihether they love atranger• an.4 -ue go4-.r•u1ng .1n
thought. " -( 11.· 174-76.) 9 - The OJ'olop1, Polnhemu• vaa a . aonatroU.
•an, •who
•h•ph•~d•4
hi• tlooka alone an4 a.tar, and DliDgl•d not
with othqa, but lived apart v1.th hi• heart aet on lawl•5eneaa."
187-89~)
(11.
Odyaa.u1
oave.
-v!t~
twelve ot hia beat OOIU'a4ea
He aupplioatea the
C7ol~p•
en~4ra
th• Oyolopa•
in th• nan• ot Zeua, the go4 ot
atrangera and gue1ta.
h"• _
•mm
so I apoke, e.nd h• atraightv-.,. 11t.ade anaver with pitil••a
b•art: 'A tool a,~ thop, atr~g,r,
pt 0(90
lf-ff.18,
•••ing tbat tbau-bid4eat ae .eltb•r to tear or to
th• 1"-' • P• ~· C,ol~P•• t~• ~o · t~cn~lJl• tos- z.,,.,
Q"
Who beara th• aeg1•, nor of' th• .blea11t.1d goda,, ainoe .
- v•r11~ wi.
b•ti4•r t~ tb91l t ••1"' N'-Ir, ..\ll.d l, ~P '~
the wrath ot Z•ua, · apar• eithe- th•• · .Ill' th7 OOlll"ade••
r
u•
~·~t
•bic>ul4 pld ••·
(~l. 272~7a,)
Sho~tl7 tb•r•~ter.
havlAg.blop-•4
o~~ i:fb,•
w:t.l,•a MY
QtlQl
CJ~lops kill• Ind
••i;•
t!•o
'
oa••
o.-•4••.,
ot OdJf•tnW •
..
-..:t~,,~1
~· ~·• Qle$.f
th&t h• int"14' t~ UQ ~~· ~Ml• ~~ - •11 ~t ~~..,
- <>41.1•a•iw ~~•~v'~
.• :p:J.'° t<a P¥t out
r-..IJlda ot hi• •M q~l ...,. Qµ~
tti, Of~l-,P•' .,~, •::.- 1'}l~1.- . 1-•· ~-~ - I, ~· - J1-•tp,10 ft>,,
A•
.
~ wi,t~
tnt
•f~•' out a.ad. Q~Jl~ to
~av••·
•ll th•
QJ'olqp~
l1ytns .ftt'tifbJ
Th•Y tb,rpng ~\'>out outa149' "~ ~~v' ~ Nf
Vb.ether some
~
t• - k~lliN
~
·bJ
~~~
.·I...
Q79lf»pll
1~ th'~~
'4l"f .•il•
W l'J· f""Q~,
~'
~Pwf
~. ·· !':4 ~~ :.:-:traula:tiontiP,An,taett.. ..1Lof1b;:Olu.._,••1: .td.bJtu,... .
9. _ Inaolent and vlld ••_. 'o ha tlalanoe4 . 96•1nst . lOT1ng .
WUangRa ..... ,qt;::: Jmt .a•:tn•tl b•iN .....,,• ...._ ... t . . . .t. .
10. Coneider Buripides• addition to the atol"'J', C1clo.£!, 11. ~Jl-
43 ,_··582r4. _
·
�12
OctJ'CJe\UI b.aO. tol~ !Wa that hie nam• i• M--., h• repl!•a, '' . .1•n4•,
Hc:iaan i• killing me br guil•tnot by toro~.·
no aan le
4o1~
'l'h•f anawer that it'
7ou violence, p•rhap• it 1• Zeua, ao prq to om
:tather, . Lor4 Po••idon; and then th•7 leav•.
04J•••ut later oon-
trlvea hi• eaoape tr• th• oave.
The uoilOlllio needa ot the C7olopa ue provided tor bJ .the soda.
Co.naequentl7 eocncaiopr•••ur•• do not pl"od th. ., aa pr1ait!v•
u• uauall7 pro44ed,
••n
into ~o~ing larger oa•untti•• tor th• liake .
ot mutual aid, .ooopera.tion and.
uoh~•· ·
Bttoau.aethe7 ·eenever
moved to tora • · l~ger 11001ety, th•J never 4•v•loP IJrt arte or
ora.tta be7on4 the JJinimal •kill• needed ttr a 11tl•pherd 1 a lit•.
live in oavea,
~ot
have no •hip•' .and
'fl167
houau, ·and, HOlller •f•Oitioall'J' -.nttona, they
no ••n
to
•ale• 9h1f~' •o.tmat;
the sea and viait the oitiea ot otb9• folk u
moat. ~ortantl7 b1 never rOl'llling oitl•••
th•J ~t oro••·
oth9r aen
201•!••
'°·
But
ce~ioti•••
p°'itloc.l
they n•ver .davelpp th• utaot .olvili••• cl!•oourae, the uts8 .or
cc.matm.l.oation. 1 ~
Th• C)rel(;pa !a toelecl b7 a man .aJdllet in th• . .
art· ot uaing wor4a ~ . !'lleii' laok of aldll; 01' . uit ·with V.Aa make•
it iapoaeil>le tor .th- to cooperate, . ,o a i 4 their teµov . n hi• .
i
time ot nee4.
Wot .on17
are
tha O)"olopa
tiTated, but deapit• th• t'aot
entire!.7 to
th• · aeda~
~hat
b~utal,llawleaa, tt~4
th•7 owe th•:l.r material p18!1t7
th•1 -ar• imlJioua. and, :lno14enta.11J. ·oonoo1ted.
A.a the Cyolepa•i!a7a _we "pat a• h••• ••.• to th•
t!'Ul.7 we are better
~'Y
uno'11-
tar
~leased,
goda, •lnce
than theJ• 11 (11. 2TS-76.)
11. One ot tM •oat ecmaon .etjaGJ.ocl•• 9t tl\t .JIOJI~ octlllllU?ij.•ation ·
traoee it b&e>k to ~oota . .aalq llUri.at a11&U, ·QM.;.11P1Pi1, • . fS.tJ•
wall. ·
�. 13
In hia GU"JU.ll Ideolog Marx give• •n all too bri•t gl1apa• at
hla . picture ot ~he tinal OODllllW'liat · aoeiet7 1 1'bere not the 01J11Pian.
goda, but machine technolog7 and oomau.nlat ·organization will
~ro•id•
.
-
a•vyman wit~ · all. hi• · •oonc:aio need.a t~Treb7 making poaaib~• ~h•
tinal treedoa, tl-••4oa t'rCllJ the diviaion ot labor~ or d1Yia~on· ot
.
tunotlon,
or
I
~lvia~Ol\
.
ot nature it••lt.
~ttr
It vlll be •poaaibl•
. . to do one thing toda7 and another tcaorrov, to hunt ill
th~
·
.m orning, ti•h in th• atternoont rear oattl• 1n the •Y!ln1ng, oriti.
011• atter dinner, juat aa I
•
ti•~ •• h•rd•••~or
1
.
..
11~•. w~tbout
•••r beo.Un• a hunter,
a.oritio.•12 . Boli.w•.;;Qll
th• oontrQ7,
p••••117• ·uMa 41-.•lpline o:r
eoonomlo neoeaa1t7 .and ~at .1ou· vlll ••t 1• qot a new :hl~ti'l•f ¥-
augs••t•: .Liberat·e .-11 aen troa the
.•au:il7 :t'ult1lled. bre-4 ot ·~· ·but a rao• ot CJo~of,• . In one ot th• ..
many plaoea 'Where he touoh•• on the relation between uonoaio n•c11a•
••
•
"' .
.l
1ity and the 4•velopaent o:t aan•a higher taoultiea, A.ri1tot~• •P•illr•
ot how .t h• polia, the politioal. o.-unlt7,
the
c~i ty
la
.
the
'
com.plat• ommmtt7,
·111 !oh, att•r . th• toll7 all4 the village, haa o•• to tho
'
point ot tull aelt-aut"tloiene,-: Be then aay• : "1nd~ed it baa
\•18' to• th• sake ot lite, ·b ut it
(12s2 b
Jo. >13
~
tor the 1ake of the
f,,• .~
~ood
lite.• ·
·
a••·· ' .
Deuta~ 13ao1011•t a.I.A.I. 1D D" ' Pr\\hacbritt~~,
p.
1, iitijj "'aaoh ·-· ,...
ueh·
lJ. Hom.er•• treataant in tba Cjalopa atar7 ot tht tll.at of
•h••"• on th• ona 9'Ult, ••••ua \ille• •f
aet.1 and! am ol
12. ble
.,.a..r, I9JJ,
•h•
the ait7, on tih• •-••• lbnll. be . oont~aatad •i·~ 1111.t Blb11••l
. a~4&Nnt et C._in u4. Abel • . Ot. •ea11sJ ellap. 4. ci. !aaao
tl,
1
· "Comaenta1'7 on the Bible," ~
v • ~•11.tio 1 Plail••
, ecla • .
· Ralph Lerna.: uid Null•ia _,.1,
•
·· ,
& •
•. ao•'1,
"".O...
· potnte ot 'Yi_,, V• ·t9 _,. t~ S~ riatJ, !£;:": , ·
A - 6 ti. D, .
781 I - 78l A. CB tae la•taP- ••• L•• ••aut4 , L~ll•l&,I' AISJ.12'
~f, "Mod.•r~, Ba1111• ,.,,11., 1968. PP• l.,.~.
. .
�III
Tho•• .,.rk1 ·ot Ariatotl• oall•d logical reoeived that name
beoauae th•y ar•, in general, 4evote4 to th• underatan41.na, th•
di•o1pllne,. ali4.. .taaa ~••tton -ot logo•.14. In th~ tl••t ohapter .
ot
Op
· Int•rpretttlog
: Ariatotle ·upl&!m that;. l) •.itt911 vorda are .
•111bol• ot ••1oecl or apoken vor4•, 2) . apo.ken word• are aJllbola an4
aigna ot exp·e Flqoea,
OJI
pa11lon.1, . ot th• ltoul, . that _1•
peroept~;.i?IU)•
thought• and aenaationa, an4 )} the.experiea.oeaoot the aoul are
liken••••• ot thlqa • . '!'he vor4 .1Jmbol . oc:mea trm .two Greek worcla
. .uiing to throw or to put together.
put together b7 •••
SJllbola are alwa71 made, or
The 1°1rat. thtq .Arlatotl•
not••
about vrittea
and apoken •Jmbola ·11 that they U• not the••• tor · all aen, '6hereaa
the
upe•~•no•• ·~ . h•
t
tor all.
aoul . and the thlngil
~heaa•lvu
are tM · ....
Ve nee4 onl.7 to think ot what h &
ppem ••el"J till• w• uiaAei--
•tand •C!ll»thlngwittan or apolcen 1li a
-~eip
language .
Th~t
• ouncla r•t•rring to· the aaae thil\I• titter trca tribe to tribe or
nation to nation polnta to th• taot tut the 1oun4a Ao not ot th•- .
o ~lvea
aign1f'7, or r•.t•r to, the 9.ZPerl•no•• ancl thins•. theJ' are • t 1D11
ot, that 11. the7 ar• not aignitiout, or aeaningtul, b7 nature,
th•7 are aignitloantb7 &1r!8••nt, b7 OC111Paot, 1>'1 convention.
'
Oon•
iu
ft•t..ln ..t. . .1. l'll••-tiM&it, tMIR• ··. ·~· -u.U. ..... '·I t!.).-.·
, ....
·
.
f:Jt-.. .ttiui..W•dlJ' ••••l-.9t1...•he li.Uio·
teria and the
~ ~ Altuab1~ ~l!t
.
:·
1
.
·:
~-
•. ·.
·~
·
~t~· u4 4••a•t baok iilto . $~ Platon1o ea-y-. ar•. t• l>• ._.,
Mt. ..
. :.
l
afloonoa
•@••••ting ·t• •ll•a1-t.1''f • • •· ,ef; ·-~• ·91MfR&: tM· ..~•1'1'1 · W '·U4M'·• ·
.. .
by . ~an• or . the Cat!S!1'1~1• . On .
1..i~
.
... ~~·(Cl lllf.
~
ietlc 3tK~ ona~i.i\4
cloa to tiu. . l!•tj.g • . - ~
·
.,.
P. BOgg•••, .
ara i ..and · •
etQric 1 tu., Ca'ta,•v.'fit.t.., l' Pbzt!B- .
!•1•, Vol. xv, 110. 1, 1970, pp. 86-90.
al•o ThOlnaa AQ.uinia,::sem'iire:q on the Poaterior Anal ztioa o.t Al'itcotle, Magi Boolca, Albm7,
1970'; orevord, pp. ·1-3.
·
, itm1•!-JiiJ' .· ·
!
••=:: ., - .,,Prw. ·.·.:tm:.
'
!l'ofiio• .
·S••.
�1$
trarivtee, · th• .xi:»•rienoea ot the soul, th• peroeptiona, though.ta
and sensationa are .the aale tor all md do not depend upon human
agreement tor th•ir ·aeanlng; · the7 reter to Whitt · they signitJ' b'f
tha.aelvea,not tbro\18h th• ••41at1on o:t anTth1n8 else; thtt7 ar•
.
.
1~
a1gsd:t1oant, or ••anlngt\11, b7 nature • . .
Let uw anal7•• the
ap~k•n a~ol
material ot th• •Jabol i• yoioed
aore olo••lf.
aoun~, . whioh ia
.
b7 au.
The medium or
produoed natuiaall7
.
Th• peeuliu . o-'tination, o'l'ganisa~ion and ·to'.1"lat1oa o:t
·the · voioed aound.• ·ao ·
a•
.
~
'
to aignifJ' tbt• 'xpe:tiaoe, ·:.tald118 ·th,a• ~
particular aQUDd.a to •1pitf · that , patloular experience, · th• :tom!ng . ·
ot th.• aaterial of th• •Jmbol depend• . upon human inatitution, vp':;,n
oonvent~on.
"°''
· .Other 1oun4a 'ould. clo aa : v,1~, but o~qe the aoun48 tor
a pu-tioular oonoeptiqn
beo~a
.'aett1•4 it
ar• •sr••d
onoe th• deciaio.ri i•
a a1atak• to ua• tho•• aounda. another wq, to .
point to acil!llething el••• . Unli~•
.
.
"'oana
ot th• aiok. ao?'•ma ot
t.n-o• .~ laUght••, •P••oh ·aoa4. at-.U• th•~ aign1t1oat1on through
·
.
. .
.
.
'
..
'
' ·' .r. '
. ..
: :-
. ::
ct &l•totlli
·'ftMau
t!·tS. II, •.pp. 23-29. ·.; ftt•9~•t!jtp· it h~• An4 ~~t·~~~~··•.
Ol'.Jetu• . liQICI
; ·eM!llS?.·bl
iaon
'!he vor4 ·~~ol •• ua•4
~
t~A
41'7~
7.i«r~e'Urr,-
tett with it• ult!Jaa-• reraren~ and•ratood aa naturall7 ~1v•n ahoUld
be diatinguiahe4 · t'r• th• "od•rJ> aatheaatiof.1 •1l'~ol lob Ot\o m•~1! .
.
.
i• 4~t•Jlllin•4 P•lll&11i17 by •ho•e •ul•• or aetbo4 governing th• •
olgenerating 1ntell1gen ce ~ a elf and th• a7at91Jatiq 00'1-t~ o-r •J11L Qi.t1l thin 'llldoh U7 PU'tiollial' •Jllbol 00011Pa. ISH Jacob Klein, ~1'
Hath!!!atioal ThorJJ¥4~ t~lGi! ot~~·~t-• M.i.T.
iap.,Clia\)t'D' 9.1
• ;i
T ,W, ,lia • 12, · A and 8, pp. l !
J178, 192·211. · Por Vieta 'l'h• lett•r •tsn deaip~t•• the ~tent~OJV' l
obj•ot ot a
iate~\ion• ••• , n ...17 ot a concept Which it••li
· direotl,- inte!lCla another Cl'9no•ft and. no.t •
1l~J b•W•" 'l'h4t
ret•Jtent
th• lett•• alil'f o 'the •Jllbol in ita merel'j"JIB'••ible
· 4•'b•nalnat-en•11•, · ia aooord•4 a oert•in ,i~ep~clenoe vb.lop J>•~t .. ·
i • to be the ·aub j•o• et 'ca1ou.lat1on.al' dperation•." The•• aJmbol:to
·t:oaatlon• t.J!•, t~---• itq.th th• &14 af... 1l1la'. w••1n•t!•n bf : tbt :tr:;:""1~ol.
goaora•1D8 int•13 tgenoe aa .. dir.aet.1 7 .. .Ppr•henaibl• .b eingi "whose merelJ
~otential - ob3aottvit7. l• . nderat.ood..aa · an llOt'q41 ob.j~o.tivltJ. "· ~•ip, .
u
lbl4. 174-75, . 20f-08J; . Th• .Val' 1• open•d .. tor a spbol-g•n•ratin_s. ln~ . ,
'titrigeno• which in a ·~·~ 'Preacrib•• to natv• ita .Q>o~•~J,e/ l,va t.
in order to 41aoo•er lava Which voul.4 never be . given" to th• h1D1.ttn
"
under• tanding by nature 1 ta •lt •. ·
o'
••••eacl
;e' .
Pr••••
t;sn
�16
The illpulae to f'Ol'9l
hu,.p 1?l4·tit\.•tlon,
anJ
to •hue 8peeoh
ari••• natui-aUy among aen wherever the7 a.r• tound to
~Jmbola
exi~ t.
'l'h111
natural illpul•• to 4•v•lop thWl J.hat.ru.a't:ali't t.n that allow tor the
COllalUDio.at1Qn and.
ahu~~
ia perhapa the moat
~•ing
ot thougbte and t••l1Dga, et experlenoe,
4•~1•iv•
ot thoao ph•n01aen4L that :point to man• e;
We have returned to
b7 nature a aooial an4 pol1t1oal animal.
th• th•• w'lth 11b.loh •• began.
'11111• natural impul•• coupled with .
th• deair• -tor mutual uncleratanding• &lil()ng other thing•,
poi~•
to
th• enda or tUnotiona ot the 11peeoh 1)11bol: living togethe:P, l•arning ·togethe:P an4 -.utual under•tanding.
In aua, tbr•• ot the tour
oaua•• aooounti.ng tor th• 1119bol are natural, th•7 ue th• matvial
oauae, vooal aoundJ the ettioient cau••• the iapulae; and th• ttnal
Th• to....i, er organ-
oau1e, th• and, . living and leal"nlng to1•ther.
ising, oauaa whioh give• each •Jabol 1ta 41•tillotiv•
a·ign ia conventional.
c~aoter
a.a a
To generalize: aan i a req,uir•d b7 natur•, b7
h1a natur• a.a a thoughtful, apeald.ng an4 poli tloal an1lnal to · tol'a
oonventiona, th• ao•t iaportant ot v:hi.ob are -tho•• conventiona
tha• 4••lgnate 081't-lu 4etin1t• oClfbUiatto•• 1i •o1Pl4• •• r•r»e1911.ta·ttv• or a1p1titant
-.r
~•i-t•1n
4•tln1t• aot;iou ot th• atn4.
u.tur• 1• ao _oODit1t"t•a u to
r•q~• th•
t•~
kin4 ot Qal:y.•1•
it• tulttll»ept. · Th•
·~
Huaan
to.--.tto11 ·ot •oa•a11ou ·
poiii~ina
to t}J.e ua4
t• -the ooopeJ:1"atio11 ·at na~ve and •DllYWlltotL' a~pt b• aae4 •to 01. .1.f )' ·
.Vi1totl•'• view ot t~• · J?P\ll• ot the po;\it.lo.t.l. o~lt7, 1.t••li'.
HatuJ-• proYid•• th.• a.;.terialt the •••• 11atuall7 Utteienti•t•cl in .
their oapa.o1t1ea to .ta.ltill the1r o• . ~4 eao)i
alao provide• th• •tt1o1•iit 0&\18•,
·vtth1n th•
m~;
to•
otb•»-~" n••d1;
pol~tioal
au4 th• ttnal o•ua•; tht g&od
natna•
ud •ooi~l 11QlJJ.1·t ~:
l~t•,
the lit•
•Q~o:rding
to natur•• 'l'h• toraal 0&1Ml8, howevel', tbe lava and SOV0Dlll81lt-1, inati ...
�tuttan._
whi•,._
17
~ailg••
organise and o:r:d,•r t h• •en towarda th• •4
1.1"•
.aupp11e4 by ut, · th• l•si•lato:P 1 • art, and convention. · Thia, h0wever,
•• au.l'
earli•r ' diaouaaion qt 41atrlbutiv• ' juatio• •howa,
4•.., enough • .· Po• law• ue aa4• by and
U G
4o•• not go
»•tlactiona of\legialator1 .
lele, OP 'llhat kliul .er aen, ue to b• l•gi•latta•• ant\ gOT•~nc~• 1• ·
4•t..-in•~
b7 tha ..... lund.. .antal OIMler
o~ dtaurlbuti~•
B•o• flk• aabigultr ot
l)elltJ', or r•.s.....
1hap•1 th• ap1n101U1, laalt•t• and
••~nta
11
juat loe, th•
leg1elatoi-". to-. h• who
-.
wioh the OIHl•r ot
•••per
•.PAD4a 1• a l•ai•lator in a
••n••· The
aort tun4•111Dtal. . t1oa •t th• polltleall o• a entt.,,, •o th• extent that
Alotl"ibutive
ju•~le•
ba•·•
.
'
.
it
4•t.S.Uit• f"9 aa• 11 not all.. .• 4 ••1•17 ~7 otr•uaat~oea, t 1
4erlvat1v• hi• av.oh a l•ai1latiY• ut, aa a.rt vllloh it aight h~ said
11 111.S .alatiYe prtau-111 over loso!.16
Let ua try to b• aor• preoiae a.bou.t th• oha:aoter ot tho11e .ex•
peiencee or pa11ion1 ot th• 1oul•. wbioh · aooording to th• pa••-.•
have been analysing. are lik•n••••• and thereb,. natural aigna . o·t
Wo
are .t alking ab cut what V• ar• aotualizing. what
wo underata.ncl .. ancl do not ••rely h•a.r,
. expertanc••
or the
wh.~;1..t
we
·~- ,. .
· t~
und-~atan4; . when .
ac:aeone .1s •"7in8• The ..
•oul; J.r111totl• ••,.., f):r e the . . . . tor .a ll • . It v e
are oo:rreot .in · the ueumption . that un4erl1ea moat ot our pral\tioa1 · .
0
d 1&cour••· that When •• talk to eaoh other we are .talking about, or
•Ul•
intending to talk abo11t. th•
thing1, there muat be something
a.bout thing• whioh can be the same tor all men, that 1•. according t o
.
.
.
--~'Xr&~.---0P-o~n-.~1~a-er, tor ~~)G What oone.titutea the unity
'. .
~·in Plato' 1 Re l:tlio, '
b d. We are ignoring
illitinotion between o 01 · and !lthoa. S•• Le.urenoe Bern11,
415
ot tho
her" tbe
.
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Berns, Laurence, 1928-
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Rational animal - political animal: nature and convention in human speech and politics
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SPECUIATIONS ON LIBERAL AND ILLIBERAL POLITICS
BY
Laurence Berns
A revised version of a lecture delivered at
St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
May 24, 1968
Now he [Socrates] was not eager for his companions to
become able speakers, able men of affairs and able contrivers,
but before these things he considered it to be necessary for
them to acquire moderation. For he believed that those who
are capable of these things without being moderate are both
more unjust and more able to work harm. First, indeed, he
tried to make his companions more moderate about gods.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV. 3.
�Speculations on Liberal and Illiberal Politics*
by Laurence Berns**
We live during a time of vast and rapidly moving social, political
and economic changes.
This most obvious fact seems to shape the back-
ground and foreground of almost all academic political discussion today.
To enable us to become well-informed about this most complex of societies
new techniques of sununarizing, condensing, tabulating and distributing
information have been developed.
Corresponding habits of rapid reading and
machine-like memorization, reading with a minimum of reflective thought,
seem to be appropriate for the imbibing of much of this material.
These changes, changes in the conditions of political and social
life, are, for the most part, consequences of progress in the medical and
technological sciences.
They confront us with apparently unprecedented
practical problems, increasingly complicated interdependence, relative
affluence and overpopulation, the control of nuclear weapons, to mention
only a few.
causes.
However, a distinction may be drawn between conditions and
The conditions delimit the range of alternatives possible for
human action.
The primary causes decide which alternatives are chosen.
They constitute what is called human nature.
It is in no way evident that
human nature, in the decisive respects, has changed as have the external
conditions of political and social life.
Among the causes which account for human behaviour are reasons, and
Bcise<l on a le(;CW..:: delivered at St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland,
May 24, 1968.
** Tutor, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland; Ph.D.,The University of
Chicago, 1957.
-t
�even those causes which are not reasons, like appetites, passions, and
desires, are rarely unmixed with reasons.
Reasons can be right or·wrong,
more or less right or wrong, true and false, etc.
Human behaviour cannot
be understood adequately without understanding the adequacy or inadequacy
of the cognitions guiding, or accompanying, the behaviour, the prejudices,
or opinions, false or true, or the knowledge guiding the behaviour.
An
adequate social science then, one capable of distinguishing between knowlege, opinion, and prejudice, would have to be a philosophic social science.
The study of human nature, of the persistent causes of human behaviour, has more to do with meditation and reflection than it has with
technique and technology.
One learns about it from those, regardless of
when they lived, or live, who are most of all masters of reflection and
meditation.
It may well be that, along with misguided scientism, the
habits of study and thought, formed in pursuit of solutions to our most
urgent problems tend to make the reflections of those writers from whom
illumination is most needed less and less accessible.
sobriety is easily lost.
Freedom without
This attempt to articulate certain sobering re-
flections, that once were much more the common property of educated men
than they are today, is undertaken with some sense of urgency.
Such re-
flections could never be brought to light by any technique cir manipulatory
skill, however sophisticated.
The aim of this paper is to arrive at an adequate notion of what it
means
to
be liberal.
It is divided into five, sometimes overlapping parts:
1. Classical Liberalism, 2. Historicist Liberalism, 3. The Radicality of
Classical Liberalism, 4. The Conservatism of Classical Liberalism,
Liberalism.
s.
American
�3
CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
By classical liberalism we do not refer to the doctrines associated
with Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, laissez-faire economics and what
historians frequently call individualism.
liberal as it is used in classical Greek.
1
We refer rather to the word
The liberal, the
e~E.U IJ{fU) $
(eleutherios), belulvwa like a free man in contradistinction to a slave • .
But true slavishness is baseness, being enslaved by the baser parts of one's
nature.
The liberal man is liberated from control by the baser side of his
nature: he is free from the love of money, free from domination by bodily
desires and from domination by fear.
He is free from vulgarity.
Freedom
from, however, is not enough, and one of the Greek words for vulgarity points
to what the liberal man has been liberated for:
that word is
'
\
C(1t£'f" I<. «.1. <./ ci(
(apeirokalia), literally, lack of experience with nobility, with beauty,
lack of experience with things noble. The liberal man does what he does for
the sake of the noble.
a devotee of the Muses.
He is a cultivated man, a liberally educated man,
2
1. On the grounds of modern, as distinct from classical, liberalism, see Laurence
Berns, "Thomas Hobbes", in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss
and Joseph Cropsey,Rand McNally, 1963,pp.359-63. Cf. ibid.,Warren Winiarski,
"Niccolo Machiavelli",pp.273-75; Stanley Rosen, "Benedict Spinoza", p.417;
Robert A. Goldwin, "John Locke" ,pp.453-64; and esp. Leo Strauss, Natural
Right and History,u. of Chicago, 1953,pp.181-2.
2. Cf. Plato, Republic,403 C; Xenophon, Memorabilia,bk.4,ch.5; Oeconomicus,
1,17-23; Aristotle, !!.• Ethics,1099 a 11-20; Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient
and Modern,Basic Books, 1968, chs. 1 and 2.
�4
What has all this to do with politics?
The cultivated men, for
Aristotle at least, are not what one would call ae$thetes, they form a
definite political class.
of. virtue.
They are not non-partisan, they ai:e partisans
They are united not by
common social origins or common eco-
nornic situation, but by their common goal, the love and pursuit of excellence,
of virtue.
They look forward to a political order that encourages and
fosters this love and this pursuit.
HISTORICIST LIBERALISM
This characterization might be accepted by many who call themselves
liberals today, but only as partial descriptions of themselves.
For the word
as it is most often used today points not so much, or so directly, to the
noble and the base, and therefore implicitly to the good and the bad, as it
does to another set of distinctions.
to conservative, or reactionary.
Liberal is, of course, generally opposed
We frequently speak of men and proposals as
progressive or reactionary, assuming automatically that to try to go back to
some older way or older idea is bad and to move towards the new is good, or
that "forward looking" is good and "backward looking" bad.
The conservative
is thought of as incapable of appreciating changed conditions and the need for
corresponding political, social and economic changes.
It is as if the distinction
between progressive and reactionary were to replace the distinction between
good and bad.
But the term progress, of course, implies not only change, but
change for the better, the term reaction, as it is used in politics, usually
means change for the worse.
These terms often suggest that the issue of good-
ness or badness has been prejudged or is trivial, the decisive consideration
is the attitude towards change.
The new distinctions are time-
~T hi~tory-
�5
oriented.
The power of the historicist assumptions underlying them, at
least in the .intellectual community, can hardly be exaggerated.
almost all of our discourse about practical politics.
them is usually taken as a sign of lack of cultivation.
They pervade
Not to respond to
The inadequacy of
an approach that identifies rightness with change and wrongness with opposition
to change would seem to be obvious as soon as it is made explicit.
Its
persistence, however, is a sign that perhaps some more serious concern or
issue underlies it, or is reflected in it.
that more serious issue later.
We shall address ourselves to
3
The classical liberal, if not every reasonable man, wants to conserve
what is good and to eliminate what is bad, to promote change for the better
and to prevent change for the worse.
He will be conservative, progressive,
and even reactionary (in the sense of going back to an older policy), according
to what is called for by the circumstances.
From this perspective the simple
opposition between liberal and conservative makes little sense.
To take another approach to this problem, Book Five of Aristotle's
Politics is frequently called the book on revolutions.
But somehow the word
revolution is too fancy for what Aristotle describes.
The word rebellion, the
word used in the Constitution of the United States, is probably closer to
Aristotle's meaning.
Rebellion is old-fashioned, common-sensical and personal.
Revolution is more scientific, impersonal necessity is suggested.
The term is
a scientific term in mathematics, physics, and astronomy: a sphere is generated
by tj_ie revolution of a semi-circle about its diameter; Copernicus writes about
the revolutions of the celestial spheres, the revolutions of inanimate bodies.
3. See below, p.20.
�6
The word rebel is usually associated with the image of a man who strikes out
against the government, the word revolutionary with an intellectual fighting
for an elaborately articulated cause.
Aristotle in Book Five was, one might
say, concerned primarily with rebellions, those political controversies and
conflicts of beliefs and opinions, those conflicts about justice, which arise,
so to speak, naturally between political men, that is, from the consideration
of political and personal issues alone without any explicit or direct intervention of theory or science.
When appeal to higher authority is made in non-
philosophical, non-theoretical, political life, it is usually to the gods or
God generally accepted by the religious conununity of the country.
Aristotle
articulates political arguments in a political spirit, and, as far as I know,
only in his Politics introduces oaths to Zeus into his arguments.
4
The notion
4. 1281 a 17 and 1281 b 19. Cf. Abraham Lincoln, To the Voters of the Seventh
Congressional District, July 31, 1846.
Fellow Citizens:
A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods
of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity,
I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in
this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true;
but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never
spoken with intentional disrepect of religion in general or of any
denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life
I was inclined to believe in what I understand ts called the "Doctrine
ef Necessity"-- that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or
held in rest by some power,over·which the mind itself has no control;
and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried
to maintaift this opinion in argument-- the habit of arguing thus however,
I have, entirely left off for IN:>re than five years-- And I add here, I
have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the
Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly
stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office,
whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at religion.--Leaving
the higher matter of eternal consquences between him and his Maker, I
still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and
injure the IN:>rals, of the community in which he may live.--If, then, I
was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me
for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a
�7
of revolution is usually tied in, not with popular religion, but with
what has come to be called ideology.
Ideologies have been called, not
inappropriately, secular political religions.
In the post-Kantian
development the distinction between progressive and reactionary usually
plays a role, because the ultimate appeal of these ideologies is to
.
a theory, or an alleged science, of history.
Revolution rather than
rebellion seems more appropriate to a modern technological society, a
scientific society, an enlightened society.
The movement called Enlightenment could be considered as the attempt
to replace revealed religion by popularized philosophy.
The two most
outstanding characteristics of ideologies, at the risk of further oversimplification, are: 1) as regards their theoretical foundations, history
replaces nature as the standard of right and wrong and good and
2) popularized philosophy replaces revealed religion.
bad~
and
One way to under-
stand the origins, if not the rationale, of our IOC>dern theories of history
might be to see them as attempts to surIOC>unt the difficulties consequent
upon the radical separation by Kant of thought about freedom from thought
about nature, of the IOC>ral realm from the natural.
Theoretical history
aims, so to speak, at bringing the two realms back together again and at
relating them within a doctrine of the whole of human life.
5
charge in circulation against me.
Cf. also Winston s. Churchill, letter to Lady Randolph, 14 January 1897,
in Winston~ Churchill, by Randolph s. Churchill, Companion Volume.!_,~~'
1899-1900, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1967, pp. 724-25
5. "ldee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbuergerlicher Absic1rt.•
"Kants Werke, Akademie - Textausgabe, B. viii, pp. 15-32. "Idea for a
Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View." in I<ant, 2E_ History,
ed. Lewis Beck, Library of Liberal Arts, pp. 11-26
�8
The more general problem behind all this would seem to be the difficulty
for a science of human nature based on modern mathematical natural science
to account for morality and science.
6
A passage from Kant's "Conjectural Beginning of Human History" may
serve to illustrate the spirit of the Enlightenment.
Kant presents his
account in that work in the form of a commentary on the book of Genesis,
chapters two to six.
at every point
to
He invites his reader to consult the Biblical text
see whether the way that philosophy takes coincides
with that of Holy Writ.
Towards the middle of the piece he speaks about
how man became aware of how nature has raised him above community with
animals.
"The first time he ever said to the sheep, 'nature has given
you the skin you wear for my use, not for yours'; the first time he ever
took that skin and put it upon himself (3:21) - that time he became aware
of the way in which his nature privileged and raised him above all animals."
He refers to, but does not quote, Genesis 3:21, which reads, "Unto Adam
and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin, and clothed them."
What the Bible attributes to the action of God, Kant's philosophic conjectures about history have man do for himself.
Ideology is supposed to incorporate Enlightenment within itself.
Enlightenment looks forward to a vast expansiop of man's power to control
his own destiny, a vast expansion of human ambition.
relation between ideology and ambition.
Let us consider the
The Chorus in Oedipus declares,
"I pray that god may never abolish the eager ambition (the rivalry), that
keeps the city noble."
6.
Ambition is a subtle passion:
it can drive a
"Muthmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte';ibid., pp. 107-23
cit., pp. 53-68.
Sophoclei;-necrrpus Tyrannus, 11. 880-81.
Trans.,~
7.
7
�9
hardy soul like Macbeth
to
raging tyranny and, on the other hand, as
Sophocles's Chorus says, keep a city noble.
The craving for glory,
for honor, is a selfish passion, yet a passion that attains its objects
most readily through public service.
A public man might think that he
loves the people because they are loveable, but he also might think
that he loves them because they have the power to bestow what he really
loves more, fame, honor, or glory.
Ideology and the philosophy of
history tend to focus the attention of the educable away from the analysis
of the lives and the souls of individual men.
Nations, social,
political, or economic classes, "cultures," societies, trends and
movements become the individuals concentrated on.
Such concentration
makes it easier for political men to disguise their own personal ambition from themselves.
How much demagoguery and political fanaticism
might be prevented, if the politically aspiring, or their educators,
were once again to be educated by those classical authors who made it
their business to try to train political men to appreciate the subtlety
of their own ambition, to train them to master their master passion?
8
It might be instructive in this connection to compare Jack Cade,
the rebel, as Shakespeare presents him in the second part of Henry the
Sixth, with the revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler.
Cade,
one might say, is the demagogue according to nature, Lenin and Hitler
ideological demagogues.
Cade is stubborn, courageous, enduring and clever.
Secretly set on by the Duke of York, with pretensions to the royal title
of Lord Mortimer, whom he resembles, he leads his Kentish rebels into
the heart of London and almost wins the city.
He seems most of all to
want the title Lord, and is ready to grant a Lordship to the first man
8. Cf. Xenophon, Meioorabilia, bk. 3, chs. 6 and 7; bk. 4, chs. 2 and 3;
bk. 1, ch. 2.
�10
who addresses him as Your Lordship.
9
He promises his followers that
"all things shall be in conmen," money will be abolished, the price of
bread will be lowered by two-thirds, and that he will destroy their
enemies, that is all scholars, lawyers, courtiers and gentlemen.
10
In
this connection it is interesting to note that the late Senator Joseph
McCarthy was relatively successful so long as he confined his attacks
to government officials, lawyers and academics.
He began to lose his
following and to consolidate his opposition when he became so reckless
as to extend his attacks to the military and to the clergy.
Cade has
no way of fulfilling the first promises, but enemies, or material for
erunity, is always available.
Henry the Sixth's Treasurer, Lord Say,
for executing policies he did not initiate or even approve, has become
a particular object of popular hatred.
Besides, Cade charges,
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in
erecting a grammar school: and whereas, before, our forefathers
had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused
printing to be used, and, contrary to the King his crown and dignity,
thou hast built a paper mill. It will be proven to thy face that
thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb
and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.
Thou hast appointed justices of peace, to call poor men before
them about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou
hast put them in prison; and because they could not read, thou
hast hanged them; when, indeed, only for that cause they have
been most worthy to live.
Say denies the specific charges and goes on:
Justice with favor have I always done;
Pray'rs and tears have noved me, gifts could never.
When have I aught exacted at your hands
But to maintain the King, the realm, and you?
Large gifts have I bestowed on learned clerks,
Because my book preferred me to the King;
And, seeing ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven,
Unless you be possessed with devilish spirits,
You cannot but forbear to murder me.
This tongue hath parleyed unto foreign kings
For your behoof.
9. Henry the
Sixth,~~'
10. Op. cit., 4.4.39.
4.7.4-5
�11
Cade replies, "Tut, when struckst thou one blow in the field?"
He orders him to be beheaded.
Say speaks again:
Tell me wherein have I off ended most?
Have I affected wealth or honor?
Speak.
Are my chests filled with extorted gold?
Is my apparel sumptuous to behold?
Whom have I injured that ye seek my death?
These hands are free from guiltless bloodshedding,
This breast from harboring foul deceitful thoughts.
Oh, let me live!" (11)
Cade is Ioc>ved by these words, but bridles the remorse that he, but not
apparently his followers, feels at Say's words; and sensible that for
.
.
.
most men the most potent mark of authority is t h e power o f execution, 12
has Say put to death.
However, shortly thereafter, confronted by the
force of the old and clever Baron Clifford who wins away his followers
by granting them pardons, invoking the name of their hero, Henry the Fifth,
and appealing to their patriotic hatred of the French, Cade is forced
to flee for his own life; not, however, before he observes, "Was ever
feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?"
Where the
scientific ideologist sees masses moved by necessary and scientifically
determinable reactions to objective deprivations, Jack Cade sees a flighty
multitude, ready
to
follow the man most skillful at arousing and shaping
their expectations, at transforming their notions and feelings about what
is tolerable and intolerable, just and unjust. He knows that the same men
in the same conditions may be led to endure, or may be led to rebel -
and sometimes by being made to expect by right what no one can ever provide
them.
His impressive final scene, the scene of his death, begins with the
line, "Fie on ambitions."
11. 4.7.32-46, 69-82, 101-08.
12. Consider the implications for the question
of capital punishment
�12
For all his villainy, Cade can still feel remorse and he is aware
of his own ambition:
he wants to lord it over other men.
His counter-
part, the ideological demagogue, learns from a science, or pseudo-science,
of history to identify the
ultima~e
good with the practical and necessary
success, the "historical" goals of his revolution.
I quote from Lenin,
"The great world-wide historic service of Marx and Engels lies in the
fact that they proved by scientific analysis the inevitability of the
downfall of capitalism and its transition to communism under which there
will be no more exploitation of man by man."
13
This seems to be some kind
of corruption of what in Kant's religious philosophy and speculations on
history is called rational faith, i.e., what, in the absence of knowledge,
we are obliged by reason to believe, in order to strengthen our capacity
to act in accordance with the moral law.
It is not too difficult for a
man to be misled by a doctrine, which successfully propagated would place
him in a position of highest authority.
The ideological demagogue consci-
entiously disciplines himself to stifle and discount any remorse or scruple
that might impede success.
Since for him moralities are all products of
history, whatever scruples he might feel can be dismissed as discardable
vestiges from a discredited past.
ance.
He identifies his opposition with ignor-
He learns, apparently, to forget about himself.
ambition from himself.
He disguises his
He seems to combine worst parts of
intellectual,
demagogue, and religious fanatic.
Men like Cade and men like Lenin and Hitler, share in common the
natural qualities of the talented and dangerous demagogue.
What distinguishes
the ideological demagogues, we suggest, is the fanatic intellectuality they
add to the character.
13.
2!!.!:!!!. Theory
Lenin was the author of a philosophic book like
of Marxism, International Publishers, New York, (1948).
(cont. on foilowing page)
�13
Materialism and Emperio-Criticisrn.
On Contradiction.
Mao Tse-Tung is the author of
Hitler could say, "It's against my own inclinations
that I devote myself to politics....
philosophy.
I'd have chosen the arts or
1114
New communications technology and the tastelessness of the news
industry have made it all too easy for too many to be seduced and carried
away by their desires for fame and notoriety.
The craving for distinction, however, takes on many forms.
Between
mere exhibitionism and the craving to be distinguished for ex- ellence alone,
c
but certainly closer to the latter, is the hero.
There is much in modern
life, not to speak of any life, antithetical to heroism.
Aspirations for
some form of heroic nobility would seem to be behind much of the political
and moral rebellion of our times.
Some, alarmed by what corrupted and
perverted heroism can lead to, recormnend the elimination of heroic
ation from the world altogether.
~spir-
If heroic aspiration, expressed in some
form or another, is ineradicably rooted in human nature, and if nature can
be fulfilled, corrupted, or perverted, but not eliminated, the only course
left would seem to be to direct one's efforts towards the cultivation of
taste for, and understanding of, authentic heroism. Merely debunking is
hardly sufficient:
again the balance of classical liberalism shows itself
in its ability to articulate together both the nobility and limits of the
Cf. Karl Loewith, Heidegger, Denker in duerft1ger Zeit, Goettingen. 1960.
chs. 2 and 4; Stanley Rosen, "Philosophy and Ideology: Reflections on
Heidegger," Social Research, Summer, 1968. The common ground, from our
point of view, of these doctrines can be seen in Hegel's remark: 11 For WorldHistory moves itself on a higher ground than that on which morality has its
proper station •••• " "Denn die Weltgeschichte bewegt sich auf einem hoehern
Boden, als der ist, auf dem die Moralitaet ihre eigentuemliche Staette hat, ••• "
Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Geschichte, Einleitung.
14. Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1944, Signet Books, p. 252
�14
hero.
There may be no better way to begin this refinement of taste
than by studying Shakespeare and The Iliad and The Odyssey and by
trying to understand the differences between Coriolanus, Brutus, Henry
v,
and Prospero; between Achilles, Agamemnon_ and Odysseus.
THE RADICALITY OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his letter to fellow clergymen
from the Birminghan Jail, refers to Thomas Aquinas's "T.reatise on Law, 1115
in order to justify his advocacy of disobedience for segregation laws.
An unjust law, Thomas cites Augustine, seems to be no law at all.
Every
human law is binding as law only in so far as it is derived from the natural
law, the law of reason.
To the extent to which it deviates from the
law it is a perversion of law.
n~tural
The right to rebellion enunciated by Thomas
is based on the distinction between human law and natural law which is in
turn an interpretation of Aristotle's distinction between natural justice,
'
'
(' I
or natural right, TO fUtrlt<OV olK.d..lOl
or conventional justice,
(to physikon dikaion) , and legal
TO TOi'ot l K ~ V l/i<f!f..toi '(to
noI!Ukon dikaion).
16
The
highest law, higher than any law promulgated by a political legislator,
is the law of living reason.
In Question 96, article 4, Thomas qualifies
the right to rebellion, as the Declaration of Independence does, by pointing
out that the possession of a. right does not automatically license the possessor
to exercise the right.
Whether a right ought to be exercised or not depends
upon the given circumstances of the situation.
If it is likely that the
evils attendant upon the exercise of a right would outweigh evils justly
complained of, for the sake of avoiding the greater evil the just man yields
his right.
In the exercise of his rights too, man is responsible for the
15. Summa Theologica, I-II Q. 95, A. 2
16. ~· Ethics,
s. 7,
1134 b 18 ,.. U35 a 15
�15
foreseeable consequences of his actions.
The right to rebellion as
found in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, the Declaration of Independence,
Lincoln and others serves as a reminder that no government of men is as
important as are the moral principles of good government.
The beautiful
balance of Thoma.s's position can be seen in a passage where, pointing
out that rebellion is always a serious matter for conscience, he quotes
the Apostle Paul's Letter to the Romans:
"All human power is from God;
Therefore, he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God."
But in the middle of his quote st. Thomas adds the decisive liberal
qualification, "in matters that are within its scope."
The quote then
with Thoma.s's addition reads, "All human power is from God:
Therefore
he that resisteth the power, 'in matters that are within its scope,'
resisteth the ordinance of God.' ;,l 7
Why reasonable radicali ty must be
accompanied by reasonable conservatism can be seen by considering the
fact that he who speculates about the principles justifying all government
is in that very act speculating about principles which could justify the
alteration or abolition of any government that does not measure up to
those principles.
THE CONSERVATISM OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
Why is government, why are human laws, laws which compel obedience
through fear of punishment, thought to be necessary?
Why is the natural
law, which appeals to reason alone, not sufficient?
Federalist fifty-one
notes, "what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on
human nature?
If men were angels no government would be necessary.
If
17. Q. 96, A. 4, ad 1. Cf. John Calvin, Commentary ~ the Epistle ~ the
Romans, ch. 13, secs. 1-4; Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. 4,
ch. 2o, esp. secs. 16ff. Cf. John Locke, ~Paraphrase and Notes ~ the
Epistles of St. Paul •••• Cf. note p on Romans, 13:1, with the end of
oaragraph 2 of Locke's introduction to this section, and cp. the latter
�16
angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
Men who are primarily devoted to learning and to teaching, concentrating on the strengthening and development of their rational powers, are
prone to exaggerate the part reason plays in the lives of most men, men
not so concentrated and so dedicated.
Although it leads to some squandering
of forces, as a practical rule of thumb in the profession of learning and
teaching, if one is likely to err, it is better to err on the side of overestimating rational capacities.
In politics, however, this generous, and
in that sense liberal, tendency can lead to consequences far worse than
mere ineffectiveness.
Those who expect too much from reason are bound to
be frustrated; then, like disappointed lovers, overcome by a despair that
can easily turn to contempt and hate, they are liable to begin to reject
reasonable procedures altogether, to turn to pressure, intimidation, dire c t
action and force, thus depriving political life of that limited but saving
'b
.
part that reason can contri ute to it. 18
Although it is certainly not universally true, and though it does
depend upon the books, it still might be said that in general readers of
books are more rational than those who do not read books.
Thus, to make
reason more effective and to correct their readers' characteristic error
the great tradition of classical writers taught the limits of reason.
Herman Melville, comnenting on More's Utopia and Plato's Republic, wrote
with the tables of contents of his Two Treatises on Government.
18. Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 89 C ff. Cf. in this order Turgenev's novels
Fathers and ~and Virgin Soil, and Dostoevsky's Possessed, for
an account of how Russia's political intellectuals turned from
populism to terrorism.
�17
a small poem entitled,
~
Reasonable Constitution.
What though Reason forged your scheme?
'Twas Reason dreamed the Utopia's dream:
'Tis ·dream to think that Reason can
19
Govern the reasoning creature man.
Plato and Aristotle, I believe, would not disapprove of that poem.
Aristotle's Metaphysics begins with the assertion: "All men by nature desire
to know."
This passage is frequently misunderstood.
He never said that
for IOC>St men the desire to know dominates the other desires.
ones for whom this is so are rather rare.
Those blessed
In the preface to the Politics,
the last chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues that while all men
do desire to know, IOC>st men desire other things more.
The presence and
the power of those desires make political or human law necessary.
We might, following Thomas and Aristotle, divide the purpose of
human law, or government, into maximal and minimal purposes.
The maximal
purpose is to furnish man with the training, or discipline, (and perhaps the
conditions), which he requires for the perfection of virtue, for excellence,
that is, education.
And because they are most inexperienced with it, most
in need of it, and most capable of acquiring it, this discipline, or education,
is primarily education of the young.
For those whom Aristotle calls naturally
free or liberal, that is with good and uncorrupted natural dispositions, words,
arguments and discourses, especially parental admonitions, can provide the
ethical part of this education.
But most men, living as they do by passion,
prone to vice, are not easily moved by words.
20
The minimal purpose of govern-
ment is to restrain these men from evil by force and fear of punishment, to
restrain them from harming themselves, and especially from harming others, from
19. The Selected Poems of Herman Melville, ed. Hennig Cohen, Anchor Books, 1964,
pp. 169 and 257.
20. Aristotle, N. Ethics, 1179 b 5-18.
�18
disturbing the peace of others.
peace.
The minimal purpose of government is domestic
Thomas also refers to a purpose intermediate between virtue and peace,
which is coordinated with a type of character intermediate .to the types
mentioned before: this would be the purpose of educating those who have been
habituated by force and fear of punishment, to do willingly what before they
21
.
d i.d f rom f ear, an d thus to b ecome virtuous.
Human law, or government, if it
is to be enlightened, does keep the end of the virtuous in view.
But law
must be adjusted to the capacities of those for whom the law is intended.
There are limits on what one can reasonably expect from the law in the way
of moral improvement.
Being framed for the illiberal majority, the law,
according to Thomas, should not forbid all those vices from which the liberal
can abstain.
The illiberal majority should not be burdened with precepts
too far beyond what they can be expected
to
live up to.
For, as they violate
them, they are likely to come to despise them and law in general.
Thus,
from contempt they are likely to break out into transgressions worse than
those they began with.
Thomas quotes Proverbs (30:33): "He that too vehem-
ently blows his nose brings out blood."
The law should forbid only those
Jl'Ore grievous vices from which it is possible for the majority to abstain.
It can promote, but it cannot prescribe that men be virtuous, that is, that
they not only act virtuously, but do so willingly, habitually, and for virtue's
sake.
22
When the conditions presupposed by laws have changed, the laws may or
21. Swmna Theologica, I-II, Q.92, A.2,ad 4; Q.95, A.l.
22. Aristotle, N. Ethics,1105 a 26- 1105 b 1.
�19
may not thereby be rendered obsolete.
They might still be applicable, in
whole or in part, to the new conditions; if not, they ought to be changed.
As the need for new legislation to adapt to rapidly changing conditions grows,
understanding the complexity of the problem of change becomes increasingly
important.
The conservatism of classical liberalism comes to a focus in what
it has to say about change in laws, the subject of Question 97 of Thoma.s's
Treatise on Law.
We quote from article 2:
Human law is rightly changed in so far as such change is
conducive to the common interest. But to a certain extent
change of law itself is detrimental to the common good. For
custom has great force in the observance of laws, in as much
as what is done contrary to common custom, even if it should
be in itself light, seems to be grave. Thus when a law is
changed the constraining force of law is diminished, in so
far as custom is destroyed.
Consequently, Thomas goes on, human laws should not be changed unless the
good attained by the change outweighs the harm done in this respect.
The
first objection goes as follows:
It seems that human law ought always to be changed whenever something better occurs. For human laws are devised by human reason
as are the other arts. But in the other arts that which was held
at first, is changed, if something better occurs. Therefore the
same ought also to be done in human laws.
Tho mas answers:
Rules of art derive their efficacy from reason alone, and
therefore whenever any improvement occurs, that which was held
before ought to be changed. But laws derive very great force
from custom as the Phi,losopher says in Book II of the Politics,
and therefore they ought not to be readily changed.
In the passage referred to Aristotle points out that the strength of law with
regard to compliance, depends upon the compliance becoming habitual, and, he
notes, it takes some time to form habits.
23. 1268 b 23 - 1269 a 28.
23
Unlike what goes on in the other
�20
arts and in the sciences, what reason alone would dictate is not simply
applicable in political matters.
Reason, even wisdom, must compromise
with and thereby be diluted by the requirements of compliance and consent,
that is, by habit, prejudice, and custom.
It is unreasonable not to make
due concessions to irrationality in political affairs.
What seems then, to underly the common opposition between liberal
and conservative is a more fundamental difference of opinion concerning
the relative strengths of rational and irrational powers in most men, in
practical terms, concerning how much rationality is to be expected from
most men.
The distinction between conservative and what probably should be
called progressive would seem to be more adequate: both make serious claims to
be called liberal.
This disparity between what is appropriate for the sciences and the arts,
and what is appropriate for social and political life is treated more dialectically in Plato's Republic
and Aristotle's Politics.
if not the fundamental theme of both books.
It is a fundamental,
Arguments for aristocracy and
kingship, the rule of living reason, in Plato and Aristotle are accompanied
.
24
b y arguments b y ana 1 ogy f rom th e arts an d sciences.
The rank orders of
the regimes in both books could be understood as being based on the degree
to which the peoples of the respective regimes are capable or not of receiving
more artistic or more scientific political forms, the degree to which they are
capable of being governed in a liberal manner, the degree to which they are
capable of conforming their lives to the rule of their most reasonable fellows.
The idea of the rule of living reason functions as a paradigm, as a standard of
improvement for politics.
24.
It moves us to continue to search for governors who,
E.g., Aristotle, Politics, 1273 b 10-12, where flute playing is paired
with shoemaking. The former addresses itself to the soul, especially the
passions, the latter protects the body.
�21
as The Federalist (number fifty-seven) puts it, "possess most wisdom to
discern, and most virtue to pursue, the coilUIIOn good."
It reminds us that
institutions ought ultimately to be judged not by technical standards, but
by the kind of human beings they encourage and tend to produce and by the
kind they discourage and tend to eliminate, that is, that ethics is the
architechtonic part of social and political science.
The idea of the rule
of living reason gratifies reasonable hopes by clarifying and articulating
fully their ultimate goals.
At the same time, however, it presupposes con-
ditions which are so impossible, or so rare, as to preclude it as a practical
political possibility.
possibility.)
(This would not automatically preclude it as a personal
By clarifying how rare, or impossible, the pre-conditions for
the perfect political order are, writers like Plato and Aristotle save idealism
from fanaticism, they teach men to moderate and to civilize their hopes.
They
prepare men to accept the implications of the distinctions between what is best
in itself, that is, what is best in the best possible circumstances, what is
best in circumstances that most generally prevail, and what is best relative
to any particular set of given circumstances.
The chief political alternatives open to Americans and Western Europeans
would seem to be the rule of reasonable law or some form of despotism, benevolent or unbenevolent.
also.
This seemed to be the case to Herman Melville in 1863
In July, 1863, riots protesting the draft broke out in New York City.
The rioters turned to attacking Negroes and burned a Negro church and an orphanage.
Melville reflected on these events, and more, in a remarkable poem called
The House Top - A Night Piece - :
�22
(July, 1863)
No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And binds the brain-a dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.
Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads
Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.
Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf
Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot.
Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought,
Balefully glares red Arson-there-and there •
••• All civil charms
And priestly spells which late held hearts in aweFear-bound, subjected to a better sway
Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,
And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,
And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.
Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll
Of black artillery; he comes, though late;
In code corroborating Calvin's creed
And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;
He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed,
Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds
The grimy slur on the Republic's faith implied,
Which holds that Man is naturally good,
25
And-more-is Nature's Roman, never to be scourged.
The rule of law, it must be said, cannot by itself produce nobility of soul,
but it may go far towards producing the best possible conditions for the
cultivation of nobility of soul.
Most informed citizens in the English-speaking world pay lip-service
to
the blessings of the rule of law.
But those who would most directly and
severely feel the loss of liberty its weakening would entail are those whose
very calling presupposes freedom of speech, those for whom learning, study,
teaching and serious conversation are habitual and regular occupations. How
ironic it is then-- we hope it is not just--that the spirit of Draco should
be receiving some of its loudest invitations today from institutions that are
25.
2E..!.
cit., above, n. 19, p. 24.
Cf. Acts of the Apostles, 22: 24 and 25
�23
avowedly institutions of higher learning.
We cannot avoid considering
the implications of Melville's words, "Wise Draco comes":
suffer an unwise Draco, or to deserve a wise?
Is it 'WOrse to
It is altogether possible to
suffer both conditions.
The irony referred to, however, may not be something only peculiar to
our times.
It would seem that now, in the beginning, and always, science
and philosophy come into the world with the awareness that a distinction
can be made between nature and convention, or between the reasonable and
the conventional.
Wherever there are philosophers (a class which can include
erring philosophers) there seem to arise imitators of philosophers, men who
are aware of the distinction between nature and convention, but who never
sufficiently reflect on the reasons for the conventions.
Some would say that
such men, sometimes called sophists, sometimes intellectuals, are more attracted by the honors of philosophers than by their true objects, or that they
somehow confound political ambition with philosophic ambition, but whatever
their motives, the problem is that they abuse the instruments of philosophy,
they abuse the distinction between nature and convention, so as to undermine
all conventions, so as to undermine ordinary decency.
One permanent task of
Socratic philosophy then would seem to be to defend ordinary pre-philosophic
practical wisdom from sophistical attack;
that is, to prepare, if necessary,
a theoretical defence of ordinary decency against sophistical science. To
avoid misunderstanding, it should be said that such polemical activity does
not mean that one ceases to -U-y to understand or to learn from those one
attacks.
26.
We need only consider the Socrates of Plato and Xenophon.
26
Cf. Note 4, above, and Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, The Free Press of Glencoe,
1963, esp. p. 199
�24
AMERICAN LIBERALISM
"It has been frequently remarked," writes Hamilton in the opening
paragraph of '?he Federalist,
that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this
country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important
question, whether societies of men are really capable or not
of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or
whether they are forever destined to depend for their political
constitutions on accident and force.27
It is hard to conceive of a better solution to the problem of political
stability and change than the American constitutional system.
The Constitution
provides a point of veneration and the fixed and stable framework within which
the various departments of government are granted broad and flexible powers
to deal energetically with the problems arising from changing conditions. The
reasonability of the constitution itself is attested to by its ample recognition
of and reliance upon the indecorous, but never failing, springs of human selfWe recur to Federalist, number fifty-one:
ishness.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
If angels were to govern men, neither external nor
internal controls on government would be necessary.
In framing a government which is to be administered
by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:
you must enable the government to control the governed;
and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control
on the government; but experience has taught mankind the
necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Those auxiliary precautions are the check and balance system and separation of
powers.
Finding the right balance between the enabling powers of government
and restrictions on governmental power is the permanent problem of American
government.
If one focuses not on the needs of liberal learning, but on the ordinary
concerns of most men, it might be said without too much oversimplification that
the most prevalent and persistent forms of injustice are bullying and cheating.
27.
Footnote on the next page
�25
The English-speaking peoples by means of the rule of law seem to have
concentrated on preventing men from bullying one another.
Like our Conunun-
ist rivals, we have also been greatly concerned with preventing cheating,
but have taken the precaution to deal with this problem in such a way as to
avoid concentrating too much power in the hands of our governmental protectors,
so as to avoid putting our protectors themselves in a position to bully us.
The reasoning behind this choice seems to be that, although the two are often
connected, injury to dignity is worse than injury to material well-being.
In addition, he who is in a position to bully is usually in a position to cheat
as well, whereas the converse is not true.
What the right balance between enabling powers and restrictions on
government is depends upon the given conditions of material life.
Along with
the introduction of large-scale technology, a new system of administration and
ownership of peoperty developed in the West, devised to coordinate the resources
of large groups of men in a manner appropriate to new technological possibilities.
We refer to the rise of the depersonalized, that is ethically irres-
ponsible, ownership of joint-stock companies, organized for profit and with
limited liability.
28
The inequities engendered by this system might be traced,
at least in part, to the fact that the system was developed under the guidance
of a philosophy, or social science, that either minimized or denied the significance of ethics for political, social, and economic science.
However this
may be, the principle seems to be generally accepted now that the inequities
resulting from the growth of large-scale non-governmental corporate and
27.
Cf. George Anastaplo, Book Review, Levy: Legacy of Suppression-Freedom
of Speech and Press in Early American History, 39 New York University
Law Review 735 (1964), esp. p. 741; Laurence Berns, "Two Old Conservatives
Discuss the Anastaplo Case," 54 Cornell Law Review 920, July, 1969.
28. Cf. R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society,
ch. 5.
�26
institutional power can be effectively remedied only by a
enlargement of goverrunental powers of regulation.
corres~nding
In addition, the licen-
sing of _
government corporations and agencies has been expanded in order to
perform necessary public services that privately owned enterprises could not
be relied upon to supply.
The American system is peculiarly well adapted to solving the problems
brought on by new conditions without sacrificing, or at least with a minimum
1oss o f , l 1'b erty. 29
New ways are continually being found to combine justice
and liberty, public responsibility and private initiative.
By the skillful
use of tax laws an amazing proliferation of private welfare and cultural
agencies has been induced, performing needed social services without concentrating power in the hands of goverrunent.
Large corporations under threat
of increasing regulation and taxes, and guided by an increasing awareness of
the insufficiency of an unmitigated profit motive, are tending to follow more
public-spirited policies and even to take on a semi-public character.
Within
government itself the institution of specialized relatively independent corporations and authorities, in addition to the regular constitutional separation
of powers both within and between Federal, State and local governments, all
enable us to address ourselves to new conditions without that concentration
of power in the central government that less sophisticated structures of
government cannot avoid.
The principle behind the American Union and the Constitution of the United
States, in Lincoln's words, "entwining itself more closely about the human heart,"
is the Declaration of Independence's assertion of "Liberty to all."
This prin-
ciple in Lincoln's mind is inextricably connected with the Declaration's assertion
that "all men are created equal."
30
The great and no longer tolerable failing
Cf. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. I, ch. 5, last section~
vol. 2, bk. 2, ch. 7
30. "Fragment: The Constitution and the Union" 1860 or 1861, Collected Works
29.
of Abraham Lincoln, Roy Basler, ed.
Rutgers
u.
Press, vol. lV, PP• 168-6 9 •
�27
of American political life, the failure to guarantee Negro citizens equal
rights of citizenship, is not, according to Lincoln, a failure of American
principles; it is rather a failure of men to act in accordance with those
principles.
Lincoln commented on that statement in his speech on .the
Dred Scott decision:
I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to
include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men
equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were
equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social
capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what
respects they did consider all men created equal--equal in
"certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant.
They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were
then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were
about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had
no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare
the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast
as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard
maxim for free society, which could be familiar to all, and
revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly spreading
and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and
value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The
assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and
it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future
use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving
itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might
seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of
despoti~m.
They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed
tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair
land and commence their vocatio~ they should find left for them
1
at least one hard nut to crack.
The difference in nature (the Declaration speaks of the "Laws of Nature")
that these natural rights are based upon, rights which all men share, is the
difference between rational and irrational animals, between men, animals
capable of thoughtful speech, and beasts, animals incapable of thoughtful
speech.
This difference both for a classical liberal like Aristotle and
the Founding Fathers is elementary and fundamental.
31.
fo~
Aristotle goes on to
Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, emphasis in original.
f
�28
divide men in terms of the different ways and degrees that they possess
this capacity, but the differences of ways and degrees can never be as
significant as the difference between animals lacking the capacity
entirely and those having it in any degree whatever.
Part of what Aristotle and the Declaration of Independence mean was
spelled out by Kant in the work referred to before, where he uses the book
of Genesis to speculate about the various stages man might have gone through
32
.
.
.
in h. progress t owar d s un d erstand.
is
ing h. uniqueness among t h e anima 1 s.
is
Kant minimizes the importance of eating from the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.
fig-leaf.
For him the epoch-making event was the institution of the
He interprets it as follows:
this removal of the object of
inclination from the view of the senses reflects man's first awareness of
a certain degree of mastery of reason over impulse;
that he is a moral creature.
this was his first hint
His partner's similar action, this implicit
refusal, forces man, moved by sensual desire, to become aware of the moral
qualities of the objects of his desire, the rational and moral qualities of
his fellow human beings.
Thus he becomes able to be moved not only by
sensual, but also- by more inward spiritual attractions; he becomes able to
move from animal desire to love, from the desire of possessive enjoyment to
the simple appreciation of beauty.
Through self-restraint and refusal men
come to deserve and to recognize each other as worthy of the dignities
befitting free men.
St. Jorrn•s College, Aunapolis, Maryland
May 24, 1968
32.
~cit.,
above, n. 6.
�
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ON THE RELATION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION*
Laurence Berns
St. John's College
Annapolis
The problem from which these reflections begin is fairly
straightforward:
Although philosophy came into the world by
separating itself off from religion, in modern times, it seems to
be trying to incorporate within itself what,
in my opinion,
properly belongs to religion. The representatives of moder~
philosophy I have in mind are chiefly Nietzsche and
Heidegger.
In order to understand better how and why this change came about
I will sketch out a very general history of the relation between
philosophy and religion,
for ancient, medieval and
modern
philosophy.
(It is,
incidentally, clear from this that I am
speaking of what some call Western Philosophy.)
First, a preliminary distinction: The title of this paper
is not
"On the Relation between Philosophy and Theology,"
because there are traditionally two kinds of theology, of
discourse about God, natural theology, discourse about God or
gods based on natural reason and naturally acquired evidence, and
revealed theology, theology based on special and supernatural
divine revelation. The two kinds of theology are not always kept
separate, as the famous saying of Heraclitus illustrates:
"The
only wise thing is one, it 9oes not wish and it does wish to be
called by the name of Zeus."
An illustration might be ' useful. The Declaration
of
Independence of the United States asserts that the laws of nature
and of Nature's God entitle all men to certain natural rights,
among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What
is the basis in nature of these natural rights? The traditional
and correct answer, I believe, is the natural superiority of the
rational animal, man, to non-rational animals, beasts. But that
may be only half the story. We notice that God is referred to in
the Declaration at least four times in the following order, once
as legislator of the laws of nature, once as Creator 3 , again as
Supreme Judge of the World and finally as the executor of Divine
Providence. In the divine Governor of the world legislative,
executive and judicial powers are united. The Founders of the
United States, like intelligent men of all times, disagreed about
many things, but if there is anything they all seemed to agree
about it is the necessity to separate the powers of government.
Humanly speaking, the uniting of legislative, · executive and
judicial powers in the same hands, they declared, is the very
definition of tyranny. Only a divine being with supreme wisdom
and goodness, with no truth-obscuring and excessively selfregarding passions could rightly possess such powers. The natural
1
�theology of the Declaration is then an extrapolation from the
idea of good government to the idea of perfect government, and
the perfect governor. No human being can measure up to such a
standard. No human being is sufficiently godlike to be entrusted .
with such despotic power over other human beings. The natural
rights of the Declaration then stem from human superiority with
relation to the beasts and human defect with relation to ·God. All
men are equal in that they are neither beasts nor gods. Does such
a God exist? That might require faith to believe. But the natural
theology of the Declaration, the idea of such a God, clarifies
what it is meant to clarify whether one conceives of such a God
as existing or not. By its reference to the Creator and His
Providence, however, the Declaration brings both traditions
together,
it combines its natural theology with the revealed
theology of the Biblical tradition. 4
I
THE SEPARATION OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY FROM RELIGION--THE INCORPORATION OF
RELIGION INTO MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The lovers of myth, Aristotle says, like the philosophers,
wonder about the first things, the things whose characters and
actions govern all the rest. The first philosophers distinguished
themselves from the lovers of myth by no longer speaking of the
first things as gods, but as nature. Science and philosophy come
into She world, Aristotle suggests, with the discovery of
nature . There were and still are people who have no distinct
idea of nature. The words natur5 and natural do not occur in the
Hebrew Bible or in the Gospels . The prephilosophic equivalents
of the word nature seem to be the words way or custom. Before the
discovery of nature men spoke about the gods ordering and
commanding things to go in their customary ways. The way or
custom of fire is to go up and burn, for the earth to bring forth
plants, for human beings to speak, for one tribe to bury its
dead, for another to burn its dead. At some point a curious and
thoughtful person must have noticed that some ways are always the
same no matter what anyone does about them, and others vary from
time to time, and still others would vary from time to time more
if men did not make them happen the same way. Such a person
begins to become aware of the distinctions between the necessary
and the accidental or contingent, the necessary and the customary
and the necessary and the artificial. The ways that vary from
place to place, from city to city, from tribe to tribe, must have
been most striking at first because they most contradict "our
way". Herodotus tells how horror-struck Greeks and Indians were
on learning of each other's diverse burial customs.
(III. 38)
These divergencies extend to differences about the nature of the
gods themselves.
The
suspicion
begins
2
to arise that
the
ways
that
are
�everywhere the same are primary, permanent and fundamental and
those that differ from town to town and from tribe to tribe
are secondary, transient and derivative. The man-made things owe .
their existence to forethought, the ways which are everywhere the
same seem to occur by themselves automatically inside the things
characterized by them. Way or custom splits up in70 nature, on
the one hand, and convention or law, on the other . That human
beings can speak is natural, that this tribe speaks
its
particular language, that tribe its particular language, is
conventional. Impersonal nature replaces divine ordination. The
good life is no longer determined by divine law but by the quest
for what is right by nature. In Plato's Republic the torch race
in honor of the goddess, which they were supposed to watch,
is
forgotten in favor of the discussion in quest of the life that is
good according to nature. Philosophy and science come into the
world by separating themselves from religion.
To illustrate the other pole of our initial problem,
the
incorporation of religion into philosophy, we turn now to the man
whom many regard as the greatest philosophic thinker of recent
times, Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger, philosophy, or what he
would rather call Thinking, cannot be academic or isolated from
the spirit of society, from the spirit of one's own times,
from
history. The deepest sense of what things are, he argues, depends
on History, and History, in German Geschichte, he connects
with
the word Geschick, that which has been sent. The sender, this
mysterious ground of existence, or ground of the relation between
being and human thought, of human fate (Schicksal), he sometimes
calls gods, sometimes god.
The great danger of our time, Heidegger argues, is that we
are so overwhelmed by the power of scientific, mathematical,
technological thinking that we have begun to think of human
beings as just one more product of scientific laws to be
serviced, used and conveniently disposed of. In contrast to the
focus on the depersonalized, the dehumanized, the cybernetic, he
argues that the deepest truths about the world reveal themselves
to thought and to thinkers that are caring, committed, concerned
with what they regard as "mine" and ours, with home and homeland.
Even the standard for human conduct that he erects as a
replacement for ethical virtue, authenticity , reflects this
emphasis on the personal and particular. The German
word
Eigentlichkeit has no direct English equivalent, it means "one'sownness". In working out what amounts to his replacement for
ethics
the
notions
of conscience,
anxiety,
guilt
and
"fallenness" play central roles.
That our particularity, our individuality, like that of the
fallen sparrow, should have ultimate significance makes sense,
it seems, if we and our world are the creations of a loving,
caring omnipotent God. Heidegger, an extraordinarily learned and
thoughtful heir of the philosophic tradition has incorporated
3
�Christian religious ideas and sentiments into his thinking
without articulating the theological presuppositions that could
establish their plausibility. Through a sketch of the history of
the relation between philosophy and religion I hope to show that
in so
doing Heidegger is fulfilling one of the
deepest
tendencies of modern philosophy.
In fairness to Heidegger, however, it should be said that
he emphatically rejects the account of the origin of philosophy
out of religion and myth as a Platonic-Aristotelian prejudice.
"The fall of thinking into the sciences, on the one hand, ang
faith, on the other, is the evil, fateful sending of Being."
Religious mythos and philosophic logos "became separated and
opposed only there where neither mythes nor logos could maintain
their original essential presence. This happened already with
Plato . " He denies that logos could destroy mythes. "Nothing
religious is ever destroyed by logic; it is destroyed only by the
god's withdrawing himself." 9
THE
DISTINCTIONS
BETWEEN
II
ANCIENT,
MEDIEVAL
AND
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
For our sketch of the history of the relation between
philosophy and religion we distinguish three positions, ancient,
medieval and modern in terms of what each takes to be the
ultimate
source of meaningfulness in the
world:
ancient
philosophy
as nature-centered, or
physiocentric;
medieval
philosophy as God-centered, or theocentric and modern philosophy
as man(human)-centered, or anthropocentric. I do not imply that
each is only valid for its time. They arose at different times
and each late.r position presupposed the existence of the earlier
positions,
but they are accounted for here as
permanent
alternatives.
how
To
illustrate these differences we consider
representatives of each position deal with a fairly common
phenomenon, the appearance of purposiveness or end-directed
activity in nature.
The primary prescientif ic or prephilosophic meaning of the
Greek word for nature, phys1s, is growth, which includes that
into which a thing grows, the end or term of growth, the state in
which the thing is most capable of doing the work, or, as we say,
the function, characteristic of that thing. End-directed activity
is most characteristic of living things. The acorn becomes
intelligible as a possible oak. The structure of the eye becomes
intelligible with a view to its function of seeing. Aristotle
speaks of such an end as the cause "for the sake of which," or in
the later latinate form, ·final cause. (In this discussion of
ancient philosophy I will concentrate on Platonic-Aristotelian
philosophy, the most influential ancient philosophy.) Aristotle
4
�defines nature as a principle or cause of motion and rest in that
to which it belongs primarily and not by accident. The end of
natural growth is a potentiality inherent in the living thing .
from the beginning, in its constitution, so to speak, in its very
matter. He frequently compares natural end-directed activity to
the
end-directed
activity of human making.
The
crucial
differences are that in artifacts the final form of the work of
art exists primarily in the mind of the artisan, both the end and
the formative action hay5 their source in the artisan, external
to the thing produced . The unapprehended ends of natural
activities like respiration, metabolism, animal instinct, etc.,
do not require an external mind intending them as purposes. They
are simply inherent in natural things as potentialities.
For Thomas Aquinas as representative of the theocentric
view there is no end or final cause that is not intended as such
by some intelligence, as the artist intends the completed work of
art. If the being in which the end is being actualized does not
have the intelligence to apprehend it, it is apprehended by
the
intelligence of another, namely the intelligence of God. We quote
from his discussion of natural instinct:
"the sensitive appetite of dumb animals, and likewise the
natural appetite of insensible things result from
the
apprehension of an intellect, just as the appetite of the
intellectual nature ... called the will. But there is
a
difference,
in that the will is moved by an apprehension of
the intellect in the same subject; whereas the movement of
the natural appetite results from the apprehension of the
separate Intellect, Who is the Author of Nature; as does also
the sensitive appetite of dumb animals who act from a certain
natural instinct .... in the actions of irrational animals and
of other natural things wci obs~rve a procedure which is
similar to ... the actions of art."
According to Immanuel Kant as representative of the modern
anthropocentric view the necessary and universal laws which
constitute objective knowledge of nature are not found in the
things themselves, but, in his language, they are prescribed to
nature by the human understanding. When we come across phenomena
like the phenomena of living organized beings for which the laws
of mechanical cause and effect do not seem adequate, the
reflective judgment of the investigator should supply
the
phenomena with purposive laws that make sense of them ~ if some
intelligent cause, a God, had produced them . Like Thomas, Kant
argues that ends in nature only make sense when they are thought
of as intended by some intelligence, namely God. Teleology, he
argues, finds its consummation in theology. But this God cannot
be assumed to have objective reality. We produce and supply the
idea of such a being to ourselves in or~2r to satisfy the
subjective needs of our cognitive faculties.
The
ultimate
source
of the
5
appearance
of
end-directed
�activity fin irrational nature for the ancients is the
nature of things in themselves, for the medievals the
God, for the moderns the human understanding itself.
inherent
mind of
III
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
The Platonic-Aristotelian, or Socratic, way of seeking the
primary, permanent and fundamental things that are nature (among
other things, by thinking through the implications of human
speech) culminates in a doctrine that the truly fundamental is
the intelligible. For Plato it seems to be the eternal ideas, or
forms, or species; for Aristotle the thinking, or
active
intellection that is the life or energy constitutive of those
forms or ideas, or as he sometimes calls them, the universals. If
there is to be genuine knowledge, or even true opinion, of things
in themselves, these intelligibles must be able to exist at one
and the same time both in the things they characterize and in the
mind kn~!ing them, in the things as enmattered, in the mind as
thought.
Corresponding to the intelligibility in things, then,
is the power in all rational beings to apprehend it, the power
called nous, intellectual intuition.
There is another way to put this: for the classical
philosophers the intelligible is the divine, and the concern for
the truly divine is philosophy. The self-sufficiency of the
intelligible is the standard for both theoretical and practical
life; in this respect there is a harmony between
theory and
practice. But the intelligible is manifested in universal or
general principles, or as we often say, in general laws, and
every practical action is a particular action, an action of one's
own. It is true that every human action is more or less permeated
by the intelligible, by unde-~standing, but it is always a
particular action mixed with thI accidental and the contingent,
the inherently unintelligible. 4 According to this philosophy
then, it is impossible for any particular or contingent event to
be absolutely sacred. There seems to be a tension in our souls
between the love of the good recognized by intelligence and the
love of one's own that guides our spirited part. It is the
natural favoritism of parents for their own children and its
conflict with pure justice that leads to the unnatural family
arrangements of Plato's Republic.
Since both poles, the love of one's own stemming from our
particularity and the love of the good stemming from our
intelligence are rooted in human nature, the tension can assume
tragic proportions. We have no choice about the genetic make-up
with which we are endowed, the family and country in which we are
born. Yet to be bereft of pride of ancestry is barely tolerable,
a deficiency which~ furthermore, usually deprives its sufferers
6
�of sufficient energy to pursue the goods that intelligence might
discern. As individuals also, with regard to those basic goals,
virtue and knowledge, it is clear that virtue is not virtue,
knowledge is not knowledge, until it becomes one's own. Both
poles are ineradicable or equally primordial. On the highest
level, according to what Socrates says in the Symposium, the love
of one's own and the love of the good are reconciled, the true
object of love is "to have the good be one's own forever." (206a)
But for most of us most of the time the words of Plato's
Athenian Stranger seem appropriate:
"In truth the cause of every failure comes to each person
each time through excessive love of oneself. For the one who
loves is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges the
just and the good and the noble things badly, believing that
he is 1 ~ound always to honor what is his own before the
truth."
This consequence of our particular needs, this tendency
to sacrifice the truth to the love of one's own, points
to moderation as a key virtue in moral and political life, even
the moderation of our highest hopes.
The sublime Alenu prayer sung at the close of almost every
Jewish religious service calls out:
"We therefore hope in thee, O Lord our God, that we may
speedily behold the glory of thy might, when the abominations
will be removed from the earth
when the world will be
perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all the
children of flesh will call upon thy name and all the wicked
of the earth will be turned to thee."
Compare this with Socrates in the Theaetetus answering an
enthusiastic Theodorus: "But it is not possible for evils to be
done away with, Theodorus, for it is necessary that there always
be something contrary to the good." The moderate Socrates,
however, does not silence the voice of his heart; he goes on to
add that of course evils cannot be established among gods,
just
that necessity forces the evils "to haunt mortal nature and this
region
here." Flight from these evils, he says,
partial
assimilation t9 the divine as far as possible in justice,
holiness and intelligence, may 1 ~e possible for some individuals
but not for society as a whole.·
That moderation is the virtue of the philosopher's action,
but not his thoughts is exhibited by this statement of the 10th
century Arabic philosopher Alfarabi on the relation of classical
philosophy to religion.
"There are two ways of making a thing comprehensible: first
by causing its essence to be perceived by the intellect, and
second by causing it to be imagined through the similitude
that imitates it. Assent, too, is brought about by one of two
7
�methods, either the method of ... demonstration or the method
of persuasion .... when one acquires knowledge of the beings
or receives instruction in them, if he perceives their ideas
... with his intellect, and his assent ... is by means of ...
demonstration,
then the science that
comprises
these
cognitions is philosophy .... if they are known by imagining
them through similitudes that imitate them, and assent to
what is imagined ... is caused by persuasive methods then the
ancients call what comprises these cognitions religion
Therefore,
according to the ancients, religion is
an
imitation of philosophy .... Religion sets forth images [of
the ultimate principles] by ... similitudes ... taken from
corporeal principles and imi~ates them by their likenesses
among political offices ... "
Further, to
enable us to overcome the passions bred
by radical selfishness and the love of one's own, counteracting
law-abiding passions must be bred by the sanctification of norms,
in order to enable us to live decently in society with a modicum
of freedom. Such sanctifications require divinities that can
address us passionately, individually and collectively, here and
now. Classical philosophy never considered itself able to become
a substitute for public religion.
If Aristotle's treatment of religion is t~ 8 be found
anywhere,
I believe it is most of all in his Poetics , and in
scattered remarks in the Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric and the
Metaphysics.
For Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, it is much
clearer: religion is classified in the Summa Theologica as a part
of the moral virtue of justice, religion is the worship which is
properly due and paid to God.
IV
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Medieval philosophy is characterized by the attempt to
reconcile classical philosophy with revealed or
scriptural
religion, with the religions of the Bible and the Koran. For the
most influential medieval philosophers the natural world, as far
as natural reason unaided by supernatural revelation could
comprehend it, was to be understood through the philosophy of
Aristotle. The fundamental presupposition for medieval philosophy
is belief in the truth of the revealed word and in the God that
is its supernatural source. This assumption entails important
modifications of and deviations from Aristotelian doctrine.
Aristotle evidently held that the visible universe is eternal, at
least,
in
agreement with Plato,
that
its
intelligible
underpinnings, the forms, are eternal.
All philosophers seem to have accepted what has been called
8
�the principle of causality, namely, that nothing comes into being
out of nothing. The positive consequence of the principle is not:
Everything comes into being out of something. It , is rather that:
Everything that comes into being comes into being out of
something. Those "somethings out of which" have either themselves
come into being or have not come into being, that is, are
unchanging. The task for scientific and - philosophic knowledge
then is to discover the permanent or unchanging somethings, or
principles, underlying change. As Thomas Aquinas says, "that the
world did not always exis! 9 is held by faith alone, and cannot be
proved by demonstration."
The Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. If the ultimate principles are unchanging
or eternal, philosophy tells us, there was no ultimate beginning.
To meet the challenge of ancient philosophy, religious or
scriptural philosophers declare that Almighty God super~aturally,
miraculously, created everything out of nothing. The Platonic and
Aristotelian forms are thoughts in the divine mind in accordance
with which He creates the laws of nature. Unlike any human
artisan He is not bound by the limitations of his materials, for
all material limits also are grounded in his will. There is no
eternal order independent of divine will, no source of principles
for human guidance apart from that will. If the God of the Bible
is omnipotent, He is also omniscient. Not the least action of the
least of his creatures escapes his notice.
In practice He is a caring God, a just and loving God.
There is no necessary conflict between the love of one's own and
the good, if the love of one's own is sanctified by the ultimate
principle of the universe. Particularity is not disparaged: the
ultimate principle of the universe reveals itself in personal
address to particular men, particular families and nations, on
particular
occasions. If their souls are
immortal,
each
individual is of everlasting importance. One can be fully at home
in the world when the world is one's Father's house.
On the other hand, one might say that the gulf between man
and the God of the Bible is unbridgeable. In the Hebrew Bible the
mutuality of the Covenant and the gift of the Law bridge the
gulf. In Christianity the gulf itself, one is tempted to say,
is
overcome by the mystery of God's becoming a particular man, by
the very
notion that full divinity can exist in a particular
man. The pain of the moral gulf between man and God is relieved
by Jesus's assumption of the world's sin, for all those who are
justified by believing in that sacrifice.
Morality for the Bible as a whole takes on heightened
importance when error and perversion become sin, an ungrateful
personal affront to the loving all-powerful source of all
goodness. In explaining why divine law was needed in addition to
natural and human law Thomas Aquinas says that because "of the
9
�uncertainty of human judgment ... on contingent and particular
matters
that man may know without doubt what he ought to do
and what he ought to avoid, it was necessary for man to be
direc~ d
by a law given by God, for ... such a law cannot
err." 0
This, however, is moderated by the arguments
of
philosophers like Thomas that the great bulk of morality is given
to men through the natural law, the law of reason. Virtues are
habits that perfect natural powers in a world so designed as to
allow reason to discover the ends implicit in most of nature.
Something
like
classical moderation,
the
moderating
of
unreasonable expectations, is also preserved in the medieval
distinction between this world and the kingdom of heaven, the
world to come, the "other" world.
How can classical and medieval philosophy deal with each
other's fundamental assumptions? Thomas's harmonizing formula is
that revelation goes beyond, but cannot contradict, reason.
Because revelation is superior, philosophy is the handmaid of
theology.
That
is not acceptable to
Alfarabi's
ancient
philosopher:
religion
is an imitation of
and
therefore
subordinate
to
philosophy. The possibility
of
Creation,
Revelation and miracles seem to rest on the assumption that God
is omnipotent and his will is unfathomable. Can reason refute
that assumption? Is it self-contradictory? Can revelation refute
reason? Can they even agree about what would constitute a
refutation, what would constitute evidence? A rational proof
demands suspension of belief, or doubt, until all the evidence is
in. Revelation claims that its truth requires faith in the
revealed and revealing God in order to be accepted and to be
understood. From the point of view of rational philosophy, faith
or belief is simply insufficient knowledge. Each can refute the
other only by begging the question in dispute, presupposing its
own canons for understanding. It appears that they are mutually
irrefutable.
Faith, Thomas Aquinas tells us, is an act of the intellect
wherein the intellect is moved to assent, not by the clarity and
evidence of the intellect's proper 2 ~bject, but by the command of
the will, the practical faculty.
This subordination of the
theoretical to the practical faculty is another fundamental
difference between ancient and medieval philosophy.
v
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The mutual irrefutability of philosophy and revelation, Leo
Strauss has suggested, has created a tension that is perhaps the
secret of the vitality of ~estern Civilization, a civilization
that will not allow the mind to silence the voice of the heart,
nor the heart to drown out the voice of the mind. This tension
must trouble philosophy more than faith. If faith in the
10
�omnipotent God of Creation, Revelation and miracles cannot be
refuted, does philosophy itself rest on indemonstrable premise~
just a different kind of faith, or at best, disputable opinion? 2
To
free itself from this unresolvable
tension
and
uncertainty, Strauss suggests, a new kind of philosophy, modern
philosophy, comes into the world, rejecting both the idea of
nature of classical philosophy and the omnipotent God of medieval
philosophy -a new philosophy with a new basis, that is, man: the
ultimate source of meaning for humanity's understanding of the
world is the human understanding itself.
"If one wished to refute Orthodoxy, no other way remained
than to attempt to demonstrate that the world and life are
fully
understandable
without
the
assumption
of
an
unfathomable God. That means that the refutation of Orthodoxy
depended on the success of a system. Man had to prove himself
theoretically and practically the lord of the world and the
lord of his life. The world he created had to make the world
that was merely 'given' to him disappe~3· Then Orthodoxy was
more than refuted, it was 'outlived.'"
In the introduction to his Logic, Kant says that the basic
questions determining the basic divisions of philosophy,
"What
can I know?" (Nature), "What ought I to do?"
(Morality),
"What
may I hope?" (Religion), could all be referred to
the single
question, "What is man?"
The classical understanding of nature is opposed by the
modern idea of the conquest of nature and its practical goal, in
Descartes' words, of making men "the masters and possessors of
nature." The classical and medieval standard for morality,
virtue, seen as natural fulfillments of natural powers,
is
replaced by freedom, or more precisely, autonomy. And last in our
sketch of modern thought, the idea of history as a determinate
process rather than a certain kind of study, becomes a secular
substitute for Divine Providence.
a.
N~~ure, Bacon declares, cannot be conquered except by being
obeyed.
The nature to be conquered must be different from the
nature to be obeyed. The nature to be conquered is nature as it
presents itself to ordinary prescientific experience with its
apparent purposivity and unpredictability due to chance. The
nature to be obeyed, through which the conquest is to take place,
is the nature to be discovered by methodical experimentation
keyed to (following Galileo and Descartes) mathematical laws.
Final causes are to be excluded from physics. To prepare the way
for the new science the classical reliance on, or "idolization"
of, natural experience and natural speech is to be refuted by a
critique or refutation of the natural human understanding. This
critique culminates in Kant's assumption that there
is no
intellectual intuition that permits us to gain access to the
11
�nature of things in themselves. There is no
natural harmony
between the natural human understanding and the natural world.
Nature is not a kind mother, she must be tortured by methodical
experimentation and forced to reveal her secrets. Furthermore,
the ideas of chance or fortune and the subordination of art to
nature must be rejected as breeding a "premature despair in
human enterprises." The Aristotelian notion of unstable matter,
pure potency, underlying the notion of fortune is altogether to
be rejected. Matter is to be understood as acting in accordance
with fixed and unwavering laws. Above all, Bacon
insisted in
opposition to medieval philosophy, physics must be separated from
theology in order to avoid fabulous philosophy and
heretical
religion. With Bacon clearing the way, Descartes'
"I think"
becomes the exemplar of finding a beginning for thought that in
no way depends upon anything outside of man.
b.
The
new philosophy was obliged to find a new moral
standard that would be compatible with a
non-teleological
physics. Th~$ standard, again, is freedom, autonomy, selflegislation.
Rousseau was the first to define freedom as selflegislation, but it is already implicit in Hobbes's theory of
sovereignty and the social contract. According to Hobbes, we must
obey the sovereign because each of us through the social contract
has agreed to allow his will to represent each of our wills. His
legislation,
because of the social contract, is,
legally
considered, our own self-legislation. He is our representative.
Hobbes also formulated the more fundamental principle underlying
this conception: there is "no Obligati~g on any man, which
ariseth not from some Act of his own."
This is all made even more . explicit in Rousseau's doctrine
of the general will. Freedom in society consists in uniting
oneself with all the rest under the general will that declares
the law, while at the same time remaining free in so far as one
has contributed to the making of that law. The process that makes
the will general also makes it moral. Being compelled to express
one's will in such form that it can become a general law, so
that it can coincide with the wills of all the others, moralizes
the will. If I generalize my desire not to pay taxes in a law
that no one ought to pay taxes, I am compelled to see that then
the police, public schools, courts, and so on, would disappear,
and the irrationality of my original desire becomes manifest.
The idea is fully developed as a moral principle in Kant's
doctrine of the categorical imperative: So act that the maxim of
your action can become a universal law. The truly free or moral
person, according to Kant, bows only to the moral will or
practical reason within him or her self, and not to any standard
imposed from without, either by nature or by God.
12
�Hegel extends the notion of freedom as self-legislation
beyond
politics and morality to make it a
logical
and
metaphysical principle. The life of the concept, the life of that
Spirit or Mind that forms and informs the human mind, human
History and the objects of human knowledge -the mind of Godproceeds in accordance with the principle of freedom,
selflegislation. Hegel begins his "Doctrine of the Concept" with
these words: . "The Concept is the principle of freedom, the power
of substance self-realized." And later:
"
the concept is the genuine first; and things are what
they are through the action of the concept dwelling in them
and revealing itself in them. In our religious consciousness
this comes forth in such a way that we say God created the
world out of nothing, or, in other words,
the world and
finite things have issued from the fullness of the divine
thoughts
and divine decrees. Thus religion
recognizes
thought, more exactly the concept, to be the infinite form,
or the free creative activity which can realize itself
without the help of a matter that exists outside it." 27
At the same time modern ethical and especially political
thought is said to be characterized by a certain Realism
associated with the name of Machiavelli. Classical and medieval
political thought, they argue, failed because it aimed too high.
Because they based their political doctrines on exalted notions
of virtue and societies devoted to the formation of virtue, they
made themselves ineffective. As Bacon put it, their discourses
are beautiful like the stars, which give little light because
they are so high. Effectiveness can be secured by lowering one's
goals, by accepting and exploiting those lower motives that move
most men most of the time: pleasure, comfort, acquisitiveness,
and especially that all powerful negative motive fear, fear for
the loss of one's ~~fe and fear for the possible loss of what one
already possesses.
c.
We turn next briefly to that secular substitute for divine
providence, History, the meeting place of modern morality with
modern realism. One of the first signposts on the way to the idea
was Machiavelli's observation that the conflicts between nobles
and plebians in Rome, the vicious civil strife universally
deplored by the philosophers, actually led to the greater good of
Rome as a whole. Adam Smith extends the notion: private vice,
public benefit, to the economic sphere. Merchants intending only
their own gain increase the annual income and well-being of
society as a whole;
led by an invisible hand they promote
beneficial ends which are no part of their intentions.
Kant calls for a history that will show how the antagonism
of men in society, their ambition, lust for power and greed cause
them to develop their talents and, consequently, their moral
13
�discrimination so as to prepare them for citi29nship in the
perfectly free and moral societies of the future.
Hegel, as it
were, takes up Kant's call, finding Kantian freedom and reason,
linked up with his own doctrine of logical opposites, operative
everywhere in History, making Smith's invisible hand visible as
the self-unfolding of the human spirit and Spirit in general.
This self-unfolding culminates in the self-consciousness that all
spiritual goods are produced not by any external source, but by
Spirit itself. The idea . of History and the modern idea of freedom
seem to be inextricably linked, history allegedly showing that
man's freedom is basically limited only by the ideas of those
limits that human consciousness has imposed on itself; man's
freedom is limited by his earlier use of that inchoate freedom,
and ~ot 3 By his nature or by the whole order of nature and
creation.
VI
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
If to want to be fully at home in the world is a religious
motive, perfectly appropriate for a world governed by
an
omnipotent, beneficent and loving God, then perhaps we can
speak of a religious motive permeating modern philosophy from its
beginning, even in its anti-theological stances. If this is
correct, one can say that this motive begins to become explicit
with the formal acceptance of philosophy of religion as an
accepted branch of philosophy.
The modern scientific conception of nature, according to
Kant, is incapable of supplying ethical and political standards.
Morality is traced to a source independent of nature, namely,
practical reason. The realm of nature and the realm of freedom or
morality, according to Kant, do not contradict one another, but
like parallel lines simply do not meet. This thorough-going
separation becomes a special problem for Kantian philosophy. How
can natural man and moral man coexist in one and the same man?
How can the two realms be brought together in systematic unity?
Kant experimented with a philosophy of history, but finally
settled on a philosophy of religion. The Critique of Pure Reason
established, according to Kant, that we have no knowledge,
positive or negative, concerning the existence of God. Religion
within the limits of reason alone establishes what in the absence
of knowledge we are obliged to believe in order to strengthen our
capacities to obey the moral law. Religion is unambiguously
subordinated to morality, moral reason:
"pure moral legislation, through which the will of God is
primordially engraved in our hearts,
is not only
the
unavoidable condition of · all true religion whatsoever, but is
also that which really constitutes such religion."
True religion, he argues, "is a purely rational affair." 31
14
�His
position
is brought out
dramatically
by
his
interpretation of what he calls the myth of Abraham's sacrifice:
Abraham should have replied to this supposedly divine voice that
even if your voice rings down from heaven, if you order me to
kill my good 3 ~on, contrary to the moral law, you cannot be the
voice of God.
Some might regard this as superficially rational;
but would
the story of Abraham's sacrifice have had the
influence it has had if Abraham had indeed sacrificed Isaac?
Hegel's thought aims at absolute comprehensiveness. It aims
not
only
at comprehending and superseding
all
previous
philosophies and theories, but also the truth not only about but
within practical life and reality
as a whole. It's allcomprehensiveness
will allow it to supersede
all
finite
standpoints. One most impor3~nt part of that reality is religious
life and religious thought.
The incorporation of religion into
philosophy reaches its culmination in Hegel. "Culture has," he
declares:
"raised this latest era so far above the ancient antithesis
of reason and faith, of philosophy and positive religion,
that this opposition of faith and knowledge has acquired
quite a different sense and has now been transferred into the
field of philosophy itself. In earlier times philosophy was
said to be the handmaid of faith. Ideas and expressions of
this sort have vanished and giilosophy has irresistibly
affirmed its absolute autonomy."
Kant too, he argues, tried to accomplish this synthesis, but his
notion of reason was too narrow. Alongside
the
narrowly
intellectual and rational "religion has its sublime aspect as
feeling,
the love filled with eternal longing ... it yearns for
eternal ~5auty and bliss ... it seeks ... the Absolute and the
eternal."
Hegel's philosophy must encompass the full range of
religious experience. For Kant, Jesus was a representation of
"the Idea of Humanity in its full moral perfection." For Hegel,
Jesus was the epoch-making revelation that the universal divine
Spirit, God, that permeates and enlivens the universe dwells in
and comes to full self-consciousness in man, in the human spirit.
This consciousness goes through stages,the highest of which is
the conceptual. "Every philosophy sets forth nothing else but the
construction of highest bliss as Idea." "The sins of him who
lies against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, a~g the lie
against the Spirit is that he is not a universal .... "
The expected transformation of human life,
including
political life, Hegel's rational kingdom of heaven on earth,
according to his schedule, is long overdue. Kierkegaard, revolted
by Hegelian rationalism, turned to revelation as intrinsically
irrational. Nietzsche continued the modern project of finding the
source of meaning in, rather than outside of, man, however no
longer as reason, but as will. Heidegger urges us to be resolute
without clarifying what the ends of that resolution are to be.
15
�The classical and medieval dependence of morality on nature and
natural law is replaced by an exaltation of human "creativity"
coupled with despair of finding a rational source of ends to
guide that creativity.
However, even if modern thought should have proved an
inadequate candidate for articulating the meaning of human life,
there is one area in which its success seems indubitable. I refer
to the natural sciences. The question for those who lean toward
the classical or medieval alternatives is: Can modern natural
science be integrated into those allegedly more comprehensive
frameworks?
One indication, certainly no proof,
of
this
possibility is Werner Heisenberg's turning to Aristotle's concept
of potency and Plato's Timaeyf when he tries to make philosophic
sense out of quantum theory.
The unanswered questions raised by this broad survey might
seem overwhelming, but it does seem to be clear that we are faced
by three fundamental alternatives, and that the attempt to
dispense with or transcend the ancient and medieval alternatives
is highly questionable. If, as Heidegger says, questioning is the
piety of thoughtfulness, the piety of thoughtfulness requires
that we do justice both to philosophy open to the claims of faith
and to faith open to the claims of philosophy.
NOTES
*A revised version of a lecture delivered at St. John's
October 28, 1988.
College,
1. Heidegger has been discussed in greater detail with a brief
discussion of the relation of modern scientific philosophy
(Husserl) to religion in my "The Prescientific World
and
Historicism: Some Reflections on Strauss, Heidegger and Husserl,"
forthcoming in The Humanistic Legacy of Leo Strauss, ed. Alan
Udoff, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).
2. Diels, 32.
3. The reference to God as Creator follows closely on the
reference to "the laws of nature and of nature's God", suggesting
that the Creation is carried on in accordance with those natural
laws.
4. Cf. Harry V . .Jaffa, "What is Equality? The Declaration
Independence Revisited," The Conditions of Freedom: Essays
16
of
in
�Political Philosophy, (Baltimore: The 3ohns Hopkins University
Press, 1975), 149-160; and George Anastaplo, "The Declaration of
Independence," St. Louis University Law Journal (Spring, 1965),
390.
5. Metaphysics, 981b 27-29, 982b 11-983a 11, 983b 7-984a 2, 1014b
16-1015a 19, 1074b 1-14, 1091a 29-1091b 20.
6. In Homer the word nature occurs only once, in the Odyssey. (X.
303) The first and only man to use the word is Odysseus who had
seen the cities and learned the minds of many men, who had
learned how men's thoughts differ from place to place and from
tribe to tribe. He uses the divinely given gift of natural
knowledge to defeat the baneful magic of a goddess.
7. Aristotle,
Physics,
II; Leo Strauss, Natural Right and
History,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1953), 78-97;
3ohn Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, (London: Adam and Charles
Black, 1892), Introduction.
8.
Holzwege,
(Ff. am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), 325.
9. Was Heisst Denken?,
(Ttibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1954}, 6-7.
10. Nicomachean Ethics, 1140a 1-23; Metaphysics, 1032a 12 ff.
11. Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 40, A.3. Cf. also Q. 1, A.2.
12. Kritik der Urteilskraft, Einleitung. IV, ## 75 and 76.
13. Plato, Meno, 72c 6-d 1.
14. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1027a 14, 1036a 9.
15.
La~'ls,
731e-732a.
16. Theaetetus, 176a-b.
17. Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, translated and
edited by Muhsin Mahdi, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969),
Part I, sec. 55. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1252b 24-27.
18. Laurence Berns, "Aristotle's Poetics", Ancients and Moderns:
Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo
Strauss,
ed. 3oseph Cropsey, (New York: Basic Books, 1964), 7478, and 81.
(The last section, p.
82, should be
marked
"Epilogue".}
19. Aristotle,
De caelo, 298b
Theologica, I, Q. 46, A.2.
20. Ibid., I-II, Q. 91, A.4.
17
14-25;
Thomas
Aquinas,
Summa
�21.
Ibid., II-II, Q. 1, AA.4 and 5; Q. 2, AA.1, 2 and 9; Q. 4,
AA.1 and 8. The will, in turn, is moved by hope and charity: hope
of attaining the ultimate happiness of a supernatural vision of
God, and charity (friendship for God) in the desire to honor God
by the acceptance of his authority. Ibid. Q. 2, A.3, A.9 ad 2,
A.10; Q. 4, AA.3 and 7; Q. 23, AA.1 and 6.
22. Leo Strauss, "Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in
Western Civilization," Modern Judaism I,
(Baltimore:
Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1981), 17~45; "The Mutual Influence of
Theology and Philosophy", The Independent Journal of Philosophy,
ed. George Elliott Tucker,
(Vienna:
1979), 111-118.
(Those
lectures [in 1952] provided a most important impetus
and
inspiration for these reflections.) Aristotle,Topics,
lOOa 30100b 23 and especially lOla 36-lOlb 4.
23. Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz: Beitrage zum Verstandnis
Maimunis
und Seiner Vorlaufer,
(Berlin:
Schocken,
1935),
Einleitung, and especially 21; translation by Fred Baumann,
Philosophy and Law: Essays toward the Understanding of Maimonides
and his Predecessors,
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society,
1987), Introduction and especially 13;
Spinoza's
Critique of Religion, (New York: Schocken, 1965), Preface to the
English Translation, 28-31; History of Political Philosophy, eds.
Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987), 296 and 297. Note that on 297 Strauss does not say
modern political philosophy.
24.
Novum
"conquered"
Part VI.
Organum,
I, aphorism 3
(Spedding
mistranslates
as "commanded".); Descartes, Discourse on Method,
25. Cf. Sophocles, Antigone, l. 821.
26. Leviathan, chap. 21.
27.
Enzyklopadie, I, ## 160 and 163; translation by W.
The Logic of Hegel, (Oxford: 1892), ## 160 and 163.
Wallace,
28. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History,
178-183; Laurence
Berns,
"Aristotle and the Moderns on Freedom and Equality",
The
Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, eds.
Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Soffer, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987),
Corrected Edition, 148-151.
29.
Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher
Absicht, Idea of a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent
30. Leo Strauss, "Progress or Return?", n. 22, above, 32-33.
31. DJe RelJgion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft,
Akademie-Textausgabe, VI,
104; Religion within the Limits of
18
�Reason Alone, translation by T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson,
(New
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 95; Der Streit der Fakultaten,
Akademie-Textausgabe, VII, 67; The Conflict of the Faculties,
translation by Mary J. Gregor, (dual language), (New York: Abaris
Books, 1979), 123.
32.
Ibid., note, 63 (German); 115 (English). Cf. Emil L.
Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy,
(New York: Schocken, 1980), chap. 2, "Abraham and the Kantians:
Moral Duties and Divine Commandments."
33. Cf. Emil L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension
Thought, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 15-23.
in
Hegel's
34.
Glauben und Wissen,
(Jenaer Schriften),
(Ff. am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1970), beginning; Faith and Knowledge, translation by
Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 55.
35. Ibid., 290-291 (German); 58 (English).
36. Der Streit der Fakultaten, 39; The Conflict of the Faculties,
67; Glauben und Wissen, 292; Faith and Knowledge, 59; Vorlesungen
uber die Geschichte der Philosophie, (Ff. am Main: Suhrkamp,
1971), I, 95; The History of Philosophy, Introduction.
37. "Planck's Discovery and the Philosophical Problems of Atomic
Physics,"
Lecture, Sept. 4,
1958,
On Modern Physics,
W.
Heisenberg, M. Born, E. Schrodinger, and P. Auger,
(New York:
Collier Books, 1962).
19
�
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Berns, Laurence, 1928-
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On the relation between philosophy and religion
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1988-10-28
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Revised version of a lecture delivered on October 28, 1988 by Laurence Berns as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/74ae5b8767d2a23385d811ecb911ae28.mp3
6e09049577776d180579fd2565fdb39f
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Francis Bacon and the Conquest of Nature
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 25, 1975, by Laurence Berns as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626
Philosophy, Modern
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Dialectic, virtue and recollection in Plato's Meno
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 24, 2010 by Laurence Berns as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Dialectic, Virtue and Recollection in Plato's Meno*
Laurence Berns
The first thing that confronts the reader of a Platonic dialogue is its strange form.
Philosophic writings, since Aristotle, usually take the form of treatises or essays. But
dialogues present themselves as dramas, where actions are equally, or even
sometimes more, important than what has been presented as spoken, where what is
said must be understood in the light o·f what is done, and what is done must be
understood in the light of what is said. Thus, the validity and meaning of the
arguments presented in a dialogue must be worked out and qualified by the
imaginative and logical exercise of working out the arguments implicit in the action.
I. Opening Questions
Plato's Meno opens with Meno confronting Socrates with what appears to be a
fundamental question about virtue, that is, human excellence. The usual Socratic or
Platonic preparation or context for the question is absent. That is, we are not told
why Meno asks that question or why it is asked of Socrates. It does, however, appear
that Meno is very interested in the question of how to acquire virtue, or at least how
to acquire the benefits that a reputation for virtue might supply. But the latter
question, why it is asked of Socrates, is not too difficult: Socrates does have a
reputation for being exceptionally knowledgeable about the question of virtue: in
Plato's, Republic, (358A ff.) Glaucon is speaking to Socrates:
But the argument for justice, that it is better than injustice, I have never heard from
anyone, as I would like to hear it. And I would like to hear it praised, itself
for its very self. And I think that I can learn it from you, most of all.
*The Anastaplo Works of the Mind Lecture, University of Chicago, 11 /15/2009, revised for the
Homecoming Lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, 9/24/201 O
�Meno, from Thessaly visits the sophisticated metropolis Athens and asks the expert
on virtue a "learned" question about the subject of his expertise. Socrates's
response to the question is, on its face, outrageous. To Meno's surprise, he answers
that wisdom must have emigrated from Athens to Thessaly, because if anyone in
Athens should be asked such a question he would laugh about being thought
capable of answering it, and would insist that, "I happen not to know at all what that
thing virtue itself is." The truth of that assertion by Socrates would seem to depend
on the acceptance of his supremely high standard for what "to know" might be. At
any rate, he does seem to be very knowledgeable about everything that has been
said about virtue, e.g. Justice-Republic, Courage-Laches, Moderation-Charmides,
Knowledge-Theaetetus, et al.
Socrates claims to share the poverty of the rest of the Athenians: "How could I know
what sort of thing something is [for example, whether virtue is teachable], if I do not
know what [virtue] is?" Socrates turns Meno's more practical question, about how
something is acquired, into a theoretical inquiry about what the thing Meno is asking
about is.
What is it about Meno's question that could provoke such a response? Does
Socrates already know that Meno's character is as questionable, as Xenophon
reports it to be in his Anabasis? 1 This dialogue tells us nothing about Meno's later
history. We are left by Plato to deduce Meno's character from what he says and
does in this dialogue. The opening question is:
Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is something teachable? Or is it not
teachable, but something that comes from practice? Or is it something neither from
practice nor from learning, but comes to human beings by nature, or in some other
way?
1
Xenophon, Anabasis, II. vi. 21-29.
2
�If "learning" in this question is only considered as the other side of teaching we are
given three distinct alternatives as to what the source of virtue might be. If they can
be separated, we have four, with one indeterminate possibility: teaching, or practice,
or learning, or nature; they all exhibit themselves throughout the dialogue, either by
their presence or by their conspicuous absence. The "some other way" may be an
anticipation of the answer, "by divine dispensation", with which the dialogue ends.
If, as it seems to me, Socrates knew that, as far as human character is concerned,
nature provides the capacities, teaching and/or learning set forth the ends, the goals,
implicit in the natural capacities, and practice develops the habits that enable one to
actualize or defeat those goals. Divine dispensation could be a replacement for
nature as the source of the original capacities.
Meno's question, then, erroneously disjoins, as separated alternatives, factors that
can only be properly understood as interrelated parts functioning together in the
unified whole of human development. Socrates' seemingly outrageous response
could then be seen as the beginning of an attempt to help Meno get sight of the
whole that he has unwittingly dismantled. The vast question of the relations of parts
to the wholes that they are parts of manifests itself, but not explicitly, at the very
beginning and throughout the whole of this dialogue.
II. Dialectic
Since this dialogue is a dramatic dialogue and not a narrated dialogue like the
Republic, our only access to the action of the dialogue is through the mode of the
discussion itself. We are not altogether at a loss, however, in this matter, for
Socrates has explicitly characterized that mode as dialectical.
But if, being friends as both I and you are now, ... [we] should want to have a
discussion with one another, then surely a somehow more gentle and more dialectical
way of answering is required. And it is perhaps more dialectical to answer not only
�with the truth, but also through those things which he who is being questioned could
agree that he knows. (Speech 82 2 [75C-D])
But dialectical means a variety of interrelated things in the Platonic writings. The
word is derived from the Greek dialegein, to converse, to discuss. The word dia,
connected to the word for two, duo, in composite words like this, signifies
connections between two or more separated things. It is a linking prefix. Consider
the Greek word diabainein. The word bainein means to walk. When you prefix dia to
it, it means to cross a bridge. The dia links the two sides of a bridge. The word logos,
part of the word dialoqos (dialogue, a noun connected with the adjective dialectical)
means a number of things: some primary meanings are speech, meaning and
reckoning.
Dialectical then does often mean gentle and friendly conversation, where the
interlocutors accommodate themselves to, and try to understand each other's views,
in contrast to unfriendly and contentious conversation. Dialectic in this personal
sense suggests that the meaning of what is being said is to be understood primarily
with reference to the characters and capacities of the speakers including their
limitations or talents. If the situation, or the character, or capacity of an interlocutor
makes theoretical questioning no longer appropriate, the conscientious dialectician
can aim at furthering some salutary opinion or belief, some communal agreement that
could be beneficial for society as a whole. This form of dialectic frequently appears,
as in the case of the Meno, near the end of a dialogue.
Aristotle, in his discussion of dialectical reasoning, in the first chapter of his Topics,
distinguishes dialectical reasoning from the most perfect form of reasoning,
demonstrative reasoning. Demonstration reasons from premises that are "true and
primary". The types of persons holding those premises need not be mentioned
2
The translations, notes and speech numbers referred to are those to be found in Plato's
Meno, translated with annotations by George Anastaplo and Laurence Berns, (Focus
Publishing, R. Pullins Co., Newburyport, MA: 2004).
4
�because the premises produce conviction or belief "through themselves". But
dialectical premises, it seems, require reference to those holding them. Dialectical
premises are generally accepted opinions (endoxa) "held by all people, most people,
or by the wise, and of these, all of the wise, or most of the wise, or the most notable
and illustrious of the wise. " 3 Here, in dialectic, where even true and primary premises
might be subject to question, reference to the kind of people holding the premises is
appropriate.
In this personal sense, for example, Plato's treatment of moderation in the Republic
can be called dialectical. 4 It ascends from how moderation exists in all, or rather
most, people, as control over one's desires, pleasures and pains with respect to
food, drink and sexual satisfaction, to its highest and most rare form as a beautiful
harmony of cooperating and interpenetrating powers of the soul, each power
functioning smoothly as it was naturally meant to function. It should not come as a
surprise that Plato's treatment of dialectic is itself dialectical: it is certainly spoken
about in a number of different ways in the dialogues.
In the Republic, dialegesthai and dialektike, both usually translated as dialectic, refer
to that highest form of inquiry by which reason (logos) ascends from sense
perception, experience, opinion and what is changeable and opinable, to seek what
is purely intelligible, knowable and unchangeable, that is, the forms, or ideas, what
each thing is, its very being (ousia), and finally to the governing principle of the whole
(literally, of the fil!, to pan. 5118). Aristotle, Plato's foremost student, put this last
point as follows: "Dialectic . . . being investigative, has a way to the principles of all
pursuits, (all methods, methodon). " 5
3
One is almost tempted to add, "or by all of the most notable, or most of the most notable,
or the very most notable of the most notable; or ... etc."
4
See the note on Speeches 26 and 28 [73A-B], and Republic, 3890-E and 4300-4328.
5
Topics, 101 b2-4
�These two meanings of dialectical, the personal and the theoretical, come together
when two or more friends are genuinely disposed through discussion to seek an
adequate response to a serious "What is ... ?" question, like, "What is virtue?" 6 Or, if
a response is not forthcoming, they can search for a better understanding of the
question itself, by refining it. 7 In Plato's Cratylus (390C) the dialectician is referred to
as one who knows how to ask and to answer questions.
But sometimes these two modes of dialectic can be at cross purposes. Socrates,
from the beginning of the dialogue up to Speech 354 [86C], has been trying to get
Meno to seriously address the question, "What is virtue?". Meno, in Speech 355
[86C-D], reverts, as if nothing had happened during the intervening discussion, to his
opening question (with two important omissions). 8 At this point, Socrates, by
dialectically accommodating himself to being "ruled" by Meno, gives up trying to
engage Meno in the ways of the higher dialectic, adopting instead what he calls a
"hypothetical" approach. Something similar happened earlier in the discussions of
shape and color. Socrates seeks definitions rooted in our primary experience of the
things defined, but Meno finds such definitions too simple. 9 Socrates dialectically
accommodates himself to Meno by producing an overgeneral, fancy, materialist
("Empedoclean") definition of color that undialectically ignores the primary
experience, the primary cognition, from which any definition of color, or definition of
the object of sight, would have to begin, that is, looking.
Just before giving up on Meno, Socrates invites him to join with him in putting into
practice what has just been exhibited in the Slave Boy scene 10 But, one might
6
See note for Speech 194 [81 E].
Leo Strauss uses the word "zetetic", seeking or searching (from the Greek verb, zetein), to
describe the fundamental characteristic of Socratic philosophizing. On Tyranny, Victor
Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth, eds. (New York: The Free Press/Macmillan, 1991), p. 196.
8
To use Biblical language, this speech, an important turning point, could be regarded as
Meno's Fall. He repeats his opening question leaving out the two things he needs most:
learning and practice.
9
See Plato's Sophist, 243A-B.
10
Speech 354, [86C].
7
6
�object, in the entire Slave Boy episode no "What is ... ?" question is ever raised.
How then does the Slave Boy scene relate to the higher dialectic? Both the mode of
presentation and the subject-matter of the Slave Boy scene put a premium on
looking, looking inside one's self and looking outside at what one can learn only by
looking. The Slave Boy scene is an exhibition for Meno's sake of how one can be
prepared --here with the aid of a master teacher-- for higher dialectic. The
preparation consists of an honest, careful and critical review of what one thinks one
knows, in order to come to understand what one does not know. One cannot
understand that one does not know without understanding what one does not know.
Mathematical illustrations have been traditionally, and are here, models of clarity and
precision. The Boy enthusiastically swears when he fully realizes that he does not
know from "what sort of line" the eight-foot squared area comes to be. 11 Socrates
remarks to Meno and even more to us: "For now he, not knowing, can even carry on
the search gladly ... do you think that before he would have tried to seek for or to
learn that which he thought he knew while he did not know --before he fell down into
perplexity and want and came to believe that he did not know, and longed to
know?" 12
-
But Meno, although he acquiesces politely, does not seem to see what
Socrates is getting at. His vanity may not allow him to become a slave of learning.
Ill. Eidos
Socrates' major complaint with Meno's different accounts of virtue is that Meno
continually gives him swarms of many different virtues, and not that "one and the
same form (eidos) through which they are virtues, and upon which one would
somehow do well to focus one's gaze." 13 After Meno introduces the ability to acquire
11
Speech 275 [84A]
Speeches 282 and 284 [848-C]
13
Speech 16 [72C].Eidos is often translated as "form" or "idea". It is also sometimes
translated as "class", as "character" and as "pattern". The elementary meaning of the word is
"looks", that by which someone or something is recognized as being who or what he, she or
it is. It is connected to the verb eidenai, "to know", the original meaning of which is "to have
seen".
12
7
�wealth into the virtues, Socrates characterizes Meno's enumerations of the different
virtues, like justice, moderation and piety, as breaking up or changing the whole of
virtue into small coin, pieces of small change. This whole, as eidos, as class
character, constitutes the whole class of virtues, and each virtue as what it is,
according to Socrates; but what kind of whole are we being urged to think of? The
old tried and true, natural, if not even childlike, method would be to try to reason to
the less known from what seems to be better known. Are justice, moderation,
courage, piety and wisdom related to virtue as small change is to gold coin; or as
two, three, four and five, are related to number; or as the different kinds of bees are
related to their hive; or as the different classes of human beings are related to
political society as a whole; or as the organs of a living body are related to the whole
living body? Is "virtue" by itself the organism of the different virtues? There is one
passage in the dialogue that seems to favor the organismic model. In Speech 112
[77A-B] Socrates urges Meno to tell him what virtue is, "leaving it whole and healthy."
While "health" as an analogous term can apply to a number of things, its primary
reference is to an animal organism.
Aristotle, who appears to be more practical than Plato, approves of Gorgias' and
Meno's way of enumerating the virtues. 14 But Aristotle too indicates, near the end of
his treatment of courage in the Nicomachean Ethics, (1117b9-13), that no particular
virtue possessed in isolation from the other virtues fully deserves the name "virtue":
"the more a man possesses virtue in its entirety (ten areten pasan), and the more
happy he is, the more will he be pained by death; for life is most worth living for such
a man."
How does the elementary notion of "sensible looks" become transmuted by Plato and
Aristotle into the idea of "intelligible (noetic) looks"? It has something to do with the fact that
that by virtue of which a being is what it is, is also that by virtue of which it belongs to a
class. When we say, "This is a dog.", we also mean, "This belongs to the class of dogs."
What gives a being its character has the attribute of a class character. See Republic, Books
VI and VII.
14
See Politics, 1259b21 .-1260b 7, especially 1260a25-28.
�There are Platonic dialogues devoted to different virtues, such as Justice-the
Republic, Moderation-the Charmides, Courage-the Laches, and Piety-the
Euthyphro,. The organismic hypothesis might help account for why none of these
inquiries by itself is said to be successful.
IV. Cloaking Unknowns As Knowns
In Speech 172 [798-C] Socrates tells Meno that "when you were requested by me to
talk about virtue as a whole, you fell far short of saying what it is, but you declared
that every action is a virtue whenever it is done with some piece of virtue, just as if
you had said what the whole, virtue, is and it was immediately recognized by me,
even if you were to change it into pieces of small change. " 15 But, Jacob Klein argues,
in commenting on these passages, 16 that what Meno is charged with doing (see
italics in the previous sentence) is what we all do every time we express an opinion
about someone possessing or not possessing some particular virtue.
To hold an opinion about that which is under consideration means to take-or, at
worst, to pretend to take-the zetoumenon [the thing sought], the "unknown," as if it
were "known." To test an opinion means to follow it up through necessary
consequences until a patent absurdity (a "contradiction") or something
incontrovertibly true comes int6 sight. 17
Klein's use of the mathematical term "unknown" alludes to what he has described (on
p. 83 of the same text) as the "analytic" tradition of ancient mathematics, where
15
See Speeches 152-166 [78C-79A (especially Speeches 161 [78E] and 164 and165 [78E79A].
16
Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno,. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1965), p. 84.
17
Klein adds, "Depending on whether the former or the latter happens, the opinion is either
refuted or vindicated. To vindicate (or verify) an opinion means to transform a zetoumenon
into an homologoumenon, into something one has to agree to, to transform the hitherto
'unknown' into a truth now indeed 'known.' However seldom, if ever, such vindicating occurs
in a Platonic dialogue, the 'dialectical' process, which is 'analytical' in its very conception and
structure, tends toward that end."
9
�proofs begin by assuming that one already has the unknown being sought, the
zetoumenon, and then, by following up the necessary consequences of that
assumption, one either arrives at a contradiction, proving the impossibility of the
assumption, or one arrives at some agreed upon truth which establishes the truth of
the assumption. "All mathematics today is an outgrowth of this ['analytic'] tradition,"
Klein says. He alludes to, among other things, the ubiquitous x of algebra. A very
simple example: What is the number that multiplied by two equals six? Let us
assume that we have it and call it x. Therefore 2x
= 3.
= 6.
Divide both sides by 2, then x
Three is the number. But not only modern mathematics, the argument goes, but
all testing of opinions, including the testing of opinions in the dialectical process of a
Platonic dialogue, follows some such analytic procedure.
This bears on the consideration of wholes and their parts as follows:
Generally, any opinion on any subject can be understood to catch some "partially"
true aspect of the subject under investigation. This means that, however mistaken
each of us may be about that subject as a "whole," we are talking together about "the
same thing" or, at least, are making an effort to talk about "the same thing." ... But
that, in turn, indicates a common, if usually hidden, ground along which the
conversation proceeds and where the "whole" is really "located." This "back-ground"
is the zetoumenon [thing sought] and its continuing presence manifests itself in our
ability to opine, that is, to cloak what remains "unknown" with the guise of the
"known." The dialectical-analytic process thus tends indeed through "parts" toward a
"whole." That is why it is not at all impossible to talk about "properties" of something
of which we do not know what it is. 18
The continuing presence, then, often inexplicit, of a background idea of "the same
thing" holding the conversation together manifests itself in dialectical differences of
opinion, each interlocutor is arguing about that which he or she does not fully know,
assuming the "unknown" as if it were known. If those who converse are genuinely
18
See Speech 2 (71 B) of Plato's Meno, and Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, p. 85.
10
�interested in getting to the truth of the matter, and if each presents evidence and
arguments that make sense, they may come to see that the oppositions they find
indicate that they have not been talking about the same thing. The "cloaking"
process of opining had at first kept them from seeing, but then made it possible for
them to see, that they had been talking about different things. Through the saving
grace of the principle of non-contradiction, the oppositions are resolved by
distinctions, and opinions move closer to knowledge. 19
If, as Klein argues, Socrates misrepresents, in this and other dialogues, the
illegitimacy of our ordinary use of "cloaked" eidetic unknown wholes in order to talk
about properties of particulars participating in them, his primary motive would seem
to be to open up the question "as to what underlies our ordinary speaking and
thinking" on any subject, "as a precondition for looking at the 'wholeness' of things."
Does the Slave Boy scene exhibit what it purports to exhibit, that all so-called
teaching is really recollecting? It appears that Socrates simply gives, or "teaches,"
the Boy the sought-for line. The scene does exhibit a perfectly natural series of
errors, brought out and clarified by a master teacher. The clarification of those
natural errors, as errors, also exhibits how one can come to learn, and to benefit from
learning, what one does not know. In this simpler case, at least, the question is
answered: the Boy does move from false opinions to a true opinion about the soughtfor line. 20 Meno had complained before the Slave Boy episode (Speech 179 [79 E-80
B]) that Socrates, unlike anyone he has ever spoken with, numbs him both in soul
and mouth, so that he is not able to join him in his search for whatever virtue is.
Meno, to forestall being recruited into the search, presents in the form of questions
an argument that he thinks is beautiful which would undermine any such Socratic
19
See Plato's Republic, 430E-431A, especially 436B-441C. ·
20
See Speeches 322-332 [858-D].
11
�search. 21 To rescue his kind of searching from Menonic oblivion, Socrates introduces
his recollection story.
V. The Whole and the Surface
He claims to have heard -Meno is much more attentive to things heard than to things
seen- the story "from both men and women wise about things divine," from priests
and priestesses and divine poets "able to give an account (loqon) of those things they
have taken in hand." What they say is that the human soul is immortal, it appears to
die and be born again many times, but is never destroyed. Because it is immortal,
has been born many times and "has seen all things ... there is nothing it has not
learned and therefore is able to recollect 22 , about virtue and about other things, which
it already knew before." Since part of that time it was without a body and sense
organs, that seeing cannot simply be seeing in the normal sense; presumably it was
some kind of seeing with the mind's eye. "Inasmuch as all nature is akin (or,
connected in kinship, synqenous) and the soul has learned all things, there is nothing
to prevent someone who recollects (which people call learning) one thing only from
discovering all other things, so long as he is brave and does not grow tired of
seeking." Since all nature is connected (syn-) -in kinship (-genous) "every bit the soul
recollects can be understood as a 'part' of a 'whole'."23 The implication is that that
whole is an ordered and knowable whole, the knowable whole.
We spoke earlier of the description, in the Republic, of the ultimate or highest object
of dialectic being knowledge of the governing principle (archen) of the whole: the
recollection story of the Meno, then, points to the ultimate object of, the ultimate
zetoumenon. thing sought, by, our natural inclination to know. To know a whole
means to know its parts, and to know how those parts fit together to make a whole.
21
•
See Speeches 185-188 [80D-81A].
22
"Remembering", mnesis, is distinguished from "reminding", or "recollecting", anamnesis.
Prefixing ana- to the ordinary word for memory or remembering suggests setting out to
recall, or to bring something back up to memory.
23
Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, p. 96.
12
�But if the whole of any particular subject is only a part of the all-comprehensive
whole, one cannot have full and perfect knowledge of any particular subject without
knowledge of the all-comprehensive whole that it fits into. In any literal sense this is
not possible.
What then could Plato mean by philosophy, and what is he recommending to us
upon reading the Meno? Do not opinions, different opinions, about the ultimate thing
sought, zetoumenon, shape or influence the ways we go about seeking knowledge of
those parts of the whole that we think we can learn, the different "sciences?" Is the
governing principle of the whole corporeal, mathematical, noetic (an object of
intellect), organic, or something else ---or all or a few of these together? Seeking to
understand fundamental problems, or alternatives, is not solely a theoretical matter.
Theory and practice come together as one seeks to understand the principles
shaping one's own most cherished opinions.
One simple and straightforward consequence of holding to the recollection doctrine
is that anyone seeking to discover what virtue is should first look inside oneself, to
examine just what it is that one thinks one knows. It may seem immodest, Leo
Strauss once remarked, to speak about "all objects of human knowledge," but "we all
really have opinions -and sometimes very strong opinions-- about all objects of
human knowledge, and it is perhaps better to confess that to oneself and to try to
clarify that than just to leave it at the amiable appearance of modesty." Socratic
philosophy, then, would be zetetic, 24 ready to seek; openly skeptical in the original
sense of the word skeptical: that original sense is derived from the words skopein
and skeptesthai, to look carefully, which occur many times in this dialogue. To be a
skeptic in this sense of the word is to be a thoughtful "looker." A zetetic skeptic,
then, is a thoughtful "looker" seeking and searching for the truth, including the truth
about the unavoidable, but elusive, principle or principles governing the whole.
24
See Plato's Meno, cited in note 1, the notes for speeches 12 [72A] and 194 [81 E], pp. 50
and 61.
�Speaking generally from what relates to human cognition, the whole and its parts
becomes accessible to us through sense experience as sensible heterogeneity: its
intelligible (or noetic) underpinnings through intellection as noetic heterogeneity and
through counting and mathematics as noetic or dianoetic homogeneity. Sensible
heterogeneity refers to the things we all know, dogs, cats, trees, tables, human
beings, men women, etc.: they come in different kinds. Noetic or dianoetic
homogeneity refers to numbers, that is, multitudes of units or monads of the same
kind: if we want to count seats, or humans, or men, or women in this room, we have
to specify first the kind of unit we are using in our count. Both of these modes of
cognition, sensible heterogeneity and dianoetic heterogeneity, presuppose divisions
into, and relations between, different kinds, or classes, or to use the Platonic Greek
term, different eide, that is, they presuppose noetic heterogeneity.
I will quote Leo Strauss to sum this up:
The "what is" questions point to "essences," to "essential" differences -to the fact
that the whole consists of parts which are heterogeneous, not merely sensibly (like
fire, air, water and earth) but noetically: to understand the whole means to
understand the "What" of each of these parts, of these classes of beings, and how
they are linked with one another. Such understanding cannot be the reduction of
one heterogeneous class to others or to any cause or causes other than the class
itself; the class, or the class character, is the cause par excellence. Socrates
conceived of his turn to the "what is" questions as a turn, or return, to sanity, to
"common sense": while the roots of the whole are hidden, the whole manifestly
consists of heterogeneous parts. One may say, that according to Socrates the
things which are "first in themselves" are somehow "first for us"; the things which
are "first in themselves" are in a manner, but necessarily, revealed in men's
opinions. 25
25
Leo Strauss, The City And Man,(Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1964), p. 19, and
Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, (Cambridge & London:
The M. I. T. Press, 1968), pp. 89-91.
14
�I find it comforting, comforting, but also puzzling, that with all these unusual
expressions we have been talking about the "surface" of things. What might be called
the sentence of Leo Strauss is about that surface. It goes as follows: "The problem
inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of
things." 26 I have found it instructive to think about how Strauss leads up to that
sentence. It is from his book Thoughts on Machiavelli27:
We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at
any rate harmless ridicule, if we profess ourselves inclined to the old-fashioned and
simple opinion according to which Machiavelli was a teacher of evil.
Strauss then lists nine examples of Machiavelli's "maxims of public and private
gangsterism." The central one is: "not virtue, but the prudent use of virtue and vice
leads to happiness". Such maxims were said to be devilish. Strauss goes on:
To recognize the diabolical character of Machiavelli's thought would mean to
recognize in it a perverted nobility of a very high order. [He refers to Marlowe's remark
that according to Machiavelli, 'there is no sin but ignorance.' and then goes on:] Not
the contempt for the simple opinion, nor the disregard of it, but the considerate
ascent from it leads to the core of Machiavelli's thought. There is no surer protection
against the understanding of anything than taking for granted or otherwise despising
the obvious and the surface.
I leave you repeating once again, the final sentence of that statement: "The problem
inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of
things."
26
27
Thoughts on Machiavelli, (The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois: 1958), p. 13.
The Introduction, p. 9.
�
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Description
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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paper
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15 pages
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Dialectic, virtue and recollection in Plato's Meno
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 24, 2010 by Laurence Berns as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Berns, Laurence, 1928-
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2010-09-24
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text
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pdf
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/6849" target="_blank" title="Audio Recording" rel="noreferrer noopener">Audio Recording</a>
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English
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Bib # 78947
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4cf2d001991ea4fced6e2ff9f66e25c0.mp3
c39b5cf879c26518d77b0f616d64de74
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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audiocassette
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00:50:31
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Virtuality Is Its Own Reward
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 12, 1997, by Sven Birkerts as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Birkerts, Sven
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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1997-09-12
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sound
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mp3
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Digital media--Social aspects
Literature and technology
Books and reading--Technological innovations
Internet--Social aspects
Language
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English
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LEC_Birkerts_Sven_1997-09-12_ac
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4921f10018329f17b24e5327e496c91e.mp3
306593e0296f9cc7a6dc30eb25c2739e
Dublin Core
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Description
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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wav
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00:53:19
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Given and Giving: Hegel and Heidegger on the Work of Art
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered by Brendan Boyle on February 22, 2019 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. (Beginning of recording is cut off).
Creator
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Boyle, Brendan
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2019-02-22
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sound
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mp3
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English
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Boyle_Brendan_2019-02-22
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4336028f91d20f59ccea9a42879d9567.mp3
da729253758901f64803b0683cd88e6a
Dublin Core
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Description
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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00:59:20
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Bib # 82439
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Privacy and the Constitution
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 19, 2014 by William Braithwaite as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
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Braithwaite, William
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
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2014-09-19
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
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sound
Format
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mp3
Subject
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Privacy
Constitutions
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f0ad61f8a58ce280b730e638c1c90471.pdf
cbcbec0adcf644670e9ddc57e39ba3d5
PDF Text
Text
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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pdf
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18 pages
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Reading Genesis Chapter Three
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 2, 2022, by William Braithwaite as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr. Braithwaite offers this description: "The Garden of Eden story, about Adam and Eve, what they did and how they were punished for it, is the authoritative source for the Christian doctrine of original sin. Before St. Augustine and St. Paul appropriated it for this purpose, however, the story belonged to the Hebrew Scriptures of the ancient Israelites, and Judaism has no dogma of original sin. But even before ancient rabbis put the story in writing many centuries ago, it may, some scholars suggest, have circulated orally.
If we try to imagine who first told the story, and to whom, and with what end in mind, what would we take it to be about, and what truth might we find in it? What does the story say to those who are not Christians or Jews, whether of another faith, or even atheist or agnostic? Seeking reliable speculations on such questions is the work behind this lecture."
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Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas)
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2022-09-02
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A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: make a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a recording of my lecture available online; make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Subject
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Bible. Genesis
Eve (Biblical figure)
David, King of Israel
Parables
Solomon, King of Israel
Language
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English
Identifier
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LEC_Braithwaite_William_2022-09-02
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d34aed13624e9834bdf439cb45e0126d.mp4
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Dublin Core
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Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Moving Image
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mp4
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01:17:48
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Title
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Reading Genesis Chapter Three
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered on September 2, 2022, by William Braithwaite as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr. Braithwaite offers this description: "The Garden of Eden story, about Adam and Eve, what they did and how they were punished for it, is the authoritative source for the Christian doctrine of original sin. Before St. Augustine and St. Paul appropriated it for this purpose, however, the story belonged to the Hebrew Scriptures of the ancient Israelites, and Judaism has no dogma of original sin. But even before ancient rabbis put the story in writing many centuries ago, it may, some scholars suggest, have circulated orally.
If we try to imagine who first told the story, and to whom, and with what end in mind, what would we take it to be about, and what truth might we find in it? What does the story say to those who are not Christians or Jews, whether of another faith, or even atheist or agnostic? Seeking reliable speculations on such questions is the work behind this lecture."
Creator
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Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas)
Publisher
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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
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2022-09-02
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A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: make a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a recording of my lecture available online; make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a copy of my typescript available online."
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Bible. Genesis
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David, King of Israel
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LEC_Braithwaite_William_2022-09-02_ac
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1c0101ce28ea085841d2551fe7afa90b.pdf
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Text
DEPTH
AND
DESIRE
EVABRM-IN
St. John's College
Annapolis, Friday, August 31, 1990
�DEPTH AND DESIRE
Eva Brann
Annapolis, Friday, August 31, 1990
li5l y an old tradition the first lecture •)f the year is dedicated to
lQJ the new members of our college, to the freshman students and
the freshman tutors. It is a chance to tell you something about the
shape and the spirit of the Program that pverns St. John's College-
and not only to tell you but perhaps even to show you.
I think I am right in this spirit when I begin by examining
the class-name I just called you by: freshmen. A freshman, my
etymological dictionaries tell me, is a person "not tainted, sullied or
worn," a still-fresh human being, where "fresh" means, so the
dictionary points out, both "frisky" and "impertinent." Later on in the
year you will learn a weighty Greek word applicable to persons of
frisky impertinence. They are said to have thymos, spiritedness or
plain spunk, a characteristic necessary for serious learning. This
spirited frame of mind is perfectly compatible with being shy and
secretly a little scared. In fact, to my mind, it is a sign of quality in
newcomers to be anxious for their own diJnity in the way that shows
itself in spirited shyness. It is our business, the business of the
faculty and of the more responsible upper class students, to help your
spiritedness to become serious, to emerge from the shyness-- whether
it be of the quiet or the boisterous sort, to help you channel your
energy into a steady desire for learning and to direct your boldness
toward the discovery of depth and, moreover, to help you without
leaving you tainted, sullied, and worn out. I keep saying "help,"
because although great changes are bound to take place in you in
these next years-- do but behold the seniors: unsullied, untainted,
unworn and transfigured-- we none of us know who should get the
most credit besides yourself:
the Program, our teaching, your
friendships or just plain time passing.
At any rate, the spirit of the college is invested in
seriousness, a certain kind of seriousness-- not dead seriousness but
live seriousness, you might say. This seriousness shows itself on
many occasions: in deep or heated conversations in the noon sun or
at midnight, in marathons of effort and in the oblivion of sleep, in
devoted daily preparation and in glorious goofing-off, in the
1
�BRANN
DEPTH AND DESIRE
willingness to try on opinions and in the need to come to conclusions.
What does your school do to induce this very particular kind of
seriousness?
When you chose to come to St. John's you were, perhaps,
attracted by the fact that the mode of teaching normal in higher
education is quite abnormal here. I mean lectures. Only one lecture
a week is an integral part of the Program, on Fridays at 8:15 P.M.
Now the chief thing about a lecture is that it is prepared ahead of
time. For instance, I began working on this lecture in March. A
lecture Ol!ght to be the temporarily final word, the best a speaker has
to give you at the moment. It should not matter whether the surface
of the speech is brilliant or drab, as long as it is a deliberate and
well-prepared opening of the speaker's heart and mind to the
listeners. As such it carries authority. These authoritative occasions
are obviously important to the life of the school.
Yet our normal way is not the prepared lecture but the
focused conversation which is effervescent rather than prepared,
provisional rather than authoritative, and participatory rather than
reactive. Your tutors will not tell you but ask you; they will not
demonstrate acquired knowledge, but the activity of learning. One
reason why the teaching of new tutors-- and some of your classes will
be taught by newcomers-- is often most memorable to freshmen is
that their learning is genuinely original and keeps sympathetic pace
with yours. There is an irresistible but false local etymology of the
word tutor as "one who toots," perhaps his own horn. What the word
tutor really signifies is a person who guards and watches learning.
We are deliberately not called professors because we profess no
special expertise.
Since you will not be told things, you will have to speak
yourselves. What will you speak about? The Program wiH ask you
to focus your conversation on certain texts-- they might be books or
scores or paintings. These texts have been selected over the years by
us because they have the living seriousness I am trying to speak
about. To my mind texts, like people, are serious when they have a
surface that arouses the desire to know them and the depth to fulfill
that desire. Here then, is my announced theme for tonight: the
depth that calls forth desire.
To delineate that depth I must once again distinguish our
kind of conversation, the kind associated with such texts, from the
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�BRANN
DEPTH AND DESIRE
kind of fellowship to be found in other places. All over this country,
and wherever the conditions for some human happiness exist, there
are people who know all there is to know about some field that they
till with a single-minded love. This is the blessed race of buffs,
aficionados and those rare professionals who have had the grace to
remain amateurs at heart. They study history or race stock cars or
do biology or fly hot-air balloons. My own favorite fanatic is the
young son of a graduate of St. John's. This boy is persistently in love
with fish, with the hooks, flies, sinkers, leaders, reels and rods for
catching them, with the books for studying them, with the aquaria,
ponds, lakes and oceans for observing them. When I first met him
he looked up at me shyly and asked if I knew what an ichthyologist
was. Since I knew some Greek I knew the etymology of the word
and could tell him that it is a person who can give an account of fish,
so he was satisfied with me. This boy may have his troubles but he
is also acquainted with bliss.
This kind of concentrated bliss we cannot deliver to you,
except perhaps in limited extracurricular ways. Instead we, or rather
the Program, will drive you through centuries of time and diversities
of opinion, while depriving you of the freedom and the serenity to till
and to master a well-defined field of your own choosing. You will
study Greek and invest hours in mem01 izing paradigms, but your
tutorial is not a Greek class-- it is a language tutorial in which Greek
is studied only partly for its own virtues, and partly as a striking and,
for you, a novel example of human speecl1 and its possibilities. You
will study Euclid and demonstrate rna 11y prepositions, yet your
tutorial is not intended to make you geometers but to allow you to
think about the activity of mathematics. In short, you will be asked
to read many books carefully and to stcdy many matters in some
detail only to find them passing away, becoming mere examples in
the conversation. And these fugitive texts will almost all bear their
excellence, their worthiness to be studied exhaustively, on their face,
for we try to pick the ideal examples. This procedure is practically
guaranteed to keep you off-balance, even to drive you a little crazy,
since you will not often have the satisfaction of dwelling on anything
and of mastering it. How do we dare do this to you?
Here is a strange but unavoidable fact: Those who plow
with devotion and pleasure and increasing mastery some bounded
plot on the globe of knowledge often undergo a professional
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�BRANN
DEPTI-I AND DESIRE
deformation. They lose first the will and then the ability to go deep.
To be sure, specialists are often said to know their subjects "in
depth," but that is not the depth I mean. Let me illustrate with an
example I have a special affection for. I began my academic life as
an archaeologist, and the first thing archaeologists do is to dig deep
past the present surface of the earth, or rather they scrape it away
layer by layer. But with every stratum they scrape away they find
themselves at a new surface, the surface of a former age. They poke
into time-- a magical enough activity--but they do not pretend to
pierce the nature of things. For example, there would come up from
the depths of a well-shaft an ancient pot. I would catalogue it by
naming its form, say: kotvle, a kind of cup; by giving its dimensions:
H. 0.108 m.; diam. 0.135 m; by describing its proportions: deep
bodied, narrow-footed; by interpreting the picture painted on it: a
rabbit-- this is the pot-painter being funny-- jumping a tracking
hound from behind; by conjecturing about the provenance and the
stylistic influences: made in Attica under Corinthian influence; and
by assigning a date: third quarter of the seventh century B.C.
Was I required to consider what I meant by dimensions,
proportions, styles, images, funniness, influences, places? Not a bit-
that would have meant time out and profitless distraction from my
business, which was to know all about the looks and appearances of
the pottery of Athens in early times. What this Program of ours
offers you is exactly that time out, and that splendid distraction.
People will say of you, when you have graduated, that you have
4
�BRANN
DEPTH AND DESIRE
acquired a broad background. But your education will have been
broad only in a very incidental and sketchy way-- certainly not in the
fashion of a close-knit tapestry that is a continuous texture of
interwoven warp and woof. Many of the books you are about to read
do tie into one another. Sometimes a book written by an ancient
Greek will (I am not being funny) talk back to one written by a
modern American, or the opposite-- the strands that connect these
books seem to run back and forth and sideways through time. But
some books will stand, at least as we read them, in splendid isolation,
and all in all the texts we study do not add up to a texture of
knowledge: There is no major called "Great Books." How could
there be competence in a tradition whose moving impulse is to
undercut every wisdom in favor of a yet deeper one? There is not
even agreement whether this tradition of ours advances or
degenerates with time, whether its authors are all talking about the
same thing, though in a different way, or in apparently similar ways
about quite incomparable things.
Here is what the books do seem to me to have in common:
They intend to go into the depths of things. All the authors, even
those subtly self-contradictory ones who claim that there are no
depths but only surfaces, are deep in the way I mean. This desire for
depth, then, is what will hold your studies here together. There is a
word for this effort, to which it is my privilege to introduce you
tonight. The word is philosophy. The term is put together from two
Greek words, philos, an adjective used of someone who feels friendly,
even passionate love, and sophia, which means wisdom or deep
knowledge.
When I say that your school is devoted to philosophy, the
love of deep knowledge, I mean that all our authors want to draw you
deep into their matter, whether by words, symbols, notes or visual
shapes. Incidentally, in a few weeks a lecturer, a tutor from Santa
Fe, will come and contradict me; he has told me that he will say that
what we do needn't bear the name of philosophy at all.
Let that be a subject for future discussion, and let me come
to the heart of my lecture tonight. It is ;he question what depth is
and how is possible. I think we are all inclined to suppose that
literal, actual depth belongs to bodies and space and that people or
texts are deep only by analogy, metaphor .cally speaking.
I want to propose that here, as Sl often in philosophy, it is
5
�BRANN
DEPTH AND DESIRE
really the other way around: it is the body that is deep merely
metaphorically, as a matter of speaking, while the soul and its
expression alone are deep in the primary sense.
Certainly the depth of a body or a space is elusive. If a body
has a perfectly hard and impenetrable surface, its depth must be
forever beyond our experience-- a kind of hard, inaccessible
nothingness. On the other hand, let the physical body have a hollow
in it-- such caves are powerful allegories of depth and you will in the
next four years come across some famous holes: the grotto of
Calypso, the underground chamber in Plato's Republic, Don
Quixote's cavern of Montesinos. Now ask yourself: Where actually
is the depth? The containing boundaries of the hollow are all faces
of the body, and no matter how deep you seem to be inside the body,
you are still on its surface, just as I argued before about
archaeological excavations.
Now consider matterless bodies, geometric solids. Euclid
says in Book XI that a solid has length, breadth, and depth, but he
gives us no way to tell which is which:
it depends on your
perspective-- in fact all three dimensions are lengths delineating the
surfaces that he says are the extremity of the solid. What is inside
that solid, what its inwardness or true depth is, he does not feel
obliged to say. These are questions you might want to raise in your
mathematics tutorials: Can one get inside a geometric solid? How?
Bodies, I am suggesting, are either too hard or too involuted
or too featureless or too empty to have true depth. Only divine or
human beings and the texts they produce-- texts made of words,
notes, paint, stones, what have you-- can be literally deep or
profound. For I attribute depth or profundity to that which is of a
truly different order from the surface that covers and hides it. And
it must be the inside and foundation of just that surface, so that we
can gain entrance to it through that particular outside and through no
other. Every depth must be sought through its own proper surface
which it both denies or negates and supplies with significance: the
surface that hides its own depth is never superficial.
Human beings seem to me the most obvious example of such
depth. All human beings have a surface, namely the face and figure
they present. I personally think that in real life almost all people
also have an inside, their soul, their depth. But there are some
famous novels in which characters are described who are nothing but
6
�BRANN
DEPTI-1 AND DESIRE
empty shells. Against their impenetrable surface those whom they
attract by the insidiously unflawed beauty peculiar to facades that
hide nothing break themselves, or if they tear through, they fall into
nothingness.
However, these are fictions, and actual human beings have
by the very fact of their humanity an inner sanctum. We begin by
noting, casually, their face, their demeanor. As our interest awakens
we proceed to read more carefully, to watch their appearance
ardently for what it signifies. If we are lucky, they may open up to
us, as we do to them. If we go about it right, this interpretative
process need never come to an end, for the human inside, or to give
it, once again, its proper name, the soul, is a true mystery. By a true
mystery I mean a profundity whose bottom we can never seem to
plumb though we have a persistent faith }n its actuality. I think that
for us human beings only depths and mysteries induce viable desire.
For love entirely without longing is not possible among human
beings. Many a failure of love follows on the-- usually false-
opinion that we have exhausted the other person's inside, that there
is no further promise of depth.
It is not only in respect to living human beings that depth
calls forth desire. This college would not be the close human
community that it is if you did not get to know some human beings
deeply-- which is called friendship. But such love is only the essential
by-product (to coin a contradictory phrase) of our philosophical
Program, a program that encourages the love of certain para-human
beings. These para-human beings are the expressions of the human
soul, our texts, as well as the things they talk about.
Let me take a moment to ask wl>ether this particular desire
for depth I keep referring to is common among human beings or
even natural. I say it is absolutely natural and very common. You
will see what I mean when I tell you what I think is the nature of
desire. Desire seems to me to be a kind of negative form or a
shaped emptiness in the soul, a place in the spirit expecting to be
filled, a kind of psychic envelope waiting to be stuffed with its proper
contents.
Now take a long leap and ask yourself what a question is.
A question is a negative form or shaped emptiness in the mind, a
place in thought waiting to be filled, a psychic envelope ready to be
supplied with its proper message. Questions therefore have the same
7
�BRANN
DEPTII AND DESIRE
structure as desires. In fact questions are a subspecies of desire: a
question is desire directed upon wisdom or knowledge. Therefore I
might go so far as to say that this school teaches the shaping of
desire-- because here we practice asking deep questions. Now I think
that very many, probably all, human beings would like to ask such
questions if they only knew how. That is why the desire for depth is
both common and natural.
What we most often, or at least most programmatically, ask
questions about are those texts I have been mentioning. As I have
intimated, such a text, particularly a text of words, is a curious kind
of being, neither a living soul nor a mere rigid thing. What a book
might be, such that it could have genuine depth, is a question that
should arise over and over in the tutorials and the seminars. That
books do have depth is shown by the fact that they induce questions,
the directed desire to open them up. I want to end by giving a
sample of a deep text and a demonstration of the beginning of a
reading, a mere knock at its gate, so to speak.
The text is a saying by Heraclitus. Heraclitus flourished
about 500 B.C. He was early among those who inquired into the
nature of things, and he had a contemporary antagonist, Parmenides.
You will see from your sheets that Heraclitus said that it is wise to
agree that "All things are one. • Parmenides said things that, on the
face of it, seem similar, but whether he meant the same thing as
Heraclitus, or something opposite or something incomparable-- that
is a matter of ever-live debate.
In any case, Heraclitus and
Parmenides together embody the great principle of our tradition that
I mentioned before; you might call it the "the principle of responsive
differentiation." However, I shall not try to talk about Heraclitus's
actual wisdom tonight-- that along with the previous questions: "What
is philosophy?," "What is a solid?," "What is a cave?," "What is a
book?," I leave to future discussion. I shall attend only to the
preliminaries with which Heraclitus surrounds his wisdom.
Heraclitus's book is largely lost, though as far as we know it
was not a treatise but a book of sayings. Even in ancient times it
had a reputation for depth; the tragedian Euripides said of it that it
required a Delian diver-- the divers from the island Delos (which
means the "Manifest" or "Clear") were evidently famous for diving
deep and bringing things to light.
8
�DEPTH AND DESIRE
BRANN
The sayi�g I have chosen goes:
OVK IIJOU &:ua TOU Aoyou aKQU aaVTas
611oAoydv aoq�ov AaTw lv 1rav-Ta dva&
Transliterated it reads
ouk emou alia tou logou akousantas
homologein sophon estin ben panta einai.
On the surface this saying is in Greek and needs to be
translated. Since I have argued that surfaces are, like traditional
Japanese packaging, an integral part of the contents, they must be
carefully and patiently undone. Now to put Heraclitus's Greek into
English is, up to a certain point, not hard. Your Greek manual will
tell you about the "accusative absolute" and about various infinitives,
and your Greek dictionaries will give you the meaning of "listening,"
of "wise" (which you are already familiar with in philosophy), and of
"agree."
"Logos" is one of the
But then you look up logos.
tremendous words of our tradition, to which it is, once again, my
privilege to introduce you. Without even looking it up, I can give
you the following meanings: Word and speech, saying and story, tally
and tale, ratio and relation, account and explanation (that was the
meaning which occurred in the word "ichthyologist"), argument and
discussion, reason and reasoning, collection and gathering, the word
of God and the son of God. As you learn Greek you will see what
it is about the root-meaning of logos that makes this great scope of
significance possible.
But how are you to choose?
You are
caught in a vicious circle: Unless you know what Heraclitus means
by logos you cannot choose the right English translation, and unless
you discover the right English word you cannot know what he means
by his saying. However, sensible people find ways to scramble
themselves out of this bind.
Try a meaning that makes good
immediate sense: choose "reasoning."
Listening not to me but to my reasoning,
it is wise to agree that all things are one.
This yields a saying that is particularly pertinent to us, since
9
�BRANN
DEPTII AND DESIRE
it might be posted over every seminar door. For though we must
look into each other's faces, we must not get stuck on personalities.
Each seminar member has a right to say: "Never mind me, answer
my argument." Heraclitus is introducing a great notion into the
Western world here: Not who says it matters but what is said.
But there is more signifying surface to the saying. Listen to
its sound and notice that in the second line the word homologein
sounds like logos. "Agree" is a good first meaning but it does not
preserve the similarity of sound. Homologein literally means "to say
the same." Let me try that, and for "my reasoning" I will substitute
"the Saying."
If you listen not to me but to the Saying,
it is wise to say the same: that all things are one.
Now what sense does that make? What Saying? Whose saying other
than Heraclitus's own? Suppose the translation did make sense, then
Heraclitus is saying that there is a saying that can be heard beyond
his own, a speech to which we must listen, a speaking that it would
be the part of wisdom to echo in what we say. What impersonal
speech could that be? Heraclitus in fact tells us not what the logos
is, but what it says, for he bids us to say the same: "All things are
one." What if this saying, of which no human being is the author,
where a power whose saying and doing were one and the same?
What if its speech were an act? Let me play with a third, somewhat
strange, version:
Once you have listened not to me but to the Gathering,
it is wise similarly to gather all things into one.
Here logos is translated as gathering or collection. It is the power
that gathers everything in the world into a unified whole, the
organizing power we are invited to imitate by giving a comprehensive
account of the universe in speech. The logos speaks primally; our
logos becomes deep by imitating it.
I think by now the text has begun to draw us through its
surface into its depth. You can see that it demands of you the playful
seriousness I mentioned at the beginning, a seriousness that calls out
all your capacity for careful attention to surface detail as well as your
willingness to dive into the depths.
io
�BRANN
DEPTH AND DESIRE
Here I shall stop. But although I am ending, I am not
finished-- and neither, of course, are you. If you have in fact listened
not only to me but also to my argument, and if you are possessed by
the proper freshman spirit, now is your moment, the part of the
Friday night lecture that is the true St. John's:
the time for
questions.
11
�A NOTE ABOUT THE
TEXT
This lecture was written and
edited in WordPerfect 5.1.
All headings, subheadings,
and body text are set in
Times Roman. Typesetting,
editing, and printing were
done at the St. John's Print
Shop.
�
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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Depth and desire
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on August 31, 1990 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Brann, Eva T. H.
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St. John's College
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1990-08-31
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pdf
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English
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text
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Bib # 57332
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Taken from the St. John's Review, Volume XXIX, Number 3, 1989-90. It was originally the opening lecture of the 1990-91 academic year at St. John's College, Annapolis.
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Annapolis, MD
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<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/326">Audio recording</a>
Deans
Friday night lecture
St. John's Review
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a1c9f2fc4240a91c117155ca8ef84126.mp3
4b3f07f1255ce76f9a2ad1c04a0bada1
Dublin Core
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Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
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
CD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:55:16
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
Talking, Reading, Writing, Listening: A Lecture for Parents and Students
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-11-04
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I herby grant St. John's College permission: To make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make an audio recording of my lecture available on the St. John's College web site."
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_Brann_Eva_2011-11-04
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 4, 2011, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/55e6aa8f496fa78a421d25bf54284ef0.mp3
d715f6cabf822c3afed8083364d2ef02
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:08:08
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Brann_Eva_1972-05-05_ac
Title
A name given to the resource
On Thomas More's Utopia
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on May 5, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
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
1972-05-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
More, Thomas, Saint, 1478-1535. Utopia
More, Thomas, Saint, 1478-1535
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2e712cf6ffbdf618790e699e961dda6e.mp3
1e9d6dc5c4d2a41546b04b3325072635
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:40:16
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Brann_Eva_1972-10-06_ac
Title
A name given to the resource
The Poet of the Odyssey
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 6, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
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
1972-10-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Homer. Odyssey
Greek literature
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/edf751d064ff28012445edd4d5929c84.mp3
17ddf7b73e53cd0a282d3bdadcae7fdd
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:59:58
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 10108
Title
A name given to the resource
On the Imagination
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 18, 1977, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
The first few sentences of Brann's lecture are cut off by recording problems, just after the word, "Tonight." In Brann's lecture transcript, this paragraph reads, "Tonight I shall commit the deliberate indiscretion of trying to say what may be, all in all, unsayable. Let me, therefore, begin with a little disquisition on ineffability."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
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
1977-11-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Imagination
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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