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Truths about quantum mechanics
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Trout, B. Truths about Quantum Mechanics
Friday night lecture
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A Ran1ble on Fern Hill
Jonathan Tuck
Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
A Lecture Given at
St. John's College
Santa Fe, New Mexico
April 8, 1994
�I
A Ramble on Fern Hill
I want to do several things at once: To give a partial reading of "Fern Hill," by
Dylan Thomas, and to catch myself in the act of giving such a reading in order to reflect
on what it means to give a reading. When I say "give a reading," I do not mean only
that I want to read the poem aloud-- although I do want to do that too-- but to give an
analysis, an interpretation, an exegesis. It's interesting that the lit. crit. locution "to give
a reading" should mean this: almost as if to read the poem is to analyze it, or to analyze
it is only to read it. But I think there's a particular appropriateness to this locution when
applied to a lyric poem:
Whatever "lyric" means--and in our day it seems to mean
nothing more than a pretty short poem-- its etymology
suggests that we should be
thinking of an utterance which is to be sung, and even accompanied by music. If the
poem comes first to our ear, not our eye, it remains there in some way even through
every act of cutting it up and surrounding it with commentary. The concrete presence
of the sung or spoken poem unifies and holds together all the discursive particularities in
an interpretation. When we interpret at length, we distance ourselves from this presence,
but only temporarily: for in my experience there is no such thing as ruining a poem by
analysing it. We cannot "murder to dissect"; the poem is resurrected each time we read
it again.
But if our act of interpreting has been fruitful, it is not the same poem now;
�2
this new presence holds together more particulars, more complexities, more internal
articulations. So the purpose of interpreting the poem is to be able to read it again, and
also to come to know part of it for the first time. It is in this sense that I intend to "give
a reading" of "Fern Hill," and to watch myself closely in order to see how I do it.
In teaching lyric poems, I have found that certain students are aware of having a
certain kind of "blind spot" (actually, it would be better to say a "deaf spot") when it
.comes to the appreciation of poetry. They are genuinely puzzled by what others find to
interest themselves in while reading a great lyric poem; and they are alarmed at having
to try to write anything substantive about it. I cannot aspire to opening blind eyes or deaf
ears; but I hope to try to give some practical counsel to such people about possible ways
to open up what has been a closed-off area for them. They may not be able to find the
same immediate appeal in poems that other readers do, but I would like them to see how
a poem can be discussible.
Why do I choose "Fern Hill" as the specimen for this how-to-do-it demonstration?
Certainly not because it is an "easy" poem; in fact, an easy poem, whatever that is,
would be exactly the wrong kind for a demonstration. My motive for choosing "Fern
Hill" is alarmingly simple:
I believe that it is the greatest lyric poem in the English
language-- at least among those I am aware of-- and I have a kind of evangelistic zeal to
share it with others and to display it as the greatest. But what on earth can I mean by
the preposterous claim that "Fern Hill" is the greatest English lyric poem? It seems clear
that I have yet another task: To think about what makes a poem good, or great. It is not
�3
that I want you to agree with me in my evaluation of "Fern Hill"; but perhaps what
makes this poem great for me is what may make some other lyric poem great for you.
In the process, I want to show that "Fern Hill"'s relation to the theme of time is not
accidental but is part of what makes the poem so good; that all poetry, or at least
certainly all lyric poetry, is concerned with time because time is one of the conditions
within which it comes to light. And this presupposes that poems are characte1istically
about poetry, whatever else they are also about. This reflexive property of poems gives
a clue to what kinds of things to look for in analysis, in "giving a reading": instances
where the theme of the poem is somehow mirrored in the poem's form, so that in the
course of being about something else, the poem can also be about itself. This is a \Vay
of poems' being about poetry that is I think more substantive than the less interesting
sense in which each poem necessarily redefines the possibilities of the form, genre or
tradition within which it is working.
In the course of "giving a reading," I am reviving into the present an entity which
has two kinds of temporal extension: (1) First: At every "performance" of the poem,
every reading-through of it, whether silent or aloud, I am reminding myself of the poem's
emergence through time-- not only in the way that every spoken language does (since
only one sound can be spoken at a time) but also in the special way that poems, by their
rhythm and measurement of time units, formalize and almost spatialize
repetition-- that raw temporality of language.
-- through
(2) Second: The other form of temporal
�4
extension is the endurance through several different renditions or performances of the
"same" poem-- the several often spread out over years, decades or centuries. It is in this
way that a poem can be a monument more enduring than brass or stone, as Horace and
many others claim. Clearly, it is problematic how these several performances "belong"
to the "same" poem-- in somewhat the same way that the relation of a given production
or performance to the Shakespearean text, or of a playing of a symphony to its notated
form on paper, are also problematic. One might ask what sort of existence the "poem"
has when it is not being "performed." Is it only potential? And why, strangely, does it
show signs of having changed for us when it reemerges into actuality at our next reading?
But instead of addressing these issues, I think we should make actual the particular
poem we are to look at.
It follows from what I've said, as well as from all of my
experience with poetry that the right way to approach a poem, whether by oneself or in
the company of a class, is to read it aloud initially--perhaps several times; and then, after
talking about it or thinking about it, to read it aloud again, to "put it back together
again." (This seems comparable to the actions of analysis & synthesis in mathematical
proof.)
Here,then, is my first practical counsel to those who find poetry hard to enjoy:
The lyric poem, in particular, does not exist until it is read aloud, preferably several
times. It is better still if you can memorize it and recite it aloud from memory--though
this may come only after many oral readings . Now , in approaching "Fern Hill," there's
a special condition which does not exist in approaching a poem by Donne or Keats or
Shakespeare-- namely that we have a recording of Thomas himself reading his poem.
�5
Should I read it myself, or play his version? And if both, when shall I do which?
It seems dramatically right to start with Thomas 's reading, which, like the printed
version on the page, is part of the "received" form of the poem as it comes to us. But
then if time permitted, I should really read it aloud myself, as each of you should: Only
in this way would the poem begin to become ours, to sound on our inner ear as we
proceed to think about it. Then after analyzing it and in some way making it more fully
"mine," I should read it aloud myself at the end. The hope is that the second reading
aloud will contain or embody much of what is gained or learned in the intervening
analysis-- contain or embody both for me the reader and for those co-readers to whom
I am reading. Choosing this order reflects a literary-theoretical allegiance of my own,
in favor of appropriating the artwork, making it new and making it mine, rather than
trying as an archaeologist to arrive at the author's intention. So that is what I will plan
to do, and here is Dylan Thomas's reading of "Fern Hill":
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
5
�6
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
�7
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land .
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
50
Dylan Thomas
(1914-1953)
Though it's not always best for an analysis to start at the first line, or the first word, and
proceed diachronically through the text, in this case I will do so, almost in despair: There is
so much richness, so many logical starting places that lead straight into the heart of the poem.
The poem's first two \Vords are "Now as." Each is ambiguous, and there is some connection
in their ambiguities. "Now" may be sheerly a temporal indicator , in which case we must think
of the poem as referring to the present time in which it is spoken by its speaker. There's a
difficulty here, though, since the first line goes on to refer to the past: "Now as I was young
and easy." But we might still think that the purpose of the initial "Now" is somehow to recreate
or reenact the past, real or imagined, that is portrayed in most of the poem. The innocence of
that past is perhaps regainable in some vicarious way; and it is true that one of the effects of the
poem seems to be to make us feel the experience of Thomas's innocent childhood visits to his
aunt's farm at Fernhill. But the other possible meaning of" now" is almost exactly opposite to
this one:
It may be a transitional particle, used to introduce an antithetical idea, as in the
following imaginary statement: "As an adult I know and feel my mortality and my fallen state.
�8
Now when I was a boy, I never did; I thought I would live forever." The "Now" in the poem's
first line gives the utterance that is the poem a very concrete conversational context: Breaking
away from the thought of how he thinks and feels at present, the speaker turns his attention to
his childhood, as specifically opposed to the present. In this reading of "Now", the poem is a
statement of the finality of loss, rather than an evocation of paradise regained. Of course the
poem as a whole is both.
My point is that the one word "now" holds together these two
possibilities, containing in a small compass many of the largest themes and issues in the whole
poem.
We find a similar phenomenon when we look at the poem's second word, "as."
What
among many possibilities does "as" mean here? Even as I ask the question, I am unable to
forget that the word "as" recurs in the poem, especially in constructions implying comparison
or similitude: "happy as the grass was green"; "singing as the farm was home"; "the hay fields
high as the house"; "fire green as grass"; "happy as the heart was long."
If similes and
metaphors are the essence of poetry, transforming our vision by pointing out correspondences
between the world we know and some imagined, invisible one, then our consideration of the
power of "as" becomes a kind of referendum on the power of poetry. Can it in fact transform
our vision as it claims? Does "as I was young and easy" mean "at the time when I was young
and easy"? or "because I was young and easy"? or "in the same way that I was young and
easy"? or "to the same degree that I was young and easy"? or "as long, and only as long. as
I was young and easy"? It is clear that each of these variant readings produces a different sense
of the power of time and of the power of imagination to triumph over time. "Happy as the grass
�9
was green" sounds comfy and proverbial, like "happy as the day is long" or "happy as a clam."
(Actually, neither of those similes will bear much scrutiny either, will they?) Taken in this
simple-minded or innocent way, the speaker means that he was happy to the same degree that
the grass was green. Comparisons like this usually make use of a vehicle of comparison that
is supposed to be unproblematic:
"strong as an ox" means very strong because an ox by its
nature is very strong. Grass is very green, but the grass by its very nature does not stay green
forever; is it in the nature of things that the speaker will not stay happy forever? Only if "happy
as the grass was green" also means happy in the same way that the grass was green, naturally,
unreflectively-- and temporarily. Because the greenness of the grass is implicitly localized in
time, it may seem diminished: That which doesn't stay green might seem to be less green, or
only apparently green. Was the speaker less happy than he thought he was, only apparently
happy? In this way the vehicle of the simile-- the thing used for purposes of comparison--makes
more complex our notion of the tenor of the simile, the thing being compared to something.
One of our readings of the ambiguous word "as" leads us to other readings: happy at the time
when the grass was green, and only at that time; happy as long as the grass was green.
An
additional complication enters when, in the next stanza, it is not the grass but the child that is
green: "as I was green and carefree." Here "green" must be able to mean not only "young,
fresh" but also "inexperienced, raw, naive"-- as in the expression "greenhorn." At this point
the tenor and the vehicle of our original simile have collapsed into each other: The child and the
grass come together in their greenness, and perhaps we remember the words of the First Epistle
General of Peter:
�10
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of
man is as the flower of grass. The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away:
But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
(I Peter 1:24-25)
We have been noticing ambiguities in the words "Now" and "as."
I induce from this
another practical precept for the poetry-blind: Seek out ambiguities and try to spell them out
patiently and deliberately, almost literal-mindedly. Because the language of poetry has a kind
of life of its own, the natural lexical range of a word is brought into play whenever that word
is used. It is especially fruitful when the ambiguous readings even seem to contradict each other
more or less directly:
Seeing the meaning as problematic makes it possible to connect
alternative meanings to different ways of feeling. I think I am assuming that language may not
always be ambiguous, but feelings almost always are; so that complexities in the language may
bring it closer to the reality of our feelings.
Another precept for the uninitiated reader of
poems: Look hard for repetitions of the same word, or the same image, or the same sound.
In our case, we segued into the poem's second use of "as" from considering its first use. Part
of the formality of a poem, part of its architecture, is the use of repetition; even the ideas of
meter and rhyme presuppose this. But repetition is never pure, as Heraclitus and Kierkegaard
remind us; it is always a re-evocation, containing both sameness and difference. Hence one of
the activities of reading a poem is comparing and contrasting. Jumping back and forth in a
poem to compare and contrast usages of the same word or image, holding them up together, is
a way of treating the poem as a simultaneous structure rather than merely a flowing-in-time.
�11
But noticing differences is a reminder that pure repetition is impossible because the poem exists
in time. This kind of comparing and contrasting is the very theme of "Fern Hill": The speaker
juxtaposes scenes from his past with his present altered condition, and poses the question of
whether he can renew or retain his youth somehow-- perhaps through poetry itself? For this
reason "Fern Hill" is extraordinarily concentrated and unified; it almost seems like pure lyricism
because it both is and is about the very things that constitute the "lyric moment."
Let us take our own advice and go on looking for other usages of the word "as."
When
we next meet a comparable phrase, in the third stanza, "fire green as grass" makes little obvious
sense; fire is not typically green. The fire seems to be there in order to continue the catalogue
of the elements, begun in "air/ And playing, lovely and watery." The earth would seem to be
absent from this list, except that it is present everywhere, not only in the "grass" but in the
fields, the pebbles in the streams, and in the whole subject at hand:
"it was all ... " The lower
element of earth is transformed into higher elements: the flowing water, emblematic of time's
motion; air, which by a pun is also song, the "tunes from the chimneys"; and fire, highest and
simplest, connected with warmth and light.
We still don't see how the fire can be green;
perhaps the peat or coal used in that part of Wales burns with a greenish flame? Or perhaps
"green" here means "new" or "young" or "innocent," like the childhood of the narrator-- in the
case of fire, "closer to the time of Creation," and therefore more elemental. (This might also
help us to account for the "whinnying green stable" in line 35).
Or perhaps the problematic
fact that fire normall y lacks greenness makes the simile into a "dissimile," of the same negative
form as that famous slogan, "A woman needs a man as a fish needs a bicycle"; and if so,
�12
perhaps this problematic form of the simile is meant to cast doubt on other uses of the word
"as."
Let's look at some more: The hay fields were of course not as high as the house, except
to the child's innocent eye, which makes things so only by the imperatives of desire:
"My
wishes raced through the house high hay." Listening to the sounds at the end of that line, we
realize that the comparison between the hay and the house has gone from measurement into a
pure exclamation of joy. Like the child's seeing, the poem's sounding has the power simply to
enact its wishes.
Parallel to "happy as the grass was green," in the second stanza, is the more
peculiar "singing as the farm was home." It is peculiar because we would normally think that
the farm either is or isn't home; unlike the greenness of grass, the farm's identity as home does
not admit of quantification, which seems to eliminate some of our possible ambiguous readings.
But if we are told that the farm was not, in fact, home to Thomas-- he visited there during the
summers-- the eliminated variant reading comes back in a more sinister form: The boy was
singing in the same way, or to the same degree, that the fann was home-- that is, only
temporarily or not at all. Singing has already been attributed to the house: "the lilting house,"
"tunes from the chimneys." It will come again in the poem's last image, another simile:
"I
sang in my chains like the sea." These are "morning songs," with all the poignancy of the pun
hammered home by the word "such."
They are "morning songs" spelled without the "u"
because they belong to youth, both the boy's youth and the youth of the world.
They are
"mourning songs," spelled with the "u" and with the qualifications of "such" and "so few,"
because even our youthful singing is an unknowing presage of our own funeral music. It is
clearly not an accident that the topic of song, like the transforming power of similes, is the
�13
poem's reflexive comment on poetry itself.
It is not only phrases with "as" that are repeated frequently throughout the poem; one of
its most prominent features is the repetition , with crucial variations, of words, images, and even
whole syntactic structures. (The first two stanzas, especially, display a high degree of this
syntactic parallelism.) But moving to smaller units of meaning, it is very noticeable that there
is much repetition of sounds. Thomas is known as a poet for whom flashy sound effects almost
take on a life of their own-- as if abstract patterns of vowel and consonant repetition could make
some kind of musical pleasure for us, regardless of the meanings of the words. But in this poem
at least, I think I can show that the repetitions are purposive, and that they are directly related
to his theme. Look for example at the poem's beginning: "Now as I was young and easy under
the wple boughs." The stressed syllables "I", "eas-", "un-" and "ap-" all alliterate, since any
word beginning with a vowel alliterates with any other. "Boughs" alliterates with the "b" in
"about" and assonates both with "about" and with "house." "House" alliterates with "happy,"
whose first syllable assonates with "grass," which alliterates with "green." The alternating links
of alliteration and assonance form a chaining effect. We see it again at the end of the stanza in
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
The purpose of this chaining of sounds, this singing in chains, is to imitate the "trailing" stream
of the daisies and barley, to connect the various parts of this paradise of sense-stimuli into a
single manifold of sound, or light, or time.
The boy's world has a coherence that came from
�14
innocence, or from his infantile perception of himself as not separated from the objects of his
seeing and hearing. The unity of this world is later reflected in the third and fourth stanzas, in
the poem's use of the word "it" without any obvious antecedent. And within this world, the boy
also has a child's fantasies of omnipotence: It was he who had the trees and leaves trail. This
omnipotence corresponds both to the power Adam and Eve are said to have had over nature
while still in a state of innocence, and also to the power that the poet still has over his little
created world, even in a fallen state. Through playing with patterns of vowels and consonants,
Thomas too "has" the trees and leaves trail. Does this mean that poetry can restore innocence
and conquer Time? But as the last line says, the poet sings in another set of chains, not of his
own making.
It seems clear that sound-effects can be imitative in an almost iconic way. They can act less
directly as well. Notice a pattern of internal rhyme in the first stanza:
Now as I was young and easy under the apple bQJJghs
About the lilting house ...
And again:
Time let me hail and climb.
In each case these internal rhymes act to frame and enclose either a line or a phrase, giving a
sense of secure self-containedness and self-sufficiency. "Time let me hail and climb" is parallel
with the second stanza's "Time let me play and be." The self-enclosed character of the first of
these lines leads us to expect the second to be self-enclosed too-- and it seems to make sense that
�15
way: Time let me play and time let me be-- either let me exist or left me alone. The word
"Golden" thus comes as a shock; we had not expected that the line would be enjambed, even
though "Golden" in the second stanza is parallel with the same word at the same position in the
first stanza. But as it turns out, the two are not syntactically parallel: The first "Golden" is part
of a parenthetical adjectival phrase, modifying "me"; the second "Golden" is a predicate
adjective with "be." This difference throws into relief a difference in meaning: The "Golden"
of the first stanza seems to be unambiguously favorable, while the second "Golden" carries a
hint of another possibility: The speaker is not already golden, a fair-haired lad smiled on by
Fortune and befriended by Time . Rather we see Time letting him be golden. From here it is
not a long jump to another possible meaning of "golden," which certainly comes into play in the
following line: "And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman." Here "golden" suggests
the important difference between spring and harvest time; the latter is still a prosperous,
auspicious time, but it is a time of ripeness and intimations of autumn and encroaching death.
We see this in the way the phrase "green and golden" develops in the fifth stanza:
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
The pairing of "green and golden" becomes, in the last stanza, explicitly, "green and dying . "
Even in the first moments of childhood, we have started on our journey toward death; as the
Clovm says in As You Like It,
. .. from hour to hour we ripe and ripe
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot
And thereby hangs a tale.
�16
(A YLI, Il.vii.25-27)
As "golden" becomes "dying," as a state of ripeness or of being specially favored-- a "golden
boy"-- turns into its opposite, we remember that "green" also means
Hence "green and dying" comes to mean not just
11
naive or unknowing.
growing and rotting" but
11
unaware of
mortality, and yet mortal. 11 What defines the boy's innocence is not so much a lack of sin as
a lack of knowledge, the knowledge of his own mortality. That knowledge itself is a kind of
dying, as it was for Adam and Eve in the garden.
Now the interplay of the images of color-- green, golden, white with the dew, sky blue,
Iamb white-- is a very conspicuous feature of the poem, one that few readers are likely to miss.
But my specific claim is that the use of the internal rhymes, by setting us up for the prominence
of "Golden" in the second stanza, triggers our awareness of this pattern. And if so, we can
educe two more precepts for the novice analyst of poetry: (1) Listen hard to the sound effects,
and when in doubt, assume they are significant. (2) Look at the ends of lines, to see places
where the Iineation is a way of manipulating our successive responses.
We have seen two
instances of unexpected enjambment, in lines 7-8 and in lines 13-14.
These are the most
conspicuous, but there are others.
But how do we listen to the sounds of poems, and what sort of significance do we listen
for? Apart from phonemic repetitions like alliteration, assonance, consonance and rhyme-- each
of which may make a pattern, whether imitative or abstract, there is the clearly imitative
�17
phenomenon of onomatopoeia, the "making" (poieia) through a word (onoma) of something we
otherwise encounter in the world. We don't see much in this poem of sheerly imitative sound,
like Tennyson's "murmur of innumerable bees." Perhaps the chaining effect I described in the
first stanza can be considered an example. But there is a chronic difficulty in the attempt to read
sound as directly mimetic or imitative. Take the sound pattern of line 12, "In the sun that is
young once onJy." Do the repetition of the "uh" sound and the orthographic and etymological
redundancy of "once only" imitate the persistence through time of a sun that is the same each
day-- truly young once only-- or do these sound effects imitate the periodicity of a series of
several suns, as in line 39's "the sun born over and over"? Or does the sound by its ambiguity
raise for us the same question that the poem raises: How to reconcile continuity with change
and repetition, the enduring infinitude of our desire with the finitude of our lives, with the
passage of time?
Sound repetitions can be local, within a line or a few lines, or they can be the architectonic
by which the form of the poem is defined. Thomas used the unobvious measurement of syllabic
count to define the pattern of his stanzas. He was steered to this choice by the precedent of the
medieval Welsh technique known as cynghanedd ("king' ha neth"), which I will not even attempt
to spell for you; in other words, by a precedent from a language other than English, unearthed
by Thomas in a fit of Celtic historical nostalgia. In "Fern Hill," the six stanzas are of nine
lines each. In the general form of the stanza, the first, second, sixth and seventh lines are of
fourteen syllables each, the third and fifth lines are of nine syllables, and the fourth line is of
six.
(I'm guided here by Thomas's own pronunciation, which renders "fire" in line 22 as a
�18
disyllable, and "blessed" in line 25 as a single syllable.) The last two lines of the stanzas vary,
but in a purposive way: In the first, second and last stanzas the eighth line is seven syllables,
while the ninth line is nine. In the third, fourth and fifth stanzas the eighth line is nine syllables,
while the ninth line is six. In effect, the flip-flopping of the long and short lines defines two
cuts in the poem, after stanza two and after stanza five. On inspection, this seems appropriate,
since the result is to set off the third, fourth and fifth stanzas as a separate part. In these stanzas
we are given a flashback into the particularity of the rhythm of day-night alternation as it then
seemed to the young boy protagonist: In this prui of the poem, the sun is "born over and over,"
"green and golden" can coexist, and there is no double awareness, until the end of the fifth
stanza, that only by Time's mercy does all this happen. In the last stanza we get a return to the
divided perspective of the first two, in which our view of the child's innocence is mediated by
our own and the poet's experience of age and mortality. The cycle of "riding to sleep" and
waking, described in detail in stanzas three and. four, is recapitulated in stanza six from a
different viewpoint: Instead of coming back "like a wanderer white/ with the dew," the farm
in this stanza is "forever fled from the childless land." The slight variation in the forms of the
stanzas makes the change explicit, but almost unnoticeably.
An even more subtle pair of
demarcations in the poem comes from the only two variances in the syllable counts I gave
above. I said that the sixth and seventh lines of each stanza are regularly of fourteen syllables.
But the sixth line of stanza one and the seventh line of stanza six have fifteen syllables each.
There is a kind of logic to these cuts too: The first five lines, which precede the first metrical
variation, can be seen as a kind of introductory or general statement, before we descend into the
�19
specificity of the fairy-tale "once below a time." Similarly, the last three lines are signalled as
a new gesture of summation by the metrical variation in line 52. In these last lines we get a
repeating of several elements from the first two stanzas: "as I was young and easy" from line
1 (although the "Now" disappears); "in the mercy of his means" from line 14; "Time held me"
echoing "Time let me" in lines 4 and 13; "green and dying" echoing "green and golden" from
line 15. It is not only the extra syllable in line 52 that signals this last demarcation: Here alone
we get a departure from the scheme of rhyme, near-rhyme and assonance that has unobtrusively
shaped each stanza. All previous stanzas had the general pattern ABCDDABCD. Here in the
last stanza, the sixth and seventh lines exchange their rhyme-sounds, pointing out a break from
what has gone before. ("Dying," which corresponds with "rising," comes after "means," which
corresponds with "sleep. 11 ) As if in compensation, the vowel sound symbolized by 11 D 11 --"sleep,"
11
fields, 11 11 sea" --is the same in this stanza as that symbolized by "A 11 - - 11 me" and "rnea ns 11 --so that
the first and sixth lines assonate not only with each other, but with lines 4, 5, and 9.
Who on earth would notice these features, except me, the critic busily counting away? Do
you hear them as they go past you? I doubt that even the syllabic regularity of the stanzas
comes out to the casual listener, let alone the variations therefrom.
But are we sure that we
are not affected by what we do not consciously notice? And when we do notice it, doesn't it
make the poem better for us? In a poem of almost limitless coherence, I think the assumption
has to be that nothing happens by accident. If we notice a feature of the poem that seems to
cohere with the others we have noticed, the burden of proof is on the person who seeks to
exclude this insight, to deny that it is part of the poem's meaning. I am arguing that \Ve adopt
�20
the interpretive maxim of St. Augustine that in cases of doubt, we take the reading that conduces
to the reign of charity . Practically speaking, this means that we incline towards the inclusion
of whatever complexities we find, unless they make the poem worse, less coherent, less
concentrated. In the present case, there is a fittingness about the subtlety with which the poem's
formal variations work on us. We are not accustomed to syllabic verse in English; our prosody
is almost universally accentual-syllabic.
Syllabic verse, in our experience, tends to be in
languages like French, where there is a certain uniformity of stress. Our first impression in
listening to Thomas is of strongly marked accents or stresses, which tempts us to try to measure
his verse as purely accentual. But if we start counting stresses, we end up with a stanza pattern
more illusory than real; there are too many variations for us to be able to say with confidence
what the paradigm is. Thomas's poem sings in its syllabic chains, but those chains are so light
that they are almost unfelt. As listeners we are as innocent as the boy depicted in the poem;
time-- or more precisely, the measurement of time in syllabic units-- lets us play and be.
The moral of the story seems to be, "Never read any poem for the first time." In fact,
the experience of a poem's sound grows more specific, more itself, the longer we have listened
to it, memorized it, learned the relation of part to part and of cadence to cadence. My thirty
years of friendship with "Fern Hill" constitute yet another temporal perspective in my reading
of the poem . The poem concerns itself with several different expanses of time: the finite lifespan of the speaker, the cyclical and repetitive time-scheme of nature, the sacred historical time
of creation, pastoral innocence, and fallenness. The first of these is replicated in my life-span
as a reader, and the second in my repeated experience of the poem. The poem as an utterance
�21
takes time to say or to hear; its own elapsed time somehow becomes identified with all of time-making the poem a capacious summation but also isolating it. If all of time is within it, there
is nothing beyond it. In this way the poem reminds me of my essential solitude as a timeconscious being. At any moment I look forward and back and contain an infinity within me;
but metaphysically 1-- we-- live as we die, alone. This reflection might apply equally to all lyric
poems, as a description of the "lyric moment"; it is especially true of "Fern Hill" because there
are no other humans within the poem apart from the speaker of it.
The child's solitude in the poem is qualified only by the presence of personified animals
and other natural beings-- like the "apple towns" -- and by the personified presence of Time. But
of this latter presence, the child is unaware. His solitary consciousness is absolute and selfdetermining; his sense of himself is as ari unmoving, stable point around which the delightful
variety of the world moves. Thus as he falls asleep, the diminishing sound of the owls' hooting
signals their having moved away from him, taking the farm with them. When the child awakes,
it is not that he returns to the farm, but that it returns to him:
like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder.
It is a characteristic of very young children, we are told, that they do not perceive objects as
permanent, perhaps because they do not feel themselves as distinct from, standing over against,
the objects in their environment. But this slightly older child does in one way realize that the
motion is his, not the farm's: He sees himself as riding to sleep. As his account of the farm's
motion makes clear, however, the implication of this phrase is not known to him:
the
�22
implication that sleep is a second death, that in moving through our lives, in aging we are all
"riding to sleep," as we hear in the last stanza.
Yet in the last stanza the question remains:
Did he leave the farm or did the farm leave him-- or both? The persistence of the question is
signalled by the ambiguity of the phrase, "And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless
land."
"Fled" seems to modify "farm," but it is hard in any literal way to imagine the farm
fleeing from the land. It seems possible for "fled" also to modify the subject, the speaker "I."
The ambiguity is reiterated by the difficulty of "fled from the childless land." One would think
that the land is only "childless" because the speaker has fled from it, or because the farm, in
some idealized sense, has fled from it.
Yet it is already the childless land from which the
fleeing takes place . There is a suggestion here that the speaker may have physically tried to
return, found the place sterile and unhomelike, and fled from it in some more literal way. But
if the farm has fled, then he himself is the childless land. In either case, the doubt about who
is in motion suggests that the naive perspective of the child is not entirely lost even in the
imprisoned present time of the speaker's singing in his chains.
This relativity of motion in space-- this uncertainty as to whether he or the farm is moving-is connected with a relativity of motion in time. The child feels time as the streaming past him
of a river of light-- He does not yet know that the light is a \vindfall, that his life is a fragile gift
bestowed by the grace of another. Time is measured only by the motion of the heavenly bodies:
"all the sun Jong," "all the moon long." He himself is not aware of moving in time, of growing
older. And yet the world itself is unmoved: It is perfectly new and unaltered, as at the moment
of Creation:
�23
it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
"That very day" is emphatic: it is the same day, the true day, etymologically, of Creation itself.
But the next words confuse the situation.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
Our first reading is likely to take "so" as inferential" Therefore, it must have been just after
the birth of the simple light, on the first day of Creation. But this makes little sense-- as if we
were discovering now, through a process of reasoning, that the time of his youth was literally
the youth of the world. We cannot be discovering it now, since this was how it seemed to him
then. So we see that we were pronouncing the word wrong, that "so" is to be· stressed: It"
means not "therefore" but "like this." "So it must have been after the birth of the simple light";
the feeling at the remote time of creation must have been similar to the child's felt sense of
newness in the rebirth of the morning.
But this is a very different assertion.
To be like
something is not to be it, its very self: As Wallace Stevens said, "Identity is the vanishing point
of resemblance." If the morning is only like the time of Creation, then the vision of the child
or of the poet is not powerful enough to annihilate time.
We can only speculate on what
creation "must have been" like; that nev-lness and innocence is removed from us. The vagueness
�24
of the phrase, "afier the birth of the simple light" can now be seen as purposive: \Ve are not
told how long after.
Creation itself is implicitly linked with the activity of song. The horses are "spellbound,"
held by magic spells, charms or enchantments. But as the etymologies suggest, "charm" and
"enchantment" are words for singing. If the spell or charm is the creating word of God on the
sixth day, when the animals were made, then the "fields of praise" would refer to God's looking
on his work and finding it good. Like a poet, like Amphion with the walls of Thebes, God
sings the world into being; we might think of the picture of creation in C.S. Lewis's Narnia
tales. In Thomas's poem Creation is linked to music again in the phrase "And the Sabbath rang
slowly/In the pebbles of the holy streams." But if we're tempted to think that all Nature is holy
because it comes good from the hands of the Creator, we need to recall that the omnipotent
being who holds us "in the mercy of his means" is not God here, but Time. The music of
time's "tuneful turning" includes morning songs (without the "u "), songs of newness, innocence
and Creation; but also mourning songs (with the "u"), songs of aging, .experience, evening and
death.
I have not begun to exhaust the resources of the poem in this very partial reading of it. But
the Time which has been letting me play in the fertile fields of "Fern Hill" now hurries me
toward a stopping place, if not a conclusion.
I said that our criterion for the validity of a
particular interpretive insight into any feature of the poem should be, does it make the poem
better for us? But why should it be that a poem improves upon analysis? The implication is that
complexity itself is a poetic virtue, perhaps the distinctive virtue of poetry that is good or great.
�25
In the realm of feeling, verbal complexity is always truer than verbal simplicity, because of the
incommensurability between our feelings and our thoughts. Not only must the additional
complexities I notice make the poem seem better, they must also endure in later readings, to the
point where they now seem native to the poem's core of meaning, not added ornaments found
out by ingenuity and imputed to it.
The complexities of meaning and form that I find must
seem to be relatable to mixtures of feelings that the poem awakens in me.
In this way,
analyzing a poem, "giving a reading" of it, is a kind of introspective psychological exercise,
trying to find things in the form or external content of the poem that correspond to feelings that
I already have. And I impute a kind of causative power to these formal complexities that I find:
I say that they are the reason that my feelings were mixed, though I have only discovered it
now. Complexity is thus interesting to us--it speaks to us of ourselves-- and so it allows a poem
of finite size and scope to go on interesting us as we read and reread it. But the complexity
must not be merely given at the outset: Instead, the poem, to be a good poem, must move
toward greater complexity as we continue to encounter it over and over in time. A great poem
must improve with age, but unlike a wine or a quarterback, it should never peak and decline:
and this very inexhaustibility of poems is an interesting and puzzling phenomenon.
My claim for the particular greatness of "Fern Hill" is thus partly an empirical one, resting
on my continued experience of its ability to grow. "Fern Hill" is not the most complex poem
I have ever read, nor even the most complex that Thomas wrote-- Many of his sonnets,
especially, are notably obscure and even unintelligible on first reading.
But I do claim that
"Fern Hill" has exhibited the most increase in complexity as I continue to read it, unlike
�26
gnomic, riddling poems that remain static once they are deciphered.
But the increase in
complexity is always contained and governed m a mysterious way by the finite sensuous
experience of the spoken text of the poem, as if the moments of its sounding were the congealed
presence to me of ever-increasing intervals of Time itself. The musicality of the poem's surface
does not disappear or cloy as I go on reading; instead it animates, accomodates, and brings into
the foreground a steadily increasing number of complexities and internal articulations.
The
poem deepens although its surface does not change; and the character of its depths is consistent
with that of the surface. Thus it is that we can often recognize the greatness of a great poem
even on first reading, long before we have unpacked it and made it our own. The spoken text
is like the finite sum of an infinite series.
The specific greatness of "Fern Hill" is not however an accidental fact in my autobiography.
This poem addresses itself precisely to the encounter between innocence and experience that
constitutes the successive experiencing of poems and this poem.
Each time we read it, the
poem's theme readdresses the question of how we can connect this reading to our previous ones.
The poem's identity as it subsists in the face of change and age is like my own, making me
identify not only with the time-bound speaker but with the time-bound poem itself. And then
I am brought to reconsider questions like, Who am I now?
Can I ever prescind from my
location in space and time, to consider \Vhere I end and my world begins? Can I distinguish
among successive me's in time, so as to think meaningfully about what I think, feel and see
now, as opposed to \Vhat I remember thinking, feeling and seeing?
How can even these
questions keep their meaning for me, unreconciled as I am to the implacable fact of my own
�27
awaiting death?
************
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
That was T.S. Eliot, in another very great poem which shares its subject with "Fern Hill,"
and with this lecture. All are about time, and it is now about time that I end by reclaiming
"Fern Hill" for myself, as I said I would, by putting it back together, singing it in my chains,
speaking it into being one more time:
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Go!den in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
5
10
15
�28
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sk.-y gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun -born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
*****************************
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A ramble of fern hill
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Tutors
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Text
Kant’s Grounding of a Dual Metaphysics1
James Carey – 03 07 2017
1. Metaphysics reinterpreted
Prior to Kant, metaphysics was understood as the enquiry into being, into the different
kinds of beings, and into how these beings are, as distinct from how they merely appear. Kant
redefines metaphysics as a priori synthetic knowledge of objects. It is characterized by
universality and necessity. Metaphysics is not derived from experience, which for him is always
bound up with sensation. And yet metaphysics consists of more than mere definitions and what
can be analytically or logically deduced from them. With this redefinition of metaphysics as a
priori synthetic knowledge of objects there comes a new division.
Metaphysics is divided into that of the speculative and that of the practical
employment of pure reason, and is therefore either metaphysics of nature or
metaphysics of morals.2
Kant grounds this dual metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Critique of
Practical Reason, which attempt to show that we have a priori synthetic knowledge pertaining to
both natural science and morality respectively. And Kant develops this dual metaphysics in the
1
A rewritten and expanded version of a lecture first given at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 1994, and again in
2017.
2
Critique of Pure Reason A 841, B 869 (emphasis in the original). Passages from this work are cited according to
the first (A) and second (B) edition, the pagination of which is included in the margins of English translations. When
A and B are both cited, the text appears in both editions, When A alone is cited, the text is found only in the first
edition; and when B alone is cited, the text is found only in the second edition. I have made ample of use of Norman
Kemp Smith’s translation of the Critique of Pure Reason, though altering it with some frequency in the interest of
greater literalness. Unless otherwise noted, translations of passages from other works are my own. Passages quoted
or translated directly from the German text are taken from Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 1956. Passages from other texts by Kant are taken from Werke in Zehn Banden (edited by Wilhelm
Weischedel, Darmstadt: Wissenchaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981 – Sonderausgabe), hereafter Werke.
1
�Metaphysical Foundation of Natural Science and the Metaphysics of Morals.3 In what follows I
shall attempt to identify the ultimate ground of Kant’s dual metaphysics.
Kant’s task is to give a solution to the problem of how man can have ends, or telē, while
nonetheless dwelling within nature, which according to modern natural science is devoid of ends.
It is by virtue of his reason that man is oriented toward theoretical and practical ends.
Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being has the
ability to act according to the notion of laws, i.e., according to principles, or a
will.4
Man is not just pushed and pulled through life by irresistible forces, or even instincts. He has
immediate and incontestable awareness of himself as an agent. The evidence we have that we
act, that we do things for the sake of ends, that is, with purposes in mind, and that we are not just
acted upon by other things, is immediate, incontestable, and irrefutable by any theory, scientific
or otherwise. No theory of natural science, however much it may contribute to our understanding
of non-human nature, carries, or could carry, as much evidence in its favor as does our
immediate awareness of acting for the sake of ends. We even think—as distinct from freely
associating—for the sake of an end, minimally for subjective clarity and consistency, maximally
for objective knowledge. And we are aware that we have to make some effort to achieve clarity,
consistency, and knowledge. This effort, which we all experience, is immediate evidence of our
teleological constitution. We can speculate or refrain from speculating about the origin of our
3
The Metaphysics of Morals should not be confused with the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Section 2, 412: “Ein jedes Ding der Natur wirkt nach Gesetzen. Nur ein
vernünftiges Wesen hat das Vermögen, nach der Vorstellung der Gesetze d.i. nach Prinzipien zu handeln, oder einen
Willen.” (Emphasis in the original.) Werke, Band 6, 41.
4
2
�teleological constitution, as we wish. But we cannot explain it away.5 Our orientation toward
ends is the genuine “first for us.”
According to Aristotle and his followers, man is at home within a world, within a cosmos
that is itself teleological. Not only plants and animals, but simple bodies at one extreme and stars
at the other, all seem to exhibit teleology, as does the very topology of the cosmos: things have
their proper places, and when displaced from them by force, they return to them by nature.
Enforced motion is virtually defined by Aristotle as motion contrary to nature.6
With the scientific revolution of early modernity, the Aristotelian perspective got
seriously called into question. The distinction between celestial and terrestrial bodies collapsed,
as did the distinction between natural and enforced motion. Modern natural science attempted to
demonstrate that, in the case of inanimate beings, motion can be explained by mechanical or
push-pull, causality alone. And the hope was held open that the motion of animate beings, man
included, could be explained the same way. Natural ends came to be regarded as superfluous
principles. Kant is in general agreement with modern science in its non-teleological account of
non-human human nature. But Kant is in general agreement with Aristotle in his teleological
account of human nature, though the specifics of his account of human nature differ in important
ways from Aristotle’s.
Kant’s metaphysics of nature consists of a body of interrelated a priori synthetic
propositions or judgments. The architectonic propositions pertaining to the metaphysics of nature
are the concern of roughly the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason. I shall focus on only one
5
It is as self-evident as any law of logic that we act for the sake of ends, for pleasure and knowledge among other
things. If modern science cannot make sense of this fact, then modern science needs to restrict the scope of its
claims or revisit its presuppositions, or both.
6
Physics 215a1-4.
3
�of these: “Every event has a cause,” or as Kant also puts it, “All alterations take place in
conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect.” Kant agrees with Hume that the
proposition, “Every event has a cause,” cannot be strictly inferred from experience. We see an
event, A, followed by another event, B. But we do not see A cause B. We see one event happen
after another, to be sure. We see temporal consecution all the time and in recurring patterns. But
we never see temporal connection, no matter how many times we see B followed by A. The
regularity with which B follows A does not permit us to infer, by any known rule of logic, that A
causes B. (And it is for that reason that we sometimes make mistakes in predicting that B will
follow A.) Moreover, even if we could see in a given case that A causes B, we would not be able
to logically infer, given our spatially and temporally limited experience, that whenever A occurs
again it will cause B again, or even be followed by B. We cannot logically infer even that every
time B occurs it must have a cause, much less that everything that has ever happened, is
happening now, or ever will happen, must have a cause. Such a so-called inference is only an
empirical generalization. It lacks any claim to apodicticity inasmuch as it is always colored by
some tincture, however slight, of dubitability.
Because I can think of an event without having to think of its having a cause, I can think
without logical contradiction of its not having a cause at all. And the same is true of an act,
whether construed as event within time or as an act of some other kind.7 I can think, without
logical contradiction, of an act’s not having any cause at all. And so I can also think, without
contradiction, of an event or an act’s being its own cause. There is nothing logically
contradictory about a free act. The stakes, it should be obvious, are rather high regarding what
we can and cannot know about causality.
7
The possibility of an act that does not occur within time, and hence is not an event in the ordinary sense of the
word, will be considered in Section 8, below.
4
�The judgment, “Every event must have a cause,” cannot then be known from experience,
or as Kant says, a posteriori. If it can be known at all, it can be known only a priori, that is,
without relying on experience. But if the judgment, “Every event must have a cause,” is an a
priori judgment, it is not an analytic judgment. There is nothing in the mere concept of an event,
of something that happens, that enables me to logically infer that it must, or even does, have a
cause. (And if I say that to be an event means to have cause, then I am simply begging the
question.) The judgment, “Every event must have cause,” if it is to be a knowable truth, must be
both a priori and synthetic. It can be validated only by a new kind of argument, one that is
neither empirical nor analytic-semantic. Kant calls this new kind of argument “transcendental,”
because it transcends, or prescinds from, all particular content of experience—of sense
experience—relying on none of it, and attempts to exhibit what makes experience possible in the
first place.8
Kant’s well known formulation of the question—“How are a priori synthetic judgments
possible?”—is somewhat misleading. For it could seem to suggest that Kant first assumes the
existence of a priori synthetic judgments, and then tries to show how the mind would have to be
constituted for there to be such judgments.9 But, as the best readers of Kant have pointed out, this
style of argument cannot lead to the conclusion that every event must have a cause, but only to
the conclusion that, if every event must have a cause, and if this proposition is knowable, then the
mind must possess certain cognitive faculties (or cognitive abilities—Erkenntnisvermögen)
8
A 11, B 25; Cf. A 295-296, B 351-353.
In the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that there are a priori synthetic judgments in
mathematics. His argument there serves chiefly as an incentive for seeking such judgments elsewhere. Even if, as
many twentieth century logicians have argued, all judgments of mathematics are analytic and not synthetic, that fact,
by itself, would not undermine Kant’s argument for a priori synthetic judgments functioning as architectonic
propositions for knowledge of nature.
9
5
�whereby it is able to know this.10 Such a procedure would prove neither that every event must
have a cause nor that the mind really does possess faculties enabling it to know this.11 Such a
way of arguing is not fruitless, however. It is in fact the sole procedure of Kant’s Prolegomena.
In that comparatively short and introductory book, Kant says that he “proceeds from that which
is sought, as if it were given, and ascends to the conditions under which alone it is possible.”12
Kant calls this way of proceeding, “analytic” or “regressive.” The way of proceeding in the
Critique of Pure Reason, however, he calls “synthetic or progressive.” Rather than assuming
that every event must have a cause, Kant establishes, or attempts to establish, solely by
considering how the human mind operates, that it really does possess faculties whereby it can
know, indeed constitute, objects and events. He attempts to show that that one of the ways in
which the mind constitutes objects and events is in accordance with the category of cause and
effect—with the result that every event must have a cause. There is a problem, however. In the
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant employs both analytic and synthetic procedures.13 And that leads
some to say, understandably but falsely, that the Critique of Pure Reason presupposes modern
mathematical physics as a body of truth, in order to validate modern mathematical physics as a
body of truth—which is, of course, a fallacy. The deepest stratum of Kant’s argument in the
Critique of Pure Reason does not commit this fallacy. The difficulty is in identifying the deepest
stratum of his argument.
10
In Beyond Good and Evil, § 11 “On the Prejudices of the Philosophers,” Nietzsche has a merry time making fun
of Kant’s use of the word “faculty” (Vermögen).” But Nietzsche’s criticism, such as it is, is not particularly
penetrating. According to Kant, the human mind has the ability (another, less technical sounding, translation of
Vermögen) to be affected; and it also has a quite different ability, namely the ability to think, in particular to judge.
If Kant is right about this, then nothing of importance turns on his naming the former the “faculty of sensibility and
the latter the “faculty of understanding.”
11
See Robert Paul Wolf, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973), pp. 44-56.
12
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Preamble § 5 fn.
13
Kant employs both ways of arguing in the Critique of Pure Reason for the sake of thoroughness. The synthetic
procedure only heuristically presupposes the analytic procedure. It does not logically presuppose the analytic
procedure. That is to say, the synthetic procedure does not employ its hypothetically-conditioned result of the
analytic procedure as an actual premise.
6
�This difficulty is greatly augmented by the rugged contours of Kant’s text. The first
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, was put together in a relatively short
period of time. But Kant developed his main theses over the course of the preceding twelve years
or so. According the prevailing though not universally accepted hypothesis, which has both soft
and hard versions, the Critique of Pure Reason is something of a “patchwork,” including
sentences and paragraphs written at different times during the decade prior to its publication. It is
not hard to find inconsistencies and obscurities in his presentation.14 Moreover, Kant can be
imprecise in his terminology. The word “knowledge” (or “cognition”—Erkenntnis) usually
means the conceptual grasping of a synthesized intuition in a judgment proper, but it sometimes
means only the synthesized intuition itself. In spite of making a rather sharp distinction between
“transcendent” and “transcendental,” Kant occasionally uses the latter when he means the
former. He makes a major distinction between a mere “form of intuition” and a “formal
intuition,” but often uses the one word “intuition” for both. He distinguishes between two kinds
of “synthesis,” but one has to determine from the context which synthesis he has in mind when
he uses this word. Kant also uses the important word “unity” in more than one way. Most
problematically, as we shall see, he sometimes speaks of “the understanding” in distinction from
“the imagination,” but sometimes as including it. The reader who does want to dismiss Kant is
inclined to blame himself for his confusion. But Kant is largely responsible for the confusion. If
he were not saying something of immense significance, the reader would be justified in refusing
to follow him through the “thorny paths of the Critique of Pure Reason.”15
And there is a further problem. Kant made major revisions for the second edition,
published in 1787; and up until his death he continued to refine his thoughts on questions and
14
15
Kant himself acknowledges this. See the Preface to the second edition, B xxxvii-xliv,
B xliii.
7
�problems dealt with Critique of Pure Reason in notes and in other publications, culminating in
the unfinished but rich and wide-ranging Opus Postumum. One cannot call the Critique of Pure
Reason a “snapshot” of Kant’s thinking. It is more like a scrapbook containing photographs
taken over a period of about fifteen years, and not always arranged in chronological order.
But what Kant is getting at has to be considered, if only because of his influence, which
is greater than that of any philosopher since Aristotle. If Kant’s general argument of the Critique
of Pure Reason is sound, he has answered Hume, validating the conception of science as a truly
objective enterprise, while at the same exploding its pretentions to disclose the deepest
foundation of things; and he has destroyed metaphysics as classically conceived. His
speculations stimulated the work of his greatest successors, both when they attempt to develop
his thoughts further and when they react against him.16 Kant is the central figure in modern
philosophy. The contemporary distinction between “analytic philosophy” and “continental
philosophy” can be understood as a distinction between two ways of philosophizing, both
motored in almost opposite directions, by Kantian discoveries or, as the case may be, inventions.
Whether and to what extent Kant is breaking new ground or making things up in the Critique of
Pure Reason can be determined only by attempting to enter into his way of thinking and
suspending judgment on the value of his project until the whole of it is brought as clearly into
16
See Eckart Förster, The Twenty Five Years of Philosophy (translated by Brady Bowman, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2012). Förster treats the revolution in metaphysical thinking that Kant effected in the Critique of
Pure Reason, and the remarkable developments in philosophy that occurred in the aftermath of its publication. In the
opening pages of his book, Förster makes amply clear what Kant meant in his startling claim that “prior to the
development of critical philosophy there had been no philosophy at all.” Förster’s book can be understood as a kind
of justification of the word “The” in its title. One does not have to agree with Kant’s opinion of the prior history of
metaphysical speculation to recognize the massive import of the Critique of Pure Reason and the necessity of
coming to terms with this work for those who take a serious interest in philosophy.
8
�view as possible. Needless to say, what follows is only introductory exposition of the basic
principles of his critical philosophy. 17
2. The two sources of human knowledge
Kant’s distinctive interpretation of the human mind turns on his account of, and his sharp
distinction between, intuitions and judgments. Kant tells us that it is by means intuition that the
mind is in an immediate relation to objects (Gegenstande).18 He thinks that there are only two
ways a mind could be in immediate relation to objects: it could immediately create them or it
could be immediately affected by them. The former is how an infinite, or divine, mind (if there is
such a thing), immediately relates itself to objects. The latter is how our finite, human mind is
immediately related to objects. We are affected by them; and all we know of them immediately is
that we are affected them. A divine mind (should one exist) would have an intellectual intuition,
such that in actively creating things it would know them fully for what they are, not just as they
17
I have reservations of my own about various aspects of Kant’s project. Because it is not possible to take issue with
Kant intelligently without understanding him first, I refrain from expressing my reservations in this introductory
exposition.
18
When Kant speaks of being affected by objects (Gegenstande), at A 19, B34, he is not yet distinguishing between
things-in-themselves and appearances. Sometimes Kant uses “object” (Gegenstand) as equivalent to “thing” (Ding).
And in this sense he will speak both of “things-in-themselves” (e.g., A 26, B 42) and of “objects-in-themselves”
(e.g., A 36, B 52). Kant also uses the word Objekt, which, like Gegenstand, is naturally translated into English as
“object.” For a brief but clear summary of how Kant uses the words Gegenstand and Objekt, see the entry, “object,”
in A Kant Dictionary. Caygill, Howard (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 1995 ( Blackwell Reference Online. 21 July
2007). Compare Kant’s use of Gegenstand and Objekt in the sentence at A 89, B 121 beginning, “Denn da nur
vermittlest….,” with the use of Gegenstand in the sentence that immediately follows and with the definition of
Objekt at B 137. On the basis of these two passages, we can say that when Kant is speaking carefully he uses the
word Gegenstand broadly to name what (unlike a thing-in-itself) is within and present to the mind, though exclusive
of the mind’s own acts (cf. infra, fn. 28.); and that he uses Objekt narrowly to name a Gegenstand that is
conceptually unified. Objekt and Gegenstand are not exactly opposed. For every Objekt is a Gegenstand, though the
reverse is not the case. Kemp Smith translates Gegenstand and Objekt both as “object,” which is an infelicitous
solution to be sure, but one that is not so easy to improve on in an extended translation. In what follows I shall
frequently place an “(o)” or a “(g)” after “object” and its derivatives, when I think something important turns, or
could be thought to turn, on the distinction between Objekt and Gegenstand.
9
�appear but as they are “in themselves.”19 Our intuition, however, is not intellectual but sensible
only. It gives us no access to things as they are “in themselves,” but only to things as they appear
to us.
Early in the Critique of Pure Reason, in the section titled the Transcendental Aesthetic,
Kant argues that space and time are merely subjective conditions of receptivity. They are two
indefinitely extended intra-mental vestibules in which we receive sense data entering from
without. In space, the data are simultaneously given; in time, they are successively given. These
data are not things. In fact, considered by themselves, they are not even appearances. They are
only the matter of appearances. Appearances owe their unity and interconnection to something
other than bare given-ness.
If we abstract from the sensible filling, from the empirical data received within space and
time, two forms of intuition remain; and they are precisely space and time. As forms of our
sensible intuition, they do not pertain to things as they are in themselves. The human mind does
not get space and time from experience because, Kant argues, we would have to receive them as
empirical data—our intuition being, again, only sensible and not intellectual. But if the human
mind received space and time from experience, it would need mental receptacles into which
space and time could be received. Space and time, however, are themselves these very mental
receptacles. And they are nothing more than this—or so Kant argues. Though we can imagine
away all the empirical filling of space and time, such as shapes, colors, and events, we cannot
imagine away space and time themselves. Kant regards this fact as evidence that space and time
belong intrinsically to the human mind, that they are part of its a priori endowment. They are no
19
B 72. Kant speaks both of God’s possessing an intellectual intuition and of his possessing an intuitive
understanding. B 145; cf. B 135. Eckart Förster makes a strong case that, contrary to the common assumption, Kant
did not understand these two to be simply identical. The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 144-152.
10
�more properties of things-in-themselves than the act of judging is. Perhaps things-in-themselves
do exist in some kind spatio-temporal order “in-itself.” Since we cannot know exactly what
things-in- themselves are, we cannot definitively rule this possibility out. But there is no reason,
according to Kant, to think of things-in-themselves as spatially and temporally ordered in any
sense.
These and other arguments go to make up the Metaphysical Exposition of the concepts of
space and time. In the Transcendental Exposition of these concepts he attempts to show that only
as he has interprets them in the Metaphysical Exposition is it possible to have an a priori science
of space and time.20 We understand geometry to be an a priori science of space, inasmuch as it
does not rely on the particular content of experience—we do not need a laboratory and special
equipment, nor do we need to engage in field research, to prove geometrical propositions.21 To
be sure, we do proofs at a blackboard. But these proofs are not experiments. We all “see,”
somehow, that takes it only one proof, illustrated with any isosceles triangle you like, to
establishes that the base angles are equal in all isosceles triangles.22 We “see,” so to speak, that
we do not have to repeat the proof with n number of isosceles triangles, breaking off arbitrarily
when we are more or less satisfied that the evidence thus far is in favor isosceles triangles’
having their base angles equals. This “seeing” on the basis of one example is possible, Kant
argues, because we recognize that space is homogenous in its character, that we shall never find
out anything about any part of space, no matter how far away, no matter how small or large, that
20
Kant does not, as some have thought, infer the a priori character of space from the a priori character of geometry.
Rather, it is only because space is an a priori endowment of the mind that there can be a priori science of it, i.e.,
geometry. See Rolf Peter Horstmann, “Transcendental Idealism and Space,” in Reading Kant—New Perspectives on
Transcendental Arguments and Critical Philosophy, edited by Eva Schaper and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1989.
21
The possibility of an a priori science of time is more complicated. What Kant says in the Transcendental
Exposition of Time (B 48-49) is developed at much greater length in the chapter entitled “Analogies of Experience.”
22
Euclid, Elements Bk. 1 Prop..5.
11
�is different from the space that is close by.23 If geometry is an a priori science, then space “as a
whole” is present to, by virtue of being an intrinsic feature of, the human mind. So Kant argues;
and he would challenge anyone who disagrees to show how we can be more confident about the
findings of geometry than about the findings of a manifestly empirical science, such as physics
which, unlike geometry, relies on repeated observations and experiments, arbitrarily broken off
at some point and their findings empirically generalized into putatively necessary and universal
laws of nature.
The innate cognitive faculty that we have been considering Kant calls “sensibility.” It
yields intuitions. The other innate cognitive faculty, which Kant calls the “understanding,” yields
concepts (Begriffe) and judgments (which employ concepts). Sensibility puts us in an immediate
but passive relation to objects (g); the understanding puts us in a mediate but active relation to
objects.24 We have a faculty of understanding because, and only because, our intuition is sensible
and affected by its object. If our intuition were intellectual and creative of its object (as God’s
intellect is, if he exists), we would not need concepts. By means of sensibility, the human mind is
23
It is frequently said that non-Euclidean geometry poses a problem for Kant’s understanding of space, which is
surely Euclidean. Lobachevsky and Riemann develop alternate geometries by denying, in opposite ways, Playfair’s
axiom, which can be construed as a restatement of Euclid’s Fifth Postulate. If Kant had known of Lobachevsky and
Riemann, he would likely have argued that these new geometries, like Euclid’s, also contain a priori synthetic
propositions. For this is all Kant needs to support his claim, in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason (and
well in advance of the chapter titled “System of All Principles of Pure Understanding”) that a priori synthetic
judgments are possible, more precisely, that they are actual, in the case of geometrical constructions most obviously.
If certain appearances, met with in the empirical investigation of nature, turn out to be better accounted for by
Lobachevskian or Riemannian geometry than by Euclidean geometry, that would be of very great interest to Kant, to
be sure. And, in that he case, he would definitely have to modify some of his statements about the relation of
geometry to experience. (Consider B 206- 207.) But he would likely deny that such findings require him to abandon
his brief argument, in the Transcendental Aesthetic, that geometry per se consists of a priori synthetic (and
demonstrable) propositions, whatever (non-refutable) postulates it may adopt, or that such findings require him to
abandon his extended argument, in the Second Analogy, that all alterations take place in the conformity with the law
of the connection of cause and effect. The burden would be on Kant’s critics to show otherwise.
24
See Gerhardt Krüger, Philosophie und Moral in der Kantischen Kritik (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr, 1931), 16-21, on
the “pre-critical” limitation of discursive thinking, or judgment, as such.
12
�affected; by means of the understanding, the human mind acts.25 Sensibility is merely open to
what is given to it; it is the business of the understanding to connect and grasp (or comprehend—
begreifen) what is given to sensibility. 26 And as the counterpart of the passivity of sensibility is
the activity of the understanding, so the counterpart of the receptivity of sensibility is the
spontaneity of the understanding—about which, more later.
We judge by means of concepts. We predicate one concept of another in a categorical
judgment, and we connect two or more judgments, consisting of concepts, with each other in
hypothetical and disjunctive judgments. In the Metaphysical Deduction,27 Kant presents a table
of judgments, from which he derives a table of categories. Categories are concepts, but they are
not empirical concepts. The concept of a dog, for example, is empirical; it is gotten from
experience. Not so, as we have seen, with the concept of cause and effect. This is a nonempirical, or pure, concept. And since we cannot get this concept from experience, or a
posteriori, it is either a spurious concept, as Hume had suggested, or a concept that we possess a
priori, a concept intrinsic to the operation of the human mind necessarily functions. Kant argues
for the latter.
25
And so, according to Kant, though we do not know by creating things, as presumably God (if he exists) does, we
do know by constituting objects (via concepts). In both cases, different as they surely are, knowing is active. It is not
just passively “taking in.”
26
A concept (Begriff) is a kind of grasp (Griff—the English words, “conceive” and “comprehend,” have similar
etymologies.) Kant regards a concept as placing its own imprint on what it grasps, so that what one knows through
concepts is, in part, a product of the mind’s own operation. This is particularly true of pure concepts, i.e., categories.
Kant’s claim that we cannot have knowledge without concepts, and that a concept contributes to knowledge only by
unifying something that would otherwise lack unity, rules out metaphysics as classically conceived, that is, as
knowledge of what is, in itself and independently of the unifying operations of the human mind. Any attempt to
substantively rehabilitate classical metaphysics in the face of Kant’s critique requires developing a clear and
consistent alternative to his account of what a concept is.
27
In the second edition version of the Transcendental Deduction, at B 159, Kant refers to the “Metaphysical
Deduction,” in which he has attempted to prove the a priori origin of the categories. He does not use this expression
as the title of any section of the Critique of Pure Reason, but it is generally agreed that he is referring to Chapter 1 of
the Analytic of Concepts, especially to Sections 2 and 3 of that chapter.
13
�A judgment is not just a string of concepts. It has a coherence, actually a unity.
According to Kant, judgments can be brought under four “heads” (Titel): quantity, quality,
relation, and modality; and each of these is subdivided into three “moments.” There are then
twelve forms of judgment. Each has its own unique unifying function. This unifying function
Kant calls a category.28 Categories are concepts, but they are not empirical concepts. They are
pure concepts that “apply (or extend—gehen) a priori to objects (o).”29 The twelve forms of
judgment are not gotten from experience. They are, rather, intrinsic to the very way we think.
Since the categories are unifying functions in these forms of judgement, the twelve categories
are, like the forms of intuition—space and time—part of the original endowment of the human
mind.
A common criticism of Kant’s table of the categories—more precisely, of his table of
judgments, from which the table of categories is derived—is that he has not demonstrated the
table’s “completeness.” There are two different questions here that are not always kept distinct.
(1) Does the table include too many forms of judgment? And (2) does the table include too few
forms of judgment?
28
A 68, B 93: “By a ‘function’ I mean the unity of the act of ordering different representations under one common
representation.” The German word translated here and elsewhere as “representation” is Vorstellung, literally a
“placing-before.” A more accurate translation would be “presentation.” Kant uses Vorstellung broadly to name
something that is simply present to the mind, which may or may not “represent” something outside the mind. Kant
calls the apperceptive act, “I think,” a Vorstellung (e.g., at B 132; cf. B 157), and it certainly represents nothing
outside the mind. Consider also the distinctively Kantian claim at beginning of § 14 that a certain kind of
Vorstellung, namely a pure concept of the understanding, i.e., a category, is a priori determinate of its object (g) and
not vice versa—something that would be impossible if Vorstellung always meant “representation” in the ordinary
sense the word. (Kant could seem to confuse things at A 320, B 376. But the primary sense of the Latin
repraesentatio, just like praesentatio, is simply a “placing before”, i.e., a “presentation.”) The German word
Vorstellung does not carry with it the sense re-presenting, i.e., presenting again, a sense that in some contexts can be
squeezed out of the English word “representation.” I translate Vorstellung as “representation” with misgivings. But
this is how the word is typically rendered in English translations of Kant’s works (and also in English commentaries
on his works). I am following suit so that passages that I quote can be located without confusion in the text. But the
reader should keep in mind that the word “representation” here and in English translations of Kant’s works is a
broad term that can stand for anything that is present to the mind, however much certain kinds of representations
differ from each other.
29
A 79, B 105.
14
�To show that the table of judgments does not contain too many forms of judgment one
need point to only a single judgment that expresses a quantity, a quality, and relation, and a
modality. Take the judgment, “All dogs are animals.” This judgment has a quantity: universal
(and not, say, particular). It has a quality: affirmative (and not, say, negative). It has a relation:
categorical (and not, say, hypothetical). And it has a modality: necessary. Unlike the quantity,
quality, and relation expressed in the judgment, “All dogs are animals,” the modality is
unexpressed. But it is easy to add it in: “All dogs are necessarily animals.” This is an analytic
judgment. Even though the concepts, dog and animal, derive from experience, they are so closely
connected that being an animal pertains to the very meaning of being a dog: if it is not an animal,
then it is not a dog. This particular judgment and countless others like it contain a quantity, a
quality, a relation, and a modality (even if unexpressed). All four of these characteristics are
embedded in these judgments. Hence the table does not contain too many forms of judgment. No
less than four distinct forms of judgment are identifiable in judgments of the type that we have
just considered.30 Kant’s table of judgments is not excessive.31
Is it, however, deficient? Does it contain too few forms of judgment? This is quite a
different question: and it concerns the “completeness” of the table in the precise sense of the
30
That each of the four general characteristics of judgment exhibits three subtypes (amounting to a total of twelve
forms of judgment) is, I think, easy to see. The only ambiguous case is quality. Kant thinks that the infinite
judgment “A is non-B” is distinct from the negative judgment, “A is not B.” The infinite judgment (unlike the
negative judgment) says that “A” is something, but (unlike the affirmative judgment) it names this “something” only
negatively. And yet, “only negatively,” is somewhat misleading, inasmuch as the whole indefinitely extended class
of “non-B” is predicated of “A.” So the form of “A is non-B” is distinguishable, in transcendental (vs. general)
logic), from both of the other two forms, “A is B” and “A is not B.” Cf. A 71-73, B 97-98.
31
A judgment that might appear to lack one of these characteristics can easily be shown, on reformulation, to
possess it implicitly. The judgment, “John drinks beer,” can be reformulated, somewhat awkwardly but without
essential modification of its sense, as “John is a beer drinker.” This judgment is singular in quantity, negative in
quality, and categorical in relation. Its unexpressed modality is likely assertoric. The one making this judgment
likely intends it neither as apodictic (“John must be a beer drinker”) nor as problematic (“John may be a beer
drinker”). I say “likely” here because, if the modality of a judgment is unexpressed, we can determine what it is with
confidence only by asking the speaker what he intends. But whatever uncertainty we might have regarding what the
modality of a given judgment is does not mean that it lacks a modality. A judgment essentially lacking modality is
not a judgment at all.
15
�word. Does this individual judgment, “All dogs are (necessarily) animals,” according to its form,
exhibit a fifth general characteristic, like quantity, quality, relation, and modality, distinct from
but on a level with these. It is hard, to say the least, to see how it does. What could it be? Still,
one might ask, is there not perhaps some other individual judgment that exhibits a fifth general
characteristic in addition to quantity, quality, relation, and modality? This question obviously
cannot be answered by taking every possible individual judgment and examining it to see if it
happens to exhibit a fifth general characteristic on a level with quantity, quality, relation, and
modality, for there is no limit to the number of possible individual judgments. Kant can
challenge his critic to find a single individual judgment that does exhibit this (ostensibly) fifth
general characteristic. And, in the absence of such a finding, Kant can plausibly argue that his
table is complete: there are only four general characteristics of judgment. Rather than advance
either a definitive argument for his table’s not containing too many forms of judgment (as I have
tried to do in the preceding paragraph) or a plausible argument for his table’s not containing too
few forms of judgment (as I have tried to do in this paragraph) Kant advanced no argument in the
Critique of Pure Reason at all.32 It should be noted, however, that if his table in fact contains too
few forms of judgment, then the derived table of categories contains too few categories as well.
And, in that case nature, as the complex of phenomena governed by a priori laws prescribed to it
by the human understanding,33 would be more, not less, architectonically determined than Kant
thought it was. If that were so, it should go without saying, Kant’s response to Hume would not
be compromised in the least.
32
Kant says that we cannot know exactly why we have twelve and only twelve forms of judgment, and hence twelve
and only twelve categories. See the last sentence of § 21, B 146. He may at some point have entertained the
possibility of deriving these forms from the primordial judgment “I think.” But, as far as I know, he never carried
out such a derivation. In Notes and Fragments (a volume in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, edited by Paul Guyer), Note 5854 (p. 300), Kant gives a short
but quite interesting account of why, under each of the four general “titles” of judgments, there must be exactly three
“moments,” no more and no fewer.
33
B 163. Cf. B xix.
16
�3. The question of right (quid juris)
As noted earlier, we have a faculty of understanding, which is to say, a faculty of
concepts, only because our intuition is sensible rather than intellectual. We think, not intuitively,
but discursively only. As Kant says, in a much quoted sentence, “Thoughts without content are
empty. Intuitions without concepts are blind.”34 So, neither (sensible) intuition nor concepts yield
knowledge by themselves. But intuition has a kind of primacy over concepts. To repeat, Kant
argues that the only reason we even have concepts is to make up for the fact that do not have an
intellectual intuition.35 But what is their origin? In the case of empirical concepts, the answer is a
relatively obvious. We derive them from sense experience, via generalization, by attending to
what perceived individuals have in common. We cannot, however, derive pure concepts, or
categories, from experience. This is how Kant describes the relation of categories to intuition in
the Metaphysical Deduction.
The same function that gives unity to the synthesis of various representations in a
judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an
intuition; and this unity, generally expressed, we entitle the pure concept of the
understanding. The same understanding then, indeed through the same operations
by which in concepts, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form
34
A 51, B 75. In this sentence, Kant is speaking only of sensible intuitions.
See B 72; A 50-52, B 74-76. According to Kant, the human understanding, is discursive only, not intuitive, as
God’s understanding is, if he exists.
35
17
�of a judgment, also introduces a transcendental content into its representations, by
means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general.36
Kant has argued that we need concepts only because our intuition is merely sensible; and he has
argued that we have not just empirical concepts but pure concepts, the categories, which are
resident a priori in the human understanding, manifesting themselves in the very way we think,
that is, in the very way we judge. If Kant is right on these two points, it follows that the pure
concepts have a relation, an a priori and necessary relation, to intuition. He announces in the
passage just quoted what this relation has to be, if the categories apply to intuitions in such a way
as to yield a priori knowledge of the general structure of human experience, and thereby of the
general structure of nature itself as the sum of all appearances.37 The categories can have this
relation by virtue of their unifying function, which is at work in both the logical forms of
judgment and—he says without yet accounting for the manner in which this happens—in
intuition as well. The account of the manner in which this happens is the task of the
Transcendental Deduction.38
It is striking how sharply Kant distinguishes between the two modes of cognition we have
at our disposal, sensibility and the understanding.
The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only insofar
as they unite (sich vereinigen), can knowledge arise. But that is no reason to
36
A 79, B 105.
B 163-165.
38
A 85, B 117. In the Transcendental Deduction, Kant argues generally that a priori categories are applied with
“right” to what is provided by the senses. In the chapters following the Transcendental Deduction, Kant tries to
show how each of the a priori categories is applied to what is provided by the senses.
37
18
�confound the contribution of either with that of the other; rather it is a strong
reason to carefully separate and distinguish the one from the other.39
It is the very sharpness of this distinction that requires Kant to undertake a Transcendental
Deduction of the categories, which purports to show that the categories of the understanding
apply, with right,40 to whatever is encountered in spatio-temporal sense experience. On the other
hand, it also the very sharpness of the distinction that enables Kant to carry out the
Transcendental Deduction and, among other things, begin to answer Hume by justifying the
claim that the category of cause and effect, though not derived from experience nonetheless
determines experience.41 Put with greatest possible simplicity, Kant’s project in the
Transcendental Aesthetic and in the Transcendental Analytic is to show that and how, in spite of
the sharpness of the distinction between sensibility and the understanding, these two modes of
cognition are nonetheless intimately, and intelligibly, related to each other. His project is to
show that the categories, which are unifying functions in judgments, are at the same time
unifying functions in objects (o). Whatever can be given to us in sense experience, whatever can
enter our receiving rooms of space and time, is subject to the categories. It can be grasped a
priori with respect to its general features, and moreover judged with respect to these features in
fundamental propositions that hold a priori for whatever can be met with in experience. Such is
the accomplishment of the faculty of understanding in relation to the faculty of sensibility. Or so
Kant attempts to show.
39
A 51-52, B 75-76.
A 84-85, B 116-117; cf. B xxxiv-xxxx.
41
I say that Kant begins to answer Hume on the question of causality in the Transcendental Deduction. He
completes his answer to Hume in the Second Analogy of the Chapter entitled “System of All Principles (or
fundamental propositions—Grundsätze) of Pure Understanding.”
40
19
�Let us focus on only one of the judgments and its corresponding category. The
hypothetical judgment, “if p then q,” is one judgment. But it possesses two components. Each of
these components is a proposition, a judgment, and can be considered by itself: I can think the
proposition, “p”, by itself and without a preceding “if”; and I can think the proposition, “q”, by
itself and without a preceding “then.” The complex judgment, “if p then q” unites these two
propositions, and it unites them as ground and consequence.42 This relation is a purely logical
one and does not rely on temporal entities or on time itself. Consider the judgment, “If a triangle
has two sides equal, then the angles subtending them are equal as well.” In this judgment, the
“if” clause names the ground, the “then” clause names the consequent. This relationship is nontemporal, though, of course, we need time to think it through. Our mind moves discursively
through time as it thinks the proposition. But the proposition itself does not move through time.
Such a thing is not even conceivable. Thinking through a proposition occurs rapidly or slowly.
The proposition that is thought through does not itself move rapidly or slowly. It does not move
at all. The proposition retains its identity across multiple acts of thinking about it, acts separated
by intervals when it is not thought about. And it retains its identity for multiple subjects thinking
at the same time and at different times as well.43 These subjects can agree about the truth of the
proposition and its provability, or they can disagree about one or the other of these, or they can
disagree about both.44 But this proposition has to be self-identical, it has to be the same
proposition for multiple subjects, for them to have either meaningful agreement or meaningful
disagreement about its truth and provability.
42
A 73, B 98.
A sentence is bound to a particular language; a proposition is not. For that reason, one and the same proposition
can be expressed in multiple languages, or even reformulated (slightly) in different sentences within the same
language. For example, in the geometrical proposition stated above we can substitute “also” for “as well,” and we
can omit “then”: “If a triangle has two sides equal, the angles subtending them are also equal.” There is a difference
between these two sentences. But the same proposition is expressed in both of them.
44
By “proposition” here, I mean only what is to be proved, not the actual proof itself.
43
20
�To restate the matter for the sake of clarity and emphasis, in the general hypothetical
judgment form, “if p then q,” each of the two component propositions can be considered in
isolation from the other. Neither “p,” taken by itself, nor “q,” taken by itself, need have a
reference to the other, inasmuch as “p” here just stands for a proposition you like, and “q”
likewise.45 Only when they are united in the single hypothetical judgment form do “p” and “q”
refer to each other. Their reference is of ground to consequence. Now a ground according to its
sense is the ground of a consequent, and a consequent according to its sense is the consequent of
a ground. The relation of ground and consequent is the unifying function in the hypothetical
judgment, “if p then q.” We can also express this unifying function as the single, albeit complex,
category of causality and dependence, or of cause and effect.46 It is a single category because it
expresses a relation in which “p” and “q” are united in a special way, not as “p and q,” nor as
“either p or q, but not both,” nor in any way other than “if p then q.” We can say that the
premises are the cause of the conclusion.47 When speaking of a-temporal relation, as in a logical
or geometrical proof, the single category of cause and effect says nothing at all about temporal
causation. In the Second Analogy, however, Kant will try to demonstrate that every event,
everything that happens in time (unlike the conclusion of a proof), has a temporally antecedent
45
There can be false as well as true instantiations of “if p then q.” E.g., “If a lead weight is dropped from the top of
mast in a rapidly sailing ship, then it will land some distance behind the mast.” We can come up with particular
instantiations of “p” and “q” that do have a logical relationship to each other—e.g., where “p” stands for “All men
are animals and all animals are mortal” and “q” stands for “All men are mortal.” But in speaking of the form of the
hypothetical judgment, our concern is only with the general “if… then” relationship, without regard to how “p” or
“q” get instantiated in this or that concrete judgment.
46
At A 73, B 98, prior to identifying the categories, Kant names one of the “relations of thought in judgment” as that
“of ground to consequent” (des Grundes zur Folge). This is the relation of the propositions “p” and “q,”
respectively, in the hypothetical judgment, “if p then q.” At B 112, after he has identified the categories, he equates,
in passing, the relation of cause to effect (der Ursache zur Wirkung, alternatively expressed as Kausalität und
Dependenz), which is one of the categories, with the relation of ground to consequent. It should be kept in mind that
Kant is not yet speaking of the categories as schematized, i.e., as endowed with a temporal significance.
Accordingly, cause and effect, or ground and consequent, need not be thought of as relation holding only within
time. See Section 8, below.
47
Cf. Aristotle, Posteriori Analytics 71b16-33; Metaphysics 1013b 20
21
�cause.48 On the way to the Second Analogy, Kant will try to show that the logical concept of
cause and effect gets endowed with a temporal meaning, as do all the other categories. Showing
that is the task of the Schematism chapter. Kant’s claim is that specifically temporal causation,
like causation of any kind, has an anticipatory logical foundation in the unifying function of the
hypothetical judgment.49
Time is an a priori form of pure sensible intuition, and the logical category of cause and
effect is an a priori category, a pure concept of the understanding. Both are a priori endowments
of the human mind. They seem then to fit together perfectly: whatever enters the a priori
receiving room of time, which the human mind possesses a priori, occurs there as an event or as
a component of an event; and this event is thus subject to the category of cause and effect, which
the human mind also possesses a priori.50
Now this is in fact Kant’s view. And it could seem that he has validated it on the basis of
the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Metaphysical Deduction. And so it could seem that with
the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Metaphysical Deduction, Kant has answered Hume:
everything entering the human mind from without, events included, enter the a priori spatiotemporal receptacle of the human mind are thereby subject to the a priori categories of the same
human mind. But Kant realizes that he has not yet answered Hume. For there was an “analytic”
or “regressive” element in the argument of the Metaphysical Deduction, that requires a
48
See again, A 79, B 105” “The same understanding, through the same operations by which in concepts, by means
of analytic unity, it produced the logical form of judgment…etc.” Note that whereas the judgment, “Every effect
must have a cause,” is analytic, the judgment, “Every event must have a cause,” is (as we have already seen)
synthetic.
49
See Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1966), 26-33, for an intriguing argument
that, even if Kant’s argument in the Second Analogy establishes that events are necessarily connected according to a
rule, it still fails to account for the actual experience of causation, this experience being rooted primordially in the
role that our own living and moving bodies play in perception (and not, or not solely, in a schematized category
derived from the form of the hypothetical judgment).
50
A 144, B 183.
22
�“synthetic” or “progressive, supplementation . Granted that we have a priori forms of intuition,
and granted that we have a priori concepts, both of which are necessary for a priori knowledge
of nature (including knowledge that “all alterations take place in conformity with the law of the
connection of cause and effect”), Kant has still not shown that our a priori forms of intuition and
concepts are sufficient for a priori knowledge of nature. For the sharp distinction between
sensibility and the understanding, between sensible intuition and concept, the sustained
elaboration of which is one of Kant’s most impressive achievements, raises a new question of its
own, a question that only Kant could have raised: by what right do we apply a category, an a
priori concept of the understanding, to what is found in our a priori forms of intuition, space and
time?51 It is a tribute to Kant’s intelligence that he realized that this question cannot be
adequately answered just by noting that the faculties of the understanding and sensibility, even as
he has so carefully described them, are faculties of one and the same mind. And it is a tribute to
Kant’s honesty that he did not gloss over the awkward fact that his account raises the question of
the unity of human mind in its cognitive functioning—a question that few, if any, other thinkers
before Kant raised, and none with his sharpness of focus and intensity of concentration. Kant
realized that the human mind might be originally cleft in such a way that a perfect fit between its
two parts was impossible. The question of right (quid juris), that is, the question by what right
can a pure concept of the understanding be applied to what is present in sensibility, is the
question of the Transcendental Deduction. The Metaphysical Deduction purported to
demonstrate that we have, in the very way that the human mind is articulated, what is necessary
for a priori knowledge of the general structure of nature. The Transcendental Deduction will
51
The legitimacy of applying empirical concepts to appearances, which are in space and time, is not essentially
problematic, since empirical concepts are derived, by way of generalization, from spatio-temporal experience to
begin with. Because, for Kant, the categories are not derived from appearances, the legitimacy of their application to
appearances is a special problem, a specifically Kantian problem.
23
�attempt to demonstrate also that we have, in the very way that the human mind operates, what is
sufficient for a priori knowledge of the general structure of nature. Since Kant conceded that the
first edition version of the Deduction was insufficiently clear,52 I shall limit my remarks in the
following to what is going on (some of it) in the second edition version.
4. The Structure of the Transcendental Deduction
The two versions of Transcendental Deduction are the most widely contested texts in the
history of philosophy, with the exception of Aristotle’s De Anima 3.5, to which the
Transcendental Deduction is not entirely unrelated, both texts dealing with what is necessarily
and irreducibly active in the mind. Though Kant attempted to clear up obscurities that he thought
marred the first edition version of the Transcendental Deduction, the second edition itself is not
free of obscurity. Certain terms are used without the qualification that the reader has to supply by
attending to the context not just in light of what has already been said elsewhere but even in light
of what will be said only later in the Deduction. The text is replete with side observations that,
though they are always of considerable interest, can cause the reader to lose the thread of the
argument. Assertions are made early on that do not get fully justified until later on. Most
strikingly, at the end of § 20 we have what appears to be an announcement that the Deduction
has been successfully brought to a conclusion—“Consequently, the manifold of a given intuition
is necessarily subject to the categories”—only to discover, in § 21 ff., that we have hardly
reached the halfway point of the argument. And the Deduction includes, near the end, what
52
In what follows, when I use the abbreviated expression, “Deduction,” by itself, I am referring to the
Transcendental Deduction only, not to the Metaphysical Deduction, and only to the version in the second edition of
the Critique of Pure Reason.
24
�appears to be an overstatement that, assuming it is not a simple mistake, cries out to be brought
into some kind of agreement with what Kant says a few pages earlier in the Deduction.
Here is what I take to be the structure of the Transcendental Deduction in the second
edition:
The first section, § 15, is introductory and speaks of combination in its general character.
Kant argues here that any analysis of what is present to the mind, of our representations, always
presupposes synthesis.
The next three sections, §§ 16-20, comprise the first half of the Deduction. This half can
be subdivided into two stages. In the first stage, §§ 16-17, Kant gives an account of
apperception—self-consciousness in the act “I think” 53—as such. In the second stage, §§ 18-20,
he argues that objectivity (o) is constituted by apperception—though it is in the first stage, in the
second paragraph of § 17, that Kant says what he means by an object (o) in the context of the
Deduction. In § 20, Kant concludes the first half of the Deduction by arguing that all sensible
intuitions are subject to the categories. But he realizes that the Deduction is not finished at this
point because he has not yet fully accounted for the synthetic character of sensible intuition
itself, which is a presupposition, not a consequence, of the explicit application of categories to
intuition in a judgment.
§ 21 is the bridge from the first to the second half of the Deduction
§§ 22-26 comprise the second half of the Deduction. This half too can be subdivided into
stages. In the first stage, §§ 22-23, Kant argues that the categories yield no knowledge of things53
By apperception, Kant means self-consciousness (B 68). By transcendental apperception, he means consciousness
of self as engaged in the act “I think,” and as thereby constitutive of all a priori knowledge, even (as we shall see) of
objectivity itself. Empirical apperception is consciousness of self as having particular memories, inclinations,
aspirations, etc. Unlike transcendental apperception, empirical apperception varies from individual to individual.
25
�in-themselves, and yet that they extend to objects (g) of sensible intuition in general, that is to
any intuition, be it like or unlike ours, that is receptive and not active (or intellectual, as God’s is,
if he exists). In the second stage, the first three paragraphs of § 24, Kant introduces the
imagination, barely even alluded to up to this point in the Deduction, though silently
presupposed all along; and here he distinguishes between two a priori syntheses, figurative and
intellectual. The remainder of § 24 through the whole of § 25 arrests the development of the
second half of the Deduction. This passage could be called a “digression,” did not the
observations made in it have such a massive bearing, not only on the chief claims of the Critique
of Pure Reason, but on the whole of Kant’s mature philosophy.54 The third stage (proper) of the
second half of the Deduction, § 26, continues from where the third paragraph of § 24 left off.
Here Kant completes the Deduction by arguing that the categories apply to our sensible
intuition, hence to whatever data enter into it from without, hence to whatever can be perceived,
and that they are therefore valid a priori for all possible objects (g) of experience.
§ 27 states the “Outcome” of the Transcendental Deduction, and argues briefly against
two alternative ways of construing the relation between experience and categories.
5. The Transcendental Deduction §§15-20
54
Kant begins this passage with, “This is a suitable place for explaining the paradox…etc.” I think that it is, in fact,
not a suitable place, and that he should have treated this paradox after § 26. Still, this passage does speak to
questions that, even as early as § 16, will likely have occurred to an intelligent reader. Kant may have placed it
where he did in order to forestall objections to the winding up of his argument in § 26 (which is entitled
“Transcendental Deduction of the Universally Possible Use in Experience of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding”). The passage in § 24 beginning, “This is a suitable place…etc.,” and the whole of § 25 looks like
an insert. I suspect that Kant originally ended § 24 after the first three paragraphs and the section now given as § 26
followed immediately as § 25. Hence the reference in the note at B 136 to § 25, when the more obvious reference
would be to § 26.
26
�Kant holds that all synthesis of what is present to the mind is performed by the
understanding which, construed broadly, is the faculty of combination. We are not, according to
Kant, originally given wholes—whether single individuals, Gestalten, eidē, or any other kind of
organized wholes—but only manifolds of discontinuous and unconnected discreta.55 Because
sensibility, considered independently of the synthetic contribution of the understanding, is
nothing more than a passive faculty of receptivity, it cannot combine. It can only “take in.”
Lacking spatial and temporal continuity, sense data are not yet appearances but, again, the matter
of appearances. Appearances owe their form to the synthetic operation of the mind.
Analysis, according to Kant, presupposes synthesis. The human mind can know
something about its objects by analyzing them only because it has originally synthesized them.56
In breaking down an empirical object into its constituent parts in order to understand how it is, as
we tellingly say, “put together,” the mind aims, or should aim, at following up this analysis with
a recombination of the parts back into a whole. In such recombining, the mind recapitulates and
makes explicit to itself its own prior activity. The synthesis that follows analysis is always, for
Kant, a re-synthesis. The power of the human understanding consists, then, less in taking things
apart than in putting them together in the first place.
Synthesis, regarded as mere putting together, does not by itself does result in knowledge.
For knowledge, what has been merely put together must be conceptually unified. In the
Metaphysical Deduction Kant said,
55
How broad this claim is becomes clear only in the second half of the Transcendental Deduction. See especially B
160, note.
56
This claim has been disputed at length and in numerous studies by Aron Gurwitsch, both on phenomenological
grounds and in light of the empirical findings of gestalt psychologists such as Kurt Kofka and Wolfgang Köhler. See
especially Gurwitsch’s Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press,
1966), 3-68, 175-286.
27
�By means of analysis different representations are brought under one concept—a
procedure (Geschäft) with which general logic deals. What transcendental logic
[in the Transcendental Analytic], on the other hand, teaches is how we bring to
concepts not representations [merely] but the pure synthesis of representations.57
It is through the pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, that this pure synthesis of
representations gets unified. That which bestows conceptual unity on the pure synthesis of
representations is the thinking subject, the ego. The ego bestows this unity in a self-conscious act
that Kant calls transcendental apperception, expressed in the fundamental proposition
(Grundsatz), “I think,” which, Kant says, is “the highest [proposition] in the whole sphere of
human knowledge.”58
It should be obvious that we do not, and cannot, infer the fundamental proposition, “I
think,” from the assumed validity of Newtonian science or from anything else. As an act, the “I
think” is originally present, and I can attend to thematically as long as I exist. As an act,
regardless of what it acts upon, that is, regardless of what content, representation, or object (g),
the “I think,” in an act of attention, is actually directed to at any given moment, it is abiding and
unchanging throughout consciousness. Otherwise I would not know, it would not even occur to
me, that I have thought, and can think, of different things at different times; or even that I who
am thinking the middle of this sentence is the same I that thought the beginning of it. I am a
priori conscious of the act, “I think,” as self-identical regardless of what I happen to think
about.59 The act, “I think,” does not depend on the particular content of empirical thinking,
57
A 78, B 104 (emphasis in the original). Kant speaks frequently of bringing something already synthesized to
concepts or to the unity of apperception..
58
B 135.
59
A 108: “This very transcendental unity of apperception makes out of all possible appearances, which can always
be together in one experience, a connection of all these representations according to laws. For this unity of
28
�which may undergo all kinds of changes. I am a priori self-conscious. I am conscious of myself
as doing, as putting together representations in various ways.60 And that means that even at the
level of speculative reason, quite apart from practical (i.e., moral) reason, I am conscious of
myself as an agent. Human thinking is not just a matter of passively gazing at bits and pieces of
mental data as they happen to float by in time. Rather, human thinking is active. It does not
create; but it does synthesize.61
That I think is self-evident. The question about the act, “I think,” concerns not its
existence its scope. Kant says:
It must be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations for
otherwise something would be represented in me (in mir vorgestellt) that could
not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would
be impossible, or at least would be nothing for me (für mich nichts).
This single sentence deserves more scrutiny than can be given here.62 I limit myself to a few
observations. (1) By representations, Kant means broadly whatever is present to the mind: its
acts, objects, appearances, sense data, even fictions and fantasies. (2) Kant says that it must be
possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations; he does not say that the “I think”
consciousness would be impossible, if the mind in cognition (Erkenntnis) of the manifold could not become
conscious of the identity of the function whereby it synthetically combines it in one cognition.”
60
For an alternative account see Aron Gurwitsch, “A Non-egological Conception of Consciousness,” in Studies in
Phenomenology and Psychology, 287-300.
61
As we shall see in Section 9, below, though I am conscious that I think, and of course that I am, I do not know
exactly what I am. I am conscious that the act, “I think,” has a unifying effect. (A proposition or judgment
constituted by thought has a unity, of subject and predicate in the simplest case: it is one judgment, not two.) So I do
know that I am a unifying agent. But I do not know that this unifying agent that I am—“in myself,” apart from this
act and apart from how I merely appear to myself—is itself an indissoluble unity. Or so Kant argues.
62
This sentence was considered in detail by Dieter Henrich in a course on the Critique of Pure Reason given at
Columbia University in the spring of 1972. See also his article, “The Proof Structure of Kant’s’ Transcendental
Deduction” (Kant on Pure Reason, edited by Ralph C.S. Walker, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 77.
29
�does accompany all my representations.63 For the “I think” to accompany a representation, that
representation must be actually thought about, that is, it must be homed in on, or targeted, in a
focused act of attention and conceptually grasped in a judgment. There are many representations
that are mine, that are present in my spatial and temporal field of view, but which I do not attend
to, such as colors and shapes at the periphery of my vision, or barely audible noises, such as the
sound of an air conditioner that, strangely enough, I seem to become aware of only when it goes
off. (Another example: distinctive odors in a certain building that one never noticed until
returning to it after having been away for some time.) What Kant is claiming is that it must
possible for me to think about, to think about coherently with categories, or to judge, any
particular representation that I have, though by no means all of them at once. The “I think” need
not, or rather cannot, accompany all my representations. I might never have thought about the
sound of the air conditioner, had it not gone off and ceased to make a sound. The “I think”
cannot even accompany all the representations it has at any given moment. I cannot think about
Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, and at the same time think about the background noise in this
room, the ambient temperature, all the different colors and shapes in it, the texture of the pencil I
am holding, etc., even though all these representations are present—as a twentieth century
philosopher will say—at the margin of my field of consciousness, though not as the theme of my
consciousness.64 What Kant is claiming in this sentence is only that I can think about any of
these representations simply by attending to them.65 (3) Kant concludes this sentence with a
63
Cf. A 116: “For in me [representations]…must be at least capable [!] of being so connected….etc.”
Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964.
65
See B 134: “The thought: these representations given in intuition one and all belong to me, means…that I unite
them in one consciousness, or can at least unite them therein….[O]nly insofar as I can grasp the manifold of the
representations in one consciousness, do I call them (nenne ich dieselben) one and all mine.” (Emphasis added in the
translation.) That I can unite representations given in intuition is sufficient to establish that the manifold
representations in an intuition are subject to (or stand under--stehen unter) the categories. Even representations of
mine that are not accompanied by the “I think” are nonetheless subject to the categories. B 136: “[I]nsofar as [the
manifold representations of intuition] must be capable [!] of being combined (müssen verbunden werden können) in
64
30
�reason justifying the first part of it: “for otherwise something would be represented in me that
could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be
impossible.” By this Kant means that something present in the mind that nonetheless could not
be thought about would impossible. But (4!) he ends the sentence with striking qualification, “or
at least would be nothing for me.”
Kant does not think that the oddity of something’s being “in me” but nonetheless
“nothing for me” can be dismissed out of hand. Such a thing is conceivable, again, in light of his
earlier and sharp distinction—a distinction that has to be, certainly not abandoned, but modified,
something Kant has not yet done but will do shortly—between sensibility and the
understanding.66 The qualification “or at least would be nothing for me,” points to one of the
principal tasks of the Transcendental Deduction: to show that whatever is in me, in particular,
whatever is in my spatio-temporal receiving room, really can become something for me, by
being accompanied by the “I think”—which, for Kant, is just a different way of saying that
whatever is in space and time really is subject to the categories.67
In the Metaphysical Deduction, Kant had argued that the categories are unifying
functions in judgment. In the Transcendental Deduction, he states the relation between judgment
and the apperceptive act, “I think.”
[A] judgment is nothing more than the manner of bringing given cognitions to the
objective (o) unity of apperception. 68
one consciousness, they are subject to [the conditions of the original-synthetic unity of apperception].” (Emphasis in
the original.)
66
Henrich “The Proof Structure of Kant’s’ Transcendental Deduction,” p. 77.
67
Cf. A 90. B 123; A 116.
68
B 141. The word translated here as “cognitions,” Erkenntnisse, Kemp Smith translates as “modes of knowledge,”
since “knowledges,” in the plural, does not accord with English usage. A cognition need not take the form of a
31
�Every individual judgment can be reformulated, without any sacrifice to its essential meaning, by
employing the copula “is” (or “are” in the case of subjects expressed in the plural) which
connects subject with predicate.69 The copula “is,” Kant says, is used
in order to distinguish the objective (o) unity of given representations from the
subjective. It indicates their reference (Beziehung) to original apperception and its
necessary unity….Only in this way does there arise… a judgment, that is, a
relation (Verhältnis) that is objectively (o) valid.70
Kant has given objectivity a new meaning. It does not mean things as they are in themselves and
independent of whatever relation they have to our cognitive faculties. Nor does objectivity mean
what all subjects may happen to agree upon, for all subjects may get something wrong, say,
judging (long ago) that things resting on the surface of the earth would necessarily fly off it if the
earth were spinning about its axis. Kant distinguishes objects (o) both from merely subjective
representations and from things-in-themselves. He defines an object and explicates his definition
of it thus.
Object (o) is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is
united (vereinigt). Now all unification of representations demands unity of
proposition. Kant explicitly speaks of intuition as a cognition (A 19,B 33); and an intuition, pure or empirical, is not
a proposition. When he speaks in the above passage of given cognitions, I understand him to be thinking of
intuitions. For given cognitions can be brought to the unity of apperception only if they preexist being brought to the
unity of apperception. See the passages quoted at the end fn. 79, infra.
69
See fn. 31, supra. The judgment “Bodies of different weights fall with the same speed in a vacuum,” can be
reformulated as “Bodies of different weights are in the class of bodies of that fall with the same speed in a vacuum.”
Such reformulations are certainly odd-sounding. Still, they can be made while perfectly preserving the essential
meaning of the original sentence. Judgments are not, according to Kant, all categorical. Hypothetical and disjunctive
judgements cannot be reduced to categorical judgments. See B 141. But their component judgments, or propositions,
can be formulated, or reformulated, by employing the copula “is.” For example the general hypothetical judgment,
“If p then q,” can be reformulated, depending on the content of the judgments “p” and “q,” along the lines of “If A is
B, then A is C,” where each these two judgments is categorical.
70
B 141-142.
32
�consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently unity of consciousness is
that which alone constitutes (ausmacht) the reference (Beziehung) of
representations to an object (g), and therefore their objective (o) validity.71
My consciousness has a dimension, one might say, that is peculiar to me as distinct from you,
hence subjective in the usual sense of the word. But my consciousness also has a dimension that
is not peculiar to me but is common to all of us—and it is consciousness in this latter sense that
constitutes objects (o), and thereby objectivity itself. Kant distinguishes within consciousness
between the empirical ego and the transcendental ego. The empirical ego differs essentially from
subject to subject: my upbringing, antipathies, inclinations, etc., vs. yours. The transcendental
ego does not differ essentially from subject to subject. Though “instantiated” in multiple thinking
human beings, the transcendental ego is essentially the same in all of them. The intersubjective
agreement that can be achieved in mathematics and the sciences—an agreement that is quite
remarkable, indeed astonishing, when you think about it—Kant accounts for by reference to
transcendental ego; and in the same way he accounts for agreement about ordinary objects of
experience as well. It is because you and I constitute objects in the same way, by means of the
same categories and within the same space and time, that we can agree on what we have
constituted. As a consequence, I can say not only that, to use Kant’s example, “If I support a
body, I feel an impression of heaviness (einen Druck der Schwere),” but that “It, the body, is
heavy.”72 So, though we have knowledge only of appearances within the mind, we nonetheless
can distinguish between what is merely subjective in these appearances, what holds for you but
not necessarily for me, and what is objective in them, what necessarily holds for both of us—
71
B 137 (emphasis in the original). When Kant uses Gegenstand the second sentence in this passage, he surely
seems to mean that special kind of Gegenstand that is an Objekt. One cannot fault Kemp Smith too harshly for
translating both terms as “object,” not only for reasons of style but also because Kant himself does not always use
these terms precisely.
72
B 142.
33
�objectivity being (to repeat) constituted by the subject not in its private and empirical functioning
but in its common and transcendental functioning. As a consequence, science can be a common
enterprise and an objective one too, without pretending to transcend appearances and determine
what is in-itself.73
In concluding the first half of the Deduction, Kant says that “all sensible intuitions are
subject to the categories.”
[T]that act of understanding… by which the manifold of given representations (be
they intuitions or concepts) is brought under one apperception, is the logical
function of judgment....The categories are nothing other than these functions of
judging, insofar as the manifold of a given intuition is determined in view of them
(in Ansehung ihrer).74
The first half of the Transcendental Deduction has at its conclusion that the manifold in a given
intuition—an already synthesized intuition, it must be emphasized 75—is necessarily subject to
73
And so Kant can say that “the proud name of an ontology, which ps to give, in systematic doctrinal form,
synthetic a priori knowledge of things in general…must give place to a mere Analytic of the pure understanding.” A
247, B 303.
74
B 143.
75
See § 20. “Also steht auch das Mannigfaltige in einer gegebnenen Anschauung notwendig unter Kategorien.” Two
sentences earlier Kant writes, “Also ist alles Mannigfaltige, sofern es in Einer empirische Anschauung gegeben ist,
in Ansehung einer der logischen Funtionen zu urteilen bestimmt, durch die es nämlich zu einem Bewusstsein
überhaupt gebracht wird. Henrich notes that, whereas the German word “einer” can be translated as the indefinite
article, “a” or “an,” it can also be translated as “one.” It is, in fact, cognate with Einheit (unity). Henrich interprets
the peculiar capitalization of Einer as a hint from Kant that what he has in mind here is the “inner unity” of the
intuition. (“The Proof Structure of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction,” 70.) This seems right to me. We must keep in
mind, however, that Kant had another word at his disposal. He could have used vereinigt (unified), also cognate with
Einheit. But he has used vereinigt earlier and with emphasis, in his definition of an object (o): “Objekt aber ist das,
in dessen Begriff das Mannigfaltige einer gegebenen Anschauung vereinigt ist” (§ 17, at B 137). In that sentence he
was speaking of the unity effected by the apperceptive act, “I think.” In § 20, on the other hand, he is speaking of a
unity presupposed by the apperceptive act: “All the manifold, insofar (!) as it is given in Einer empirical
intuition…etc.” (Note the expression, gebracht wird, which is used twice in § 20.) Since Kant has spoken earlier,
and twice in this very section also, of the “unity” (“Einheit”) of apperception, he needs to distinguish the unity that
characterizes the intuition, qua intuition, from the unity of apperception. His way of doing this in § 20 is by
capitalizing “Einer” when speaking of the former. In the concluding sentence of § 20, he does not resort to the
artificial capitalization of “einer” But he expects the reader to keep in mind what the previous capitalization of the
34
�(steht unter) the categories.76 The prior synthesis of the manifold of intuition can be brought to
the unity of apperception in a judgment. But the scope of this prior synthesis has to be
determined in order to rule out the worrisome possibility that some datum of sensibility might be
in me but nothing for me. The first half of the Deduction proceeded on the assumption that
whatever is in me, that whatever happens to be in my spatial and temporal forms of intuition,
really can be something for me. This assumption, it turns out, is equivalent to the assumption that
the pure manifold of sensible intuition provided by sensibility has already been synthesized into
a formal intuition.77 A formal intuition can then be conceptually grasped (begriffen) in an act of
judgment, which employs concepts (Begriffe). The second half of the Transcendental Deduction
aims at validating this assumption.
6. The Transcendental Deduction §§21-24 (first three paragraphs), § 26.
I must apologize in advance for belaboring certain points in this section. My hope is that
the overkill, though inelegant, will contribute to clarity.
The important passage from the Metaphysical Deduction that I quoted in Section 3 above,
bears requoting here.
words was intended to convey. Consider the first sentence of § 21; the note to that sentence; the second sentence of
§ 21, where he capitalizes “Einer” again; and the entire note in § 26, at B 160, beginning “Der Raum, als
Gegenstand vorgestellt….”
76
The expressions “stehen unter” in the title of § 20 and “steht unter” in the concluding sentence of § 20, do not
mean that all sensible intuitions are united in a judgment employing categories, but only that any and every sensible
intuition, because it has been antecedently synthesized by the imagination can be united by category application-which occurs when the synthesis already accomplished by the imagination is subsequently brought to concepts (A
79, B 104) in the act, “I think.”
77
On “formal intuition” vs. mere “form of intuition” (the latter is all that sensibility considered by itself contains),
see again B 160, note. We shall return to this distinction shortly.
35
�The same function that gives unity to the synthesis of various representations in a
judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an
intuition; and this unity, in its most general expression, we entitle the pure concept
of the understanding. The same understanding, through the same operations by
which in concepts, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form of a
judgment, also introduces a transcendental content into its representations, by
means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general.78
As I noted, this passage claims that the categories, derived a priori not from intuition but from
the understanding, can through their unifying function be applied to sensible intuition and make
knowledge possible. On the basis of the first half of the Transcendental Deduction, we can begin
to appreciate Kant’s earlier statement, here in the Metaphysical Deduction, that the category
“gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition.” The unity effected
by the category, is itself a synthesis. But it presupposes a synthesis, which in this passage from
the Metaphysical Deduction Kant calls a “mere” (blossen) synthesis, presumably because it
produces only contiguous unity of temporal and spatial representations. But once synthesized at
this level, these representations can be accompanied by the “I think,” in a synthesis that is
anything but “mere,” for it produces conceptual unity. As Kant put the matter at the end of § 16,
I am conscious to myself a priori of a necessary synthesis [of representations],
which is called the original synthetic unity of apperception, under which all
78
A 79, B 105.
36
�representations that are given to me must stand, but under which they must also
be brought by means of a synthesis.79
The first synthesis mentioned in this sentence can be called a “higher-order synthesis.” It is the
chief theme of the first half of the Deduction. The second synthesis mentioned in this sentence is
a “lower-order synthesis.” It is the chief theme of the second half of the Deduction.
The passage from the Metaphysical Deduction that I have now quoted twice ends with a
curious formulation that is easy to overlook, given all the other interesting things Kant says
there. In speaking of “intuition in general,” Kant is clearly speaking of sensible, not intellectual,
intuition which, to repeat, we do not possess. But he is not speaking exclusively of our sensible
intuition. By sensible intuition in general, Kant means neither an intellectual intuition nor our
special sensible intuition, that is, our spatio-temporal sensible intuition. If there are other finite
but thinking beings, then they too possess a merely sensible intuition; but it need not be a spatiotemporal sensible intuition.80 We cannot know what alternative form(s) of sensible intuition
other finite thinking beings would possess, or even if there are such beings (angels?), like us in
possessing sensible intuition, but unlike us in possessing a sensible intuition different from ours.
79
“[I]ch mir einer notwendigen Synthesis [gegenbenen Vorstellungen] a priori bewusst bin, welche die
ursprünglische synthetische Einhiet der Apperzeption heisst, unter der alle mir gegenben Vorstelungen stehen, aber
unter die sie auch durch eine Synthesis gebracht werden müssen.” B 135-36. Cf. Jonathan Bennet (Kant’s Analytic,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, 112) points out that Norman Kemp Smith inserts the word “first”
into his translation of the concluding clause: “…but under which they have also first to be brought by means of a
synthesis.” Kemp Smith’s translation is indeed inaccurate, but as an interpretation it is on target. See the use of
“first” (erste) at A 78, B 104; and especially at B 152: “die erste Anwendung…,” a formulation that we shall
consider further in what follows. Regarding the formulation in quoted text above, “but under which they must also
be brought by means of a synthesis,” consider A 78, B 103: “[T]o bring this synthesis [accomplished by the
imagination] to concepts is a function that belongs to the understanding,” and A 78, B 104”: “What transcendental
logic teaches is how we bring to concepts…the pure synthesis of representations.” (Emphasis in the original in both
these sentences.)
80
As forms of sensible intuition, space and time allow for manifolds to be given simultaneously and successively.
But there is no reason in principle why manifolds could not be given some other way than simultaneously and
successively, though we cannot imagine, i.e., form an image of, other modes of receptivity besides these two. There
is no analytic connection between the concept of receptivity and the concepts of spatiality and temporality.
37
�Kant is not just indulging his fancy by entertaining the possibility of a sensible intuition
other than ours. The notion of a sensible intuition in general plays an important role in the
argument of the second half of the Deduction. 81 These are the points Kant wishes to make: (1)
The categories of their very nature have a relation to sensible intuition. (2) There is no reason to
think that our sensible intuition is the only sensible intuition that is possible. (3) Because the
categories are not derived from our sensible intuition, they are in their application not restricted
to our sensible intuition, though this application is of no cognitive use to us. (4) And so, since the
categories do not of their very nature refer to our specifically spatio-temporal intuition, it is
possible to think, without contradiction, of a-spatial and a-temporal things, though by means of
the categories we can know nothing of them.82 Finally (5), on this interpretation of the broad
scope of category application, the locus of the categories in the a priori forms of judgment is
reasserted. If the categories of their own nature had a relation only to our specifically spatiotemporal intuition, one might suspect, falsely, that they were somehow derived from spatiotemporal intuition, as empirical judgments are derived from experience. If, per impossibile, the
81
See B 148: “The pure concepts of the understanding are free from this limitation [i.e., restriction to spatiotemporal objects] and extend to objects (g) of intuition in general, be [the intuition] similar to ours or not, if only it
be sensible.” Cf. B 146: “space and time are the only forms of our [!] possible intuition”; B 150: first sentence of §
24; B 159: first two sentences of § 26—note the distinction here between “objects (g) of a [sensible] intuition in
general” and “whatever objects (g) may present themselves to our [!] senses” (emphasis in the original); B 161: note
the formulation “combination of the manifold of a given [= sensible] intuition in general ” in relation to the
formulation “…in so far as the combination is applied to our [!] sensible intuition” (both emphases in the original);
and B 72 (in a part of the Transcendental Aesthetic that appears only in the second edition.) In § 20, which
concludes the first half of the Deduction, Kant says that all sensible intuitions as subject to the categories. The full
force of this sentence does not become clear until the first paragraph of § 23. John Wetlaufer, in an important but
underappreciated article, “On the Transcendental Deduction: Some Problems of Interpretation and Elements of a
New Reading” (Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 5:1, 1975, 113–131), places appropriate emphasis on Kant’s
distinction between our sensible intuition and a sensible intuition in general (126-127).
82
If we had other forms of sensible intuition, in addition to, or even instead of, space and time, their manifolds too
would be subject to the categories. We would still not in any way know things-in-themselves by means of the
categories. For things-in-themselves, according to Kant, cannot be given in any sensible intuition, be it like or unlike
ours. Knowledge by means of the categories is limited to what can be antecedently given to sensible intuition. What
is given to sensible intuition—vs. what is produced, or created, by intellectual intuition—are not things (inthemselves) but mere representations (Vorstellungen) of things. These representations, mere pointillistic sense data
prior to the syntheses carried out by the faculty of spontaneity, are not extra-mental things but only the effects that
extra-mental things produce on our (finite) mind. These representations are, however, worked up by the
understanding via its categories into that law-governed whole of phenomena that goes by the name of “nature.”
38
�categories were derived from the forms of intuition that characterize our passive faculty of
sensibility, they could not play the role Kant assigns to them in our active faculty of the
understanding.
Having spoken in §§ 22-23 of the relation of categories to sensible intuition in general,
Kant turns in § 24 to the relation of categories to our sensible intuition. Here he distinguishes
between (1) the original synthetic unity of apperception, the “I think,” which constitutes what I
have called the “higher-order” order synthesis and which Kant calls “intellectual,” and (2) the
“lower-order” synthesis, which he calls “figurative.”83 The latter synthesis is accomplished by
the imagination, more precisely, by what Kant calls the productive imagination, which is also a
priori and hence is distinct from the reproductive imagination, the latter being subject to
empirical laws of association and not a priori.84 The productive imagination is responsible for
the original synthesis of the pure a priori manifold of space and time. As a result of this original
synthesis, any empirical manifold, any data entering space and time from outside the mind, gets
synthesized as a matter of course.
Though the Transcendental Aesthetic spoke of the a priori forms of intuition, space and
time, as though they were originally present to us as already unified, the question of how they
come to possess unity was temporarily suppressed. It resurfaces in the second half of the
Transcendental Deduction. According to Kant, even the mere togetherness of points in empty
space or of moments in empty time is a product of the synthetic activity of the understanding,
construed not narrowly as judgment solely but broadly as combination in general.85
83
B 151.
B 152.
85
For some places where Kant speaks of manifold of pure or a priori intuition (as distinct from a manifold of
empirical or a posteriori intuition, i.e., a manifold of sense data), see A 77, B 103; A 78-79, B 104; A 99-100; B
130; B 140; B 150; B 160, note.; cf. B 202-203.
84
39
�Combination, then, takes two distinct forms: what is accomplished by the productive imagination
and what is accomplished by apperception. Time itself undergoes the synthesis of the productive
imagination, without which it would be only a manifold of moments. It would not be one
continuously flowing time. The synthesis of time is not an accomplishment of sensibility, for this
faculty is, again, only passive. Synthesis, or combination, however, is active; and “all
combination—whether we become (werden) conscious of it or not, whether it is a combination
of the manifold of intuition, or of various concepts…is an act of the understanding.” And yet, to
repeat, the original synthesis of time is not an act of judgment, an apperceptive synthesis, but a
synthesis that precedes this. In what is the most helpful footnote in the Transcendental
Deduction, Kant writes.
Space represented as object (g) (as we need to do in geometry) contains more than
more form of intuition, [it also contains] combination (Zusammenfassung) of the
manifold, given according to the form of sensibility, in an intuitive representation,
so that the form of intuition gives only a manifold, the formal intuition gives unity
of representation. In the Aesthetic I have reckoned this unity as belonging merely
to sensibility, in order to note that it precedes any concept, although, as a matter
of fact, it presupposes as syntheses that does not belong to the senses but through
which all concepts of space and time first become possible. For since by its means
(in that the understanding determines sensibility) space and time are first given as
intuitions, the unity (Einheit) of this a priori intuition belongs to space and time,
and not to the concept of the understanding. 86
86
B 160, note.. Why Kant says in this context that the understanding, and not the imagination, determines sensibility
we shall consider below.
40
�The a priori synthesis of time, as the form of inner sense, is eo ipso the a priori synthesis of
space, as form of outer space. For whatever I am conscious of as being in space, I am also
conscious of as being in time, if only as enduring motionless against the flow of time. In this
way, the a priori synthesis of time affects whatever material or empirical content is received a
posteriori in space and time from sources outside the mind. This “figurative synthesis,” Kant
also calls “the transcendental synthesis of the imagination.”
Immediately after identifying the figurative synthesis and the transcendental synthesis of
the imagination, Kant writes, “Imagination is the faculty of representing in intuition an object (g)
that is not itself present.”87 Imagination can do this in fantasy, of course, and it has an especially
important role to play in artistic production.88 But it also does this in the recollection, memory,
retention, anticipation, and expectation of such things as colors, sounds, and actual objects of
experience. This is the work of the empirical or reproductive synthesis of the imagination. But
the imagination, as transcendental and productive, retains the past moments of pure time
themselves in intuition, prior to and independently of the particular empirical content of what
happens to be met with in time. Similarly, the imagination functioning at this a priori level also
anticipates the future moments of pure time themselves in intuition. This synthesis accomplished
by the productive imagination makes what is in one sense “absent”—the “no-longer” and the
“not-yet”—in another most peculiar sense “present” or, perhaps better, “quasi-present”89
Without this foundational transcendental synthesis of the imagination, a thoroughgoing empirical
and reproductive synthesis of sense data given from without not be possible. Without the
transcendental synthesis of the imagination, the manifold of pure intuition itself would be only a
87
B 151 “Einbildungskraft ist das Vermögen, einen Gegenstand auch ohne dessen Gegenwart in der Anschauung
vorzustellen.” (Emphasis in the original.)
88
Kant also speaks of the imagination as productive, not only in artistic production, but in even in a judgment of
taste. Critique of Judgment, “General Remark” following § 22.
89
The imagination accomplishes these syntheses in what Husserl will later call “retention” and “protention.”
41
�manifold of unconnected points in space and time, a manifold of pure discreta. But, one might
object, we cannot imagine unconnected points in space and time. Exactly! We cannot do such a
thing, Kant would reply, because to imagine points in space and time is precisely to combine
them. Pure, or empty, space and time, considered apart from the transcendental synthesis of the
imagination, are forms of intuition only. The points of pure space and time are originally
unconnected because they belong to a faculty of the mind, sensibility, that is, considered by
itself, simply passive and receptive. As formal intuitions, however, space and time can be
analyzed. They can be divided indefinitely into smaller and smaller elements. And that means,
for Kant, that they were originally synthesized. These formal intuitions, as synthesized wholes,
owe the unity they possess to the transcendental synthesis of the imagination. The members,
elements, or data of the manifold, pure or empirical, that is synthesized by the imagination are
side by side contiguously in space and they succeed one another contiguously in time. But they
are not just somehow stuck together. The effect of the synthesis accomplished by the imagination
is that each element of the synthesized manifold refers, or “points,” from within outward and
beyond itself, to other spatially and temporally contiguous elements.90 At every moment of my
mental life, I am retaining past moments and anticipating future moments. As retained and
anticipated, these moments are both present and not present, though in two different senses of
“present,” in different senses that we are manifestly aware of in temporal consciousness. These
difference between the immediate presence of “the now,” and the imagined presence of the “no
longer” and the “not yet,” we can describe, since we all recognize it. But we cannot explicate the
difference between these two senses of “present” beyond attending to it and describing it.
90
Compare Hegel, Encyclopedia - Philosophy of Nature §§ 255-259..
42
�To illustrate with a few examples from experience: In the middle of listening to a piece of
music, say, a simple melody, I retain what I have just heard and I anticipate what I am about to
hear.91 When listening to a symphony, I retain, depending on the capacity of my tonal memory,
what I have already heard, and I anticipate what I am about to hear. Even when I anticipate
incorrectly and get a surprise, the surprise is effective because there was an immediately
preceding anticipation that went “unfulfilled” (as Husserl will say). Without that anticipation, no
surprise would be possible. In watching a leaf fall, I am aware of its falling by means of my
imagination’s making what is absent, the immediate past and the immediate future, present or
quasi-present. When turning my head and looking about this room, I retain what I have just seen
and I anticipate what I am about to see. Even when staring fixedly at an immobile object, say, a
painting, my awareness that it is not moving is made possible by seeing that it is now what and
where it was a moment ago, or even an hour ago.
To return from the empirical to the a priori, Kant says that the transcendental synthesis of
the imagination is
an action (Wirkung) of the understanding [!] on sensibility; and is its first
application (and thereby the ground of all its other applications) to the objects (g)
of our possible intuition.92
91
This happens even at first note of the melody. It is by retaining in imagination the absence of a prior note that I
hear this one as the first note, as the beginning. And at the last note of the melody, something comparable happens. I
anticipate the absence of a following note, especially if the melody is tonal and the last note is the tonic.
92
B 152. The use of the expression “first application,” to say nothing of “ground,” in this passage should remove
any doubt one might have that the transcendental synthesis of the imagination precedes and conditions the a priori
apperceptive synthesis, as well all a posteriori synthesis of empirical representations or data. Already in the
Aesthetic Kant has said, at B 67, “that which, as representation, can precede (vorhergehen) any and every act of
thinking, is intuition”—a formulation that takes on considerable weight in light of the note at B 160-161. Consider A
79, B 104. “The concepts…give unity (Einheit) to this pure synthesis [i.e., the synthesis of the imagination].” Kant
virtually defines thinking (Denken) as “the act (Handlung) of bringing the synthesis of a manifold, given to the
understanding from elsewhere in intuition, to the unity of apperception.” B 145. In a note to the Preface of the
43
�So the imagination is not a third distinct faculty situated between the distinct faculties of
sensibility and the understanding, as certain passages in the first edition of the Transcendental
Deduction have mislead some to think.93 The imagination is the understanding itself—but qua
acting on what is available to it from sensibility, at the transcendental level by acting on the
manifolds of pure temporal and spatial discreta. By connecting these discreta, the imagination
bestows unity on space and time. It turns them from forms of intuition into formal intuitions, and
thereby makes possible a priori sciences of them, geometry most obviously.94 But it also makes
possible an a priori science of the architectonic propositions of nature in general.
Without the transcendental synthesis of the imagination, our a priori forms of intuition
would be, strange to say, porous, like a net. All sensory data entering the mind from without
would be, by virtue of entering it, in me. But those data that did not caught in fabric of the net,
that slipped through the gaps in it, could become nothing for me. By virtue of the transcendental
synthesis of the imagination, there are no “gaps” in our forms of intuitions. They are formal,
which is to say unified, intuitions. They are not porous.
Kant understands the figurative synthesis of the imagination to be, qua synthesis, an
expression of the spontaneity of the human understanding, which he says is responsible for
whatever synthetic features our representations exhibit—and these features are synthetic because
they can be analyzed, or broken down into smaller parts. The understanding as spontaneity is at
second edition, where Kant is speaking of his Refutation of Idealism, he distinguishes between “empirical
consciousness” and “intellectual consciousness;” and he says that the latter precedes (vorangeht) consciousness of a
relation to something outside me. He is speaking there of the priority of apperception to consciousness of anything
empirical whatsoever.
93
Consider A 124, where a pure imagination is said to be “one of the fundamental [!] faculties of the human soul.”
94
Arithmetic also makes use of space. I count two spatial objects, e.g., two fingers ( B 15-16). But I could in
principle count any discrete spatial objects. Because counting does not rely on any particular spatial object and its
particular features, arithmetic is also an a priori science.
44
�work, and it is at work on two levels. But it is not compelled to be at work at all. It is at work by
virtue of what it is. Kant says,
It is one and the same spontaneity that, in the one case, under the name (unter den
Namen) of the imagination, and in the other, under the name of the understanding,
brings combination to the manifold of intuition.95
Though the vast majority of my representations are never attended to by the “I think” in a
specifically intellectual synthesis, they are all effected by the figurative synthesis.96 The
intellectual synthesis that takes place in the apperceptive act, “I think,” is the accomplishment of
the faculty of spontaneity’s judging, under the “name” of the understanding, this or that item
within the figurative synthesis that has already been accomplished by the same faculty of
spontaneity, under the “name” of the imagination. What the faculty of spontaneity accomplishes
in the figurative synthesis is the preparation of the entirety of sensibility, both its intrinsic, a
priori, and pure manifold of intuition, and its contingent, a posteriori and empirical filling, for
explicit category application in the intellectual synthesis that occurs when the “I think”
accompanies a particular representation in a judgment.97 The figurative synthesis is in fact
performed with reference to a possible, hence subsequent, intellectual synthesis, whether or not
the latter synthesis is actually performed in the case of a given empirical representation,
95
B 162, note b (emphasis added). Cf. B 153: “The understanding, under the title (unter der Benennung) of a
transcendental synthesis of the imagination….” Compare B 152: “[The imagination’s] synthesis is an exercise
(Ausübung) of spontaneity….Imagination is spontaneity.”
96
By “representations” here, I exclude the elemental and unconnected manifold data of intuition, since prior to the
figurative synthesis of the imagination, we are not even marginally, much less thematically, conscious of them. We
are not and cannot be conscious of mere discreta, certainly not of unconnected points in pure, empty space and
unconnected moments in pure, empty time, for consciousness is essentially synthetic. As for empirical discreta, such
as separate and small points of color in space and separate and brief sounds in time, these are still synthetically
connected to the stretches of space and time that surround them. It is that very connection to the surrounding space
and time that enables us to be conscious of distinct points of color as separate from each other and of intermittently
occurring sounds as separate from each other.
97
Compare Aristotle, De Anima, 431b3: “ta men oun eidē to noētikon en tois phantasmasi noei…”
45
�synthesized by the imagination. It is the intimate relationship between these two syntheses that
enables Kant to understand them as two operations of one and the same spontaneity.
Had Kant treated the imagination as a third faculty of the human mind, situated between
and distinct from both sensibility and the understanding, he would have had to show not only
that and how the faculty of the imagination is related to a faculty of sensibility distinct it—which
is difficult enough to show, but which he does show in §§ 24 and 26—he would also have had to
show that and how the faculty of the understanding is related to a faculty of the imagination
ostensibly distinct from it. Kant’s understanding of the human mind as irreducibly two-fold—as
sensibility and the understanding—generates for him the formidable task of showing that, and
how, these two heterogeneous cognitive faculties can fit together so as to yield knowledge
(albeit of what is in space and time only). If he understood the human mind as irreducibly threefold—the faculty of sensibility and the faculty of understanding, and also, between these two, a
separate faculty of imagination—his task would have been impossible to fulfill. By construing
the synthesis of the imagination and the synthesis of apperception as two teleologically related
accomplishments—a lower-order synthesis for the sake of a higher-order synthesis—of “one and
the same faculty of spontaneity,” Kant is disburdened of this impossible task.
But, one might ask, has he not thereby made things too easy for himself. I think not.
There is nothing contradictory about one faculty functioning at two levels. A comparison might
help here. It is by one and the same “faculty” that I both pick up a hammer and subsequently
hammer a nail with it. I cannot do the latter without doing the former, though I can do the former
without doing the latter. And yet I am doing, with one and the same “faculty,” both things. What
is distinctive about the figurative synthesis of the productive imagination and the subsequent
46
�intellectual synthesis of apperception is that both are “doings,” unlike sensibility which is a
passive and receptive “being done to,” only.
The combination that allows for human knowledge, as distinct from sensation merely,
requires a priori the following: (1) a given manifold, a plethora of discrete “pointillistic” data,
which is the original content of sensibility; (2) a putting together of these data, side by side and
one after the other, which is accomplished by the imagination; and (3) an expressly conceptual
unifying of this togetherness, which is accomplished by the “I think” in an act of judgment. The
bare “given-ness” of the manifold, whether pure or empirical, is all that sensibility by itself
provides. The putting together, simultaneously and successively, of the manifold, and the
subsequent conceptual unifying of what has been put together, are the two different syntheses
accomplished by one faculty of combination, that is, of spontaneity, or the understanding
construed broadly. The first synthesis is for the sake of the latter synthesis.
I noted earlier that the second edition version of the Deduction contains what appears to
be an overstatement. It occurs in the concluding paragraph of § 26.
As mere representations, [appearances] are subject to (stehen unter) no law of
connection (Verknüpfung) save what the connecting faculty (das verknüpfnede
Vermögen) prescribes. Now it is imagination that connects the manifold of
sensible intuition; and imagination is dependent for the unity (Einheit) of its
intellectual [!] synthesis upon the understanding, and for the manifoldness of its
apprehension upon sensibility. All possible perception is thus dependent upon
synthesis of apprehension, and this empirical synthesis in turn upon
transcendental synthesis, and therefore upon the categories. Consequently, all
47
�possible perceptions, and therefore everything that can [!] come to empirical
consciousness, that is, all appearances of nature must, so far as their connection is
concerned, be subject to the categories.98
In this passage, Kant is emphasizing the dependency of all that we can be conscious of a
posteriori, on the categories. What is surprising is his speaking of an intellectual synthesis
accomplished by the imagination. For, as we have seen, a few pages earlier he identified the
transcendental synthesis of the imagination with figurative synthesis, and he contrasted it with
intellectual synthesis: “the intellectual synthesis…is carried out by the understanding alone
without aid of the imagination.”99 Kant also glossed “figurative synthesis” with the Latin
“synthesis speciosa”—and the word speiciosa (from specio—to see or look at) has a reference to
sight.100 In the above passage, Kant is arguing that perception is dependent upon the categories
by way of being conditioned by the unity accomplished a priori by the productive synthesis of
the imagination, which of course conditions everything than can be given to us in space and time,
sights most obviously, but perceptions of any kind. But how can Kant speak of an intellectual
synthesis of the imagination?
To address this question, let us return to the empirical example from § 19 that we briefly
considered earlier. I can say, “If I support a body, I feel an impression of heaviness.” According
98
B164. By consciousness (Bewusstsein), Kant typically means not just any awareness, however so vague or
“marginal,” but the apperceptive act in its reference to an already synthesized intuition. Hence when Kant writes
here, “everything that can come to empirical consciousness,” he is thinking of anything that be a matter of
experience. And by “experience” he typically means not just any awareness but empirical cognition (B 161, 166,
218). Kant uses “can” here as he used “must be able to” in the first sentence of § 16 (which I commented on earlier),
and with the same import.
99
B 152.
100
In the Metaphysical Deduction, at A 78, B 103, Kant wrote of the imagination that it is “a blind, but
indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are
scarcely ever conscious.” This sentence, though preserved in the second edition, was part of the first edition, as was
the passage at A 79, B 105 where Kant spoke of a “mere” synthesis. As Kant explicates the performance of the
imagination in the second edition, it turns out that its synthesis is not exactly “blind” after all. And its synthesis is
“mere” only in the sense that it is not a judgment.
48
�to Kant, this formulation possesses only subjective validity. It says something about me, about
what I feel. But if I employ the copula “is,” I make a judgment, and it possesses objective
validity.
To say, “The body is heavy,” is not merely to state that the two representations
have always been conjoined in my perception, however often that perception is
repeated; what we are asserting is that they are combined in the object, whatever
the state of the subject may be.101
The two representations are “body” and “heavy.” Each of these two representations, taken by
itself, is a synthesis of a manifold. These representations are not a mere multiplicity of sense
data. They are perceptual representations, apprehended through sight and touch; and, as Kant has
said, even perception is subject to the categories. So the perceptions of both “body” and “heavy”
are subject to the categories; but neither the individual body, seen as extended, nor its particular
heaviness, felt as pressure, is an object (o), strictly so called. One can say that each of these is an
object in the sense of a Gegenstand. But because neither of them, in the two perceptions
achieved by the synthesis of the imagination, is yet judged, neither is yet an object in the sense of
an Objekt.102 For if they were objects in this latter sense, then concepts would be used in the
synthesis of them that is accomplished by the imagination.103 Kant has said, however,
101
B 142 (emphasis in the original).
In this connection see B 234 – A 191, B 236, where Kant distinguishes between loose and strict use of the word,
Objekt.
103
B 137.
102
49
�Concepts are based on the spontaneity of thinking (Denkens)….The only use the
understanding can make of concepts is to judge by means of them…. Thinking is
cognition (Erkenntnis) through concepts.104
Perceiving is not thinking; it is not judging. Still, what the imagination has synthesized—in this
case body and heaviness—has a reference, according to its very sense, to a possible judgment. It
is in this sense, and only in this sense, that each of these two representations of perception is
subject to the categories. But when these two representations are actually brought to concepts in
a judgment, something new emerges, not merely two representations, even two Gegenstände, a
seen body and a felt heaviness, but an Objekt, in which the two representations are combined,
indeed unified, in the apperceptive act, I think. This empirical judgment, “The body is heavy,” is,
to be sure, not deducible from what is accomplished at the a priori level. It presupposes
experience. But though a posteriori, the judgment is made possible by, and must conform to,
what is accomplished at the a priori level.
The above passages shed should make more understandable the implication of the first
sentence of § 16 that, though not every one of my representations, even when construed as
having an inner unity produced by synthesis of the imagination, is in fact accompanied by the “I
think,” it can be accompanied by it. The inner unity of space and of time, which they possess by
being elevated from mere forms of intuitions to formal intuitions, is a unity that, Kant says,
“precedes any concept.” But, he also says, “it presupposes a synthesis,” by means of which “the
understanding determines sensibility.”105 One might have expected him to say that, in this
synthesis, “the imagination determines sensibility.” But he is using the term, “understanding,”
104
105
A 68-69, B 93-94.
B 160, note.
50
�broadly, as spontaneity and combination of any kind and at any level. He uses the term
“understanding” broadly this way not only in second edition of the Transcendental Deduction,
but in the first edition as well:
The unity of apperception in reference (or relation, Beziehung) to the synthesis of
the imagination is the understanding, and this same unity, with respect
(beziehungsweise) to the transcendental synthesis of imagination, [is] the pure
understanding.106
This sentence is actually a definition of the faculty of understanding, broadly construed, which is
so far from being a faculty distinct from the imagination that it said here to be precisely the
reference of the “I think” to what the imagination, by synthesizing the manifold of intuition,
offers to it, originally at the a priori level, and subsequently at the empirical level.107 Since there
would be no productive synthesis of the imagination at all without its having a necessary relation
to a possible judgment, the inner unity of a formal intuition, which is accomplished by the
productive synthesis of the imagination, is said to depend upon the categories.108 The figurative
106
A 119 (emphasis in the original). Compare the sentence occurring at A 118: “Thus the transcendental unity of
apperception refers itself (bezieht sich) to the pure synthesis of imagination.” In an unpublished fragment, Kant
writes, “The unity of apperception in relation to the faculty of imagination is the understanding.” Notes and
Fragments (translated by Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005—from the series, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.), 258. Immediately following
this sentence, Kant has written the one word, “Rules,” after which he expatiates further along the lines of the second
clause quoted in the text above.
107
The distinction between or “originally” and “subsequently,” or between a priori and a posteriori, should not be
taken in a literally temporal sense, as though there was some time when a priori operations alone took place, after
which empirical operations followed. Kant’s distinction between a priori and a posteriori should be understood only
in terms of what in cognition is, respectively, “founding” and “founded,” or between what the human mind supplies
out of its own resources and what is supplied to it from without. “[T]he impressions of the senses supplying the first
stimulus, the whole faculty of knowledge opens out to them (in Ansehung ihrer), and experience is brought into
existence” (A 86). “In the order of time…no knowledge in us precedes experience, and with experience all our
knowledge begins. But though all our knowledge begins with experience it does not follow that it all arises out of
experience.” (B 1—emphasis in the original.)
108
B 144 note: “[T]he unity of intuition, whereby an object (g) is given…always includes in itself a synthesis of the
manifold given for an intuition, and already contains the reference (Beziehung) of this manifold to the unity of
apperception.” (Emphasis added.). In § 24, Kant can speak of the understanding both as determining inner sense and
51
�synthesis and the intellectual synthesis are as intimately connected as is possible without being
simply identical.109 It is for this reason, I think, that Kant momentarily, and in opposition to what
he has said earlier, speaks of an intellectual synthesis of the imagination. The imagination would
not be what it is without its intrinsic reference to the unity of apperception.
The Transcendental Deduction, with all its twists and turns, returns in § 26 to the claim
made in § 15 that
all combination—whether we become conscious of it or not, whether it is a
combination of the manifold of intuition, or of various concepts…is an act of the
understanding. To this act the general name “synthesis” may be assigned….110
as thinking (i.e., judging): B 150: “the understanding, as spontaneity, is able to determine (bestimmen) inner sense
through the manifold of given representations in conformity with (gemäss) the synthetic unity of apperception, and
thus [so] to think synthetic unity of the apperception of the manifold of a priori sensible intuition….” And yet, in the
same section, at B 152, he can assign the first of these two but intimately related operations to the imagination: The,
the synthesis of the imagination “.insofar as it is an exercise of spontaneity… is able to determine sense a priori in
respect of its form in conformity with the unity of apperception….[I]ts synthesis of intuition, conforming as it does
to categories, must be the transcendental synthesis of imagination.” (Emphasis in the original.) That the manifold
representations of intuition must be capable of being combined in one consciousness, and that they thereby subject
to the conditions of the original-synthetic unity of apperception (B 136), whether are not they are attended to in an
act of judgment, is the reason why Kant can call the synthesis of the imagination both “figurative” and, in his
apparent overstatement, “intellectual.” Without this intrinsic reference of the imagination to the synthetic unity of
apperception the former would provide us with, at most, a mere “rhapsody of perceptions” (A156, B 195). Since for
Kant, the categories extend to objects (g) of a sensible intuition in general (B 148, 159, discussed in Section 6,
above), one might raise the question of whether those (hypothetically entertained) thinking and finite beings
different from us and possessing forms of sensible intuition different from ours would also need imagination to
synthesize the manifold of their sensible intuition prior to judgment. The answer is that they would definitiely need
imagination. But, no more for them than for us, would they need or even have an imagination independent of the
understanding. The imagination, as Kant makes amply clear, especially in the second edition version of the
Transcendental Deduction, is so to speak part and parcel of the understanding. For the very purpose of the
understanding, in the case of being whose intuition is only sensible, is to connect and unify what sensibility, taken
by itself, can only receive. From the great mass of data present in sensibility, but already synthesized figuratively by
the imagination, the “I think” selectively attends to, or “accompanies,” this or that representation, thereby
synthesizing it intellectually in a judgment.
109
John Wetlaufer speaks of the manifold in an intuition (synthesized by the imagination) as possessing a kind of
“pre-predicative unity.” (“On the Transcendental Deduction: Some Problems of Interpretation and Elements of a
New Reading,” 124). That’s sound right. But one could go a bit further and say that, for Kant, the manifold in an
intuition synthesized by the imagination possesses a “proto-predicative unity.” For it does not just precede
predication (or judgment); it has an intrinsic, anticipatory, and prefigured reference to a possible predication.
110
§ 15 B 130 (emphasis added). In this sentence, Kant writes, in reference to the manifold of intuition, “sinnlichen
oder nicht sinnlichen.” Because our understanding does not combine the manifold of an intellectual intuition, it has
52
�That, and how,111 one faculty—call it “synthesis in general,”112 “combination in general,”
“spontaneity” simply, or “understanding” broadly—accomplishes two distinct but intimately
related a priori syntheses is what Kant attempts to show in the Transcendental Deduction. The
validity of the argument of the Transcendental Deduction, which is progressive and synthetic
throughout, stands or falls with the success or failure of this attempt.
Representations synthesized in me virtue of the productive synthesis of the imagination,
which conditions all reproductive and empirical syntheses of the imagination, are not just in me.
Every representation, synthesized in me by virtue of the faculty of spontaneity “under the title of
the imagination,” can become an object (o) synthesized for me by virtue of the faculty of
spontaneity “under the title of the understanding.” And this is just what happens when I turn my
attention to something already synthesized by the imagination. From the fact that a
representation has been synthesized by the imagination it follows that it is, as Kant says, subject
to the categories, a formulation that means this much, but, as far as I can see, not more than this:
it is possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany it. This is what the Transcendental Deduction has
purportedly demonstrated. And so it can now be said, at the end of the Transcendental
Deduction, simply and without a qualifying clause:
It must be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations.
been proposed that this phrase be emended to “empirischen oder nicht empirischen.” It is conceivable, though just
barely, that Kant was thinking momentarily of an intuitive understanding—cf. supra fn. 19—which might well
combine, or rather create and order, the manifold of a “nicht sinnlichen” intuition. Yet in the continuation of the
sentence Kant speaks about how we represent things to ourselves. But whatever we are to make of the phrase,
“sinnlichen oder nicht sinnlichen,” Kant’s general claim in § 15 is clear, though controversial: whatever we can
analyze into parts, we ourselves have previously synthesized into wholes.
111
With, however, more to be said about “how” in the Schematism chapter.
112
Even in the first edition, Kant ties the imagination to conceptual unifying, i.e., to judgment, as two moments or
stages of synthesis, broadly construed. Cf., e.g., A 77-78, B103: “By synthesis in its most general sense, I mean the
act (Handlung) of putting different representations together and [!] of grasping what is manifold in them in one
cognition….[S]ynthesis is that which gathers (sammelt) the elements for cognition and [!] unites (vereinigt) them
into (zu) a certain content.”
53
�Period.
There can be only one source of unity, even if it is effective at two levels. I have emphasized the
productive synthesis of the imagination as “first”—following Kant: “the understanding’s first
application and the ground of all its other applications.” Kant may have thought that there was
never a time when an imaginative synthesis was occurring without apperception taking place.
Apperception is always directed to something synthesized. But, to repeat, not all that gets
synthesized by the imagination gets “apperceived.” The synthesis of the imagination includes
vastly more than does the synthesis of apperception.
It should be noted that the Transcendental Deduction does not depend on the specific
table of categories that Kant presents earlier in the Transcendental Analytic. Its conclusion
therefore holds whether or not the table is complete. But Kant has argued that the category of
ground and consequent is embedded in the hypothetical judgment—if p then q—as its unifying
function. It makes no sense to claim that we received this form of judgment from experience. It
is simply one of the ways in which the human mind thinks and must think. To the objection that
we cannot be so confident that how we humans think applies to things “outside” the mind, Kant
would respond, “Right on!” The categories apply only to appearances which, as such, are in
space and time, hence “inside” the mind.113 An appearance, as a distinct from a thing-in- itself,
exists only within, or as coordinated with, the human mind. So Kant grants, or rather insists on,
the inapplicability of the human mind’s categories to things “outside,” or beyond, or existing
independently of, the human mind, to things-in-themselves as distinct from appearances. But it is
113
I put “outside” and “inside” in quotations here, because these terms have spatial connotations, and space itself is,
for Kant, “inside” the mind. In the “Refutation of Idealism” (B 274-279), Kant sets out to prove “the existence of
objects (g) in space [!] outside me” (emphasis added). Contrary to what is occasionally said, he does not attempt in
the “Refutation of Idealism” to prove the existence of things-in-themselves in space outside me. For the latter are not
in space at all.
54
�the application of categories to intra-mental appearances that elevates them to objects (o), to
rule-governed features of an objective, hence inter-subjectively accessible, world of spatiotemporal experience, or nature.
The Transcendental Deduction does not purport to show in detail how the categories
apply to objects of experience. To answer the question of “how” more adequately, and that
means with reference to the table presented in the Metaphysical Deduction, Kant needs the
following “Schematism” chapter, the task of which is to show how each of the categories get
endowed with a temporal meaning. Nor does the Transcendental Deduction demonstrate the
individual a priori principles, or fundamental propositions (Grundsätze), among which is the a
priori synthetic judgment, “Every event has a cause.” These fundamental propositions need their
own proofs, and supplying them is the task of the chapter Principles” chapter, which purports to
demonstrate that these fundamental propositions are true and hold for nature as such, that is, that
they are true regardless of the particular empirical findings of natural science.114 These
propositions are not proven by, nor do they immediately follow from, the Transcendental
Deduction’s preparatory proof that the categories can be applied with right to appearances.
What the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic (the latter being only
first part of the Transcendental Logic) together purport to show is there are a priori synthetic
judgments, demonstratively true, and serving as general architectonic laws of nature, laws to
which special empirical laws—discovered a posteriori through experience—must conform, but
from which they cannot be derived, either by logical deduction or in any other way.115 Kant’s
114
See A.C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (London: Methuen & Co., Second
Edition, 1950), 134-135 for a helpful table coordinating in detail the various forms of judgment, categories,
schemata, and fundamental propositions.
115
B 163-165. If properly empirical laws were somehow deducible in their particularity from the architectonic laws
of nature, from the fundamental propositions treated in the “Principles” chapter, they too would be a priori and not
55
�grounding of natural science does not go so far as to endow specific empirical laws of nature
with the certainty that can hold only for a priori laws. But—assuming it is successful—this
grounding does demonstrate (1) that there must be causes for all events in nature, causes distinct
from and preceding the events themselves, (2) that these causes are also events in nature and
depend on further causes, which are also events, and (3) that the natural scientist who is engaged
in searching for causes is engaged in an objective enterprise. This is the advance that Kant has
made over Hume’s skepticism; and the modesty of this advance, given the extraordinary
complex and extended argumentation that Kant has to employ, can only deepen our respect for
the penetration of Hume’s insight into the problem of causality.
7. Reason and the Unconditioned
The Transcendental Analytic, with reliance on the Transcendental Aesthetic, aims at
demonstrating a set of a priori synthetic judgments that hold for everything that appears or can
appear to human mind. These are the fundamental propositions of a metaphysics of nature. The
The Transcendental Dialectic, aims at showing that the most venerable arguments of classical
metaphysics, arguments pertaining to things, not just as they appear to the human mind, but as
they are in themselves, are irremediably flawed. Such are the arguments advanced on behalf of
the immortality of the soul and arguments advanced on behalf of the existence of God. Such also
are the arguments advanced for the limited or unlimited extent of the world in space and time,
and arguments for and against freedom of the will. These last two, and arguments relating to
empirical at all. That empirical laws of nature in their particularity and interconnectedness are not constituted, or
even anticipated, a priori is, for Kant, a source of “a marked pleasure, even of admiration (Bewunderung),” as they
should be for all of us. Critique of Judgment, Introduction, VI (Werke Band 8, 261). Kant realizes that, even on his
interpretation of the human mind, there are limits to what it constitutes in the phenomenal realm (to say nothing of
the noumenal realm).
56
�them, generate, Kant tries to show, antinomies—or opposed conclusions—by logically valid
proofs that are nonetheless unsound because they assume without warrant that space and time,
and the sum of appearances in space and time called nature, have an existence independent from
our minds. A solution to the antinomies, Kant holds, is possible only if we make the distinction
between nature, as the sum of appearances in space and time, and things-in-themselves. The
existence of the Antinomies is not deduced from the argument of first part of the Critique, but is
met with, Kant argues, in the investigation of nature itself. The existence of the Antinomies
serves, then, as an independent confirmation of the argument of the first part of the Critique.
That argument can, however, be appealed to in working out a solution to the Antinomies.
According to Kant, the inconclusive proofs and contradictory conclusions that have
marred the history of metaphysics have arisen from the attempts of speculative reason to
comprehend what he calls “the Unconditioned,” that is, an ultimate uncaused cause or ground of
all that, on inspection, presents itself as conditioned. Kant maintains that we set out in quest for
the Unconditioned, not because of a mere psychological need, be it hubris, insecurity, fear of the
death, unwillingness to gaze into the abyss, or what have you, but because this quest is
demanded—Kant even says commanded—by reason itself.116 Dialectical illusion arises
unavoidably only to the extent that reason seeks its fulfillment, its telos, in a theoretical
apprehension of the Unconditioned. In the Canon of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggests
that reason might find its telos, the Unconditioned, not in theoria but in praxis, in the realm of
human willing and action. Turning this suggestion into a demonstration is initiated in the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and is completed in the Critique of Practical Reason.
116
B xx; A 296, B 353.
57
�In the latter work, Kant attempts to show that reason can legislate an unconditional moral
law, a law expressing to us humans not what is, unconditionally, but what ought to be,
unconditionally. The word “ought”—when used in reference to human action—expresses an
imperative addressed to a rational being, who by virtue of his sensuous (or animal) nature, is
inclined to disobey it.
This [practical] rule … is, for a being in whom reason is not the sole determining
ground of the will [but who has inclinations that can be opposed to reason], an
imperative, that is, a rule that is designated by an “ought” (ein Sollen), which
expresses the objective (o) necessity of the act, and signifies that if reason entirely
determined the will the act would inevitably happen according to the rule.117
Kant agrees with Hume that “the ought” cannot be derived from “the is”—unless, of course, we
already endow “the is” with a moral character. But, that “the ought” cannot be derived from “the
is” does not mean that it is irrational. Quite the opposite. The “ought” is derived from the
conditional “would.” What I, a rational being encumbered by sensuous inclinations, ought to do
is what a rational being unencumbered by sensuous inclinations would do.118
117
Critique of Practical Reason. Book 1, Chapter 1, 1, Definition, Remark (Werke, Band 6, 126). Inclinations for
Kant pertain to the senses and feelings, to what he calls the lower faculty of desire. The higher faculty of desire is
practical reason itself. See ibid. Chapter 1, Theorem 2, Remark 1 (129-133).
118
Though Kant defines obligation with reference to what a purely rational being, i.e., God, would do, he does not
derive the moral law from religious belief. Quite the opposite: “Even the Holy One of the Gospel must first be
compared with our ideal of moral perfection before he is recognized as such.” Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals. Second Section, (James Ellington translation, Indianapolis IN: Hackett, 1981, 21); Werke, Band VI, 36.
Leo Strauss, who is generally worlds away from Kant in his understanding of morality, agrees with him that
morality does not come from religious belief. Quite the opposite: “One has not to be naturally pious, he has merely
to have a passionate interest in genuine morality, in order to long with all his heart for revelation: moral man as such
is the potential [!] believer.” The Law of Reason in the Kuzari (in Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe IL:
The Free Press, 1952), 140. Kant would add that, since the moral law cannot issue from religion, even less from
experience, it can only issue from reason itself.
58
�Acting rationally means, minimally, not acting inconsistently. Acting inconsistently
means acting in opposition to what he calls the categorical imperative. 119 Kant gives several
formulations of the categorical imperative. I shall focus here on the formulation that is, in my
opinion, the clearest and least vulnerable to criticism.
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the
person of another, always as an end [that is, as possessing intrinsic worth] and
never as a means, or instrument, merely [that is, as possessing worth only for
someone else.].120
Kant holds that every rational being must think of himself as an end. It is not possible for a
rational being, Kant says, to think of himself as mere means—as, we sometimes say, merely a
“doormat” for others to wipe their feet on. If I think that you have slighted me, I say naturally
something along the lines of, “Treat me like a human being.” I do not naturally say, “Treat me
like a person who lives three hundred miles north of here,” or “Treat me like a music lover,” or
“Treat me like a hunter.” I can say these latter things to be sure, and in certain very odd contexts
they may be exactly the right things to say.” But it is much more natural to say “Treat me like a
human being.” Now a human being is a rational animal. And since I do not mean, “Treat me like
an animal,” when I say “Treat me like a human being,” I must mean by this expression, “Treat
me like a rational being.”121 We insist on being treated as rational beings because we
immediately recognize that rationality, which is constitutive of our humanity, has intrinsic worth.
119
Kant also calls the categorical imperative the moral law, more precisely, the moral law as it holds for a rational,
but nonetheless finite being. An infinite rational being, or God (if he exists), acts according to the moral law. But the
moral law does not address him in the form of an imperative, since, unlike finite rational beings, he has no
inclination to act against it.
120
Werke, Band 6, 61: “Handle so, dass du die Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden
andern, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloss als Mittel brauchest.” Consider Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-2 q. 64
art. 2, ad 3: “man is naturally free and existing for himself” (homo est naturaliter liber et propter seipsum existens,).
121
I mean something similar when I say, “Treat me like an adult.” We understand an adult to have reached, as we
say, the age of reason and to be, as we also say, responsible for his actions.
59
�Reason has intrinsic worth because through it we humans, unlike irrationals animals, are oriented
to the Unconditioned.
Now, any reason I can give for why you should treat me as an end, and not a means
merely, is at the same time a reason that you can give for why I should treat you as an end and
not as a means merely.122 Reason, as such, ignores what is private about us, and speaks only to
what we have in common. If you are an end, and I treat you as a means merely, I am treating you
as something you are not. I am acting irrationally. For me to treat you as means merely is as
irrational as treating an automobile as a washing machine, or a shoe as a pencil. In fact, it is
much more irrational. For in these amusing cases, I would only be treating one thing as another
thing. But in treating you as a mere means, I am now treating a person as a thing;123 and that is
not so amusing. It is reason itself commands us not to act irrationally and opposition to the
categorical imperative, just as it commands us not to think irrationally and in opposition to the
principle of non-contradiction.124
122
If you say that you do not regard yourself as an end but as a means merely, I cannot prove that you are wrong,
though I can doubt that you are telling the truth. If, however, I come to think that you are telling the truth and really
do regard yourself as a means merely, then I have to be wary of the implications of how you regard yourself for how
you will treat me. Still, your regarding yourself as a mere means does not entitle me to treat you as a mere means,
not if I think you are mistaken in how you regard yourself. Should one assert, circumspectly and sotto voce of
course, that, though some human beings (the wise few?) are ends, others (the unwise many?) are means merely, i.e.,
that they are only things and not persons, Kant would respond that, until and unless a rigorous argument is advanced
on behalf of this assertion, it does not merit serious consideration. For it is too much at odds with how we actually
encounter and interact with others, especially with how we require them to treat us. We cannot reasonably require
those we treat as mere things to treat us as something other than mere things, or reasonably expect, or even hope,
that they will do so.
123
Consider Boethius’s definition of person, “A person is an individual substance of a rational nature,” and Thomas
Aquinas’s defense of this definition in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 29, art. 1. Boethius’ definition is elegant. An
individual substance of a non-rational nature is only a thing. A universal substance of a rational nature is only a
concept, such as a genus or a species. Compare Kant’s definition, which is in basic agreement with Boethius’s. “A
person is a subject whose acts admit of imputation. Moral personality is nothing other than the freedom of a rational
being under moral laws.” Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction IV “Preliminary Concepts.”
124
The categorical imperative (especially in the formulation considered above) causes, or should cause, the
phenomenal world itself to look differently that it would without it. See the striking formulation in the Critique of
Practical Reason, On the Deduction of the Fundamental Propositions of Pure Practical Reason: “This law is to
procure for the sensible world, as a sensible nature (regarding what pertains to rational beings), the form of an
intelligible, that is, of a supersensible, nature, though without interrupting the mechanism of the former.” (Dieses
60
�Kant understands the categorical imperative to be constituted by reason itself, which
precisely qua reason frames its propositions in the language of universals. This is true of
ordinary political legislation too; and it is true of speculative reason in all its ventures as well.
Because reason is not private but common, we can reason together, about both practical matters
and speculative matters. Reason has, we might say, “a mind of its own.” We can ignore reason,
to be sure. But doing so will lead to error, to falsity in speculation and to immorality in action.
There is a striking parallelism in the accounts of our relationship to others in the first and
second Critiques. Just as, in the Critique of Pure Reason, the possibility of intersubjective
agreement in theoretical matters is founded upon an objectivity made possible by distinguishing
between the empirical ego and the transcendental ego, so, in the Critique of Practical Reason,
the recognition of others as ends in themselves with respect to whom I have obligations is
founded on consciousness of the moral law as an expression of the ego, not as a bundle of
subjective inclinations, but as rational will articulating objective law. And just as the self that
knows by constituting objectivity differs in no essential way from other human knowers, so the
self that acts morally differs in no essential way from other human actors.125 The Critique of
Pure Reason grounds a metaphysics of nature, and the Critique of Practical Reason grounds a
metaphysics of morals. The dual metaphysics that emerges from these two critiques is an account
of human nature that harmonizes the modern conception of nature, the world of appearances
Gesetz soll der Sinnenwelt, als einer sinnliche Natur (was die vernünftigen Wesen betrifft), die Form einer
Verstandeswelt, d.i., einer übersinnlichen Natur verschaffen, ohne doch jener ihrem Mechanism Abbruch zu tun.
Werke, Band 6, 156.) Kant is saying here that, though we know (through the argument of the Transcendental
Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason) that all appearances in space and time, including the bodies of human
beings, are governed by thoroughgoing determinism, our consciousness of the moral law actually makes human
beings appear as persons, and not as spatio-temporal objects merely.
125
There are, of course, many empirical egos. But there are just as many transcendental egos, or—perhaps it would
be better to say—just as many instantiations of the transcendental ego, although in the rules of their proper operation
they do not differ from one another.
61
�standing under architectonic laws prescribed a priori by the human understanding, with the with
the ancient and medieval conception of man as teleological.
The Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason could seem to rule out the
very freedom that the Critique of Practical Reason presupposes. Such a thing would be
catastrophic for reason, for it would then be in conflict with itself. Kant attempts to solve this
problem by arguing that we human beings are members of two worlds, the world as it appears,
which (Kant argues) can be known to be exhibit thoroughgoing determinism, and the world as it
is “in itself,” which (Kant also argues) can be thought, without the slightest contradiction, to
have room for freedom. Both metaphysics are rooted ultimately in the consciousness that the ego
has of itself, as a synthesizing agent in the act of knowing and as a rationally autonomous agent
in the act of willing, the former characterized by spontaneity, the latter by freedom. 126 We have
already considered something of what Kant means by spontaneity, but we need to take a closer
look at it.
8. Empirical character and intelligible character
It is sometimes is sometimes said that, according to Kant, everything of which we are
conscious is subject to time. Whereas this is true of what we know in the strict sense of that
word, it is not true of what we are only conscious of. Knowledge always requires an intuition
adequate to the thing known.
126
In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (concluding note to Part 1), Kant equates freedom with
spontaneity.
62
�In whatever manner and by whatever means a cognition may refer (beziehen) to
objects (g), intuition is that through which it immediately refers to them, and to
which all thought as a means is directed… Thought must…refer ultimately to
intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility because in no other way can an
object (g) be given to us.127
It is clear that in this passage, as in others that we have considered, Kant is concerned with how
objects are known, with how they are constituted. But what of the subject that engages in the act
of constituting objects? I do not mean here the empirical ego, with its particular perceptions,
feelings, memories, anticipations, hopes, fears, pleasures, pains, longings and the like, all of
which go into distinguishing you from me. For Kant, just as much as for Hume, the ego
understood this way is only a process of transitory perceptions and feelings. By the subject
engaged in the act of constituting objects I am speaking of the transcendental ego.
In his solution to the Third Antinomy, Kant does not base his argument for the possibility
of freedom on our consciousness of the moral law, for the latter does not get thematically treated
until the Critique of Practical Reason. In the solution to the Third Antimony, Kant argues for a
freedom that is presupposed by, but not yet identified with, properly moral freedom—a
“freedom-from,” one might call it, not yet identified with “freedom-for.” Kant says,
We should, therefore, in a subject belonging to the sensible world have, first, an
empirical character, whereby its actions (Handlungen) as appearances, stand in
thoroughgoing connection with other appearances in accordance with unvarying
laws of nature. And since these actions can be derived from the other
127
A 19, B 33.
63
�appearances, they constitute together with them a single series in the order of
nature.128
The “empirical character” of the subject is what makes it an empirical ago. Its actions are
appearances in time, and these are connected with other appearances, forming “a single
series in the order of nature.” In this sense the empirical ego or subject is entirely subject
to the principle of cause and effect. It is not free. But, Kant continues:
Secondly, we should also have to allow the subject an intelligible character, by
which it is indeed the cause of those same actions as appearances, but which does
not itself stand under any conditions of sensibility, and is not itself appearance.
We can entitle the former [i.e., the empirical character of the subject] the
character of such a thing as (or in) appearance, the latter [i.e., the intelligible
character of the subject] its character as thing-in-itself.
Now this acting subject would not, in its intelligible character, stand under any
conditions of time, for time is only the condition of appearances, not of things-inthemselves. In this subject [as a thing-in-itself], no action would begin or cease;
and it would not, therefore, have to conform to the law of the determination of all
that is alterable in time: that everything that happens must have its cause in the
appearances that precede it. In its causality [as a thing-in-itself], so far as it is
intellectual (intellektuell), it would not have a place in the series of those
128
A 539, B 567 ff.
64
�empirical conditions through which the event is rendered necessary in the world
of sense.129
Kant argues that the thing-in-itself can be consistently thought of as both free, because it is not in
time and thereby not subject to the schematized category of cause and effect, and yet also as a
cause, because without the thing-in-itself there would be no appearances (appearances being, for
Kant, appearances of something that does not itself appear). For these reasons the thing-in-itself
can be consistently thought of as a free cause, even a free will.
Kant removes the will from the phenomenal realm and lodges it in the noumenal realm of
things-in-themselves. But he also argues that the subject as thinking, and not only as willing,
must be thought of as thing-in-itself, and equally free from the thoroughgoing determinism of
nature.
Man is one of the appearances of the sensible world, and in so far one of the
natural causes, whose causality must stand under empirical laws. Like all other
things in nature he must have an empirical character. This character we observe
(bemerken) through the powers and faculties which he reveals in his actions. In
lifeless or merely animal nature we find no basis for thinking that any faculty is
conditioned otherwise than in a merely sensible manner. Man however, who
knows (kennt) all the rest of nature through the sense, cognizes himself (erkennt
129
Ibid., cont. Kemp Smith mistranslates intellektuell as “intelligible.” His note 3 (p. 468) suggests that he does not
understand exactly what is going on in this particular passage. The subject has an intelligible character, insofar as it
can be thought, and must be thought, apart from the data of sense-experience. But its activity is an intellectual (vs.
phenomenal) causality—not identical to an intellectual (i.e., divine) intuition, but imaging it, one might say.
65
�sich selbst) through pure apperception; and this indeed in inner acts and inner
determinations which he cannot reckon as impressions of the senses.130
Kant’s claim here that man “cognizes himself through pure apperception” is striking. For “pure
apperception” clearly means non-empirical apperception. Pure apperception is the act of the
transcendental ego. So this particular thing-in-itself, the transcendental ego, can be in some sense
known, or cognized, after all. But how is this possible if all concepts, pure as well as empirical,
have meaning and yield knowledge only of objects of possible experience,131 that is, knowledge
of what can be given to us from without—however our much our faculty of understanding in its
syntheses contributes to making what is given objective? Kant answers, more precisely he gives
us the means to answer, this question in the apparent digression from the argument of
Transcendental Deduction that I referred to earlier.
9. Transcendental Deduction, § 24 (last five paragraphs) - § 25.
The passages dealing with the intelligible vs. the empirical character of the ego that I
have quoted above occur in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Like most of what
occurs in the first edition, these passages are included in the second edition as well. In rewriting
the Transcendental Deduction for the second edition, Kant elaborates further on his conception
of the transcendental ego as active in thinking, not just in willing.
[The understanding’s] synthesis, therefore, if the synthesis be considered by itself
alone is nothing but the unity of the act, of which as an act, it is conscious to
130
A 546, B 574.
Kant claims at B 147 that even mathematical concepts yield knowledge only insofar as they can be applied to
empirical intuition. Cf. A 156, B 195.
131
66
�itself, even without sensibility, but through which it is yet able to determine
sensibility.132
When Kant says here, “if the synthesis be viewed by itself,” he means if it be considered
independently of exactly what it synthesizes. The unity of the act is the unity of the “I think.”
Thought is an act. It is, to be sure “empty”, without a corresponding intuition, for then it has no
content, it has nothing to synthetically grasp, that is, to conceptualize.133 It is for this reason that,
when Kant says that the understanding is conscious to itself of the unity of its act “even apart
from sensibility,” I understand him to mean that the act of the understanding can be isolated from
the particular content of sensibility that it is able to determine through its acts.134 Still, this selfconsciousness, as Kant elaborates it in the second edition of Transcendental Deduction, is not
knowledge strictly so-called.
[I]n the transcendental synthesis of the manifold of representations in
general, and therefore in the synthetic original unity of apperception, I am
132
B 153. Kemp Smith glosses “without sensibility” as “without the aid of sensibility.” The consciousness “I think”
is not consciousness of a manifold merely but rather consciousness of an act, albeit an act of synthesizing a
manifold. I interpret Kant to be arguing, not that the “I think” could occur even without any manifold, pure or
empirical, to synthesize, but only that self-consciousness, as occurring in the apperceptive act, does not rely on any
particular manifold given through sensibility, not even on the pure manifolds of the forms of sensible intuition that
are peculiar to us. Still, some form of sensible intuition must be given for the “I think” to be the act of synthesis that
Kant holds it to be. B 133; 135.
133
See B 422, note, concluding sentence.
134
See B 135. “The fundamental proposition of the necessary unity of apperception (the ‘I think’)…reveals the
necessity of a synthesis of the manifold given in intuition, without which the thoroughgoing identity of selfconsciousness cannot be thought” (emphasis added). What is at issue here is the identity of self-consciousness, its
identity over time, as distinct from the manifold of representations, which vary over time. Identity of selfconsciousness over time surely presupposes the unity of its act: the former is a consequence of the latter, not vice
versa.
67
�conscious (bewusst) of myself, not as I appear to myself, not as I am in
myself, but only that I am.135
Note the absence of the apophantic “as” in transcendental apperception. In transcendental
apperception I am conscious of myself, neither as I appear not as I am, but only that I am.136
Indeed, Kant has said earlier in the Deduction,
This fundamental proposition of the necessary unity of apperception is…an
identical, and therefore analytic proposition.137
The fundamental proposition is the very “I think” that can accompany all my representations.
The predicate “think” is analytically contained in the concept of the subject “I.” The ego is
conscious of itself in thinking, and thinking is, according to Kant, an act. The contradictory of
any analytic proposition is one that cannot be thought without contradiction, and the proposition
“I think” is no exception. The proposition, “I do not think,” is a proposition that I cannot think
without contradiction. But as an analytic proposition, or judgment, the “I think,” does not extend
my knowledge. The predicate only explicates what is already thought that in the subject.138
This representation [i.e., the original synthetic unity of apperception – the “I
think] is a thought, not an intuition. Now in order to know ourselves, there is
required in addition to (or beyond—ausser) the act of thought, which brings the
manifold of every possible intuition to the unity of apperception, a determinate
135
B 157. Consider the distinction Kant makes, in the Preface to second edition between “intellectual consciousness
of my existence” [which I possess] and “determination of my existence through intellectual intuition [which I do not
possess].” B xi (emphasis in the original).
136
There is a curious parallel between what Kant says here about the transcendental ego and what Thomas Aquinas
repeatedly says about God: we can know that he exists, but we cannot know his essence.
137
B 135.
138
Kant calls analytic judgments “explicative,” and synthetic judgments “ampliative.” Only the predicates in the
latter add something beyond what is already thought (even if confusedly thought) in the concept of the subject. A 7,
B 11.
68
�mode of intuition, whereby this manifold is given; it therefore follows that
although my own existence is not indeed appearance (still less illusion), the
determination of my existence can take place only in conformity with the form of
inner sense [i.e., time]….Accordingly I have no knowledge of myself as I am but
merely as I appear to myself. The consciousness of self is very far from being
knowledge of the self….I exist as intelligence, which is conscious solely of its
power of combination (Verbindungsvermögen); but in respect of the manifold
which it has to combine I am subject to a limiting condition (entitled inner sense),
namely, that this combination can be made intuitable only according to relations
of time, which lie entirely outside the concepts of the understanding strictly
regarded (eigentlichen Verstandesbegriffen).139
Mere consciousness of self is not genuine knowledge of self because it lacks the appropriate
intuition. By means of sensible, temporal intuition I can know myself as I appear. The
consciousness that “I am,” however, is not the consciousness of myself as just appearing
(whatever that might mean), but as being, as existing, unequivocally. But to this selfconsciousness I have no corresponding intuition, no intellectual intuition, that would enable me
to determine in what manner I exist, i.e., what I am in addition to that I am. Nonetheless mere
consciousness of self, though not knowledge properly so called, is not insignificant.
The “I think” expresses the act of determining my existence. Existence is already
given thereby, but the mode in which I am to determine this existence, that is, the
manifold belonging to it, is not thereby given.140
139
140
B 157 – B 159.
B 158, note.
69
�Kant emphasizes again that in the “I think,” existence is thereby given. “I think” (hence “I exist’)
is an analytic, indeed an identical proposition.”141
…since I do not have another self-intuition which gives the determining in me (I
am conscious only of the spontaneity of it) prior to the act of determination, as
time does in the case of determinable, I cannot determine my existence as that of a
self-active being.142
Note again that knowledge is the determination of what something is, determination through
concepts and intuition. “I cannot [in the “I think” of transcendental apperception] determine my
existence as a self-active being.” A self-active being would be active in the strongest sense of the
expression. It would be able act in relation to itself and not only in relation to what is given to it.
A self-active being would be would be self-determining or morally free. But, according to Kant,
consciousness of my synthetic, productive, and determining activity in relation to what is other
than me (a manifold of intuition, pure or empirical, to be united; or even diverse concepts to be
connected) is not conscious of self-determination. Whether I—as I am “in-myself”—am morally
free or not, or for that matter, immortal or mortal, remains unknown.
[All] that I can do is to represent to myself the spontaneity of my thought, that is
[the spontaneity] of the determination [or, more precisely, the spontaneity of the
act of determination]; and my existence is still only determinable, sensibly, that
is, as the existence of an appearance.” (Emphasis added).
141
Compare B 420-425 (from the Paralogisms) with B 131-135 and B 155-159 (both from the Transcendental
Deduction). If we take these passages together it looks as though a fourth possibility not explored in the Introduction
to the Critique of Pure Reason, and tempting to dismiss as nonsensical, is taken seriously by Kant. “I think” is an
analytic, but nonetheless empirical, proposition (or judgment). Only by making this claim, strange though it sounds,
can Kant both accomplish the task Transcendental Deduction and rule out the possibility of a proof for the
immortality of the soul. This matter requires further exploration, which, however, will not be undertaken here.
142
Ibid.
70
�To this Kant adds a qualification.
But it is owing to this spontaneity [of my thought] that I entitle myself an
intelligence.143
It is only consciousness of the spontaneity of thought that (assuming he did not change his mind
on this point) Kant must have been thinking of when, in the solution to the Second Antinomy, he
said that man “cognizes himself through pure apperception.”
We are now in a position to respond to one of the most common criticisms of the Critique
of Pure Reason, namely, that Kant applies the categories to the things-in-themselves, which
transcend any possible experience, by saying that they exist, even that they are causes. But in
doing so he violates his express claim that the categories, existence and cause among them, apply
only to objects of experience.
Kant cannot be rescued from this criticism solely by repeating his observation that the
categories can be used to think, though not to know, things-in-themselves. For we must really
know, and not just think, that at least one a-spatial, a-temporal thing-in-itself really does exist in
order to be able to say that our spatial, temporal experience is of appearances only and not of
things as they are in-themselves. The whole argument of the Critique of Pure Reason depends on
our knowing at least this much. Nor can Kant be rescued from the charge of applying the
categories to things that transcends any possible experience solely by saying that it is the unschematized categories, the categories without temporal meaning, that he applies to things-in-
143
Ibid.
71
�themselves. For Kant also teaches that, without this temporal meaning, the categories yield not
even the slightest knowledge of objects.144.
Of objects. But what does this say about the relation of categories to the subject, to the
ego itself? Here we note a curiosity: though Kant uses the expression “things-in-themselves,” in
the plural, to name the unknowable that lies behind appearances, he also frequently uses the
expression “the thing-in-itself,” in the singular, to name the same unknowable that lies behind
appearances. As far as I know, the only individual thing-in-itself that Kant ever says that we
know exists, the only thing that he says we know is not just a spatio-temporal appearance, is the
transcendental ego itself.145 Now, in transcendental apperception I am conscious that I am, but I
do not know what I am, for this self-consciousness lacks the intuition that would elevate it to
knowledge properly so called, to a knowledge that would determine my existence, to a
knowledge of what I am. And yet the consciousness that I am is surely, in some circumscribed
sense of the word, knowledge that I am. This knowledge that I am is highly restricted in that 1) it
is not knowledge of an object at all, but of the subject; and 2) it is expressed in the analytic
proposition “I think,”146 which as analytic does count as an extension of our knowledge. The
existence, then, and not just the appearance, of the knowing subject is self-evident, precisely
because “I think” is an analytic judgment. My existence is given with, is in fact identical with,
144
A 146, B 185: “The schemata of the pure concepts of the understanding are thus the true and sole conditions
under which these concepts obtain relation to objects (o) and so possess significance (or meaning—Bedeutung).”
(Emphasis in the original.) See the sentence that at the end of B 150.
145
The other candidate for a thing-in-itself, not construable as an appearance only, would be God. However, Kant
argues at great length in the section of Critique of Pure Reason called “The Ideal of Pure Reason,” that we do not
and cannot know that God exists. But he also argues there and elsewhere that we can think, without contradiction,
that God exists. And more than that. He argues in the Critique of Practical Reason (Book II, Chapter II, sections 46; Werke, Band 6, 252-264) that we must postulate that God exists (and also that the soul is immortal) in order to
make sense to ourselves of how the highest good—according to Kant, happiness in proportion to moral worth—
which ought to be, could be.
146
B 135; 407.
72
�my thinking.147 Consequently, it is self-evident that at least one thing-in itself exists, namely, the
ego that which is that is engaged in thinking. This self-evident knowledge is sufficient to ground
the distinction between appearances and the thing-in-itself that the argument of the book turns
on. Two questions arise. Does this distinction itself entail an illegitimate application of the
category of existence? And when we say that the ego as thing-in-itself is a transcendental cause
of appearances, does this amount to an illegitimate application of the category of causality?
No. For the issue of legitimate vs. illegitimate category application (in relation to
knowing, as distinct from thinking merely) always concerns application of the categories to
objects, legitimately to objects of a possible experience and illegitimately to objects that
transcend any possible experience. In fact, even when these categories are employed in speaking
about the subject, they are not applied to the subject.148 Rather, the subject—in a way that Kant,
unlike his greatest successors, seems to have thought does not admit of further explication—is
itself the origin of the categories.149 We must remember that the categories are functions of unity
in judgments, and that the table of categories is derived from the table of judgments. A judgment
expresses the “I think” and the different forms of judgment express the different ways in which I
think. Accordingly the categories are originally, though, so to speak, only latently, present
“within” the “I think.” In saying that the “I think” discloses my existence to me, and even the
causality of my thought as regards the constitution of objects, these two categories are not
applied at all, for there is nothing genuinely distinct from them, like an intuition, to which they
could be applied. The fundamental proposition “I think,” even “I think” actively and not
passively, is explicative only, not ampliative. Because the proposition is analytic, the predicate,
147
B 422, note.
B 131; B 408-409; 422, and note.
149
The subject, unlike an object, is surely not constituted as existing by applying the category of existence to it. For
all category application presupposes an existing subject to perform it.
148
73
�“think,” adds nothing to the subject, “I,” but only makes explicit what already thought in this
subject.150
When categories are applied to an object, the application extends them beyond their
origin in the subject. When the categories are employed with reference to the knowing subject,
they remain where they are: they come with the subject, originally. The existence and the
causality (in constituting objects) of the transcendental subject, and the unity of its act, are
evident in self-consciousness. In fact, not only is it a mistake to say that the categories are
applied to the subject, to the ego that thinks; when one uses expressions like “existence,”
“causality,” and “unity” with reference to the “I think,” it is a mistake even to call then
“categories,” which are, after all, only “concepts of an object [g] in general.”
[T]he concept of combination (Verbindung) contains, besides the concept of the
manifold and of its synthesis, also the concept of the unity of the manifold.
Combination is representation of the synthetic unity of the manifold. The
representation of this unity cannot, therefore, arise out of the combination. Rather,
it is what, by adding itself to the representation of the manifold, first makes
possible the concept of the combination. This unity, which precedes a priori all
concepts of combination, is not the category [!] of unity (§ 10); for all categories
are grounded in logical functions of judgment, and in these functions
combination, and therefore unity of given concepts is already thought. Thus the
150
I cannot, for example, infer from the proposition, “I think,” not even from the “I think” understood as existent
and actively constituting objects in categorial syntheses, the proposition, “I am a simple substance” (and hence, by
virtue of being simple that I cannot be de-composed, i.e. that I am naturally immortal). For the latter is a synthetic
judgment that goes outside of the subject “I” and appends to it a predicate “simple substance” that is not thought in
the subject. On other hand, and as already noted several times, the proposition, “I think,” is analytic. The concept of
the subject, “I,” contains within itself the predicate “think”—and thinking, as Kant understands it, is essentially
active, constitutive of objects, even causative of them qua objects.
74
�category already presupposes combination. We must therefore seek yet higher for
this unity (as qualitative, § 12), namely in that which itself contains the ground of
the unity of diverse concepts in judgments, and therefore of the possibility of the
understanding, even as regards its logical employment.151
The question of how Kant can apply the categories to things-in-themselves resolves into the
question of how the thinking subject can know that he is and not simply that he appears. Kant’s
answer is that it is immediately evident that the thinking subject is self-conscious and, moreover,
can it direct itself to its own faculties and operation. The transcendental ego’s recognition that it
exists as thinking, and thereby as active, even causative (of combination), and that its act
possesses unity, is—instead of category application to something given from without—
reflection, a self-relation that is inward and original, even originating.
One may not be fully satisfied with this answer to the question of how Kant can employ
the terms “existence,” “causality,” and “unity” when speaking of the thing-in-itself that is the
transcendental ego. But it is, I submit, Kant’s answer, indeed, the only possible answer that can
be given in Kantian terms. And it bears serious consideration, touching as it does and the
overarching question that will occur to the thoughtful reader of the First Critique: “How is a
Critique of Pure Reason Possible?”152 However that question is to be answered adequately, or
even adequately addressed, Kant was surely not deaf to it. He did not, as is commonly alleged,
thoughtlessly violate his own rules of category application any more than he naively assumed the
validity of Newtonian science in order to prove the validity of Newtonian science. He did not
spend the decade in which he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason in a stupor.
151
B 128. B 129-131.
The part of the First Critique that includes Kant’s treatment of the “I think,” he calls the “Transcendental
Analytic.” It consists, he says, in the dissection (Zergliederung) of all our a priori knowledge into the elements of
the pure understanding (Verstaneserkenntnis). A 64, B 89.
152
75
�In conclusion I draw attention to a most interesting parallel and opposition between the
self-consciousness of transcendental apperception and the consciousness of the moral law,
between the a priori analytic proposition, “I think,” and the a priori synthetic proposition, “I am
obliged” (to act such that the maxim of my will could always hold at the same as principle
establishing universal law). The predicate “think” is analytically contained in the concept of the
ego. But the predicate “am obliged etc.” is not analytically contained in concept of the ego; it is
synthetically connected to the concept of the ego by an act of practical reason, which thereby
makes the consciousness of the moral law “a fact of reason,” even “the sole fact of reason.” 153
The analytic proposition, “I think,” expresses the spontaneity of the understanding; the a priori
synthetic proposition “I am obliged…” expresses the freedom of the will. In both propositions
the ego is conscious of itself as active.154 The conception of the ego as active, in both thinking
and willing, is the ultimate ground of Kant’s dual metaphysics, of nature and of morals.
153
B 135; Critique of Practical Reason § 7 (Werke, Band 6, 141-142). Needless to say, the fact of reason is not what
gets called “a brute fact.” A fact of reason is something made (factum) by reason.
154
The general parallelisms within the dual metaphysics that Kant attempts to ground are striking. Speculative
Reason: The argument of the Prolegomena moves “regressively” from taking the existence of natural science
properly so called—which Hume had called into question—as given, without a rigorously justifying argument, to
the point of departure for the Critique of Pure Reason. The latter then moves “progressively” by arguing rigorously
from what Kant attempts to show pertains to the very nature of speculative reason to a justification of what was
merely assumed in the Prolegomena—thereby answering Hume. The Prolegomena is not an essential part of Kant’s
speculative philosophy, but only an introduction to it, starting from what is commonly taken for granted. The
Critique of Pure Reason, however, grounds an a priori science of nature, explicated in the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, which in turn grounds empirical natural science (which for Kant is,
paradigmatically, physics, since he holds, controversially, that there is only so much science in given field of inquiry
as there is mathematics in it). Practical Reason: The argument of the Groundwork moves “regressively” from taking
the existence of free choice and duty (which the “eudaemonists” had called into question) as given, without a
rigorously justifying argument, to the point of departure for the Critique of Practical Reason. The latter work then
moves “progressively” by arguing rigorously from what Kant thinks pertains to the very nature of practical reason to
a justification of what was merely assumed in the Groundwork (thereby answering the “eudaemonists,” and also
Hume, who says: “Reason is, and ought [!] only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other
office but to serve and obey them.” A Treatise of Human Nature, II, iii, 3). The Groundwork is not an essential part
of Kant’s practical philosophy, but only an introduction to it, starting from what is commonly taken for granted. The
Critique of Practical Reason, however, grounds an a priori science of morals, explicated in the Metaphysics of
Morals (consisting of a “Doctrine of Right” and a “Doctrine of Virtue”),which in turn grounds an empirical moral
science, explicated in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.
Publication dates of the above works:
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; second edition: 1787)
76
�Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783)
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)
Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)
Publication dates of three other late, and major works.
Critique of Judgment (1790); Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason (1793), Opus Postumum (1804).
77
�
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“We Shall Be Monsters”: Frankenstein and the Ugliness of Enlightenment
[F]or a person who is altogether ugly in appearance,
or of poor birth, or solitary and childless cannot
really be characterized as happy.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b1-5.
I hate books.
Rousseau, Emile, CW 13:331.
�Two hundred years ago, in January 1818, the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was
published anonymously in London [F 311, 334].1 Over the next two centuries Shelley’s
“hideous progeny” [F 173] grew to mythic size, siring offspring in film and print, birthing the
science fiction genre, and updating the story of Prometheus, which cautions us about the dangers
of science and technology, of ambitious philanthropy, and of ‘playing god.’
Here is a sketch of Shelley’s story. A young chemistry student named Victor
Frankenstein makes and animates a monster.2 Horrified by his work, he abandons it, and the
monster flees. A few months later, Frankenstein is called home by the murder of his youngest
brother. He returns to see a household servant accused, tried, condemned, and executed for the
crime; but he suspects that the monster is the real murderer. During a hike in the Alps, his
suspicion is confirmed: the monster confronts him, tells his story, and demands that Frankenstein
build him a companion.
To Frankenstein the monster’s demand at first seems just, despite his crime.
Frankenstein travels to England to do research and gather his materials. After several months, he
nearly completes an artificial woman; but at the last moment he tears his work to pieces, fearing
she will birth a species of monsters to war on humanity. Seeing this betrayal, the monster vows
revenge and departs, leaving Frankenstein to return home. During his return he discovers that
his friend Henry Clerval has also been murdered; he is accused of the crime and tried, but
acquitted. Home at last, Frankenstein prepares to marry his childhood companion Elizabeth
Lavenza, promising to share with her his dreadful secret once they are wed. The night of his
wedding, he sends Elizabeth away in order to confront and fight the monster. But he has
misunderstood the monster’s vow: he hears two terrible screams, and Elizabeth is dead.
Frankenstein vows revenge, and pursues the monster north.
1
�Victor Frankenstein tells this story to an explorer named Robert Walton, whom he meets
on the ice of the Arctic Ocean. Walton records the details, reporting some of them in letters to
his sister in London. Though Frankenstein is close to catching the monster when Walton finds
him, he is also near death. He is too weak to continue his pursuit, and once he has told his story
he dies on Walton’s ship. Soon afterward, Walton finds the monster crouching over
Frankenstein’s corpse. They speak briefly, then the monster exits the ship and disappears.
Walton sails for London, bringing the story of Frankenstein and his monster back to society.
Many monsters have been assembled from the materials Frankenstein furnishes. Mine is
animated by what strikes me as Mary Shelley’s chief question in the novel: is enlightenment
good? This monster’s homogeneous parts are ugliness, solitude, reading, science, ambition,
philanthropy, beauty, family, and nature. To learn how to mix these materials, I will trace the
four enlightenments depicted in Shelley’s novel: those of the monster, of Frankenstein, of
Walton, and of Shelley herself. These enlightenments make up the four proper parts of this
lecture, parts neither proportionate in size, nor ordered as in the novel. I mean to build this
monster from the inside out.
Part One: The Enlightenment of the Monster
Enlightenment makes the monster a monster. So he tells Frankenstein on the alpine sea
of ice. Abandoned by his maker, lacking other guidance, he is at first shaped only by his
confused sensations. When he sees light, he closes his eyes; when he sees darkness, he feels
pain, and opens his eyes again. When he wakes in Frankenstein’s apartment, he feels cold, and
grabs some clothes to cover himself. When he feels hot, he hides in a forest. Then there is
hunger, which leads to berries, thirst, which leads to a stream, and fatigue, which leads to sleep.
2
�At night, the dark and cold return, and he weeps in pain. But then he sees moonlight, feels
pleasure, and wonders. All this happens mechanically in response to sensations. The monster’s
mind is empty of distinct ideas [F 68].
But soon, distinct ideas follow his distinct sensations. The monster finds a fire that some
travelers have abandoned. Its warmth is pleasant, but it burns when he touches it [compare CW
2: 12 note *]. He learns to feed the fire, to fan it to life, and to cook nuts and roots over it [F 69].
But food is scarce, so he must abandon his fire to forage. This brings him to a shepherd’s hut.
The shepherd, seeing the monster, shrieks and flees, leaving behind his breakfast and another
fire. The monster remembers this hut as a kind of paradise;3 but hunger forces him to leave it
too. He comes to a village, where signs of food draw him into a cottage. The terrified villagers
assemble to repel him with a hail of missiles [F 70].
Now the monster suffers the first of three accidents. He hides in a hovel, improving it so
that it shelters and conceals him, like the shepherd’s hut. But this hovel happens to adjoin an
inhabited cottage. This guarantees the monster a source of food and water; but it also allows him
to observe the cottagers unseen [F 71-72]: a blind old man, a young man, and a young girl. They
seem kind, sad, and poor, and their relations give him “sensations of a peculiar and overpowering
nature… a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from
hunger or cold, warmth or food” [F 72]. This experience of beauty stops the monster from
stealing their food; instead, he gathers wood for them while they sleep. He becomes an invisible
family member. Noticing his benefactions, they call him “wonderful,” and “a good spirit” [F 77;
compare 65].
The monster also listens to his cottagers, and learns that they can communicate pleasure
and pain through speech. Observing with care, he begins to acquire this “godlike science”: the
3
�old man is “father,” the young girl “Agatha” or “sister,” and the young man “son,” “brother,” or
“Felix” [F 75]. But he also contrasts “the perfect forms” of his cottagers, “their grace, beauty,
and delicate complexions,” with his own ugliness, which he first sees in a pool of water.
Terrified by his own looks, the monster begins to call himself ‘monster’ [F 76].4
This, the monster tells Frankenstein, is the less moving part of his story, explaining how
he became what he once was [F 77] – namely, good. His survival and flourishing do not require
him to harm others: he is a vegetarian who will not steal food from those worse off [F 99].5 He
admires beauty and benevolence, wants to imitate them, and wants to be admired in return. The
more moving part of his story, which tells how he became what he now is [F 77], begins when
he learns how to read.
One day, a beautiful woman comes to the cottage. The monster hears that her name is
Safie, a form of Sophie. At the very middle of the novel, then, Sophie comes to the abode of
Felix and Agatha, that is, wisdom comes to the happy and the good. This moment is the peak of
the monster’s life. Since Safie can neither speak nor write the cottagers’ language, Felix teaches
her, and the monster listens in. He boasts to Frankenstein that he improved more rapidly than
she did: he is a quicker study than wisdom herself [F 79]. Felix’s lessons are readings from a
book of history, Volney’s Ruins of Empires,6 followed by explanations. The monster wonders at
the many stories of murder, and at humankind’s need for laws and governments. Vice and
bloodshed disgust him, and when he hears of the fate of the native Americans, he feels sorrow [F
80]. He learns about “the strange system of human society” [F 80], based on property, social
standing, and inequality. He learns about male and female, about the birth and growth of
children, and about family. Since Felix and Agatha are brother and sister, and the old man is
their father, it takes Safie’s arrival to teach the monster about sex.7
4
�These lessons make the monster reflect. He lacks both social rank and riches, the only
possessions human beings esteem. He admires beauty, but he is “hideously deformed and
loathsome” [F 80]. He may not even be human; he has yet to see anyone like him. He has no
family, and remembers nothing of his previous life. “I can not describe to you the agony that
these reflections inflicted on me,” he says. “I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased
with knowledge,” and knowledge “clings to the mind… like lichen on a rock” [F 81]. He wishes
he could shake off thought and feeling, and return to his life of sensations in the woods. But he
knows only death can release him from his sorrow: a fate he fears and does not understand.
Now a second accident befalls the monster.8 While seeking food and wood in the forest,
he finds copies of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the first volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and Goethe’s
Sorrows of Werther, all in the language he can read. He studies these books, taking each for a
“true history” [F 87]. Reading Goethe, he judges Werther a divine being with a deep and honest
character, wonders at his suicide for love, weeps at his death, and shares his opinions without
understanding his fate.9 This book throws the monster into “despondency and gloom” [F 86],
and renews his sorrowful reflections.10 Reading Plutarch, he finds “the histories of the first
founders of the ancient republics,” and learns “high thoughts,” and “to admire and love the
heroes of past ages” [F 86]. He prefers the peaceful lawgivers Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus to the
violent founders Romulus and Theseus, but only by accident. Had he first observed humanity in
the form of a young soldier, rather than of his cottagers, the monster tells Frankenstein, “I should
have been imbued with different sensations” [F 87].11 But reading Paradise Lost moves the
monster most strongly, because it depicts situations similar to his own. Like Adam, the monster
sees himself “apparently united by no link to any other being in existence” [F 87]; though unlike
Adam, “no Eve soothed my sorrows, or shared my thoughts” [F 88]. Like Satan, he envies the
5
�happiness of his cottagers [F 87]. About Eve’s fall, the situation that most resembles his own,
the monster is silent.
The monster also deciphers the journal pages he finds in a pocket of the clothes he
grabbed from Frankenstein’s apartment [F 87; compare 68]. They detail his “accursed origin,”
the “disgusting circumstances” that made his “odious and loathsome person” [F 88].
Frankenstein’s notes also make the monster think of Adam and Satan. “God in pity made man
beautiful and alluring, after his own image,” he tells his maker, “but my form is a filthy type of
your’s, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to
admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested” [F 88].
Having tasted, through his reading, from the tree of knowledge, the monster quickly falls.
He wants to become a visible member of his cottagers’ family, so he decides to reveal himself to
them [F 85]. Since his “unnatural hideousness” causes the horror he inspires, while his voice,
“although harsh, [has] nothing terrible in it” [F 89; compare 69],12 he plans to address himself
first to the blind old man. He hopes the old man will defend him to the other cottagers, convey
his admiration for them, and provoke their compassion, despite his looks [F 88]. When the old
man is alone, the monster knocks, enters, and speaks with him. He argues sincerely that he is a
victim of injustice, and throws himself on the old man’s mercy, just as the cottagers come home.
Seeing the monster, Agatha faints, Safie flees, Felix attacks, and the monster retreats to his hovel
[F 91]. This reception makes the monster rage and despair. He declares “everlasting war against
the human species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this
insupportable misery” [F 92]. To open hostilities he burns the cottagers’ home, and sets off to
find Frankenstein, to demand pity and justice [F 94].13
6
�Now the monster suffers a third accident. Arriving in Frankenstein’s home town, and
pondering how to address his creator, he meets a small child. He thinks, “this little creature [is]
unprejudiced, and [has] lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” [F 96]. If
he can educate the child to be his friend, he will not be alone. He seizes the child, who screams,
calls him “monster,” and threatens punishment from his father, “Monsieur Frankenstein” [F 9697]. Hearing the name of his maker, the monster makes the child his first victim. He grasps his
throat, and William Frankenstein is dead. When the monster finds a locket on William’s body,
he slips it unseen into the pocket of a nearby girl [F 97]. Soon enough this girl, Justine Moritz, is
executed for the murder of Frankenstein’s brother [F 44-58].14
This concludes the more moving part of the monster’s story. Here he first refers to his
own “malignity” [F 97]. These murders, he thinks, have completed his fall from goodness to
wickedness. But while the hated name ‘Frankenstein’ provokes him to murder, he continues to
hope for his maker’s pity and justice. The monster’s mere thought of Frankenstein is not enough
to explain William’s murder. A contributing cause must be William’s revulsion at the monster’s
ugliness, which shows the monster that the horror he inspires is not learned, but natural.15 And
while the monster claims that “the lessons of Felix, and the sanguinary laws of man” [F 97]
taught him how to frame Justine Moritz, the portrait of Frankenstein’s beautiful mother inside the
locket teaches us why he frames her. He is ugly; the smiles of beautiful women are not for him.
He is by nature cut off from human society.
Concluding his story, the monster thus demands of Frankenstein, “create a female for
me” [F 98]. He insists it is Frankenstein’s duty to comply, since a creator has a duty to make his
creation happy; if Frankenstein does not comply, he will slaughter the rest of his family, as well
as “thousands of others” [F 66].16 Frankenstein’s choice, he says, will determine whether he
7
�remains wicked, or returns to his original goodness [F 66]. He sees these possibilities in terms of
Paradise Lost: “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from
joy for no misdeed” [F 66]. Despite his fall, he is silent again about the resemblance of his story
to Eve’s. He can be Adam or Satan; he sees no third possibility.17
Frankenstein agrees with the monster about his duty [F 67].18 But if he makes a female
monster, he worries, “their joint wickedness might desolate the world” [F 98]. To reassure him,
the monster promises he and his mate will quit human society. “It is true, we shall be monsters,
cut off from all the world,” he says, “but on that account we shall be more attached to one
another” [F 99].19 His words move Frankenstein to compassion, and he consents to make the
monster a companion. He believes the monster’s claim that his wickedness is due only to his
solitude [F 100].20 For his part, the monster does not touch Frankenstein’s family again until
Frankenstein changes his mind, and destroys his second creation [F 115-116].21 Then the
monster vows revenge, resumes killing, and drags Frankenstein to his death [F 152-154].
He kills because he is wicked, the monster claims; he is wicked because he is alone;22 and
he is alone because Frankenstein did not make him a companion. But he is also alone because he
is ugly. Can a companion be made for him? Human beings naturally find him ugly [F 98], he
thinks; he even finds himself ugly [F 76]. As Frankenstein realizes later, even a companion
created for the monster will likely find him ugly [F 114];23 and worse, soon we will see that such
a companion will likely also be ugly.24 The monster’s hope for a companion is due to seeing
himself as Adam in Paradise Lost, just as his later pursuit of revenge is due to seeing himself as
Satan.25 His reading has hidden other possibilities, and this will ruin his life. The monster is
alone, and must be alone, not by Frankenstein’s choice, but simply because he is ugly.26 But
why is he ugly?
8
�Part Two: The Enlightenment of Victor Frankenstein
Enlightenment also makes Frankenstein a monster. So he tells Walton aboard ship on the
sea of ice. “No youth could have passed more happily than mine” [F 20], he says. His parents
are tender, his father as indulgent and as little dictatorial as possible [F 19, 105]. Yet his family
is strangely constituted. Victor’s mother Caroline is the daughter of a friend of his father
Alphonse [F 19]. Caroline marries him after her father’s early death, so she is much younger
than her husband. Victor is the eldest of his brothers: he is an only child until age six [F 19],
when his brother Ernest is born. When Victor turns seventeen, his youngest brother William is
still an infant [F 24]. Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s cousin, is the only child close to his age. She
joined the family when Victor was four, because her mother – Alphonse’s sister – had died, and
her father had remarried. Victor and Elizabeth grow up together, first as playmates, then as
friends. His mother Caroline intends them to marry [F 19]. Victor’s practice of calling his
family his ‘friends’ perhaps results from the differences in age this accidental family embraces
[F 147].27
Alphonse Frankenstein is old, and has put politics before family [F 18]. But now that his
family is started, he has retired, to direct his children’s education [F 19, 24]. He is thus the cause
of the first accident to befall Victor. One rainy day, the thirteen year-old Victor finds a volume
of Cornelius Agrippa, a sixteenth-century writer on alchemy and other subjects.28 The theory of
chemistry and the other “wonderful facts” he finds in its pages dazzle him. But when tells his
father, Alphonse replies, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon
this; it is sad trash” [F 21]. Had his father instead explained patiently how Agrippa’s system had
been refuted and replaced by a more rational and powerful modern chemistry, Victor thinks, he
9
�would have thrown the book aside. Finding his father’s judgment to be ignorant, he instead
acquires and reads Agrippa’s complete works, followed by those of Paracelsus and Albertus
Magnus [F 22].29
As Victor tells it, his father’s carelessness gave his ideas “the fatal impulse that led to my
ruin” and made natural philosophy “the genius that has regulated my fate” [F 21]. The projects
of these authors – raising ghosts and devils, and finding the elixir of life [F 22] – become his
projects, and emulation combines with “bright visions of extensive usefulness” [F 21] to power
his studies. Books like Agrippa’s appeal to him not only because they teach that materials have
occult properties, but also because their teachings are esoteric, “treasures known to few besides
myself” [F 22]. Their projects are private, but Victor’s successes will be public: “what glory
would attend the discovery,” he fantasizes, “if I could banish disease from the human frame, and
render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!” [F 22].
Later events loosen Victor’s attachment to his alchemical writers. He studies distillation,
steam, the air-pump, and electricity, and his alchemical writers lose credit with him for their
ignorance of these phenomena [F 22-23]. His father sends him to lectures on natural philosophy
at the local school, but a second accident keeps Victor from all but the last few, and from
understanding even these [F 23]. Victor’s home schooling ends with him disgusted with natural
philosophy, and occupied instead with mathematics, German, and Greek [F 23].30 He does not
learn a modern chemical system to replace that of his alchemical writers. Then, when he is about
to leave for university at age seventeen, Victor’s mother Caroline dies from a scarlet fever
contracted from Elizabeth [F 24-25].31 Losing his mother to death, “that most irreparable evil”
[F 25], likely returned his thoughts to the alchemical pursuit of immortality.
10
�A final accident befalls Victor when he arrives at the University of Ingolstadt.32 Away
from his family, alone in a “solitary apartment,” unable to make new friends, he pursues his
ardent desire for knowledge [F 26]. He makes only two new acquaintances outside his
childhood circle: Professors Krempe and Waldman.33 When Victor meets Krempe, and
confesses his interest in alchemy, Krempe calls his reading “nonsense,” and says he must begin
his studies anew, since “these fancies… are a thousand years old” [F 26].34 He fails to interest
Victor in modern natural philosophy, however, because he says it means to annihilate the
alchemists’ visions of immortality and power – the very visions that interest Victor [F 27]. But
when Victor meets Waldman, he shows no contempt for Agrippa, and defends the alchemists as
the founders of modern philosophy. Charmed, Victor heeds Waldman’s argument that modern
science has traded the miraculous visions of alchemy for the “new and almost unlimited powers”
promised by scientists like Harvey and Boyle [F 27-28]. Waldman defeats Victor’s prejudice
against modern chemistry, and Victor decides to study under Waldman and Krempe [F 28], The
day he met these professors, Victor tells Walton, “decided my future destiny,” since “natural
philosophy, and particularly chemistry… became nearly my sole occupation” [F 29]. It did not
hurt, Victor adds, that Waldman had a benevolent aspect and sweet voice, since it was also
Krempe’s “repulsive countenance” that deterred Victor from taking his advice [F 29 and 27].
Victor’s sensitivity to beauty has terrible consequences when, at age nineteen [F 19] – nearly
Mary Shelley’s age when she begins to write Frankenstein35 – he begins to build his monster.
The desire to end disease interests Victor in the principle of life, and in physiology,
anatomy, and the causes of decay. An “almost supernatural enthusiasm” [F 30] drives his
solitary studies, which require dissections and vivisections [F 32]. His enthusiasm is almost
supernatural because his father was careful to keep supernatural horrors from entering the young
11
�Victor’s mind [F 30]. He is not averse to his work because he fears divine punishment. Instead,
his aversion is natural: he finds his continual occupation with dead things to be ugly. But at last,
after “examining and analyzing all the minutiæ of causation” involved in death and birth, he is
suddenly enlightened [F 30].36 He finds a secret reserved for him alone: “the cause of generation
and life,” which gives him the power of “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” [F 30 and
32].37
Since his newfound power is general – he could animate a worm or a human being –
Victor must decide how to use it. He resolves to animate a being like himself. Even if the result
of his first try is not perfect, he reasons, like any other invention it could be the basis for future
improvements [F 31]. The only constraint on his choice is practical: since working on minute
parts will slow him down, he further resolves “to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to
say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large” [F 31 and 32; see also 13 and 65]. The
reasons for his haste are not clear. Perhaps he fears that another will animate a lifeless being
before he does – though the novel gives us no evidence that others are pursuing his project. To
gather materials, Victor frequents “charnel houses,” the “dissecting room,” and the “slaughterhouse” [F 32]. If he succeeds in animating his lifeless construct, he hopes that he might learn
how to reanimate the dead – something as yet he cannot do [F 32].
Despite later depictions, this construct cannot be an assembly of corpse parts animated by
electricity.38 No human corpse could furnish proper parts – hands, feet, heart – proportionate to
an eight-foot humanoid. If Victor cannot reanimate a dead human being, furthermore, he likely
also cannot reanimate their proper parts. It is more likely that the monster is built out of
homogeneous parts – bone, muscle, skin – harvested from human and animal corpses – hence the
need to visit the slaughter-house – and shaped into proper parts proportionate to the whole. The
12
�monster later tells Victor, “thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior
to thine; my joints more supple” [F 66]. When he compares himself to humans, the monster
judges, “I was more agile than they, and could subsist on coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat
and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded their’s” [F 80; see also 89]. So
Victor fails to make a being like himself; instead, he makes a being in many ways better than
himself. He also intends this being to reproduce. Anticipating the completion of his project, he
exults: “[a] new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent
natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so
completely as I should deserve their’s” [F 32].39 Either Victor already plans to make his being a
female companion, or he intends it to reproduce with human females. This mention of the
gratitude he expects from his creations is the only thought he reports about their mental lives.40
Victor’s concern with beauty extends to his creation. “His limbs were in proportion,” he
tells Walton, “and I had selected his features as beautiful” [F 34]. But as soon as he animates his
being, his enthusiasm for his project dissipates, and he sees the monster as horribly ugly. Victor
catalogs his “dull yellow eye,” “watery [and] clouded,” “his shriveled complexion, and straight
black lips,” and his “yellow skin [that] scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries
beneath” [F 34; see also 126].41 The problem is not just that Victor failed to harvest enough
skin. The monster is ugly especially because of the contrast his ugly parts make with others that
on their own are beautiful: his “hair… of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly
whiteness” [F 34]. He is so ugly that, “unable to endure [his] aspect” [F 34], Victor abandons
him almost at first sight. “I had gazed upon him while unfinished,” Victor tells Walton; “he was
ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing
such as even Dante could not have conceived” [F 35; see also 48]. Perhaps Victor hoped that
13
�motion would beautify his monster’s matter, making a ‘he’ out of an ‘it,’ rather than the reverse.
Only after seeing him move does Victor first call his work ‘monster’ [F 35].
The monster’s unintended ugliness is an image of Victor’s enlightenment. His
combination of marvelous alchemical projects and powerful modern techniques is stitched
together with the hope that form and matter can be separated from one another, and so too beauty
and life, and ugliness and death. He hopes to shape the ugly leavings of charnel houses,
dissecting rooms, and slaughter-houses into a beautiful living being. But this hope is suggested
by a truth of metabolism: by eating we make ourselves out of dead materials. Frankenstein’s
accidental reading makes for an accidental enlightenment, which makes an ugly monster, which
will ruin Frankenstein’s life.
Once the monster begins to move, Frankenstein begins to fall. He soon flees his
laboratory. When he collects himself enough to return, the monster is gone [F 35 and 37].42 He
does not see the monster again until he returns home after his brother William’s murder [F 48];
he does not speak with the monster until they are alone together later on the Alpine sea of ice [F
65]. Then, Frankenstein tries to kill his monster, presuming him guilty of William’s murder [F
65-66 and 60].43 But the monster persuades Frankenstein to hear his story, and to make him a
female companion.
This new project does not rekindle Frankenstein’s “almost supernatural enthusiasm” [F
30]. Instead, he is possessed by “a kind of insanity” that shows him “continually about me a
multitude of filthy animals inflicting on me incessant torture” [F 101], as if he were undergoing,
rather than conducting, his vivisections.44 Collecting his materials, he tells Walton, “was to me
like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head” [F 109]. Constructing
the female monster is a “horrible and irksome task,” a “filthy process.” “During my first
14
�experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment,” he
reports; “my mind was intently fixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the
horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the
work of my hands” [F 113].45
Qualms about his promise accompany Frankenstein’s disgust. It is “probable,” he thinks,
that a female monster will think and reason; but what will be her character? If the male monster
became wicked, a female one “might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate,
and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness” [F 114] – something, he implies, the
male monster does not do. While the male monster swore to quit human society, a female one
might not keep a promise made before her creation [F 114].46 Even if she is good, a female
monster might not provide the male the companionship he seeks. Frankenstein assumes she will
turn out ugly; so the male monster might find his own ugliness more abhorrent in female form,
while the female might turn from him in disgust to the superior beauty of man.47 This fresh
insult to the male monster might return him to human society [F 114]. But if the monsters can
stand one another, their intercourse will quickly produce children; thus “a race of devils would
be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a
condition precarious and full of terror” [F 114]. Without knowing exactly how his monsters
reproduce,48 we cannot know whether Frankenstein imagines a species terrifying for its ugliness,
or its superiority, or both.
This last reflection shows Frankenstein the wickedness of his promise. Earlier he had
dreamed of the blessings of mankind and of a new species [F 32]; now, he tells Walton, “I
shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not
hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the existence of the whole human race” [F
15
�114-115 and 118]. Overcome by disgust and doubt, Frankenstein looks up from his gore-strewn
workbench to see the monster watching him. The monster grins. Frankenstein sees in this only
“malice and treachery,” and tears the female monster to pieces [F 115; compare 35].
Once his Eve is destroyed, for the monster only the path of Satan remains. “I shall be
with you on your wedding-night,” he swears [F 116], and departs. Hearing this, Frankenstein
also thinks of Adam and Eve: “the apple was already eaten, and the angel’s arm bared to drive
me from all hope” [F 131]. He expects to be banished from the paradise of marriage and family
on the eve of his wedding to Elizabeth Lavenza; he expects to die then by the monster’s hand.
Instead, the monster first kills his friend Henry Clerval, then, on the wedding-night in question,
Elizabeth herself. Soon after, Alphonse Frankenstein dies from sorrow [F 137]. Now
Frankenstein too compares himself to Satan, “the archangel who aspired to omnipotence” [F
147]. The monster’s reading has possessed Frankenstein as well. Revenge, he tells Walton,
became “the devouring and only passion of my soul” [F 139]. Urged on by the monster,
Frankenstein pursues him across Europe and north to the arctic sea of ice,49 where Robert Walton
first meets the monster and his shadow.
Part Three: The Enlightenment of Robert Walton
Enlightenment nearly makes Robert Walton a monster. After an accident kills his father
while Walton is still a child, his uncle raises him. By neglecting his education, this uncle leaves
Walton free for solitary readings of tales of discovery, the only books in his uncle’s library.
Young Walton loves above all tales of voyages to the Pacific over the North Pole. He reads
them day and night. Poetry distracts him briefly from his youthful dreams of discovery, but then
a second accident – inheriting a cousin’s fortune – returns him to his projects of exploration, and
16
�equips him to pursue them [F 8]. Walton does not say whether this second accident was his
cousin’s death. But death shapes his family and his education, as it did Frankenstein’s.
Walton writes all this in letters to his sister, where he calls his self-education an evil.
“Now I am twenty-eight, and in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen,” he
laments. “It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and
magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping,” or proportion [F 10]. Walton’s
circumstances, like Frankenstein’s, have made him an imaginative and extravagant projector.
But while Frankenstein had Clerval to regulate his mind, failed to confide in him, and lost him to
his monster, Walton lacks such a friend, and feels this lack acutely [F 10 and 16].50
To Walton, the North Pole is “the region of beauty and delight” where “the sun is forever
visible” [F 7] – a land of both literal and figurative enlightenment. “What may not be expected
in a country of eternal light?” [F 7], he wonders: certainly new discoveries in geography and
physics. “[Y]ou cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the
last generation,” he writes his sister, “by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries,
to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the
magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine” [F 8]. To
these philanthropic ambitions Walton adds a personal one: to be the first human to reach the
pole. “I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before
visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man” [F 7]. Walton’s public
and private motives recall the combination that moved Frankenstein to pursue the principle of
life.51
To pursue his project, Walton learns seamanship by day; by night, he studies
mathematics, medicine, and the physical sciences of naval use. He inures his body to hardship.52
17
�Then he travels to northern Russia, to a city named Archangel – he too is living in Paradise Lost
– where he hires a ship, assembles a crew, and sails north into the sea of ice [F 8]. He reassures
his sister by letter: “you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness
wherever the safety of others is committed to my care” [F 11]. “I will not rashly encounter
danger,” Walton promises; “I will be cool, persevering, and prudent” [F 12]. Despite his
promise, many of his men will die [F 149].
Walton is also ready to risk his own life. His sister will be happy, even if he dies in the
north, because she has a husband and “lovely children” [F 148]. Walton himself does not want a
family, but a friend. With no one to share his joy at success, to temper his dejection at failure, to
amend his faults, to supply proportion to his projects, when a third accident crosses his path with
the monster’s and Frankenstein’s, and he takes the latter aboard, he is eager to regard
Frankenstein as a friend. As Walton tells his sister, “I have found a man who, before his spirit
had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my
heart” [F 15].
Though Frankenstein approves of Walton’s desire, he declines to reciprocate, explaining,
“I have lost every thing, and cannot begin life anew” [F 16; see also 147]. Yet Frankenstein does
call Walton “my friend” [F 17], he helps him by suggesting useful improvements to his plan, and
he rallies his sailors when their fear of death makes them demand that Walton sail for home [F
149].53 But the chief help he gives Walton is to tell his story. “You seek for knowledge and
wisdom, as I once did,” he says, “and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may
not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been” [F 17]. His story will provide Walton “a view of
nature, which may enlarge your faculties and understanding,” concerning “powers and
occurrences, such as you have been accustomed to believe impossible” [F 17].54 When Walton
18
�presses Frankenstein to share the secret of the monster’s animation, Frankenstein rebuffs Walton
for his “senseless curiosity.”55 “[L]earn my miseries,” Frankenstein tells him, “and do not seek
to increase your own” [F 146]. His tale completed, Frankenstein corrects and augments
Walton’s notes, especially of his conversations with the monster, and shows him Felix and
Safie’s letters, received from the hand of the monster himself [F 146; see also 83].56
Perhaps Frankenstein’s final hope is to win glory and benefit mankind by making his
story public. But the meaning of his story is ambiguous. Walton, for example, does not learn
from him to give up on enlightenment, perhaps because of Frankenstein’s conclusion. “During
these last days,” he says, “I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it
blameable” [F 151]. He does implore Walton to “[s]eek happiness in tranquility, and avoid
ambition, even… the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and
discoveries” [F 152]. But then he recants: “[y]et why do I say this? I have myself been blasted
in these hopes, yet another may succeed” [F 151].
‘Succeed’ is Victor’s last word, one worthy of his name. His last request is that Walton
catch and kill the monster, though he does not insist that Walton do so at the cost of his ship and
crew. But Walton turns home. So did Victor succeed or fail? Even after hearing Frankenstein’s
story, Walton tells his sister, “I had rather die, than return shamefully, – my purpose unfulfilled”
[F 150]. Frankenstein’s last words do not change his mind. Instead, his crew compels Walton to
return.57 Nor does he fulfill Frankenstein’s last request, though he has his chance when the
monster boards his ship to see Frankenstein’s corpse. “Never did I behold a vision so horrible as
his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness” [F 152], Walton writes his sister; but
despite the monster’s ugliness Walton listens to him, and seems persuaded by his promise: “I
shall… seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and
19
�consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and
unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been” [F 155]. The monster means
to extinguish his light at the pole, by becoming a light at the pole. Not the monster’s ugliness but
Frankenstein’s corpse angers Walton [F 154]. He lets the monster escape without trying to kill
him [F 156]. Walton does not kill the monster, nor does he kill himself and his crew in his quest
for the pole. But only the rebellion of his crew spares him the latter.58 Maybe the monster finds
the pole in his place.
Part Four: The Enlightenment of Mary Shelley
Did enlightenment make Mary Shelley a monster? She pursued it with a vengeance. As
the daughter of two famous writers, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and the lover and
later wife of a third, Percy Shelley, she set herself an intense program of reading and writing,
beginning at age seventeen, if not earlier. Starting with biographies, novels, and her parents’
books, later adding history and philosophy, she recorded each book she and Percy read, day by
day and year by year, in her journal. Thirty-six books in the latter half of 1814, seventy-four in
1815, sixty-five in 1816, seventy-one in 1817 – all told she read well more than two hundred
books in her late teens and early twenties, in the four years preceding the publication of
Frankenstein.59 She read the Iliad, the Bible, the Aeneid, Plutarch’s Lives, Tacitus’ Annals, the
Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s plays, Don Quixote, Paradise Lost – twice – and Gulliver’s
Travels [J 48-49, 73, and 89-90]. Here is a typical journal entry, from Saturday, November 17,
1816: “Draw, write; read Locke and Curtius. [Percy] Shelley reads Plutarch and Locke; he reads
“Paradise Lost” aloud in the evening. I work” [J 68]. At this point Mary’s second child is
eleven months old [F 333].
20
�Shelley herself tells us that Frankenstein is a warning about the dangers posed by science
and technology, ambitious philanthropy, and especially ‘playing god.’ In her preface to the third,
1831 edition of the novel, she writes of Frankenstein’s success in animating his monster,
“supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous
mechanism of the Creator of the world” [F 172]. But in the first, 1818 edition, the supremely
frightful thing is the monster’s ugliness. Perhaps marking this shift in emphasis, the frontispiece
of the 1831 edition depicts a monster who, though goggling at his reflection in a mirror, looks
positively beautiful. No character in the novel means to ‘play god,’ nor displays a lasting
concern with doing so. Frankenstein and his monster mostly see themselves as Adam or as
Satan. Theological claims that god’s providence is better than man’s, or that imitating his
providence is hubris or sin, are notably absent.
Instead, Frankenstein is more secular, personal, even autobiographical than Shelley’s
1831 preface suggests. Its foreground concerns are with the monster’s ugliness, the perils of
solitary reading, the mundane risks of philanthropic ambition, the loss of the family, and the
meaning of nature. The novel is a Paradise Lost without God, a Prometheus Bound without
Zeus. The monster, Frankenstein, and Walton are all shadows of Shelley herself,60 and they
repeat the novel’s fundamental question: is enlightenment good, or does it make us ugly
monsters, cut off from family and nature?
We have plenty of evidence that Shelley finds enlightenment to be costly. Take the
monster: he is attracted to family life and sensitive to the beauties of nature, but his extreme
ugliness cuts him off from both [F 77]. Were it not for his enlightenment, especially by
Paradise Lost, he might have seen a possibility for his life other than retirement with a mate, or
war with his maker. Solitary contemplation, masked social activity in person or in writing,61 and
21
�scientific inquiry do not occur to him. He does not consider a life of exploration, though his
build would suit him, more than any other reasoning being, to such a life. Though he may be
smarter than his maker, he does not build a wife or a child for himself. Take Frankenstein: he is
also attracted to and suited to family and nature. But his enlightenment, at the hands of the
alchemists and the modern chemists, makes him an ugly monster, and cuts him off from family
and nature [F 43-44], before dragging him to death across the sea of ice. And take Walton: he
longs for and is suited to friendship, if not to family, but his enlightenment through books about
voyages of discovery has sent him and his crew to risk their lives at the edge of the world. These
three neglect the rule Frankenstein proposes to Walton: if your study “has the tendency to
weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy
can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human
mind” [F 33].62 Percy Shelley, writing as the anonymous author, endorses this rule in his
preface, claiming that the chief concern of the novel is “limited to the avoiding [sic] the
enervating effects of the novels of the present day,63 and to the exhibition of the amiableness of
domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue” [F 5-6]. At the book’s center is a
family of the good, the happy, and the wise – but the monster scares them away and burns down
their home.
Still, we have Frankenstein’s first name, Victor, and his last words, “another may
succeed” [F 152]; we have Walton, the audience of the story we are reading, who is deflected
from the pole not by Frankenstein’s tale, nor by Frankenstein’s death, nor by his own interview
with the monster, but by the near-mutiny of his sailors. Perhaps had he and his sailors all been
monsters, he would have succeeded. Perhaps these details indicate that Shelley herself doubted
“the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue.” Perhaps
22
�enlightenment shows us the truth about the family and nature, by showing us the extent to which
death and chance, not life and providence, makes our families, nature, and us. Perhaps
enlightenment reveals our world not as an amiable home, but as monstrous.64 When
Frankenstein, hiking alone in the Alps, considers the “awful majesty” of the mountains, the
“wonderful and stupendous scene” of the “sea, or rather the vast river of ice,” he calls out to the
“[w]andering spirits” of the place. The spirit that answers his call is the monster [F 65 and 77].
Another lie Percy Shelly tells in his preface is, “[t]he opinions which naturally spring
from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always
in my own conviction; nor is any inference to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing
any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind” [F 6]. He, and perhaps Shelley herself, could fear
a reader’s inference of prejudice against the theological doctrine of Milton, given the damage
Paradise Lost does to Frankenstein, and above all to his monster. But a philosophical doctrine is
also being judged throughout the novel, even though its author’s name is not mentioned.
Consider: Victor Frankenstein is a Genevan who makes a “man born big and strong” [CW 13:
162, see also 189-190], but fails to educate him adequately. This being is born into a state of
nature, and perfected by circumstances; he claims that he was naturally good, but society has
made him wicked; he begins life as a savage, is mistaken for a savage [F 13], and wishes to end
his life living as a savage with his mate in South America [F 99]. Consider further: in Shelley’s
time, the park outside Geneva where the monster murders William and frames Justine featured
an obelisk dedicated to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, before which the Genevans murdered their
magistrates during the Revolution.65 Rousseau depicts himself as a modern Prometheus in the
Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, the first public writing of his philosophic career [CW 2:
2 and 179]. In Emile, his best and most important work [CW 5: 480], he mentions “another
23
�Prometheus” who had made a tiny man “by the science of alchemy” [CW 13: 436 note *].66
Rousseau claims in his Confessions to have abandoned five children to a foundling hospital [CW
5: 289, 299-301, 551-552], where they likely died. Later in life, when Shelley writes an
encyclopedia article on Rousseau, she returns repeatedly to the subject of these children [F
545].67 But the monster claims five victims before Frankenstein himself: William, Justine
Moritz, Henry Clerval, Elizabeth Lavenza, and Alphonse Frankenstein. The amiableness of
domestic affection, the excellence of universal virtue, and the beauty of nature are themes of
Rousseau’s novel Julie, or the New Héloïse. Lastly, among the more than two hundred books
that Mary Shelley read in the four years before Frankenstein was published are Rousseau’s
Confessions, Emile, Julie, and The Reveries of the Solitary Walker – and she read all but the last
of these twice [J 47-49, 55, 64, 72-73, 85-86, 89-90].68
Frankenstein is thus a meditation on the doctrine of the modern philosopher who
launched his career by questioning the goodness of enlightenment. Rousseau defended the
amiableness of domestic affection, but abandoned his children. He lauded the excellence of
universal virtue, but sparked the Revolution. “I have seen these contradictions,” Rousseau writes
about his claims in the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, “and they have not rebuffed me”
[CW 2: 4]. Nor is Mary Shelley rebuffed. The ambiguities of her “hideous progeny” suggest she
is willing to pay the price of enlightenment. She pronounces her judgment in the voice of
Frankenstein’s creation: “[w]e shall be monsters.”
Jeff J.S. Black
Annapolis, Maryland
February 23, 2018
24
�Leftover Materials
This lecture is dedicated to my father, Paul David Black. It was delivered on his birthday, March 2, 2018, at St.
John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thanks to Michael W. Grenke for the invitation to give this lecture.
Thanks to the members of the 2016-2017 Mellon Study Group on Digital Technology for a galvanizing first
discussion of the themes of Frankenstein. Thanks to Lise van Boxel and Brian Wilson, founding members of the
Combat & Classics podcast team, for an animating discussion of the ideas in the lecture. Thanks to my sister,
Katherine Melissa Watson, for her helpful comments on an earlier draft.
The engraving on the lecture’s cover page is Theodore von Holst’s, and was the frontispiece to the 1831 edition of
Frankenstein. See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frontispiece_to_Frankenstein_1831.jpg. Retrieved on
February 15, 2018.
1
Citations in the text of this lecture follow these conventions: CW refers to volume and page numbers in JeanJacques Rousseau, The Collected Writings of Rousseau. Edited by Christopher Kelly and Roger D. Masters.
Thirteen Volumes. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990-2010). F refers to page numbers in
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Edited by J. Paul Hunter. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), which
contains the 1818 text. FN refers to part and page numbers in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Frankenstein
Notebooks. Volume IX of Shelley’s Manuscripts, Two Parts. Edited by Charles E. Robinson. (New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1996). J refers to page numbers in Mary Shelley, Mary Shelley’s Journal. Edited by Frederick L.
Jones. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947). L refers to volume and page numbers in Mary Shelley,
The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Edited by Betty T. Bennett. Three Volumes. (Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). PL refers to book and line numbers of Paradise Lost, in the edition John
Milton, Paradise Lost. Second Edition. Edited by Scott Elledge. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993).
2
In calling Frankenstein’s product a ‘monster,’ I am following both Frankenstein’s practice and the monster’s own.
They each give reasons for using this term. They mean by it something so unprecedented in its deformity as to serve
as a warning.
3
He says, “it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell
after their sufferings in the lake of fire” [F 70; see PL 1:710-730].
4
“At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became
fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence
and mortification” [F 76].
5
The monster does taste the offal left behind by the travelers who abandoned their fire, finding it “much more
savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees” [F 69]. But he apparently does not begin eating meat because of
this experience. In the only case where he kills for food, he does so to feed Frankenstein [F 142]. See also Marilyn
Butler, “Frankenstein and Radical Science” [F 311]. Since the monster was not born and did not grow, it is not
entirely clear why he needs to eat. But Rousseau would endorse his vegetarianism [CW 13: 184-186 and 297-299],
which might be obscurely connected with his construction: since he is made out of dead flesh, perhaps he does not
want to add to his substance by consuming dead flesh.
6
Constantin François Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney, Les Ruines, ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires,
1791. Published in English as Constantin-François Chasseboeuf, Marquis de Volney, The Ruins: or a Survey of the
Revolutions of Empires. Third Edition. London: J. Johnson, 1796. It is available in the Liberty Fund’s Online
Library of Liberty at http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1706. Retrieved on February 2, 2018. There is no record in her
journal of Mary Shelley having read this work.
7
The connection between sex and a woman named Sophie is a theme of Book Five of Rousseau’s Emile.
25
�8
Prior to relating this accident, the monster tells Frankenstein the history of his cottagers, which “could not fail to
impress itself deeply” on his mind [F 81]. This is so much that case that the monster makes copies of letters Safie
exchanged with Felix, letters which testify to the truth of their story, in order to offer them to Frankenstein to “prove
the truth of my tale” [F 83]. Yet it is not clear what the monster learns from the history of the cottagers that is
different from what he learns from Safie and Felix’s readings and discussion of Volney. Perhaps the former history
teaches the same lessons as the latter, but is more striking because the monster can see the participants in the flesh.
9
When suicide later occurs to the monster as an alternative to demanding a mate from Frankenstein or taking
revenge on him, he rules it out, claiming that life is dear to him, despite his misery [F 66]. Yet once it is clear he
will not have a companion, and once Frankenstein is dead, the monster claims that he will commit suicide [F 155].
10
One new element appears in these reflections after reading Werther: the monster tries to infer his origin and
purpose from his physical constitution. “My person was hideous,” he reflects, “and my stature gigantic: what did
this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually
recurred, but I was unable to solve them” [F 86]. So far as I can tell, the monster makes no progress in this new line
of inquiry. It seems that his other readings closed off this line of thinking for him.
11
Here we see the damage done by Frankenstein’s abandonment of the monster. Had he overcome his disgust and
stayed to educate his product, Frankenstein might have imbued the monster with scientific and philanthropic
ambitions.
12
This contrast is the basis of the only joke I have found in Frankenstein. When the monster confronts Victor
Frankenstein to tell his story, he repeatedly demands that Frankenstein listen to him [F 66-67], likely because he
knows that his speech is more attractive than his looks. Frankenstein responds, “relieve me from the sight of your
detested form” [F 67]. “Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” the monster intones, while placing his massive hands in
front of Frankenstein’s eyes. Enraged, Frankenstein flings them away. This was not the time for a joke.
13
The monster’s halfheartedness in seeking revenge is suggested by several details. He tells Frankenstein he could
have torn Felix “limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope” [F 91], or destroyed the cottage and the cottagers,
glutting himself “with their shrieks and misery” [F 92] – but he does neither of these things, though he could have.
In addition, consider this episode that occurs on the road to Geneva. On an especially fine spring day, he sees a
young girl fall in a river, and leaps in to save her from drowning. He is trying to revive her when one of the locals
approaches him and snatches the child away. When the monster tries to follow, the man shoots him with his gun [F
95]. This bald ingratitude makes the monster renew his vow of “eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” [F
96], but even this renewed vow does not prevent the monster from imagining that he might befriend William
Frankenstein when he first encounters him in Geneva.
14
The story of Justine Moritz’s fate includes an anticipation of the question the monster means his story to answer.
Ernest Frankenstein, the elder of Victor’s two younger brothers, asks “who would credit that Justine Moritz, who
was so amiable, and fond of all the family, could all at once become so extremely wicked?” [F 50; see also 54-55].
No one should credit such a miraculous change, though, since Justine is not guilty of the murder for which she is
accused. But Justine is beautiful [F 52]. The monster, who is ugly, is guilty of the murder; the question becomes
how he, being benevolent and fond of all his cottagers, could become so extremely wicked. Reflecting on Justine
Moritz’s execution, Elizabeth Lavenza says, “men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood” [F 61].
15
In the immediate sequel the monster asserts to Frankenstein that “the human senses are insurmountable barriers”
to any sort of union between the monster and a human being [F 98].
16
In the end Frankenstein does not comply, and the monster only kills members of his family. So it seems that his
threat to kill “thousands of others” was a bluff or an exaggeration.
17
“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous” [F 66].
18
Frankenstein asks, “did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to
bestow?” [F 99]. We might wonder, since some of us are makers of children, to what extent this rhetorical question
should be answered in the affirmative.
26
�19
“Our lives will not be happy,” the monster continues, “but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now
feel” [F 99]. If the monster is not content with harmlessness, and seeks happiness as well, then he will be drawn
back to human society.
20
Shelley would have been familiar with the argument that links solitude with wickedness through the dispute
between Rousseau and Diderot communicated by a footnote in Emile. Against this link, Rousseau writes,
The precept of never hurting another carries with it that of being attached to human society as little
as possible, for in the social state the good of one necessarily constitutes the harm of another. This
relation is in the essence of the thing, and nothing can change it. On the basis of this principle, let
one investigate who is the better: the social man or the solitary man. An illustrious author
[Diderot] says it is only the wicked man who is alone. I say that it is only the good man who is
alone. If this proposition is less sententious, it is truer and better reasoned than the former one. If
the wicked man were alone, what harm would he do? It is in society that he sets up his devices for
hurting others [CW 13:240 note *].
21
Seeing Frankenstein destroy the inanimate body of his companion, the monster says, “You can blast my other
passions; but revenge remains – revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!” [F 116].
22
“My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in
communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of
existence and events, from which I am now excluded” [F 100].
23
The two monsters “might even hate each other,” Frankenstein muses; “the creature who already lived loathed his
own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female
form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again
alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species” [F 114].
24
Indeed, the monster demands that his mate be “as hideous as myself” because “once as deformed and horrible as
myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects” [F
99, 97]. He gives no other indication of why he thinks the effects of his own ugliness can be overcome. His thought
seems to be either that two solitary and isolated members of the same species will feel compelled to unite [F see 99],
despite their ugliness, or that because his mate will have been created particularly for him, they will be connected in
a way that overcomes the effects of their ugliness. The former thought seems naïve, while the latter thought depends
on the monster’s identification with Adam.
25
After the monster recounts his failed attempt to reveal himself to his cottagers, he says, “I, like the arch fiend, bore
a hell within me” [F 92]. See PL 4:73-75.
26
To be ugly is to have bad looks, to be dis-specied, without species. See Plato, Sophist, 228a.
27
One wonders whether it is the difference in age between Alphonse and Caroline Frankenstein, and the youthful
acquaintance of Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lavenza, that explains how unerotic these relationships are – or
whether this simply should be attributed to authorial discretion. The lack of eros between these partners might also
contribute to Victor Frankenstein’s easy elision between his family and his friends. The reason for this elision is
that friends who are not family cannot be true friends. “Even where the affections are not moved by any superior
excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds, which hardly any later
friend can obtain,” Victor explains. “They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards
modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of
our motives. A sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect the other
of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himselF be
invaded with suspicion” [F 147]. Alphonse Frankenstein delicately mentions his romantic coolness to Victor when
the latter postpones his marriage to Elizabeth Lavenza: “You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish
that she might become your wife” [F 104]. Elizabeth sees no difficulty in this arrangement: “our union has been the
favorite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this while young, and taught to look forward to it
as an event that would certainly take place” [F 130]. The coolness of the connection between Victor and Elizabeth
might explain why Victor does not realize that the monster’s threat, “I shall be with you on your wedding-night,” is
27
�directed against Elizabeth, rather than against himself – as his reply, “before you sign my death-warrant, be sure you
are yourself safe” [F 116] indicates. Victor seems to lack self-knowledge when he later says, “if for one instant I
had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself for
ever from my native country, and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth, than have consented to this miserable
marriage. But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions” [F 133].
28
The editors of the Norton Critical Edition of Frankenstein supply here “Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535),
German physician, author of De Occulta Philosophia (1531), and reputed magician” [F 21 note 6]. The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds that Three Books on Occult Philosophy (1510 and, reworked and enlarged, 1533)
is “a comprehensive treatise on magic and occult arts,” and that Agrippa was also known for On the Uncertainty and
Vanity of the Arts and Sciences: An Invective Declamation, “a rigorous refutation of all products of human reason.”
See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/agrippa-nettesheim. Retrieved on February 2, 2018. Is it a coincidence that
Agrippa’s other major work resembles, in its title at least, the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts? Is Agrippa a
stand-in for Rousseau?
29
Paracelsus (1493-1541) was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a German-Swiss physician and alchemist
who established the role of chemistry in medicine. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paracelsus.
Retrieved on February 4, 2018. Consider also CW 13: 436-437. According to the same source, Albertus Magnus
was a teacher of Thomas Aquinas and a proponent of Aristotle who established the legitimacy of the study of nature
for Christians. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Albertus-Magnus. Retrieved on February 4, 2018.
30
Though his disgust is not so great as to prevent him from studying Pliny and Buffon at this point [F 23]. Victor
also learned Latin and English when he was much younger [F 20].
31
Louis Pasteur did not succeed in spreading the germ theory of disease until the 1870’s. Frankenstein is set
sometime in the eighteenth century. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Pasteur/Vaccinedevelopment. Retrieved on February 16, 2018.
32
Shelley may have chosen Ingolstadt for Victor Frankenstein’s education because the secret society of the
Illuminati was founded at this university in 1776 [F 24 n 1].
33
This childhood circle includes Victor’s friend, Henry Clerval [F 21], who later studies with him at Ingolstadt [F
36], and ends by being murdered by the monster [F 122]. There is not enough time in this lecture to treat Clerval in
detail, let alone Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s other companion from childhood [F 26]. But it is worth nothing that,
even though Shelley presents Clerval’s favored subjects as a kind of antithesis and antidote to Victor’s reading [F
44] – Clerval recalls Victor to his friends, his family, and his love of nature [F 43-44] – Victor is quite familiar with
the kind of works Clerval reads [F 15-16, 31, 35-36, 101, 107-108, 143, 146-147], and this familiarity on its own is
not enough to deflect him from his path.
34
Krempe seems to be tracing the projects of the alchemists back to the eighth century, whereas the writings he is
criticizing date from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It’s not clear to me why he does this.
35
Mary Shelley was born on 30 August 1797, and began writing Frankenstein sometime in June 1816 [FN lxxvi and
lxxviii].
36
Compare Rousseau’s account of his sudden illumination on the road to Vincennes in the second of his Letters to
Malesherbes [CW 5: 575-576].
37
Almost immediately, Frankenstein tells Walton, he forgot the steps that showed him the cause, but retained the
power [F 31]. It is puzzling that Frankenstein does not use this detail as an excuse when Walton asks him later for
the secret of the monster’s animation [F 146].
38
Shelley’s claim that Frankenstein uses his “instruments of life” to “infuse a spark of being” into the monster [F
34] may be metaphorical, since there is no other reference to electricity in the account of the monster’s animation.
39
The mention of the gratitude due to a father in this passage could give the impression that Victor intends to
supplant the role of the mother in generation, and to claim the gratitude that is her due. While there is something to
28
�this reading, I am more struck by the contrast between the mention of the father in this sentence and the mention of
the creator in the previous sentence. To say nothing about the pagan gods, the Hebrew one has already twice
supplanted the role of the mother in generation. Most striking, however, are the reflections Victor’s exultation
encourages about gratitude. Compare Rousseau’s reflections on gratitude in Book IV of Emile [CW 13: 387-388].
40
Victor later admits to himself that he “thoughtlessly” bestowed life on the monster [F 60].
41
The lack of skin also argues for the theory that the monster is not an assemblage of proper parts, taken from
corpses. Each of these parts would have had skin of its own, and more than enough, had they been harvested as
wholes.
42
As he sleeps after animating the monster, but before his flight, Victor has a horrible dream:
I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted
and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with
the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead
mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds
of the flannel [F 34].
Not only does this dream depict the thought that we are all made of dead materials, and so in a sense dead things, but
it connects this interpretation of metabolism and growth with sex and generation.
43
Frankenstein infers the monster’s guilt directly from his ugliness. Seeing a figure in the trees, he says, “its
gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that
it was the wretch, the filthy dæmon to whom I had given life. Could he be,” Frankenstein asks, “the murderer of my
brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth… […] Nothing in
human shape could have destroyed that fair child. […] The mere presence of the idea,” he concludes, “was an
irresistible proof of the fact” [F 48].
44
Frankenstein realizes that he cannot create a female monster without “again devoting several months to profound
study and laborious disquisition” [F 103]. In particular, “I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an
English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success” [F 103]. Since it is hard to imagine that
Frankenstein needs additional anatomical information, which he acquires in any case through direct
experimentation, this comment might indicate that he has, reasonably, started to think about the moral formation of a
female monster. Perhaps the English philosopher Frankenstein has in mind is Mary Wollstonecraft, author of
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and Mary Shelley’s mother.
This would also explain why he puts such weight on the uncertain character of a female monster in his ultimate
decision to destroy his second creation. However this may be, Frankenstein’s need for additional study is another
indication that he might not have planned from the beginning to make a female monster, perhaps because he
intended his monster to interbreed with human women.
45
Even cleaning up the aftermath of his interrupted work is sickening to Frankenstein. “The remains of the halffinished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living
flesh of a human being” [F 118].
46
Frankenstein thus anticipates a problem that arises in Paradise Lost: Adam is prohibited from eating from the tree
of knowledge before Eve is created. She does not hear the prohibition directly, but from Adam; this inclines her less
to obey it. See PL 8:323-333 and 9:758-760. We will soon see that Frankenstein too seems to have read Milton’s
epic poem [F 131 and 147]. He does not voice, but presumably could have anticipated, a similar but greater
problem regarding the monsters’ offspring, whom the monster has said nothing to bind.
47
Perhaps this also indicates that, if Frankenstein makes his monsters capable of reproduction with one another, he
also makes them capable of reproduction with human beings.
48
Frankenstein’s fears are another indication that he does not manufacture his monsters from the proper parts of
corpses. If they were assemblages of corpse parts, would not their offspring be human?
29
�49
The monster encourages Frankenstein to pursue him in order to draw out his revenge. As Frankenstein tells it,
“sometimes he himselF who feared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die, often left some mark to guide me”
[F 141]. Oddly, Victor adds, “yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps, and, when I most murmured,
would suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes, when nature overcome by
hunger, sunk under exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert, that restored and inspirited me… I may
not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had invoked to aid me” [F 141]. Since the monster occasionally
leaves food for Frankenstein [F 142], it seems likely that he is also responsible for the activities of Frankenstein’s
‘spirits of good.’ Frankenstein’s meeting with the monster on the alpine glacier is preceded by his invocation of
“Wandering spirits” [F 65].
50
As Walton tells his sister, “I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic,
and affection enough for me to endeavor to regulate my mind” [F 10]. Later, he adds that his desire for friendship is
“one want I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe
evil” [F 10; see also 16],
51
Walton asks his sister: “do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose. My life might have been passed in
ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path” [F 9].
52
Frankenstein also claims to have superior physical endurance: “I had ever inured myself to rain, moisture, and
cold” [F 63]. But there is some reason to doubt this: he is forever swooning, for example, or struggling with
madness [F 37 and 122]. In his superior endurance Walton more resembles the monster; the same resemblance can
be found in their respective longings for a companion. Walton may be a chimera of Frankenstein and his monster.
53
“Are you then so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition?” Frankenstein asks
them. “You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your name adored, as belonging to brave
men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. […] Oh, be men, or be more than men” [F
149]. Frankenstein himself has encountered death for glory and the benefit of mankind; he has been a man and
made more than a man; and he has suffered greatly for it. It is striking that he is willing to repeat an appeal that has
cost him so much to heed.
54
If the monster is the gratification of Frankenstein’s wishes, then by calling him a “serpent” here Frankenstein
anticipates the later moment when, certain he will not receive a mate from Frankenstein, the monster compares
himself to a “snake” [F 116]. The image is Biblical, if it is not once again from Paradise Lost.
55
This is odd, since in his story Frankenstein claims to forget “all the steps” that “progressively led” to his
discovery, and to be left with “only the result” [F 31]. He clearly thinks he can continue to animate dead matter,
since otherwise he would have begged his incapacity in reply to the monster’s demand for a mate. But can he teach
this power to others?
56
Walton says, “the letters of Felix and Safie, which he shewed me, and the apparition of the monster, seen from our
ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and
connected” [F 146].
57
Nor can we say he is secretly relieved by their compulsion. He writes to his sister, “The die is cast; I have
consented to return, if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back
ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess, to bear this injustice with patience” [F 150].
58
In an early letter to his sister Walton considers the possibility that he might find a friend among his crew. “My
lieutenant,” he writes, “is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory. He is an
Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the
noblest endowments of humanity” [F 10]. Walton also tells his sister a lengthy story about the heroic generosity of
his master, but adds, “he has passed all his life on board a vessel, and has scarcely an idea beyond the rope and the
shroud” [F 11]. Walton concludes, “I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel,
among merchants and seamen” [F 10]. His crew is thus composed not of family nor of friends, but of associates
made necessary by Walton’s inability to reach the pole alone.
30
�59
Since Shelley read a few of these books twice during this period, and since she sometimes gives several works a
single entry in her journal – for example, “Shakespeare’s Plays” – this is only a rough count [J 32-33, 47-49, 71-73,
88-90].
60
The defect mentioned by at least one modern critic, that the novel’s three major characters all sound the same, is
thus not a bug but a feature, an indication that they are repetitions of the same person. See Germaine Greer, “Yes,
Frankenstein really was written by Mary Shelley. It’s obvious – because the book is so bad,” The Guardian. April
9, 2007. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/09/gender.books. Retrieved on February 4, 2018. Greer
complains, “There are three narrators: Thomas Walton, Victor Frankenstein and the monster himself. The three of
them, including the inarticulate monster, speak in paragraphs, with the same tendency to proliferating parallel
clauses and phrases and the occasional theatrical ejaculation.” It’s not clear why Greer thinks that the monster is, or
should be, inarticulate.
61
“It seems that all great things,” Nietzsche tells us in Beyond Good and Evil, “in order to inscribe themselves with
eternal demands upon the heart of humanity, must first stalk the earth as colossal and fear-inducing masks” [Preface,
see also Sections 25 and 40]. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil / On The Genealogy of Morality.
Translated, with an Afterword, by Adrian Del Caro. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). Even if the
fear and disgust the monster inspires are natural rather than learned, it does not follow that his ugliness expresses the
truth about his interior, nor that his ugliness is a disability. Since the monster’s vengeful path is ultimately due to his
accidental reading, since he was born good but was made wicked by society, Shelley can refer to Frankenstein in
one of her letters as “a book in favor defence of Polypheme” [L I: 91].
62
“If this rule were always observed,” Frankenstein continues, “if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to
interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his
country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been
destroyed” [F, 33].
63
Rousseau discusses the arguments for and against novels in the dialogue that serves as the Second Preface of Julie
[CW 6: 7-22].
64
In the Critique of Judgment, Kant asks us to
consider bold, overhanging and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piling high up in the
sky and moving about accompanied by lightning and thunderclaps, volcanoes with all their
destructive power, hurricanes with all the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean
heaved up, the high waterfall of a mighty river, and so on. Compared to the might of any of these,
our ability to resist becomes an insignificant trifle. Yet the sight of them becomes all the more
attractive the more fearful it is, provided we are in a safe place. And we like to call these objects
sublime because they raise the soul’s fortitude above its usual middle range and allow us to
discover in ourselves an ability to resist which is of a quite different kind, and which gives us the
courage [to believe] that we could be a match for nature’s seeming omnipotence [Ak. 261].
Note that the ability and the courage Kant mentions in this passage are not dependent on our safety from nature.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment. Translated, with an Introduction, by Werner S. Pluhar. (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 120.
65
In a letter to Fanny Imlay, Mary Shelley describes the promenade of Plainpalais, outside of Geneva:
Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of human
life) the magistrates, the successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were shot by
the populace during that revolution, which his writings mainly contributed to mature, and which,
notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted, has produced
enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chicanery of statesmen, nor even the great conspiracy
of kings, can entirely render vain [F 174 or L I: 20].
66
“Would anyone believe, if he did not have the proof,” Rousseau writes in the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard
Vicar,
31
�that human foolishness could have been brought to this point? Amatus Lusitanus affirmed that he
had seen a little man an inch long, closed up in a bottle, whom Julius Camillus, like another
Prometheus, had made by the science of alchemy. Paracelsus, De natura rerum, teaches the way
to produce these little men and maintains that the pygmies, the fauns, the satyrs, and the nymphs
were engendered by chemistry, Indeed, I do not see anything that further remains to be done to
establish the possibility of these facts, other than to advance that organic matter resists the heat of
fire and that its molecules can be preserved alive in a reverberatory furnace “ [CW 13:436-437
note *].
What would Rousseau have his Vicar say if the alleged generation did not require the use of fire?
67
For more on Shelley’s concern with this matter, see James O’Rourke, “‘Nothing More Unnatural’: Mary Shelley’s
Revision of Rousseau,” in ELH. Volume 56, Number 3. (Autumn, 1989), reprinted in in F, 543-569. O’Rourke
quotes from Shelley’s 1838 encyclopedia essay on Rousseau:
Our first duty is to render those to whom we give birth, wise, virtuous, and happy, as far as in us
lies. Rousseau failed in this, – can we wonder that his after course was replete with sorrow? The
distortion of intellect that blinded him to the first duties of life, we are inclined to believe to be
allied to that vein of insanity, that made him an example among men for self-inflicted sufferings
[F, 547].
68
It is difficult to be sure exactly what Shelley read of Rousseau in the years before the publication of Frankenstein,
mostly because she does not name Rousseau’s works consistently in her journal. In 1815 she records reading
Rousseau’s Confessions, Emile, and Nouvelle Heloise [J, 47-49]. In 1816 she adds Rousseau’s Reveries, over four
days in late July and early August [J, 55]. She was writing Frankenstein at this point, having begun in June [F,
333]. She also reads something she calls the “Letters of Emile” over two days in September 1816 [J, 64]: could this
refer to Emile and Sophie? In the summary of her reading for that year, she repeats these titles, listing the Reveries
and the “Letters of Emile” [J, 72-73]. Shelley turned to correcting and transcribing Frankenstein in April, May, and
October 1817 [J, 78-79, 85]. Over six days in late June and early July 1817, she records re-reading Rousseau’s
Julie, having completed Frankenstein in May that year [F, 334]. She re-reads the Confessions over three days in
October 1817, followed by three days on something she calls “Rousseau’s Letters” – perhaps those referred to in the
Confessions, which would have included the April 20, 1751 letter to Mme. de Francueil where Rousseau discusses
his treatment of his children [CW 5: 551-552; J, 85-86]. She lists the Nouvelle Heloise and “Confessions et Lettres
de Rousseau” in her reading for 1817 [J, 89-90].
32
�
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"We shall be monsters" : Frankenstein and the ugliness of enlightenment
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Transcript of a lecture given on March 2, 2018 by Jeff J.S. Black as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851. Frankenstein
Deans
Friday night lecture
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The Winnowing Oar: Odysseus’ Final Journey
Claudia Hauer
St. John’s College, Santa Fe, September 21, 2016
Abstract
In book 11 of the Odyssey, in the underworld, Teiresias describes to Odysseus a final
journey that he must take to propitiate Poseidon when his labors on Ithaka are
concluded. Teiresias tells Odysseus he must walk inland with an oar until a
wayfarer mistakes the oar for a winnowing fan. There, Teiresias says, Odysseus
must build a shrine to Poseidon and plant the oar as a dedication. In this talk, I will
explore various interpretations of this puzzling description of Odysseus’ final
journey.
Paper
In book 11 of the Odyssey, called the Nekuia, the book of the dead, Odysseus goes to
the underworld in order to question the ghost of Teiresias. Teiresias describes a
final journey that Odysseus must make after he kills the suitors:
But after you have killed these suitors in your own palace,
either by treachery, or openly with the sharp bronze,
then you must take up your well-shaped oar and go on a journey
until you come where there are men living who know nothing
of the sea, and who eat food that is not mixed with salt, who never
have known ships whose cheeks are painted purple, who never
have known well-shaped oars, which act for ships as wings do.
And I will tell you a very clear proof, and you cannot miss it.
When, as you walk, some other wayfarer happens to meet you,
and says you carry a winnow-fan on your bright shoulder,
then you must plant your well-shaped oar in the ground, and render
ceremonious sacrifice to the lord Poseidon. (Lattimore, 11. 119 – 130)
The most obvious intent of this journey will be the propitiation of Poseidon. i While
Athena and Zeus love Odysseus ‘terribly’ (1. 265), Poseidon’s anger over the
blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemus remains a menace to the ‘long, peaceful life’ that
Teiresias next prophesies Odysseus could enjoy.
Poseidon, we learn later, did not intend to prevent Odysseus’ homecoming, but the
god wanted Odysseus to suffer more than he did, and arrive at Ithaka without
treasure. In book 13, after Odysseus has been ferried safely to Ithaka by the
Phaeacians, Poseidon complains to Zeus about the potential loss of status he will
incur with respect to his thwarted intentions for a more difficult homecoming for
Odysseus. Poseidon says:
Father Zeus, no longer among the gods immortal
Shall I be honored, when there are mortals who do me no honor,
the Phaiakians, and yet these are of my own blood. See now,
I had said to myself Odysseus would come home only after
much suffering. I had not indeed taken his homecoming
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altogether away, since first you nodded your head and assented
to it. But they carried him, asleep in the fast ship, over
the sea, and set him down in Ithaka, and gave him numberless
gifts, as bronze, and gold abundant, and woven clothing,
more than Odysseus could ever have taken from Troy, even
if he had come home ungrieved and with his fair share of the plunder.
(Lattimore 13. 128 -139)
Having been thwarted with respect to his intention for Odysseus, Poseidon’s wrath
now turns to the Phaeacians. Poseidon takes Zeus’ suggestion that he teach the
Phaeacians a memorable lesson by turning the returning ship to stone in sight of the
Phaeacian harbor. Odysseus is safe… for now. The fate of the Phaeacian ship has
the intended effect. Alcinous recalls that his father prophesied that Poseidon would
cover the Phaeacian city with a mountain of rocks after turning a ship to stone, and
the Phaeacians immediately begin fervent propitiations to the god.
The forgotten prophecy suggests that the Phaeacians have let their diligence lapse
with respect to Poseidon – Alcinous only belatedly recalls the prophecy that
Poseidon would one day be angry with them because of their indiscriminate offers
of convoy. Yet Odysseus told the Phaeacians the story of the blinding of the Cyclops,
a story which included Polyphemus’ declaration that he is the son of the “glorious
earthshaker” (9.518). Nonetheless, the Phaeacians did not recognize that they were
risking Poseidon’s wrath in showering Polyphemus’ mutilator with gifts and giving
him convoy.
Odysseus’ propitiation of Poseidon on his final journey will, similarly, attempt to
compensate for any lost honor (τιμή) that the god may suffer over the ease of
Odysseus’ homecoming. But Odysseus’ propitiation will lack the anxiety that
characterizes the renewal of the Phaeacians’ worship of the god. Teiresias mentions
no future threat or calamity, and predicts a sleek old age for Odysseus once this final
labor is complete.
The propitiation will permit Odysseus to render proper observances to all of the
divinities. After describing the final journey, Teiresias orders Odysseus to return
home and “render holy hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold the wide heaven,
all of them in order” (Lattimore, 11.132-3). Odysseus’ propitiation will restore
Odysseus’ own relationship with the pantheistic order and permit him in the future
to perform the ceremonies of piety with Poseidon in his proper position of honor.
The task of the final journey is to establish a shrine to Poseidon in an inland region
far from the sea. The propitiation will extend Poseidon’s domain and his worship
cult into a community whose inhabitants do not recognize the dedicatory oar as
such, and who have never even seen the sea. What does this mean? Why is
Odysseus’ founding of an inland shrine with an unrecognized talisman an
appropriate propitiation of the god of the sea?
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Whatever oar Odysseus will take on this final journey, it will not be from the ship on
which he left Troy. Lattimore (1965), Fagles (1996), and Mitchell (2013) all
translate Teiresias’ command as a reference to “your well-shaped oar.” Yet the
Greek could also mean “a well-shaped oar,” and this must be its correct meaning, for
all of the oars from Odysseus’ ship were lost when Zeus destroyed it in the blast that
kills the companions. At the end of book 12, we learn that Odysseus, the only
survivor, washes up on Kalypso’s isle with the aid of “two long timbers” (perimήκεα
dοῦra), the only surviving pieces of the lost ship.
The last we hear of those ship’s oars, they are associated with impiety, since the air
around them is permeated with the odor of the cooking meat from the forbidden
cattle of the Sun God on Thrinakia. Odysseus, who had been praying to the gods by
himself, apart from his men, describes his return to the scene of the crime as
follows: “as I was close to the oar-swept vessel, the pleasant savor of cooking meat
came drifting around me, and I cried out my grief aloud to the gods immortal”
(Lattimore, 9.368-9). The contrast between the pleasant odor of the meat, and
Odysseus’ grief highlights the distinction between the worldliness of the
companions’ human appetite and Odysseus’ otherworldly concern with honoring
the gods. Odysseus’ words condemn the vessel and its oars, now tainted by the odor
of impiety.
From the first 4 books of the Odyssey, the Telemachia, we have learned that the
other surviving heroes from Troy, Nestor and Menelaus, are both very careful to
render proper sacrifice to the gods. Yet neither of these two surviving heroes is
“home” in the way Odysseus intends to be home. The anger-prone Nestor tells
endless war stories about the glory days, to the chagrin of the youth of Pylos. In
book 15 (191ff), Telemachus asks Nestor’s son Pisistratus to conspire to let
Telemachus skip a goodbye visit to Nestor, since the old man’s clinging company is
so tedious. Pisistratus immediately sees the sense of the request. “How overbearing
his anger will be,” Pisistratus rues, yet urges his new friend to sail immediately.
Menelaus, on the other hand, whose memories might be somewhat more bitter, is
drugged into mindless joviality by Helen.
Odysseus, as we have learned, is active, engaged, and responsive to mortals and
immortals alike, and we must assume that this is indicative of the way he wishes to
be “home.” Odysseus must restore his good standing with Poseidon, but the way he
is ordered to do it will require that an oar be mistaken for a winnow-fan. Does this
have something to do with Odysseus’ particular homecoming, his νόστος?
Teiresias describes the dedicatory oar as “well-made,” from eὐ + ἀραρίσκω. The
verb ἀραρίσκω means “to join” – so the adjective describes something crafted to be
“well-joined.” The fin and handle of the oar will have been “put together” by a
craftsman who knows how to fit the joints to be strong and seamless. There are only
two other uses of this adjective in the Odyssey. Elpenor’s oar is also named as “wellmade,” as is the ax with the olive wood handle that Kalypso gives Odysseus to use as
he builds his getaway raft. Certainly, the gods’ tools would be well-joined. Perhaps
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there are other well-joined oars in Odysseus’ palace at Ithaka, or perhaps Odysseus
himself will make the oar. Odysseus is well-skilled at joining – he is τέκτων, a homo
faber, a ‘maker-man,’ able to control his environment through the use of tools. ii
Odysseus’ talent as a craftsman is made clear in the two descriptions of his
handiwork in the Odyssey: the construction of the raft in book 5, and Odysseus’ own
description of his construction of his marriage chamber and marriage bed in book
23. Homer uses ἀραρίσκω to describe how Odysseus “joins” the deck boards as he
constructs the raft on which he will flee Kalypso’s island (5.252). In this passage,
Odysseus emerges from a night of extra-marital love-making with Kalypso in the
innermost chamber of her cave (μυχός), then joins the planks of the raft well to
make a sea-worthy vessel with which to return to his wife. In book 23, the joining,
by contrast, consecrates the innermost bedroom of man and wife. Odysseus himself
uses the verb ἀραρίσκω as he describes to Penelope how he “joined” the doors to
their bedroom around the stump of the olive, before he constructed their marriage
bed. In this passage, the well-joined doors seal off the marriage chamber (θάλαμος)
from the rest of the house. These doors have also so far protected Penelope from
the suitors, as she retires each night to the marriage chamber of Odysseus. The
dedicatory oar, insofar as it too is well-joined, references Odysseus’ prowess in both
adventure and return, such that he can craft the tool of passage across Poseidon’s
domain to and from war.
The oar that Teiresias has in mind will have been made to row “ships whose cheeks
are painted purple” (foinikoporeίoi). The Cyclops, Odysseus has already explained to
the Phaeacians in book 9, have no such ships (“red-cheeked ships” - miltopareίoi)
nor carpenters to build them (9.125). Although Poseidon is god of the sea, his son
Polyphemus and the race of Cyclops have no knowledge of ship-building and the art
of joining, and do not venture onto the sea. The people whom Odysseus will
introduce to Poseidon-worship on the final journey will also have no direct
knowledge of the craft that could take them into Poseidon’s domain. Moreover,
Teiresias does not instruct Odysseus to correct the wayfarer who thinks the oar is a
winnow-fan, so the expansion of the Poseidon-cult apparently does not require that
the new worshippers understand the oar as talismanic of Poseidon’s actual domain.
Teiresias tells Odysseus that the wayfarer’s mistake about the oar will be the “sign”
(sῆma) that he is in the correct place to perform the propitiation. Teiresias uses the
word “sign” to denote a “signal” or “mark” by which Odysseus can recognize the
sacred place. Yet the word can also be used to denote a grave-marker, as the shade
of Elpenor has used it just 50 lines earlier.
Recall that Elpenor fell off the roof just as Odysseus and his companions left Circe’s
island for the underworld. Since the body of Elpenor was left unburied, he does not
seem to have to drink the blood to speak to Odysseus in the underworld. He
approaches even before Odysseus has spoken with Teiresias, and begs Odysseus to
return to Aiaia, and
�Hauer 5
burn me there with all my armor that belongs to me, and heap up a grave
mound (sῆma) beside the beach of the gray sea, for an unhappy man, so that
those to come will know of me. Do this for me, and on top of the grave
mound plant the oar with which I rowed when I was alive and among my
companions. (Lattimore, 11.74-8)
Here the oar on the tomb signifies the grave of a man who rowed. Such a sign would
be an appropriate grave-marker for any of the companions, but the others will have
no graves, for they have offended Helios in eating the cattle of the Sun God, and are
lost at sea when Zeus (interestingly not Poseidon) blasts their ship after their
departure from Thrinakia. The oar that Odysseus is to plant at the new shrine to
Poseidon will also be a sign, but one that only Odysseus as its human founder will
fully understand, as the local community will mistake it for a threshing tool.
How might Odysseus understand the significance of the winnowing oar? Given the
proximity of Elpenor’s request and Teiresias’ instructions, perhaps Odysseus will
understand the oar as a death-token of his lost companions. Perhaps the oar will
signify his lament for the companions’ human frailty, their inability to refrain from
the flesh of the forbidden cattle, an inability which Homer and Poseidon describe at
the very beginning of the Odyssey as the companions’ characteristic “wild
recklessness” (1.7, 34). This is a single word in Greek, a word that shares the root
with the word ἄth, a delusion about the cosmos that leads to ruin caused by the
gods.
Odysseus himself is apparently free from this kind of cosmic folly. Yet it can be hard
for a contemporary reader to appreciate this, for Odysseus’ relationship with his
men often strikes contemporary readers as merely instrumental. As Robert
Hollander writes in his commentary on Dante’s Inferno Canto 26, which I will return
to below, “the companions are Ulysses’ oars” (Hollander, 493). By this reading, the
oar is, in a sense, any man who rowed for Odysseus, and it will be unnamed and
unrecognized, just as the companions are.
Another possibility is that Odysseus will understand the transformation of the oar
into winnow-fan as a transition from sea to land, or from war to peace. Teiresias has
prophesied for him a long life into “sleek old age.” Odysseus’ life will be peaceful and
prosperous, focused on animal husbandry, fruit trees, and the growing and harvest
of grain. We don’t know what form this death will take, but it will come not “on the
sea” but “from the sea,” as something foreign to Odysseus’ pastoral life on Ithaka.
The Odyssey tells the tale of a man who figured out how to get home from war – not
just back to his native place, as Nestor and Menelaus have also done, but home, at
home, alive to the present, not haunted as so many veterans are. The poem shows us
that homecoming in this fullest sense (νόστος) is not simply a transition from
‘violent’ war to ‘non-violent’ domestic life. Odysseus makes himself at home in a
world that he understands to be full of forces beyond the power of humans to
control. The transformation of “a well-made oar” into a winnow-fan is not simply
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the transformation of a tool of the stormy sea into a tool of a peaceful agrarian life.
Olson (1997) points out that the word Teiresias uses for winnow-fan is a hapax
legomenon, a word that only appears once in surviving Greek literature, a composite
of ἀleίqei (ears of corn) and loigόj (destroyer). Homer’s poem avoids the two names
of this tool in daily use – ptύon and qrίnax - in order to call attention to the way this
agrarian tool destroys the objects on which it is used.
Odysseus is, similarly, a wrecker of men. By this reckoning, the Odysseus we get to
know in the Odyssey may strike a reader as a strange figure to be charged with an
evangelical function with respect to Poseidon. The final journey will have little in
common with Odysseus’ adventures on the way home from Troy. Odysseus has only
to walk inland until the oar across his shoulders is mistaken for a winnow-fan. Yet
Odysseus’ survival to perform this final propitiation has come at considerable cost, if
not to Odysseus, then certainly to others. Odysseus has broken the goddess
Kalypso’s heart, lost his own comrades, brought about the death of the sailors on the
Phaeacian ship that bore Odysseus safely to Ithaka, and potentially led to the
obliteration of the rest of the Phaeacians as well. Odysseus has mercilessly
slaughtered the suitors and the maidservants who slept with them, including
Eurynomos, characterized by Homer as a decent, god-fearing man. He has all but
killed Irus, the local beggar.
For a reader who has never gone to war, it may be hard to accept that none of these
actions have earned Odysseus the enmity of the gods. Rather, Odysseus is hated by
Poseidon because he mutilated Poseidon’s monstrous son Polyphemus in order to
escape from the Cyclops’ cave. Obviously, the contemporary code of universal
morality condemns this. The only reason Odysseus was in the Cyclops’ cave in the
first place was because he was eager to acquire gifts and glory. Yet any concerns a
contemporary reader has about the moral quality of Odysseus’ motives will have to
be set aside. In the Homeric context, gifts and glory constitute a warrior’s honor,
much as medals, decorations, and ceremony do today. Yet the markings of honor do
not always go to the most worthy men. Indeed, there is much dispute in the classical
literature about whether Odysseus deserves the honor he received at Troy, since he
utilizes cunning in combat, and does not rely on naïve strength and physical power.
Yet Odysseus’ methods work. His strategems at Troy won the war for his side. Lives
were saved, as we would say in the American military context today. Homer’s gods
are not much concerned with the methods that mortals employ in the deadly
business of war.
With respect to the gods, Homer lacks what we would call moral theism. Moral
theism is the notion that the proper worship of the gods entails the wish for moral
purity, serves as the basis for moral redemption, or requires repentance of sin.
Worship of the Homeric pantheon is transactional, and, as we shall see, relational,
but it is not based on any stable moral theism.
The idea that a character like Odysseus could successfully propitiate the angry
Poseidon requires many contemporary readers to suspend something of their
�Hauer 7
theistic expectations. Against the backdrop of my own peaceful life context and
relatively unchallenged theological commitments, much of what Odysseus does
appears morally deficient. Odysseus himself, for example, in telling the tale to the
Phaeacians, calls his boast to the mutilated child of Poseidon a “taunt” (κερτόμιος).
However savage the Cyclops were, they kept to themselves, and Odysseus only
visited their island because he wanted to “find out about these people, and learn
what they are” (Lattimore 9.174), in the hopes, as always, of gaining status in the
form of gifts (dῶra), honor (timή), and fame (klέoj). Such passages challenge a
reader to ask herself: what do we really mean when we insist that the tenets of
moral theism apply to soldiers at war?
Occasionally in translation, Homer is made to suggest that divinities engage in
something like moral retributive justice. When Poseidon complains to Zeus that
Odysseus has had an effortless landing on Ithaka, Zeus tell him “if any humans
should insolently deny you your proper honors, of course you must feel free to
punish them in whatever way that you want to” (Mitchell, 13.141-2). The Greek here
for ‘punish,’ tίsij, means something like “extract payment”. Yet it is not the primary
offender Odysseus who is characterized as owing a debt to Poseidon, it is the
secondary offenders the Phaeacians who owe this “payment” for their lapse in the
diligence of their worship. Poseidon’s turning the ship to stone alerts the Phaeacians
to their debt, which they attempt to pay by their fervent sacrifices. Poseidon does
not pursue any principled retribution against Odysseus, in fact Poseidon is
(presumably) placated at the very moment that Odysseus is free to undertake his
machinations against the suitors. Poseidon does not “punish” in the morally theistic
sense of giving mortals what they justly deserve. Rather, the word tίsij implies a
transactional lapse; the Phaeacians “owe” Poseidon something if the god is not to
lose honor and status among his fellow immortals.
Homer’s narrative captures this through the technique of caesura in line 13.187.
Caesura, or “cut,” is a sense break inserted in or after the 3rd of the 6 feet of a line of
dactylic hexameter. In book 13, line 187, the 1st three feet are translated: “standing
around the altar”, a phrase that finishes the description of the ceremonies of
sacrifice that the Phaeacians diligently undertake after witnessing the ship turning
to stone, and after Alcinous’ belated recollection of the prophecy about Poseidon’s
wrath. That is the last we will hear of the Phaeacians. We do not find out if their
propitiation succeeds. Homer’s narrative now turns to Odysseus and his attempt to
slay the suitors. The final three feet of this line of dactylic hexameter shift the scene
with: “But now great Odysseus wakened.” Homer intends us to view these separate
scenes as simultaneous, so that Odysseus’ forthcoming strategems on Ithaka are
framed by the urgency with which the Phaeacians have learned that because of their
good treatment of him, they are in danger of suffering Poseidon’s full punishment,
which would obliterate their city and presumably themselves under a mountain of
stone.
This narrative device of caesura draws attention to the fact that Odysseus will not
have to “pay” Poseidon the price of the many sufferings the god intended for him.
�Hauer 8
Poseidon, it turns out, does not reckon his accounts that way. Poseidon’s wrath is
kindled for partisan reasons: when his own kindred are wronged or have done him
wrong. He is angry that the Phaeacians did not keep him properly in mind, and he
wants to take revenge on the man who mutilated his son. Poseidon’s vengeance has
tribal meaning, but not moral meaning. Those who expect gods to be moral will have
trouble appreciating this curious feature of Homeric divine retribution. Homer’s
world is a theistic world, in that there are gods, and they take a personal interest in
the affairs of mortals, but it is not a moral theism. Yet there is much to learn from
this theistic tribalism, in particular the way it appears to reflect something timeless
about the way warriors respond to violence.
To illustrate this contrast between the heroic model of the warrior and the Christian
model of moral theism, let us return to Dante, the 14th century author of the
Commedia. Dante knew of Homer’s Odysseus not directly, but from references in
Latin poetry. In his Inferno, Dante offers a retelling of the Odysseus story that is not
willing to absolve Odysseus merely on the grounds that Homer lacked a context of
moral theism. Dante’s language illustrates that Dante understood that this context
was absent in Homer’s pagan world, and yet condemned Odysseus anyway.
Dante’s Ulysses is guilty of irredeemable impiety. Dante’s story overlaps with
Homer’s up until the departure from Circe’s island, when Homer has Odysseus enter
the underworld, but Dante has Ulysses abandon the homecoming in order to
attempt a hubristic assault on the Mountain of Purgatory. Condemned to hell for his
unrepentant false counsel, Ulysses speaks of the Christian God dismissively, as
merely “another,” a god with his own petty tribal reasons for wanting Ulysses
destroyed.
Dante’s account is true to Homer’s in one respect: Homer’s Odysseus does not show
any hint of repentance or concern for redemption. Much has been made of the
transition in Greek narrative from the ‘shame culture’ of Homeric times to the ‘guilt
culture’ in place by the 5th century before the Christian era. E. R. Dodds (1951)
points out that Homeric characters do not exhibit much anxiety about triggering
fqόνος, the “jealousy” of the gods, or, more theistically, their “righteous indignation.”
Dodds writes, “It is plain…from the uninhibited boasting in which Homeric man
indulges that he does not take the dangers of fqόνος very seriously: such scruples
are foreign to a shame culture.” iii Yet Dante’s Christian theism requires him to
condemn this attitude categorically, and Dante places Ulysses in the 8th circle of hell,
among the false counsellors.
Dante’s Ulysses is driven by a love of experience that is also familiar to readers of
Homer. Ulysses tells the pilgrim Dante: “not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty/
toward my aged father, nor the love I owed/ Penelope that would have made her
glad/ could overcome the fervor that was mine to gain experience of the world and
learn about man’s vices, and his worth” (Hollander & Hollander, Canto 26. 94-99).
This passage seems to reference the opening lines of the Odyssey: “Many were they
whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of” (Lattimore, 1.3), as well as
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Odysseus’ misguided insistence upon landing on the Cyclops’ island, to “go and find
out about these people, and learn what they are….” Dante’s language also references
The Aeneid of Virgil, Dante the Pilgrim’s beloved guide, who wrote his own epic hero,
Aeneas, to exhibit filial piety as his most characteristic and reliable virtue.
Dante’s treatment of Ulysses in Inferno has other interesting references to Homer’s
Odysseus that can help us see how foreign Homer’s notion of propitiation is to a
theistic understanding of redemption. In Canto 26, the shade of Ulysses uses the
following language as he boasts to the pilgrim Dante how Ulysses exhorted his men
to cross the straits of Hercules in search of the realm of Purgatory:
“O brothers,” I said, “who, in the course of a hundred thousand perils, at last
have reached the west, to such brief wakefulness of our senses as remains to
us, do not deny yourselves the chance to know – following the sun – the
world where no one lives. Consider how your souls were sown: you were not
made to live like brutes or beasts, but to pursue virtue and knowledge”
(Hollander & Hollander, 26. 112 – 120)
Dante’s passage has much in common with the opening of Homer’s Odyssey book 10,
where Odysseus’ companions lie disheartened, having just landed on the shore of
Circe’s island after being unable to control their impulses with Aiolus’ precious bag
of winds. Odysseus exhorts his disconsolate men as follows: “Dear friends, for we do
not know where the darkness is nor the sunrise, nor where the Sun who shines
upon people rises, nor where he sets, then let us hasten our minds and think,
whether there is any course left open to us…” (Lattimore, 10. 190-193). The
overlap between this passage and Dante’s continues, as Circe will turn the first
group of Odysseus’ men into pigs, a reference that Dante also intends us to get, with
his “you were not made to live like brutes or beasts.”
Dante focuses on the way Odysseus’ insatiable curiosity and love of experience
constitutes an irredeemable failure to grasp the nature of original sin. Although
Homer condemns the companions and saves Odysseus, Dante insists that it is
Odysseus himself who is damned. His comrades, and the hapless Phaeacians as well,
could be reframed by Dante’s theist paradigm as simple sinners who
wholeheartedly repent of their impious follies once they learn of their
consequences.
Homer’s passage, by contrast, draws attention to the vice that Odysseus’
companions exhibit with the bag of winds, the lack of control that Homer and
Poseidon have noted. The companions’ recklessness with the bag of winds is the
reason Odysseus has to go to the underworld to talk to Teiresias, who will give
Odysseus the instructions for the propitiation of Poseidon. Odysseus himself draws
attention to the connection between the companions’ fatigue at their oars and the
current crisis that requires the intervention of Teiresias, calling his companions
after their expulsion by Aiolus as “teίreto… eἰresιηj,” (worn down by rowing –
�Hauer 10
10.78). iv Thus Teiresias’ name itself phonetically evokes the companions’ inability to
sustain themselves at the oars of Odysseus’ ship.
Odysseus’ exhortation here, “let us think, whether there is any course left open to
us,” has its own etymological reference to an important difference between
Odysseus and his companions. The ‘course’ that Odysseus asks his companions to
seek is the Greek word μήτις – ‘cunning’ or ‘strategem’, a word that has a homonym
in the word μητις – the indefinite ‘not anyone’ that Odysseus counts on when he
tells Polyphemus his name is οὐτις – ‘nobody.’ This is the trick that prevents
Polyphemus from getting help from the other Cyclops after Odysseus has escaped
and barricaded Polyphemus in his own cave. The sound of the word μήτις is thus
associated with the action that triggered Poseidon’s wrath. In book 12, Odysseus’
companions will not find a stratagem, they will fall under Circe’s spell. Odysseus,
however, with the intervention of Hermes, will find an effective stratagem. Odysseus
will be able to master Circe, while his comrades will have to suffer living “like brutes
and beasts” until their leader can save them.
From Dante’s perspective, it is precisely the lack of repentance that condemns
Ulysses to hell. While this aspect of Dante’s portrayal is true to form, in that
Homer’s Odysseus does not repent, Homer’s world does not have a theistic context
in which Odysseus could be condemned morally for this absence.
Since the tenets of moral theism don’t apply, Odysseus’ identity as propitiate on the
final journey has to be understood in some other way. Many scholars speak of the
anthropomorphic patron-client relationship between mortals and immortals in
Homer’s world. Odysseus is able to get home and slay the suitors because he is
favored by Athena, and Odysseus is favored by Athena because he has the kinds of
qualities that will enable him to get home and slay the suitors. Odysseus can utilize
deception and cunning to attain his ends, and does not see these means as entailing
scruple. In fact, this very freedom from scruple may be the key to Odysseus’ piety,
for deception and cunning require a certain type of self-discipline, and this selfdiscipline constitutes what Homer intends as Odysseus’ salvific virtue, the capacity
that distinguishes him from his reckless companions.
Nowhere is this more evident in Homer’s epic than in the tale Odysseus tells of what
happened on the island of Thrinakia, where only Odysseus has the self-control to
refrain from touching the Cattle of the Sun. Olson (1997) explores the relationship
Teiresias draws between the oar and a winnowing fan by connecting Teiresias’
prophecy to the upcoming ‘winnowing’ that will happen to Odysseus’ men in
retribution for their offense of eating the cattle on Thrinakia. v On Thrinakia, the
‘pure’ Odysseus is separated from the ‘impure’ chaff that his men represent in their
reckless unwillingness to endure hunger rather than touch the sacred cattle. Olson
notes that the name Thrinakia comes from qrinax, a common word for a winnowing
shovel (literally “three-toothed” or “trident,” which references the symbol of
Poseidon). Olson reads the entire legend of the Cattle of the Sun as a winnowing test
for the kind of self-control that Odysseus alone is capable of. Odysseus passes the
�Hauer 11
test himself, but cannot control his companions’ desire for the forbidden food,
because he has left them to go off to “pray to the gods” that they might show him a
road (ὅδος) homeward, “but what they did,” Odysseus says, “was to shed a sweet
sleep on my eyelids” (Lattimore, 12.338). vi
Throughout Homer, sacrifice is associated with the odor of the meat of oxen, cattle,
sheep and rams, an odor that spreads out into the air, conveying honor to the god to
whom it is dedicated. The meat of the different animals yields distinct odors, and
these odors seem together to make up the completeness of propitiation. Teiresias,
for example, tells Odysseus that the sacrifice to Poseidon on the final journey must
consist of a ram, a bull, and a boar. The herds of Helios though, are sacrificially
taboo, for Helios does not want to smell the odor of their flesh, since this god
“delights” in watching these animals with his eyes (χαίρεσκον, 12.380).
Although Odysseus reports to the Phaeacians that Lampetia told Helios that “we”
killed his cattle, Helios only asks Zeus to punish “the companions of Odysseus.”
Odysseus ordered his companions to swear to him before they left the ship that they
would not touch the herds on Thrinakia, but once the food from the ship has run out,
the men forsake their oath during Odysseus’ pious absence and slaughter the
animals. Although Helios has to be told that the animals have been killed, he
somehow knows to absolve Odysseus, whose salvific self-control includes the ability
to fast and pray when necessary, apparently without consequence to his strength
and endurance.
Since the events on Thrinakia are narrated by Odysseus to the Phaeacians, a reader
might be suspicious of Odysseus’ self-portrayal of his singular purity, especially as it
includes the actual conversation between Zeus and Helios. Odysseus, however,
makes a point of telling the Phaeacians that he heard this dialogue narrated by
Kalypso, who in turn heard it from Hermes. We are to understand the conversation
between Kalypso and Hermes as having taken place during Hermes’ visit, described
in book 5, to convey the message to Kalypso that Zeus has decided Odysseus must
finally get home. It was during this visit that Hermes presumably narrated to
Kalypso the conversation between Helios and Zeus which led Zeus to administer a
“just” punishment to Odysseus’ comrades for killing the forbidden cattle of Helios on
Thrinakia. vii
Once Odysseus has lost his comrades, his choice for killing the suitors is no longer
between “treachery, or openly with sharp bronze” as Teiresias told him. Now the
suitors must be overcome only by treachery, or trickery, as Homer’s word δόλος can
also mean. And so Odysseus does overcome them this way, which brings us to the
final scene of the Odyssey, in which the families of the suitors, seeking tribal
vengeance for their sons’ deaths, put on armor and march openly on Odysseus,
Laertes, Telemachus and their small armed band of loyal supporters.
Here we have an event which Teiresias did not mention in his prophecy, perhaps
because it is not left to Odysseus to find a way to accomplish it. At first it appears
�Hauer 12
that open warfare will break out. Laertes throws himself into the conflict, and exults
at the way “My son and my son’s son are contending over their courage” (Lattimore,
24.515). With Athena’s help, Laertes throws the spear that kills the father of
Antinous, who was, appropriately, the most vicious of the suitors. But as Odysseus
and Telemachus throw themselves into the front line, Athena stops them. “Hold
back,” she says, “from grievous war, so you can most swiftly come to a decision
without blood.” When Odysseus is slow to withdraw, Zeus sends a warning
thunderbolt. The epic closes with the phrase “And pledges for the days to come,
sworn to by both sides, were settled by Pallas Athene, daughter of Zeus of the aegis”
(Lattimore).
Because of the deus ex machina character of this passage, Athena’s role in this scene
could be compared to the end of Aeschylus’ 5th century tragic series, the Oresteia,
where Athena brings in judges to make a decision about Orestes, and then
persuades the furies to transform into the kindly ones and bless the Areopagus. In
Aeschylus’ play, the presence of the goddess accounts for Athens’ shift from the
customs of tribal vengeance to the rule of law. Zeus’ and Athena’s motive for not
permitting the battle between Odysseus and the families of the suitors can perhaps
be similarly characterized at the end of the Odyssey in terms of the gods’ righteous
concern with overcoming the tribal cycle of violence, a morally theist concern that
appears anachronistic in light of my argument here.
Yet this is not the only way to interpret the Odyssey’s final passage. The other
Homeric epic, The Iliad, ends with a similar stasis, as the hostilities of the Trojan
War are interrupted for the “burial of Hector, breaker of horses,” which restores
order to both the Achaian and the Trojan communities, similarly disrupted by
Achilles’ berserk mutilation of Hector’s corpse. The end of Iliad book one offers
another example, this time of hostility between the divinities, restored to stasis from
the brink of violence by the quick words and obsequious capering of the impulsive
god Hephaistos. Many Shakespearean tragedies, including King Lear, Hamlet, and
Julius Caesar, end with comments that draw attention to a cycle in human affairs in
which a broken community acknowledges the restoration of intelligibility and stasis.
This cycle need not be interpreted through a moral lens. Michel Foucault (1970)
suggests that such a cycle is intrinsic to a human sociology, as a pre-moral model in
which human beings emerge from conflict by “finding a solution that will – on one
level at least, and for a time – appease their contradictions.” viii If this is true of the
Odyssey, perhaps there is a connection after all between Athena’s and Zeus’ abrupt
ending of the hostilities and the contractual, not moral, piety I have attributed to
Odysseus.
In book 23, after the slaying of the suitors, Odysseus repeats Teiresias’ instructions
for the propitiation word-for-word, in the first conversation he has with Penelope
after their reconciliation. The word-for-word repetition is a mnemonic technique of
oral composition, but it also serves here to establish Odysseus’ piety with respect to
the importance of this task of propitiating Poseidon. The epic could have ended
without further reference to Teiresias’ mention of the final journey. The iteration
�Hauer 13
suggests that Odysseus’ intention is to follow the instructions precisely, and further,
to enlist his wife’s support and understanding of the significance of this crucial task.
This, I suggest, might be the most profound meaning of Odysseus’ νόστος.
Odysseus’ earnest piety takes additional meaning from the final passage, in which
the conflict between Odysseus and the families of the slain suitors is resolved by
divine intervention. The Odyssey ends with a divine mandate that the people of
Ithaka live in peace. Odysseus’ need to propitiate the one remaining hostile deity
now emerges as an urgent prerequisite to his fulfilling his political potential as a
wise and engaged combat veteran, capable of rendering due observances to a
complex hierarchy of divinities. Odysseus, Homer suggests, will not permit the kind
of lapse that exposes the religious and political immaturity of Poseidon’s existing
mortal kin, the Phaeacians. Perhaps it is Poseidon’s frustration with the
forgetfulness of those who should by their kinship be his most zealous celebrants
that leads the god to wish that Odysseus extend the Poseidon-cult into the
landlocked agrarian communities of what scholars assume was Arcadia, a name that
calls to mind Virgil’s eclogues, which are pastoral idylls of shepherds and wood
nymphs. The pastoral pleasures certainly await Odysseus, once he has seen to it
that his own religious observances will be acceptable to all the gods, even Poseidon,
in their due pantheistic order.
Hansen, William F. “Odysseus’ Last Journey.” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica. No 24. 1977. 27 –
48.
ii Pucci, Pietro. The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer. Roman & Littlefield, 1998.
iii Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational. University of California Press. 1951. 30.
iv Dimock, G. E. Jr. “The Name of Odysseus.” The Hudson Review. Vol. 9, No. 1. 1956. 11.
v Olson, S. Douglas. “Odysseus’ “Winnowing Shovel” (Homer. Od. 11. 119-37) and the Island of the
Cattle of the Sun.” Illinois Classical Studies. Vol. 22. 1997. 7-9
vi It is worth noting here as a digression that Odysseus’ landing on Ithaka is characterized by his
being in a deep sleep.
vii Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Harvard, 1985. 129-30.
viii Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things. Pantheon Books, 1970. 357.
i
Additional Bibliography
Adkins, Arthur. Merit and Responsibility. Midway Reprint, 1975
Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Harvard, 1985.
Kirk, G. S. The Nature of Greek Myths. Overlook Books, 1975.
Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Harvard, 2000.
Parry, Milman. Ed. Parry, Adam. The Making of Homeric Verse. Oxford, 1971.
�
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The winnowing oar : Odysseus' final journey
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This senseless course of human things : 'one of Professor Kant's most cherished ideas'
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Friday night lecture
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The forgotten faculty : the place of phronesis or practical sense in liberal education
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Friday night lecture
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ihno(^
David Lawrence Le\ ine
**/!/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude"
Frida\ Niaht Dean's Lecture, Ausust 29. 2003
Page 1
14.\
*'At the Very Center of the Plenitude^
Goethe^s GrandAttempt to Overcome the 18'^ Century'
Or
How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe
From the General Sickness ofhis Age
""Nature has become the fundamental word
that designates essential relations...to beings."
Heidegger^
"We have failed to restore to the human spirit
its ancient right to comeface toface with nature."
Goethe"*
"Goethe teaches coin-age...ihzi the disadvantages
of an\' epoch exist only to the fainthearted."
Emerson^
1. Incidental Thoughts, Fniitfiil Life:
To everyone: Welcome! To our freshman in particular a special Welcome!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, we know him first as a poet and playwright—seniors will
read his Faust ne.xt week. Yet there is another Goethe that is less well loiown but who, from his
own point ofview, isofequal, if not greater consequence,^ the Goethe who spent his life studying
nature—botan\'. zoolog}', geologv', meteorolog>', theory of color—^and is known, in this regard,
for his work in morpholog\'. I would like to speak about this lesser known Goethe tonight.
There are two subtitles to this evening*s lecture "At the Very Center of the Plenitude."
The first is given to it by Friedrich Nietzsche, the second. m\- own curious invention. The first is
"Goethe's Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18"' Centur}-." As we will see. from Nietzsche's
perspective Goethe was a philosophical thinker of the highest order who inherited, as we all do,
ideas from previous generations and thinkers, ideas that he thought were ill conceived and needed
to be rethought. Thanks to these ideas, we had become, according to Goethe, "blind with seeing
eyes."
Similarly the second subtitle. "How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe from the
General Sickness ofhis Age." This clearly reflects our unique studies here at St. John's. Here too
we see something of greater moment than we might first have seen. Here we wall have a chance
to see that his life work studying nature—^as seen in the paper that we read in freshman
laboratory—has a far greater significance than just'science.' great though this is in its own right.^
For Goethe the smdy of namre was the necessary antidote to a growing tendency—"sickness'" he
called it—^that needed to be countered for the sake of our lives and health.
n
U
We have our work cut out for us this evening.
"
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Lcc
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St. John's Colfe^"^ - Meem Library
�Da^ id Lawrence Levine
"At the Very Center of the Plenitude^"
Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
Page 2
14x
Goethe's thinking, though philosophical, is not s\"stematic. and that means there's no one
place where his deepest thinking is to be found. Just the opposite, his profoundest thought is to be
disco\ ered throughout his works, and not just in his major works, but minor ones too, often just
jottings here and there, on slips of paper, in the margins of books, the comers of newspapers, in
brief letters, in short wherever occasion found a suitable surface for pen and ink to secure for a
time his emergent thoughts. These were often then collected into "maxims and reflections."
sometimes inserted as the thinking of one of the characters of his novels, sometimes collected
under his own name.
These occasional thoughts will provide much of the material for tonight's talk. But
incidental thoughts are not necessariK" insignificant thoughts.' Not unlike flotsam and jetsam,
thoughts appear throughout our da\". Are these daih' musings 'distractions of the moment' or
'disclosures of moment'? Such irrepressible thoughtftilness and imagination gives added
dimension to the thin linearity of time. A da\' punctuated b>' the wondrous, sparked by light, is not
just another day. DaiK^ discoveiy* is meat not spice. nourishmenL not just flavoring. And its joy is
invigorating. The mundane is thereb>" transformed. Thinking happens.
One such collection of thoughts is a book of selected conversations by his secretary
Johann Peter Eckermann, a man of no small talent, who took it upon himself to record for
posterit} personal con\ersations he had \%ith his world famous employer during the last nine
>ears of his life. These are intermittenth* and imperfecth' recorded, often self-conscious,
sometimes seem contrived, and are frequenth' without a definite outcome. There we find
observations about passing acquaintances, deliberations about the wine list for the evening dinner,
plans for journeys to be taken, personal estimates about famous and not so famous authors and
statesmen. latter->'ear reflections and regrets about his youthful writings, plans for the
reconstruction of the local theater that had burned down, conversation with his patron the Grand
Duke of Weimar, observations about his wife and children, expressions of hope and
disappointment about friends, frustrations about works of his that had been overlooked or were
under appreciated. But throughout the rich array, there emerge as well recurrent themes and
persistent questions of consequence.
The same author mentioned above. Nietzsche, sa\s the following: "Apart from Goethe's
[own] writings, and in particular Goethe's conversations M'ith Eckermann, the best German
book there is. what is there realK" of German prose literature that it would be worthwhile to read
o\'er and o\er again?'"'^' 'The best German book there is." worth "reading over and over again"?
Hardly on the face of it.
Though perhaps prone to hyperbole and "philosophizing with a hammer,'* Nietzsche was
not prone to misrepresentation. What could he mean b\ such e.xaggerated praise? Perhaps what is
remarkable is not the book per se. but what is portrayed therein? Perhaps what is notable is not its
ultimate literaiy value—^the book is not on our program—^but the attempt to record a life that is in
no wa>' ordinaiy? Indeed, even through Eckermann's eyes we glimpse new possibilities for a
human life that aspires to what is extraordinary, a fullness of possibilit\" rarely seen. We glimpse a
paradigm of a full\- engaged, e\ er creati\e. wholesome fecundit>. In shorL we see philosophy as a
way of being in the world. not as a book bound between leather covers.
2. '•^Everything Nowadays is Ultrai
In 1825. late in life. Goethe wrote a letter to his friend, the composer Zelter in which he
reflected on the character of life as it had come to be lived in their lifetime:
�Da\ id Lawrence Levine
*'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'"
Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
Page 3
14x
Everything nowadays is ultra, [he \\rites] eren thing is being transcended
continually in thought as well as in action. .Vo one hw^vs himselfany longer, no
one can grasp the element in which he Ih es and works or the materials that he
handles. Pure simplicity is out of the question; of simplifiers we have enough.
Young people are stirred up much too early in life and then carried away in the
whirl of the times. Wealth and rapidit>" are what the world admires.... Railways,
quick mails, steamships, and every possible kind of rapid communication are
what the educated world seeks but it only oxer-educates itself and thereby
persists in its mediocrity. It is. moreover, the result of universalization that a
mediocre culture [then] becomes [the] common [culture]....
He then adds ruefully: "We and perhaps a few others \\ ill be the last of an epoch that will not
soon return.""
According to Goethe, a radical transformation of our wa\' of being has taken place: 1) a
change in the character of human thought and action. 2) a change in our knowledge of ourselves,
3) a change in our sense of place, and finally, 4) a change in the character and efficacy of
education.
"Exeiything noM cidays is ultra " As earh' as the beginning of the nineteenth century,
what was coming to characterize human life—^and thereb\" change the face and depth of human
experience—^Nvas the speed [die Voloziferishe] at which life was lived, a hitherto unheard of,
dizzying and disorienting pace suchthat \oung people—^but not only—could only be caught up in
"the whir! of the times." "Being caught up" means living some other life than one's own, being
inauthentic.
"Railways, quick mails, steamships:" Ever faster communication changes the lived
dimensions of life: time quickens, distance collapses. There is no delaj- between an event and its
hearing. "It's as if we were right there.'* A leisureK^ walk is replaced by a carriage ride, thereafter
b> a train ride, then a jet plane, and now b\"... a transporter (or at least in our imaginations). The
\\ ait for "news" from the pon}' e.xpress. a telegram, a phone call, a pager continues to shrink. Our
e-mail pings or our blackberry vibrates: we hear about an event "as it happens" no matter the
distance. Life, in short, is lived in fast forward. Goethe asks "Who can possibly keep up with the
demands of an exorbitant presentand that at ma.\imum speed?"'"
This matter of life's ever accelerating pace in not a philosophically indifferent one for
Goethe. "The greatest misfortune [L'nheil] of our time.'* he says elsewhere, "which let's no thing
come to fruition, is that one moment consumes the next,"^'" While the speeding up of things may
assist us in "keeping informed" and "staying in touch," it also subtracts from other essential
dimensions once thought definitive of human life. It makes certain things more difficult, if not
impossible, specificalh" those things that take time, for e.\ample, those that require slow
assimilation and acclimation. abo\e all human learning and experience. It takes time cnxay from
thoughtful reflection and other possibilities of human carefulness. For time and leisure (skole) are
tlie proper gestational home of reflection, philosophy and human care.
We hear too that our thought processes are affected: "e\'eiything is transcended in
thought [as well as in action]." We have somehow been made to think different!)'. We live at a
new level of abstraction, beyond the immediate, simple. ob\ ious. primary world, such that w-e no
longer e\ en understand "the element in which we live." What could this mean?
�Da\ id Lawrence Levine
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And most curious of all. Goethe sa\s ""No one knows himself an}- longer.** How is this
even possible? Elsewhere he says: "Learning fails to bring advancement now that the world is
caught up in such a rapid turnover: by the time }ou ha\e managed to take due note of eveiything.
vou have lost your
Are we not alwa\ s the same no matter our circumstances?
Education too is thereb}- affected. It is suggested that we might even become "overeducated,"' mis-educated, that education itself has become, somehow, distorted. He reflects: "For
almost a centuiy now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men engaged in
them."'" Rather than distinction, we ha\e mediocrity: rather than a high culture, we have an
ordinary one. What then of the rewards of "perspective." "balance" and "e.\cellence" once
thought the outcome of an ennoblingeducation?
The "whirl of the times" has only accelerated many, many fold since 1825. The author
could not possibl}- have en\ isioned the pace at which we live our lives today. To be sure, on first
hearing, one might be inclined to take the above obsenations as the grumbling of a man seeing
the world pass him by (empt}- biographism). We might however, also take this as notice to think
better about the character our li\ es in our ultra-ultra world.
3. "The General Sickness of the Agef
"Life is our lot rather than reflection."'^
Goethe's exclamation that "nowadays... no one knows himself any longer" clearly needs
further consideration. How could this be? Don't we kno\^• ourseh es?
Throughout the modem disciplines—the ph}sical sciences, histon', even poetn- and
literature—^was a growing trend, evident to Goethe, to what he called "subjecti>ity." Juniors and
'
seniors will remember, in the Discourse on Method^ Descartes' identification of the "ego" as the
primordial truth about which we alone can be immediatel}' "certain." The immediate evidence of
this self-intuition then pro\ides the standard of truth for all else, now thought true only if "clearh
and distincth" concei\ able to us. Odd though this ma}- sound, this new self-certaint}- leads to our
world being reconceived as "the external world.'* about which we can now have only a small
measure of certainly- and that of its radically stripped dow n mathematical qualities. To be sure,
this made a "modem science" of such a world possible, yet it gave us a new- definition and sense
of self that was problematic.' This excessivel}- polarized and reduced view- of the ego as
"subject"—understood as standing "o\-er against"'^ some bare objective world—is what Goethe
meant b\" "subjectivit}:'* polarized, withdrawn, exiled to its own interior world, and thereby
alienated from an}- sense ofworld in which it could feel itself integrated or at home.'^
For Goethe the consequences of this influential (na}-, fateful) redefinition of self are
now here better seen than in his own vocation, poetry-. We have all heard the caricamre of the
modem "romantic" poet: a suffering recluse, retreating to his Paris garret, whose on!}- truth is his
inner pain. But for Goethe there is. unfortunate!}-, an element of truth to be found therein: He
observ es: "All the poets [toda}-] write as if the}- were ill and the whole wwld were a lazaretto
[leper colon}-]. The}- all speak of the woe and misery- of this earth and the joy of a hereafter: all
are discontented.... This." he adds, "is a real abuse of poetiy....""® "I attach no value to [such]
poems ....'*"'
From Goethe* s perspecti\'e, "whoe%-er descends deep down into himself will always
realize he is onK half a being...,"" and being half will discover there limited resources for
creati\-it}-. "...A subjecti\e nature has soon talked out his little internal material and is at last
_
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ruined by mannerism [that is. excessive affectation],"" he notes regretfulh'. ""Such people look at
once within: they are so occupied b>' what is revoi\ ing in themselves, [that] they are like a man in
passion, who passes his dearest friends on the street without seeing them."""* With reduced
openness to the world around them. the\" have become "blind with seeing eyes." This excessive
one-sidedness. and consequent risk of self-absorption. Goethe named "the general sickness of
the present age [heinigen Zeif]f" and led Doctor von Goethe to his famous diagnosis: ""What is
Classical is healthy; what is Romantic is sick.'"^^ Sick? Unhealthy, unproductive,
foundation less, and ultimately untruthful. We lose our fullest selves.
Goethe thus found himself standing at the point of the di^•ide where, for all our efforts to
think about each separateh". subject and object were being ever more pulled apart. This
experiential breach was of fundamental concern because, when either is over-polarized—^when
the soul is diminished as an isolated, worldless ego (psyche), res cogitans or when the Morld is
diminished as external. e\ en foreign, barren res extensa—^both subject and object are diminished
for want of their natural correlate. If I ma\' indulge in a somewhat dramatic image: like a man
standing between two horses pulling him apart, Goethe found that—^for the sake of health"'—^he
had everything he could handle to keep himself and the world whole."^
Goethe himself thus resisted being "caught up in his time:" he was not a "romantic." As
he said. "m>- tendencies were opposed to those of my time, which were wholly subjective: while
in m> objective efforts. I stood alone to m>' disad\ antage.""' His "objective efforts'? How could
he resist the subjective tendencN?
4. "The Element in which we Live:'^
In all natural things there is something wonderfuL...
So we should approach the inquiry...without aversion,
knowing that in all of them there is something
natural and beautiful..
Aristotle'®
Surprising though it ma>' seem to some, the answer is nature. Thus it is apt that the
Goethe we first meet is not the poet but the Goethe who spent his whole life researching 'the
element in which we live." that is researching into nature. It is this "objective" involvement that
saved him from the excesses of his—and our—^time. nor to mention giving him "the most
wonderful moments of his life."*'
So. what is nature?.... OK. a simpler question.... what is a plant? Which grammatical form
best names its being, a noun or a \ erb (or a gerund, a verbal noun)? By plant do we intend a static
state or an acti\ it}' alive with change, something that has grown or some process of growth?"'"
Clearh' we need to name hotb. form that is also in the process ofself-formation. **G^o^^th is the
point of life."'"
For us here in the Southwest, sumac, oak. aspen, pinon. mallow and mullen are different
kinds of plants. The principle at work is the same throughout the stages of the life cycle of a
mallow, for instance, from seedling to flowering. fructil\ ing plant. Hence we name it one thing—
a mallow—despite all these various stages and differing formal manifestations.'"*
But it is not onlv this individual plant that is before us. so is the species "mallow." and
e\ en further so is the kingdom "plant." and these, as Goethe will insist not as abstract concepts
in the mind but somehow in the living instance itself. Thus Goethe sought to account for plant
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14x
life as such, despite the dizz\ ing fact that they take infiniteh man>" and wondroush" different
shapes. Sumac, aspen, mallow are in "inner essence" still "plants.""" What is needed in this view
is to identify- the imify ing principle at work (not "underK ing') in each and every form at whatever
stage of gro\\"th and complexit\- the>' might be. But how to do so? And how to find a language
that captures this universalK" active principle of forms forming themselves?
To do so Goethe had to depart radicalK -ffom his contemporaries and from their analvtical
approach. But in so doing this departure brings him closer to us. We can see this at the outset of
the Metamorphosis of Plants that we read in freshman laboratory, where he appeals, not to
results of the latest scientific journals, but to our own untutored experience. He begins: "Anyone
M-ho has paid a little attention to plant growth..."'^ [2.\]. This means that we. ordinary human
beings, still have access to a realm of primaiy significance, one not to be diminished as "prescientific." if what is meant thereb> is "pre-insightful." Rather we, >ou and me, have deep access
into what is before us."
Indeed he is critical that, with all our education and learning, we ma}* on the contrary be
closing ourselves offfrom this primary le\el of our experience. He often referred to a passage in
one of his earh" plays to illustrate this eclipse ofexperience by theory:
...as it is said in my Goetz von Berlichingen. that the son, from pure learning,
does not know the father, so in science do we find people w-ho can neither see
nor hear, through sheer learning and Inpothesis. Such people look at once
within: the>" are so [pre-] occupied b\' what is revoh ing in themselves, that the%are like a man in passion, who passes his dearest friends in the street without
seeing them. [Rather] the observation of nature requires a certain purity of mind
that cannot be disturbed or preoccupied b> an>thing....It is just because we carry-
about with usa great apparatus of philosophy and hvpothesis, that we spoil all.*®
"Like a man in passion:" Ideas, no less than passions, can take hold of our minds, preventing us
from seeing what might othenvise be evident and therebv" preventing us from attending to our
primary experience.'^ So overwhelming are our present-day theoretical preoccupations that—in
one of his most shocking statements of all—Goethe claims that we no longer even concern
ourselves with nature! "That nature, which is our [modem] concern. isn*t nature any longer....'"
he says."*^ [2x] Extraordinary!
What has been lost, in Goethe's view, is a sense of the wholeness of wholes and the
interrelatedness and integration of all things, in short, Nature (capital N). This loss is the
necessary consequence of an>- approach wherein wholes are but "b>-products"^' of
uncoordinated, underh ing, isolated forces and elements ("mater in the void"). Looking at things
in terms of their parts—elements, simples, particles, atoms—anaKtical ways of thinking stumble
in the face of the Humptv Dumptv- problem: how to put the whole back together again."*" If we
begin with parts, we end up with reconstituted conglomerates, aggregates, bunches, but the
wholeness of things, the integral realitv-. remains a secondary phenomenon, a mystery, if not an
accident."*' Here too we've become "blind with seeing eyes.'*
Juniors are soon to read and seniors will remember Descartes' famous experiment with
the wax at the end of Meditations n. There Descartes places a piece of fresh bees wa.\ near a
burning candle, whereupon it melts and loses its original color and smell, te.xture and shape (i.e.
primary as well as secondary qualities), that is loses all its original properties but res extensa,
mere e.xtension (though this changes too). This experimental method is designed to bring us to see
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what is "elementar* (if not fundamental). Descartes then proceeds to claim that b\- "an act of
intuition of reason" he—and we—^wouid know thistransmogrified, charred lump in front of us to
be the same thing as before his infernal e.xperiment. He asks, yvho M
ould not so conclude thus?
(Aristotle, for one) Well... if that were a plant, and not an amorphous hunk of bees wax. M'ho
M
ould concur M
idiDescartes that what remains is the same as what was putto the flameT*^
The anahtical flame dissociates or separates what originally was together. It "kills." So
this method."*' The disfigured, deracinated, blackened carcass of the plant is anything but. the
li\ ing whole, nowhere to be found. The mass of matter lying before Descartes is '^he same" only
if life and death are not different, and if form is not an acti\e principle but a derivative by
product. With this "lethal generality'"*^ we lose—and lose sight of—^"the spirit ofthe whole." as
Goethe would say. For this reason, he claimed as well that the modem approach—subjecthelv
predisposed to take the objects of our e.\perience in such a reduced way—loses its claim to
"objectivity.""*
The question for Goethe—and for us—is whether and how we can recover the whole. Is
it still possible to begin elsewhere, think differently such that the whole is retained along with its
manifold parts? Can we yet begin where we naturally begin, with what is "first for us" (Aristotle),
with integral wholes?
5. Our Ancient Right:
The spirit of the actual is the true ideal."
""No one who is observant will ever
find nature dead or silent.""*^
Goethe thus sought "another way." in order, as he said, "to restore to the human spirit,
its ancientright to comeface toface with nature." "*' [2x]
He asks: "What does all our communion M-ith nature amount to... if we busy ourselves
with analyzing only single portions, and do not feel the breath of the spirit that dictates the role
of every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through an immanent law ?""® Thus "phenomena
once and for all must be remo\ed from the gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic [torture]
chamber [Materkammer]." he said, "and [be] submitted [rather] to the jury of [common human
understanding]."'^ But how^ are we to do this, to return to "common human understanding"?
Since apparently we can live in more than one world. Goethe makes his bid—^"naively"
yet knowingly"'—^to reclaim nature as our home-world. "If we are to rescue ourselves from the
boundless muhiplicir\\ atomization and complexit}- ofthe modem natural sciences" he says, "and
get back to the realm of simplicity [Einfache]. we must always consider [this] question: how
would Plato [or any non-modern] have reacted to
fundamentally one unity as it still
is, how would he have \ iewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?"'* We need
to remove what "now" stands in the way.'"* We need somehow to shuck off our modem
predisposition to see all things as artificially reconstituted'" and see our world, rather, as one
might whose \ ision was not so refracted. But how?
Mindful that "the first stages of a discovery lea\-e their mark on the course of
knowledge.*'"^ Goethe first seeks to reorient us. To begin with, "anyone who has paid a little
attention" has to acknowledge that our primary and original experience of things is otherM ise than
we've been brought to conceive. 'To nature," he said, ""we never see anything isolated:
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""At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*'
Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
Page 8
everything is in connection with something."* An\- account, then, of our experience must begin
here M'ith the wiiTy and interrelatedness ofall things. Herein lays Goethe's unified field theoiy:
"I abide bv what is simple and comprehensive, he says."^ (This he also calls his "stubborn
realism."*'')
As we heard, a certain kind of undisturbed purity of mind—clarit>-. breadth of sur\ e> .
anention to manifest differences—is the pre-requisite to an>- genuine openness. In the garden,
along a path, in the laboratoiy. we need first to see the things themselves, to recognize the ways
and means that the plant [or whatever our object] uses.'*^ "...to follow it carefully throu^ all its
transitions.'"^' in short. "...xo folloM- as carefully as possible in thefootsteps of nature.' ' "In the
process.'' he sa\s. "we become familiar with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting
itself. From this point of \ iew everything gradually falls into place under higher principles
and laws revealed not to reason through \%ords and h\potheses. but to our intuitive perception
\Anschauiing^ through phenomena.^" In this way. our relationship to things is not at first
"speculative." but what Goethe calls "practical." that is grounded in the concrete experience of
individuals and the real.^ (Here have we a model of openness and e.xtreme care that will serve us
well, not onl\- in the laboratoiy . but throughout our work at the college.)
Given this, gi^•en observation that is undertaken with a"truly sj*mpathetlc interest."^* a
remarkable transformation can then begin. We can be moved to insight. In an often quoted
passage from the Introduction to his Outline ofa Theory of Color. Goethe addresses this process
of natural ideation. He writes:
An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met...that [bare] empirical
data should be presented without any theoretical context.... This demand is odd
because it is useless to simpK" look at something. Everyact oflooking [naturally]
turns into obsen-ation. every act of observation into reflection, eveiy act of
reflection into the making of associations: tints it is that we theorize every time
we look carefully at the world. The abilit\ to do this with clarity of mind^ with
self-knowledge, in a free wa>, and (if I may venture to put it so [he adds]) with
irony, is a skill we need in order to avoid the pitfalls of [modem scientific]
abstraction.''^
Nature con\erses with us. Like an\" organic transition, thought is the natural and continuous
outgrowth of its prior condition, the fmit ofconcrete experience. As such we are naturally led to a
higher integration through *\..tbe practical and self-distilling processes of common human
understanding"!'^ [2.\] "We theorize every time we look careful1\- atthe world."
When we are able to sune\' an object in eveiy detail, grasp it carefully and
reproduce it in our mind's e\e [he reflects, then] we can sa>- we have an intuitive
perception [.•inschauimg] of it in the truest and highest sense. We can [rightfully]
sa)' it belongs to us.... And thus the particular leads to the general [as well as] the
general to the particular. The two combine their effect in eveiyobsen'atioD, in
every discourse.^
As much as we take the lead in inquiry, then so too are we led by what we are inquiring
into. Experience is bi-directional. Subject-object: object-subject. Tme sympathetic observation
results in the recapitulation in our summary imagination of the originating principle. The object
becomes for us as it is in itself. In this way the object "belongs" to us as much as we. in
communion, belong with it. Our natural correlation is thereby reestablished, the Cartesian
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subjective reduction of experience is offset, if not re\ ersed. and a kind of renewed originaiin* is
returned to human experience, widening and opening our puniew®'. whereby we might be
thought once again to come "face to face" with nature. Our ancient right is restored.
6. The Original World:
"...the sublime tranquilit\' which surrounds us
when we stand in the solitude and silence of nature.
vast and eloquent."
"A living thing cannot be measured
b>" something external to itself."" ^
This reunion of obser\ er and world—^we should sa\' union—is possible because of a
unique human facult}'—one out-rightK" denied " or at least overlooked by other modem
thinkers—but to which Goethe again and again retums our attention. As we read: "When we are
. able to sur\€y an object in every detail, grasp it carefulh^ and reproduce it in the mind's eye. we
can say we have an intuitive perception of it in the truest and highest sense." This capacit>- for
"concrete imagination" or summary "intuition" (intuitive perception, Anschauung) is our
faculty for e.xperiential wholes wherein the acti\ ely unii} ing principles at work in the world
manifest themselves. (Deny it and we haNe no wholes). They are not deduced, inferred, or
synthesized. We do not ha\ e to go be\ ond or behind *the phenomena to see these at work. These
are made known to us at the level of our primary e.xperience. We "see" them.
There's a famous story: At. a meeting of the Society' for Scientific Research in Jena there
was a 'Tortunate encounter" between Goethe and the poet Friedrich Schiller—^whose poetry at the
time Goethe thought too romantic, too subjective. Goethe sought to explain to him his own
attempt to articulate such a principle whereb\" the natural plenitude of plant life might be
accounted for. His "idea" was. he admits, ''the strangest creature in the world**'^ wherein the
whole range of plant formation might be seen as "stemming" or "derived'* from an aboriginal
form that was in this regard the formal progenitor of the whole kingdom. Goethe named this the
Urpflanze^y the original ororiginary plant. ^
Schiller's first response to this suggestion reflected his philosophical background, in
particular his indebtedness to Kant. "This is not an obser\ ation from experience." he said. "This
is an idea.
"
Schiller could not see what Goethe claimed he scnw He was disinclined—^as we
ma\' be—^to grant that this was an\*thing but a "regulative idea" constructed b\" reason to help it
organize its experience, not a principle at work in the world organizing the phenomenal arra\" of
plant forms. It was mereh* an idea, merely "subjective." For him and for Kant, it couldn't be
anything more, as in their \ iew phenomena are themseh es constituted b>' consciousness and are
thus not things in themselves.
Convinced, rather, that he had identified the objective generative source of all plant
forms. Goethe replied: "Then 1 may rejoice that I ha\ e ideas without knowing iL and can even
see them with my own eyes,"* For Goethe, perception and reason, as moments of a natural
process, are not disparate faculties, but continuous. Thus this, and all other ITr-phenomena.
immanent and at work throughout our experience, are real and hence must be available to us on
the primary level of common human understanding ^. He wonders: "Why should it not also hold
true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of etemalK" creative nature we
may become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?" He thus insisted that he
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could see with his eyes something to which others seern to have become blind. ^ (Despite this
ftindamental difference, the two became close friends.)
But more needs to be said about this "strangest" of all creatures that holds, in Goethe's
words, "the secret of the creation and organization of plants" (or any family of phenomena). As
we mentioned earlier. Goethe's interests were vast and not restricted to botany; he also did
research in osteology" or bone formation. Indeed it was Goethe who discovered the role of the
intermaxillaiy- bone, the missing link that alIo\\ed zoologists to connect man and ape
anatomicalK'. In a passage from his work On Morphology, we see most clearly the point of
origination of his thinking concerning £^r-phenomena:
The distinction between man and animal long eluded discovery. Ultimately it was
belie\ ed that the definiti% e difference between ape and man la\' in the placement
of the ape's four incisors in a bone clearly and physically separate from other
bones. [Goethe provides the link.]... Meanwhile I had devoted my fiill energies to
the stud}' of osteolog}'. for in the skeleton the unmistakable character of ever}'
form is preserved conclusively and for all time.
The developmental history of an organism is not past; rather the history of successive
generational transformations is preser\ed and encapsulated in the fullness of any present form.
Just as osteogeny can now be seen to recapitulate ph} logen}'. so more generally can any such
morphological account. This "pregnanc}"^' of the present form allows of a new kind of
thinking to uncover the C/r-principle at work, a re\"erse thinking that ''traces the phenomena
[back] to their [empirical] origins.''®" (This is the first methodological principle of the new
science of morpholog}'").
In another context he reflects on this Ur-principle. now also called an "archetype:" •\..
an anatomical archet}pe will be suggested here, a general picture containing the forms of all
animals as potential [2x], one which will guide us to an orderly description of each animal.'"®^
The £/r-principle is thus a kind of omni-potential in conversation with its environment and out
of which the whole pohmorphic metamorphosis issues. "All is leaf" As such these are not
ideas in the usual sense of Plato or KanL neither separate nor abstract. Rather the}' are like ideas
in enabling us to give an account of the unify ing principles at the origin of the plenitude. They
are like ideas, as well, in that they might ser\'e as a kind of "formula" providing a way to
generate new forms—if only in imagination.®' (The "deri\'ation®^' is not ofhypothetical but real
possibilities.) Though they are more like the eidos in Aristotle, an active principle embodying
the manifold fruitfulness of nature, here ho\N'ever "the secret of the creation and organization"
ofthe family of forms. (He sometimes called itentelechy} )
Thus whatever the family of phenomena—^botany, osteolog'. geology, meteorology,
color—C/r-phenomena emerge. We come to see the unify ing principle, the spirit 'That dictates
the role of e\'er}' part and restrains or sanctions all excess through immanent law." From this
"empirical summit.®®" all things can be seen as unified. Thus we have order out of chaos®',
integration where we might otherwise have discontinuity. The plenitude is comprehended.
Therefore when you pick up Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants to read, or any of his
other writings on nature, do not close yourseh es off when hearing its foreign language, rather
attempt to hear its new \'oice and direction for the understanding of nature, "the element in
which we live." Whether, indeed. Goethe has bequeathed us afi uirfidpath by means of which
I
^
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our ancient right might be restored or whether it is but a false porta. is for each of us to
determine for ourselves.
7. Against Self-knowledge:
"Eveiything that liberates our mind
without at the same time impartina
self-control is pernicious
Where are we. then, in the midst of all this? Is there a lesson to be learned about
ourselves from this "other \\ ay of studying nature"? As we'\'e seen there are two unities that are
reestablished by Goethe's wa}- of thinking: there's the unit}' of wholes that had been fragmented,
and the unit}' of obsen er and world that had been alienated. Let us think more about the latter.
This unit}" of obsen er and world means that, like any organism, man cannot be known,
nor know himself, apart from his world—his environment— which sustains him and of which he
is an integral part. Given the polarized, inauthentic. and diminished sense of self that is the
consequence of the di\ orce of the "ego'* from its world in modem thought, it is understandable,
then, that to Goethe "no one knows himself an}' longer." This led him to his famous—if at first
shocking—remark concerning the Delphic oracle: "I mustadmit.'" he said, 'ihat I have long been
suspicious of the great and important sounding task: 'know-thyself.' This has always seemed to
me a deception practiced b}' a secret order of priests who wished to confuse humanity with
impossible demands, to divert attention from acti>it}' in the outer world to some false inner
speculation.*'" Self-knowledge—or what we take to be such—can be misleading, indeed
disabling.
But how can we make it truthful...and enabling? As we would expect, for Goethe the
success of our efforts to know ourselves depends on the degree to which we are willing to extend
ourselves be}ond ourselves. "Man is b}' all his senses and efforts directed to externals—to the
world around him....'"'* he stresses, and thus "the human being knows himself only insofar as
he knows the world: he percei\ es the world onl} in himself and himself only in the world."'"
This brings to mind his earlier obser\'ation: "WTioe\'er descends deep down into himself will
always realize he is only half a being:" this thought was then completed with 'iet him find ...a
world....and he will become whole."" In short, that we might be drawn out of our overly selfpolarized existence, we need to reestablish ourselves once again as "worldly beings, full}" engaged
with and in our natural correlate "the outer w orld."
Thus he answers the question "How can we learn self-knowledge?" in this wa}": ""'"Never
by taking thought but rather by action."'" [2x] This reph' should not surprise us. for itwas our
history that our very attempts to thwk about ourseKes and the world brought us to this unnatural
polarization. Thus it is •'acti^'it}' in the outer world" alone that is necessary" to restore a balanced
polarit}'and healthy equilibrium. We see this in Goethe's own ''objective activit} :"
Without my attempts in natural science, [he said] I should never have learned
to know mankind [including himself] as it is. In nothing else can we so closely
approach pure contemplation and thought, so closeh' observ e errors of the sense
and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character. All is more or
less pliant and wavering...but nature understands no jesting; she is always true.
alwa}'s serious: alwa}'s severe... the errors and faults are alwa}'s those of man.
The man incapable of appreciating her. she despises: and only to the apt. the pure
and the true, does she resisn herself and res eal her secrets.'^
�David Lawrence Levine
Page 12
"At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude"
FridayNight Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
Here we see Goethe learning lessons from nature that once were thought the fruit of introspection
and the stud\' of the human sciences. The book of nature, as other texts, can serve as an occasion
for self-reflection. 'The apt. the pure, and the true'* learn about themselves and other human
beinas as the\ self-criticalK" open themseh es up to new fields and methods. The earlier passage.
"For"almost a centuiy now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds ofmen engaged
in them:" comes to mind. It is followed b>-: "it is a real piece of good fortune that nature
inter>'ened. drew the essence of the humanities to itself and opened to us the way to a true
humanitarianism from its side."^" The stud>- of nature can thus be a liberatingstudy, freeing us
from the burden of blinding conceptions and enabling us to return to our original worldliness
wherein we. once asain. can open oursel\"es to our fullest possibilities. In this wa\. the study of
nature is properly a liberal art.
8. The Grand Attempt:
"Where do we meet an original naturel
Where is the man with strength to be true,
and to show himselfas he is?"'®
FinalK". certain questions emerged earlier about our modem way of life. How are we,
given the ^'demands of an exorbitant present,*" not to get ""caught up" in the whirl of our
times and to reclaim a sense of productive leisured For Goethe the answer is ...nature, whose
rhythms, it was once thought, could not be accelerated, and through our study of which
intimations of timeless self-sameness might prove a refuge and shape our own being in the world.
How are we to regain afooting ""where everything is in flux of continual change"? Here too.
the answer for Goethe is nature, our home world, whose inherent lawfulness, as evidenced in the
unities of life forms, can thus provide a secure base upon which to take our next steps. How are
we to know ourselves more completely? Nature is especially needed here to offset our tendency^
to over self-involvement and to return us to our original fullness of being. And how are we to
educate ourselves more truthfully? Since modem education only brought us, in Goethe's view,
to become "blind with seeing eyes." he sought in nature a complement—not to mention an
antidote—^whose truthfulness would bring us "to see with seeing eyes" that fullness of view,
perspective and measure that is the proper fmit of serious study. Our question: can our own
sustained reflection on these questions, beginning with freshman laboratory, lead to lessons such
as these as well?"
B\ way of conclusion I would like to quote Nietzsche one last time. Toward the end of
his life (1889). he himselftried to capture in one of his aphorisms "the European event" that was
Goethe. This distillation lis es up to his well-known boast that he "wrote whole books in one
sentence.""''® though in this case he is somewhat more loquacious, for it took him a whole
paragraph to epitomize this extraordinary life:
Goethe - not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome
the eighteenth century through a retum to nature, through a going-z/p to the
naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-ov ercoming on the part of that
century. - He bore within him its strongest instincts: sentimentality, natureidolatiy. the anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionaiy.... He
called to his aid history, the natural sciences, antiquity , likewise Spinoza, above
all practical activity; he surrounded himself with nothing but closed horizons;
he did not sever himself from life, [rather] he placed himself within it [that
is, ""at the very center of the plenitude"]; nothing could discourage him and he
took as much as possible upon himself, above himself, within himself. What he
^
�David Lawrence Le\ ine
''At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*'
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Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29,2003
14x
aspired to was rotaliry: he stro\ e against separation of reason, sensualit}'. feeling,
will (—preached in the most horrible scholasticism b> Kant, the antipode of
Goethe): he disciplined himself to the whole, he created himself...Goethe was,
in an epoch disposed to the unreal, a convinced realist: ...Goethe conceived of a
strong, highly cultured human being, skilled in all physical accomplishments,
who, keeping himself in check and having re\ erence for himself, dares to allow
himself the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, [one] who is strong
enough for this freedom .... A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the
universe with a jojful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is
separate and indi\idual ma>' be rejected, that in the totalit>- everything is
redeemed and affirmed - he no longer denies ... But such a faith is the highest
of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name [...] Dionysus.—
Those who've read more wideK" in Nietzsche will recognize this last act of baptism as
extraordinary: there is no higher, nor deeper, nor more original mode of being for Nietzsche
than this aboriginal and creative life force that he identifies in the person of Goethe: 1) this rare
independence from it's times. 2) this extraordinary, if circumspect, positivity, 3) this unlimited
and deep interest in all things. 4) this secure groundedness in practical, concrete reality-, 5) this
insistence on our original, primary experience. 6) this noble distance from suffering, 7) this
incomparable sense of measure, and of course 8) this Olympian courage. If not Dionysus, then
what name or word would be appropriate?
Goethe and Nietzsche saw that we modems ha\e a hard choice before us: between
disaffection and engagement, between c\nicism'*'" and wonder. Goethe somehow was able to
affirm life, to sav YESl'*^*
So we ask you tonight to consider this figure, how he might move you to "discipline
yourselves to the whole" and summon the natural fecundity of your inherence.
.\nd we ask you tonight "to place yourselves within life." to seek out what is primary
and original and. daring to speak the language ofdisco\'ery. to speak "poetically.'^"
And we ask you tonight to "make time" for thoughtfulness. that you transform the
mundane with thejo> s of daily discos eiy. that\ our life be rich and yourdays notordinary ones.
One last comment: Eckermann observed that even until Goethe's last da>'S (that is. into
his 83"^ year), he was continually learning. May this be so for you as well.
Thank vou.
�David Lawrence Levine
".4r the Very Center ofthe Plenitude"
Page 14
Fridav Nidit Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
14.\
Endnotes
'
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. .Maxim and Reflections. = 337: also 664 [hereafter MR]. Given as the annual
Fridav niaht Dean's Lecture' to open the 37'" academic year at St. John's College. Santa Fe. See MR = 864. This talk
is a further development of work begun in 1966 (see Levine. "The Political Philosophy of Sature. .4 Preface to
Goethe s Human Sciences." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. XL 1986. pp. 163-178). It was Thomas McDonald
who introduced me to the work of Eric Heller and Karl Lowith. and all three who introduced me to the depth of
Goethe's thinking: m\ debt to them continues. For the ambiguiiv' and greatness of Goethe's "grand anempt." see
Johann Petet Eckermann. Conversations with Goethe, translated by John Oxenford. London. 1951 [1850]. [hereafter
ECK]. October.20.1828. .As alwa>s my deep gratitude to Jacqueline Levine and John Comell for their thoughtful
suggestions.
I
"
Nietzsche. Twilight ofthe Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, translated by R.J. Holilingdale.
1968 [1889]. = 49. p. 102[hereafterTl\.
•'
.Martin Heidegger. "On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in .Aristotle's Physics B. 1." Pathmarks,
Cambridge. 1998. p. 183 [hereafter Phusis].
"
.Analysis and Synthesis [hereafter .AS], in Goethe. Scientific Studies, vol. 12. edited and translated b\-
Doualas Miller. The Colleaed ff'orks. Princeton. 1995. p. 48 [hereafter SS]. The publication of this collection of
Goethe's disparate scientific workshas provided a new occasion for further reflection about his"grand anempL"
•
Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Goethe, or the Writer." Representative Men. New York. 1995 [1850]. p. 195.
^
ECK Januaiy 4. 1824. May2. 1824. Februaiy 18and 19. 1829.
ECK Februaix 26. 1824: also .MR = 662.
'
ECK March 1. 1830.
'
Outline of a Theory of Color [hereafter OTC]. SS. = 743 see also note 21.
10
Nietzsche. "The Wanderer and His Shadow. " Human at! too Hunum, A Bookfor Free Spirits, translated by
R. J. Hollingdate. Cambridge. 1986. Vol. II. Pt II = 109. p. 336
Lener to Zelier. June 7. 1825: in Ldwith. Karl. "The Historical Background of European Xihilisin." "The
Fate of Progress." .Mature, History, and Existentialisnu and Other Essays in the Philosophy of History'. E\anston.
1966. pp. 4. 156-7: Front Hegel to Sietzsche. the Revolution in Sineteenth Century Thought. New YorL 1964. pp.
27-8. 177-181 [hereafterHN): also MR = 480.
i
MR =474.
•
MR = 479.
'•*
.MR = 770.
HN p. 226.
The EnterpriseJustified. On Morphology. SS. p. 61.
The ego or modem selfis doubtful of all but bare existence, where even the e.xiemaliiv . the worldness of the
world, is in question.
Foran interesting reflection on the problem of the subject-object polaritv . see Heidegger. Phusis. p.188.
.A modem ironv: man is least at home in a world of his own conception.
�David Lawrence Levine
Page 15
the Very Center of the Plenitude"
Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
14x
ECK September 24. 1827.
ECK September 18. 1823. Bj-contrast, all of Goethe's poetn* was insistently "occasional." that is objecti\ ely
motivated: "The world is so great and rich, and life so full of \ ariet>*. that \ou can ne\er want for occasions for poems.
But the\ must be occasioned [poems] [Geiegenheitsgediche]: that is to sa\. realin- {lVirklichkeif\ must give both
impulse and material. .A panicular even becomes universal and poetic by the veiy circumstance that it is treated bv- a
poet. .All mv poems are occasioned poems, suggested bv- real life, and having therein a firm foundation." ,A radicalh
different orientation and tone is apparent here. See also January 29. 1826. MR ^ 337.393. 119.
"
MR = 935.
ECK Januarv- 29. 1826: also .MR =1119.
ECK .May18.24.
-
ECKJanuaiv 29. 1826.
MR = 1031: ECK .Mav 2.1829.
.A comparison wiih Nietzsche is appropriate here.
ECK March. 14. 1830; also December 21. 1831: ITP p. 39.
29
ECK .April 14. 1824: also 77je Cement Prefaced. On Morphology. SS. p. 67. and HN pp. 6-7.
On the Parts of.Animals, l.v. 645al6. 19-27.
Fortunate Encounter [hereafter FE], SS. p. 18.
"The Germans." Goethe notes, "have a word for the complex of existence present in the physical organism.
Gestalt [or structured form]...[whereby] an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in character. But if we
look at all these Gestalten [all these forms], especiallv- organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is
permanent nothing is at rest or defined—everything is in flux of continual motion. This is why the Germans
fi-equentlv- and fininglv- make use of [another] wordBildung[formation] to describe [both] the end product and what is
in process of production as well." The PurposeSet Forth. On .Morphology. SS. p. 63.
Significant Help Given by an Ittgenious Turn ofPhrase [hereafter ITP]. SS. p. 40.
See CP p. 69: also Eric Heller. "Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth." The Disinherited Mind. New York.
1959.p. 10 [hereafter Heller].
*'
Metamorphosis ofPlant [hereafter MoP]. SS. ^ 60.67.
MoP. p. 76.
OTC - 743.
ECK. .Mav- 18. 1824: also January 17. 1830.
This is the "modem cave." We may not be disposed at first to include the philosophers among the "opinion
makers" parading above and behind the chained onlookers in Plato's cave {Republic VII). But they are word smiths
and as such we are indebted to them for our language and lenses as well: see also Hegel. "Preface." Phenomenology of
Spirit, translated bv .A. \'. Miller. Oxford. 1977. =33. pp. 19-20: "In modem time the individual finds the abstract ready
made.... Hence the task nowadays consists...in freeing determinate thoughts from their fixity so as to give actuality to
the universal and impart to it spiritual life. "
�Da\ id Lawrence LeN ine
Page 16
'\4t the Ven' Center ofthe Plenitude*"
Frida\- Niaht Dean's Lecture. Auaust 29. 2003
14x
r^
MR = 1364.
Lucreiius. On the yantre of Things. II.
•*"
"These anempts at division also produce many adverse effects when carried to an e.\ireme. To besure, what
is ali\e can be dissected into its component parts, but from these pans it will be impossible to restore it and bring it
back to life" (PSF p. 63). The natural plenitude is now compounded exponentially by the anahiical dissolution or
decomposition of wholes; cp. Heidegger's characterization: the original "atomic bomb" is to be found here in our
modem analuical disassociation or explosion of all things into bits, pans and panicles {"The Thing." Poetry,
Language, Thought, ed. byHofstadter. New Tork. 1971, p. 170).
.And thus the diminished realii>- of those who think that a home is bricks and monar. and humans their
chemical makeup.
~
Rene Descanes. Meditations on First Philosophy. 11. .AT pp. 19-34. How someone could e\en think this is
wonh fiinher thought.
.A. science that had given up trying to e.\plain our e.\perience was simply incomprehensive—not to mention
infuriating—^to one so firmly rooted in theactual ("at the very center of the plenitude"). The Extent to ff'Ttich the Idea
'Beauty Is Petfection in Combination with Freedom' May be .Applied to Living Organisms, SS 22: also ECK
September 2. 1830: see also Goethe's longstanding debate with the Newtonian school and their tendenc\ to substitute
secondaiyfor primary phenomena: OTC = 176. 718.
TheEnterprise Justified. On .Morphology, SS p. 61.
In this regard one might want to compare Goethe and Nietzsche's respective anempts to "sta\e off the
nihilistic consequences of modem science" (Levine. .4 World ofWoridless Truths, .An Invitation to Philosophy).
4S
OTC= 158.
.AOS p. 48.
ECK September2. 1830:also Heller, p. 16.
MR = 430: gemeine Menschen verstand (not "common sense"): cf. Empirical Observation and Science,
[hereafter EOSJ. SS p. 25.
""
Naively
Levine. "The .Antinomy and Irs Political Resolution." The Political Philosophy of.\ature. pp.
170-172.
.MR = 664: also ECK January 29. 1826: "People alwa\s talk of the study of the ancients: but what does that
mean, except that it sa\s. turn your attention to the real world....": see also OTC = 358. Yet as we shall see Goethe is
not an ancient but seeks to car\e out a middle position between ancient and modem science. While there is deep
asreement with .Aristotle about ourexperience of nature in terms of wholes, there isdisagreement aboutwhat is eternal.
In making form eternal. .Aristotle, hesaid, was prone to "precipitousness" (....) By contrast forhim it is theprocess, not
the form, which abides. "E\erything is in flux of continual motion." Goethe has sought to establish hisown "theory of
relativity. a relational and immanent measure, amidst the ever-changing" (Levine. The Political Philosophy ofSature.
p. 174)."
*•'
"There is no worse mistake in ph\ sics or an\ science than to treat secondary things as basic and...to seek an
explanation for the basic things in secondary ones" (OTC = 718). It'sas ifwe were "toenter a palace b>" the side door
and thereafter base our description of the whole on our firsL one-sided impression {General Observation [hereafter
GO], SS. p. 42 and OTC p. 160): also. = 177. 716 and its application tothe "grievous" Newtonian error at= 176.
"
See Heidegger. Phusis: "The act ofself-unfolding emergence isinherenth" a going-back-into-itself. This kind
ofbecoming present isphusis. But it must not be thought ofas a kind of built-in 'motor* that drives something nor as
an oraanizer" on hand somewhere, directing the thing. Nonetheless, we might be tempted to fall back on the notion
that p/»;iv(-detemiined being could be a kind that makes themselves. So easiK' and spontaneoush' does this idea suggest
�David Lawrence Le\'ine
"/4/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'^
Frida}' Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
Page 17
14x
itself that it has become normative for the interpretation of li\ ing nature in particular, a living being has been
understood as an "organism." No doubt a good deal of time has yet to pass before we learn to see that the idea of
organism' and of the 'organic' is a purel> modem, mechanistic teleological concept according to which "growing
things' are interpreted as ariijbcis that make themselves. E\en the word and concept "plant' takes what grows as
something "planted." something sown and cultivated (p. 195)" and "But is notphusis then misunderstood as some son
of self-makingartifacti Or is this not a misunderstanding at all but the onl\ possible interpretation of phusis. nameh. as
a kind of technel This almost seems to be the case, because modem metaphysics, in the impressive terms of ...Kanu
conceives of "nature" as a "technique" such that this "technique" that constitutes the essence of nature pro\ ides the
metaphysical ground for the possibilii>. or eN en the necessit>-. of subjecting and mastering nature through machine
technology (p. 220)."
56
GO p. 42.
ECK. May 12. 1825; also .AS p. 48.
58
ECK .April II. 1827.
59
FE p. 20.
60
The Influence of.Modern Philosophy, (hereafter IMP], SS p. 28.
MoP = 77.
62
.MoP = 84.
o r e = 175.
64
EOS p.25.
OTC = 665. There are times when Goethe seems to anticipate Husserl's phenomenological approach, in
panicular in The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject [hereafter EMOS]. p. 16. and LALO p. 22.
where the rigor and thoroughness of something like "eidetic variation" seems to be proposed. The question is li\ ing
form: ""...We cannot find enough points of view nor develop ourselves enough organs of perception to avoid killing it
when we anahze it" that is. multiple adumbrations may give us a kind of whole but at the risk of rendering the
outcome a "mental composition' (as in Kant). It would be interesting to see how Husserl and Heidegger treat life in its
original vitality. See also OTC = 166.
^
Preface. OTC p. 159. We'\ e taken the liberty to add the specification "modem scientific" to abstraction.
Throughout his OTC Goethe addresses the problems of scientific cognition and its tendency to excessive abstraction
(== 310. 716. 754.and p. 162). ForGoethe, as for Hegel, this tendency is consequential and reckless. See note52.
EOS. SS p. 25.
68
Polarity. SS p. 155: OTC = 175: Lenerto Herder. .May 17. 1778 (in Heller, p. 10).
OTC = 732 (""expanded empiricism").
On Granite. SS. p. 132.
.4 Study Based on Spinoza, SS. p. 8.
Despite Kant's denial of such a human faculty in his Critique of Teleological Judgment. Goethe found a
window ofopponunity. He wrote that Kant had "... a roguishly ironic way of working: at times heseemed determined
to put the narrowest limit on our ability to know things, and at times, with a casual gesture, he pointed beyond the
limits he himself had set." The passage in Kant that Goethe alludes to reads thus: "He can...think [of a kind of]
understanding which [unlike our discursive one is}... intuitive, [and] proceeds from the synthetical-universal tthe
intuition of the whole as suclu to theparticular, i.e. from the whole to theparts.... It is here notat all requisite toprove
that such an iniellecius archerypous is possible, but only that ue are led to the idea of it—which too contains no
�Da\ id Lawrence Le\ ine
"'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude"
Friday Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
Page 18
14x
contradiction—in contrast to our discursive understanding, which has need of'images finiellectus ect}pust and to the
contingenc}- of'its constitution." However. Goethe then drew the opposite conclusion: "Whyshould it not also hold
true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become
worthy of participating spirituallyin its creative process?." he wonders. "Impelled from thestart byan inner need. I
had stri\ en unconsciously and incessantl>' toward primal image and prototype, and had even succeeded in building up a
method of representing it which conformed to nature. Thus there was nothing ftinher to prevent me from boldly
embarking on this "adventure of reason" (as the sage of Ronigsberg himself called it)." Judgment through Intuitive
Perception [hereafter JIP]. SS pp. 31-2: also E.MOS. pp. 11-17. Contrast Kant's "aesthetic normal idea" Critique of
Aesthetic Judgment, § 17.
OTC = 177.
Lener to Herder. .Ma\ 17. 1787:"...1 am ver> close to discovering the secret of the creation and organization
of plants....The crucial point from which evetyihing else must needs spring.... The i'rpflanze is to be the strangest
creature in the world.... .After this model [visual formula] it will be possible to in\ ent plants ad infininim. which will all
be consistent...would possess an inner truth and necessity . .And the same law will be applicable to every thing alive
(Heller, p. 10). .Also OTC ? 175. Polarity p. 155.
"•
Vrpflanze is often translated as"symbolic plant." While this rendering might behelpful if we keep a strictK"
Goethean notion of symbol in mind (as in MR = 314). this translation more often misdirects us if it suggests to the
reader either a mental abstraction or a literaiy device. Rather it seeks to embody the manifold fruitfiilness of nature "in
potential" (Outline for a General Introduaion to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with Osteology [hereafter
GIC.A]. SS. p. 118).
".All is leaf." .MoP =119: OTC = 120.
Fortunate Encounter [hereafterFE], SS. p.20: ECK No\"ember 14. 1823.
^
Leners to Schiller. Februaiy 10. 14. 1787 (in Heller p. 20).
Hegel too—who other\vise was well disposed to Goethe's project, indeed helped Goethe see how it fit into
the larger scheme of the development of ideas—Hegel too nevenheless failed to see the i'rpflanze as anjthing but an
abstracted archet> pe(See Hegel, The Letters, translated b> Butler and Seller. Indiana. 1984. pp. 681-711: HN. p. 11).
^
CP, SS. pp. 68-9. .And we read in the .Metamorphosis of Plants of the cal\-x that it "...betrays its
composite origins in itsmore or less deep incisions or divisions.
ITPp.41.
OTC p. 166. This ma\ sound like "deconstruction." yet we would have to consider whether it represents a
true break with anaKiical thinking, as Goethe seeks to do here.
CP. SS p. 69. Just as it led to his "discovering" the Ur-principle of the plant kingdom, so Goethe is led in
his other studies to "postulate" one for the mammal famih': "In the process 1 was soon obliged to postulate a
prototype against which all mammals could be compared asto points of agreement and divergence. .As I had earlier
sought out the archet>pal plant 1now aspired to find the archet> pal animal: in essence the concept or idea of the
animal."
S4
GIC.A p. 118.
Letter to Herder. .Vlay 17. 1787; OTC = 175:Polarity p. 155.
86
ITP p. 41 ("...m> wholemethod relies on derivation....").
.Aristotle's eidos is not subject to metamorphosis. On the other side, in Darwin the metamorphosis of form is
not an unfolding of immanent form but the haphazard "evolution of species" and creati\e adaptation on the pan of
activ e wholes becomes ""random selection." See note 51. My thanks again to John Cornell for his helping me think this
through.
i,—^
f
>
�David Lawrence Levine
"At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude''
Page 19
Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003
ss
I4x
OTC = 720.
OTC = 109.
90
MR = 504.
ITP p. 39. .Also "if we take the significant dictum 'know rhyself and consider it. u-e niitsm'r interpret itfrom
an ascetical standpoint. It does not b>' an> means signifi" the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our modem
hjpochondriacs. humorists, and 'Heatttotimontmens' [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to
yourself, watch what you are doing so that \ ou come to realize who \ ou stand vis-a-ris your fellows and the world in
general. This needs no psychological self-torture'. an\-capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice and
of the greatest practical advantage to everyone I.MR = 657)." He objects only to those isolating tendencies of the
subjective sciences and psychologies thatare heirto the fateful alienation, if notdivorce, of the egofrom theworld.
ECK.April 10. 1829: OTC#
.
ITP p. 39. See also Goethe's ad\ ice to the \ oung Schopenhauer (
).
MR = 935: the whole passage reads"...let him find a girl or a world, no matter which, and he will become
whole." This is t>pical (see Eric Heller. "Goethe in Marienbad." ThePoet's Self and ThePoem. London. 1976).
MR # 442 ("Try to do \our dut\- and \ou'll soon disco\er what \ou're like."): also #= 770. 935: ECK
Januar\"29. 1826.
96
^
ECKFebruar\ 13. 1829.
HN p. 226: Levine. The Political Philosophy of Sature. p. 173. .Also ECK October 18. 1827: In a
conversation with Hegel about the potential tor modem sophistry of the "dialectic disease." Goethe sa\s: "Let us only
hope that these intellectual arts and de.vterities are not frequentb misused, and emplo\ edto make the false true and the
true false The study of nature preserves me from such a disease. For here we have to deal with the infinitely and
etemalb" true, which throws off as incapable e\'eryone who does not proceed purely and honestly with the treatment
and observ ation of his subject. I am also certain that man\- a dialectic disease would find a wholesome remedy in the
stud\ of nature."
^
ECK Januarv 2. 1824; also .March 12. 1828.
^
.And one lunher question: now that "nature" is at risk of being obscured b\" modem thought and being made
artificial b\ modem technological advances, can it yet serve as a point of reference any longer, not to mention a
standard?
Twilight oftheIdols, or How to Philosophize l^lth a Hanmxer [1889). = 49. pp. 102-3: cf. MR=864.
ECK January2. 1824: letterto Zelter.June 18. 1831 (in HN p. 27).
See also ECK Januaiy 24. 1825. October 12. 1825: February 1. 1827; October 18. 1827; February 12. 1827;
MR =191 and 1121. See Nietzsche. Zaraihustra
This affirmation is what Nietzsche found most admirable, indeed
he was envious of this, for it was not available to him. See Levine. Afterword: Goethe and Sietzsche. ".-I ff'orld of
Worldless Truths, .An Invitation to Philosophy."
KU
A More Intense Chemical Activityin Primordial Maner, SS, p. 137.
�
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19 pages
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"At the very center of the plenitude" : Goethe's grand attempt to overcome the 18th century, or how freshman laboratory saved Goethe from the general sickness of his age
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Transcript of a lecture given on August 29, 2003 by David Levine as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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2003-08-29
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text
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pdf
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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832.
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English
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24000772
Friday night lecture
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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18 pages
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A community of learning... in a land of Cartesians?
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Transcript of a lecture given on August 30, 2002 by David Levine as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2002-08-30
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text
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pdf
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Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859.
Descartes, René, 1596-1650.
Plato
United States -- Intellectual life
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English
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24000652
Friday night lecture
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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16 pages
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Four sides of a cube : or, why a certain question must be asked again and again
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Transcript of a lecture given on August 31, 2001 by David Levine as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2001-08-31
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text
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pdf
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Philosophy
Questions and answers
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English
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24000613
Friday night lecture
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
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16 pages
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An ennobling innocence : the founding of Socrates' Republic
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Transcript of a lecture given on August 2, 1995 by David Levine as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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1995-08-02
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text
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pdf
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Plato. Republic
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English
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24000405
Graduate Institute
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GOING FOR GOLD
Linda Wiener
St. John’s College
Santa Fe, NM 87505
The 1966 film, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, is the first of Sergio Leone’s great
Spaghetti Westerns, made in Spain, with Italian actors and American stars, this is the film that
made Clint Eastwood a star. According to Brent Kliewer of the College of Santa Fe, it is the
most recognizable film music score in history and the success of the film turned Italy’s film
industry into a spaghetti western industry for the next decade. Briefly, it is the story of three men
and their search for $200,000 in gold that belongs to none of them.
I’ve come to believe that a major focus of this film is the exploration of some of the
questions and motifs raised in Plato’s great dialogue, The Republic. Today, I want to explore
some of the parallels between these two works, and reflect on Sergio Leone’s and Plato’s views.
Plato’s Republic is an extended conversation about Justice. In Book I, this question is
asked by Socrates: “Can a gang of robbers or thieves…that set out for some unjust purpose in
common, achieve their object if they deal unjustly with each other?” Obviously, this is one of the
questions of the movie as well. This part of the conversation concludes: “They could not keep
their hands off each other if absolutely unjust, it is clear that some justice was in them and by this
justice they accomplished as much as they did.”
We are also told a few other things about justice in Book I. “Justice gives friendship and
a single mind” while “the work of injustice…is to implant hatred.” The analogy between justice
and gold is also raised in this first book. We are told that the search for justice is something more
valuable than even gold.
What and where is this justice? In Book 4, the narrator, Socrates, and his interlocutors are
looking for justice in the city and decide that maybe if they look for justice in one man, then by
analogy, they can find in in the city. The soul of man is determined to be in three parts: the
largest part are the desires (epithumos), for sex, food, alcohol, money, and luxuries. This part is
associated with the merchant class. Next is the spirited part, or fighting spirit (thumos),
associated with the military or guardians. This part is concerned with victory, glory, and honor.
The highest part is reason (nous), which is concerned with truth. Reason’s job is to guide and
order the other two parts and is associated with the wise rulers; the philosopher kings.
The three men of the title correspond to the three parts of Plato’s soul. Let’s meet them.
We are first introduced to The Ugly, played by Eli Wallach, when 3 bounty hunters, guns
blazing, burst into the place where he is eating, CLIP: BURSTING OUT The word in Greek is
aisxros, which means ugly or base. His name in the movie is Tuco, Greek for luck or chance, and
indeed he does seem to act by whim and according to the desire of the moment. This first view of
him with a turkey leg in one hand and a gun in the other tells us a lot.
Next we are introduced to The Bad, played by Lee Van Cleef, and nicknamed Angel
Eyes in a long sequence in which he tracks down the name of a man, Bill Carson, and learns that
he has a lot of gold. He kills a lot of innocent people, and also his not very nice or innocent boss.
CLIP: KILLING BOSS He is a killer, not by necessity or in the heat of the moment; he kills
with pleasure. Bad in Greek is kakon, which also means evil.
Our introduction to The Good, played by Clint Eastwood and nicknamed Blondie, is even
more protracted. We first see him killing three bounty hunter war out for the $2,000 reward for
1
�turning in Tuco. He then brings him in and collects the reward. Next we see him here: CLIP:
HANGING Notice the long list of crimes of desire for which Tuco is condemned. Turnso out
they have an interesting scam going and an interesting relationship with each other. It is worth
noting that the very title of the film THE Good, THE Bad, and THE Ugly has strong Platonic
resonances.
The foiled hanging is followed by an important scene. CLIP: DIVIDE MONEY Here,
one of the main dicta of the proper relationship between the parts of the soul is violated. It is
important to Plato that the desires take orders from the reason, and not the other way around and
also that each part get its proper share. Here, the desires want more than their share.
The next time they do their scam, The Good almost misses his shot and then splits their
partnership: CLIP: LEFT IN DESERT Kalos means good or beautiful in Greek. How is this
Good? I asked myself this and realized that Plato had the answer and that this film was about his
answer. The answer I got from Plato was this: The epithumos, or desires, really always has a
rope around its neck. The headlong rush of the desires toward their goal mean they often lead to
the noose and even more, need a noose around the neck in order to be controlled at all. The Good
is doing good here, though it may not seem so. But, really how could an outlaw and a killer be
Good (capital G)? That is a question I want to defer until later. The Good, as reason, does
contrast considerably with The Ugly. He is consistently soft spoken and dispassionate compared
with the rambunctious enthusiasms and anger of Tuco. He is also, like Plato’s Good, rather
abstract in that he has no real name and no family or history that we hear of.
Meanwhile, in his own brutal way, Angel Eyes tracks Carson and Tuco tracks Blondie.
When Tuco tries to switch roles by hanging The Good, it doesn’t work. Then Tuco tries to get
revenge by forcing The Good to walk in the desert without water. It is here that things really get
rolling.
At the fatal moment when Tuco is about to shoot Blondie, a runaway coach comes by. It
is here we meet the man The Bad was seeking at the beginning, the one who knows where the
gold is buried, Bill Carson. Carson tells Tuco the name of the graveyard, but when Carson sends
Tuco to get some water, it is Blondie who is told the name on the grave. Carson dies, and
suddenly: CLIP: DON’T DIE We can see they need each other because neither has enough
information to get the gold alone.
Gold, in the Republic is constantly used as the material metaphor for The Good, which is
the object of philosophical desire. Another symbol is the sun, by the bright light of which truth is
seen. It is an almost constant presence in this movie. Leone suggest that it may be these outlaws,
outside of the city, who have more understanding of things as they really are and who can find
the gold. The caves where people are deluded by shadows and showmen in this movie are The
Church, the saloon, family homes, and military barracks.
The Church is a presence. Tuco is very superstitious and crosses himself when he sees a
dead body or kills someone. However, though the monks in the movie are kind and care for the
wounded and sick, they are not necessarily closer to truth. Here we see Tuco with his brother:
CLIP: MONASTERY.
The civil war has been a constant presence in the movie, leaving bombed out towns and
wounded soldiers in its wake. Socrates, in Book IV tells about the important role the guardians
play in the city. But, he says, “if the guardians are no good they ruin the whole city…and all are
unhappy.” Now we move into the military world as our two heroes are captured: CLIP: GREY
TO BLUE. We see that there is not a good and bad side in the war, all warriors are alike.
2
�We now meet The Bad again as a sergeant in the Union army; he is shown to be a brutal
and dishonest officer. He is alerted to our two heroes because Tuco has taken the name of
Carson. He has Tuco tortured until he gives the name of the cemetery in a scene too brutal for me
to want to show. However, it is important.
Plato knows that the military man is dangerous unless he has the right education and is
under the control of reason. Otherwise, as seen here, “he teams up with the desires” and turns
brutal and savage. Tuco is sent off to die and The Bad teams up with Blondie to go for the gold.
He does not torture him, and here, the spirited part shows himself, at least outwardly,
considerably more civilized in the presence of the reasoning part.
Tuco escapes and they all end up in yet another bombed out town. When Blondie hears
Tuco’s gun he knows he is there and goes to rejoin him. The Good, who had formerly deserted
The Ugly as not worthy, now goes to seek him, showing that he knows that he cannot, in fact, do
without him. Together they shoot down The Bad’s henchmen (though he escapes) and head off
together for the cemetery. They are captured again and taken to the Captain: CLIP: FIGHTING
SPIRIT. There seems to be no intrinsic fighting spirit in these men.
Here. They really see the stupidity and futility of the war of a whole people deluded by
shadows; the best of them, like the captain, can only escape through drink. Blondie remarks “I’ve
never seen so many men wasted so badly.” The supposed evil of these outlaws pales in
comparison with the institutional violence wrought by the civil war. The gold is on the other side
of the bridge over which the armies are fighting, so they blow up the bridge to get the armies to
leave and incidentally save many men. They head again for the cemetery.
Plato tells us in Book VI that the “inborn nature of those beautiful and good is
gentleness.” CLIP: DYING SOLDIER. Even when they are so close to the gold, The Good still
spares some time to comfort a dying young soldier, sharing his cigar (a symbol of friendship in
this film) and covering him with his coat. The goodness of The Good has become more apparent
to me by this time. I think The Good has learned a few things as well, symbolized (more on this
in a bit) by the changing of his duster for the poncho.
If we saw the real value of The Good in the previous scene, we see the real value of The
Ugly here: CLIP: LOOKING FOR GRAVE. Plato speaks of the need for strong desires in the
one who will become a great philosopher; we can’t imagine The Good performing this
passionate search for the grave. In fact, reason must be dragged by the desires to begin his
philosophical search at all.
The name on the grave is Arch Stanton which is Greek. Archos, first or to begin; Stanton,
a neuter participle meaning a thing which stands. The whole name means something like the first
foundation or first thing to stand on. I’m not sure what to make of this yet.
The Bad shows up, and though we have seen the three main characters in all
combinations of two in the film, this is the first time all three are together. Here we see The
Good take control of the group and demand they earn the gold which is not, it turns out, in Arch
Stanton’s grave at all. The climactic scene take place on the fields of the dead, just as Plato’s
Republic ends in the land of the dead, where souls have to choose what their subsequent life will
be. In the Platonic myth, they can choose well or badly based on their ability to think about their
past and know what is best. This is a similar moment of truth. CLIP: SHOOT OUT.
The death of Bad shows that, for Leone, we ultimately cannot live with or train the
fighting spirit as represented by The Bad. It must be eliminated. This is a significant difference
from Plato, who places high hopes in the guardian class. Tuco digs and finds gold, in the
adjoining grave, with no name on it. Just like The Good, the Gold does not belong to anyone in
3
�particular, but is there for those who search and persevere and dig. But also, Sergio Leone
suggests that the search is long and arduous.
The whole hanging motif is repeated, Blondie divides the gold in half “just like old
times.” Before we end let us go back to the question in Book I of The Republic. Can unjust men
achieve a common goal? The answer seems to be yes, but only when the group or the parts of the
soul are well ordered and under the control of reason. However, the different parts must
appreciate what they can and cannot do; The Good needs The Ugly as much as the other way
around. It turns out that Tuco was in the end worth more than $3,000. And, at least in Leone’s
view, the fighting spirit has turned into mere savageness, a destructive force for society and one
who wants all the gold for himself alone. He must be destroyed for others to live.
CLIP: SHOOTING DOWN. They split at the end, as they have split up before.
The Ugly is still his old self. But, the last scene causes me to revisit some of the earlier
conclusions. The Good seems to have learned some valuable lessons and effected a
transformation. Notice that he rides off on Tuco’s dark horse and notice also that he is wearing
the poncho he obtained from the dying young soldier. I believe this means that he rides off as a
whole human being, with all three parts of his soul. The dark horse represents the desires (as in
the chariot metaphor in The Phaedrus) and the poncho from the young soldier represents the
fighting spirit in a more innocent, uncorrupted state. We cannot live with the fighting spirit in the
form of the institutionalized violence and savagery represented by The Bad, but we cannot
simply do without such an essential part of our soul, either. The Good rides away with $100,000.
However, the benefits to him are far more than just Gold; they are a full and well-ordered soul of
a philosopher.
Remark of one of the audience members: the film shows that the life of the mind, as represented
here by Clint Eastwood, is THE coolest thing that there is in the world.
4
�BOOKMARKS
Name
Chapter
Start
Finish
Bursting Out
3
5:39
5:48
Killing Boss
6
16:36
17:27
Hanging
9
21:53
22:58
Divide Money
9
23:39
24:12
Leave in Desert
11
28:11
29:13
Don’t Die
24
1:02:09
1:02:46
Monastery
27
1:13:56
1:14:51
Blue or Grey
29
1:17:48
1:18:37
Fighting Spirit
47
1:59:10
2:00:16
Dying Soldier
55
2:17:34
2:19:17
Look for Grave
57
2:22:48
2:23:24
Shoot Out
60
2:29:21
2:32:22
Shooting Down
63
2:39:10
2:40:45
5
�
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
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5 pages
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Going for gold : Sergio Leone reads Plato in The good, the bad, and the ugly
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on July 7, 2004 by Linda Wiener as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Wiener, Linda, 1957-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2004-07-07
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text
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pdf
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Plato
Leone, Sergio, 1929-1989.
Language
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English
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24002968
Graduate Institute
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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29 pages
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The age of Chronos and the age of Zeus
Description
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Transcript of a lecture given on November 22, 2013 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Dougherty, Janet
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2013-11-22
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text
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pdf
Subject
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Plato. Statesman.
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English
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24004217
Friday night lecture
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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Plato's Statesman : useful errors, a fitting image, and the statesman's art
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Transcript of a lecture given on September 16, 2011 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Plato. Statesman.
Plato -- Contributions in political science
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English
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24004034
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The nobility of Sophocles' Antigone
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Transcript of a lecture given on October 31, 1986 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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1986-10-31
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Sophocles. Antigone.
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English
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24003733
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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Aristotle's Politics : common good and forgotten excellence
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Transcript of a lecture given on April 2, 2010 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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2010-04-02
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Aristotle. Politics.
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English
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24003867
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Cartesian certainty, or awakening from the dreams of a slave
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Transcript of a lecture given on September 15, 2006 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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2006-09-15
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Descartes, René, 1596-1650.
Plato. Meno.
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English
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24003551
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#2577
On Reading Hegel before the Age of Eighty
Lecture delivered by Janet Dougherty
October 8,2004
When I was a sophomore in college one of my professors, to whom I owea great deal,
told me he thoughtthat one ought to postponereadingHegel until aboutthe age of
eighty, presumably accepting the consequence that one mightthereby entirely escapethe
task. The breadth and power ofHegel's work, so difficult to assess or criticize, was
certainly part ofthe reason for his opinion, and perhaps he thought Hegel's philosophy
was wrong in important respects. For me, however, it was already too late. My freshman
year another professor has assigned large portions of ThePhenomenology ofSpirit and I
had, at jBrst dutifully, and then with great excitement spent many hours on it. I thought I
could see then what must constitute my life's work. I must read the philosophical works
Hegel read, study what he knew of history and science, and then return to Hegel's system
to evaluate whether he had indeed articulated the truth. Would I have thought more
freely and with greater clarity had I never been gripped by the possibility that Hegel may
have known and articulated the truth?
Later, in Prague in the spring of 1979,1 recognized a copy of one ofHegel's books next
to several by Marx in a bookstore window as I was walking with a Czech friend. My
friend, noticing my glance, instructed me "Don't look at that. That's trash." His error
was understandable. The dialectical theory ofhistory, as expounded by Marx and adopted
as the rhetoric of communism, had a great impact on his hfe and the life of his nation. It
was taught as dogma and exploited as an excuse for a tyranny imposed by the Soviet
Union. I felt deeply privileged that I had always been free to examinethese thinkers on
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�their own terms, but at the moment the freedoms I normally enjoyed were being
highlighted by many contrasts. It was important for me to seeto what effect othershad
exploitedthe theories with which I was familiar from books.
Obviously no thinker should bejudged on the basis of the effects he hashad on his
followers. Still, the political possibilities of liberalism and oftotalitarianism form part of
thecontext inwhich weread philosophical works. Moreover, political freedom and the
capacity to reoojTnize the truth are far from identical. Although this lecture isprimarily
onThe Phenomenology ofSpirit, I will say a little here about Hegel's political wntings,
inwhich he presents the modem state as thecontext oftheachievement ofhuman
freedom. My reading ofHegel belongs primarily in the context ofthegoal of our
education at St. John's College as I seeit,the goal of rendering ourminds freer and
therefore less vulnerable to succumb to the domination of prejudices of any sort. Hegel's
work directly challenges many contemporary prejudices while revealing the source of
others. I intend to illuminate in what follows some ofwhat I mean by that claim.
Hegel isvery difficult. It may even bethat finally the Phenomenology isumntelligible on
itsown, without a prior understanding ofHegel's Science ofLogic. Buthow canwenot
confront Hegel's claim to have putan end to philosophy aswe encounter it in our
freshman readings as the love of (and striving for) wisdom? If Hegel's thought is correct.
Wisdom is inprinciple available to us all (Preface, section 13). Hegel challenges one of
the premises ofthe education we offer atSt. John's College (there are ofcourse a variety
ofappropriate formulations): since none ofus, and perhaps no one at all, is inpossession
�of the truth, we must strive to speak together in such a wayas to gain greater clarity both
concerning our presuppositions and concerning thefundamental questions thatrecur in
our collective thought, demanding answers. We musttry to discern thebarriers that
hinder us intheattempt to attain a recognition ofwhat is. We must strive for such cl^ity
because everything depends upon it, everything that matters. Forwewish to be
responsible human beings, living inaccord with an honest understanding ofourselves and
oftheproblematic character ofthe world wefind ourselves living in, and recognizing one
another as similarly responsible human beings. For Hegel, these tasks are transformed by
the availability oftruth and its conformity with what is realizable concretely in the ethical
and political as well as the intellectual community ofhuman beings. The premise ofthe
community of SJC is anti-Hegelian. This fact makes reading Hegel both crucial for us
and deeply problematic, far beyond the difficulties ofnegotiating one's way through his
prose.
Allow me to cite a couple ofpassages that illustrate the grandiosity ofHegel's claims:
The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence
consummating itselfin its development. Ofthe Absolute itmust be said that it is
essentially a result that only inthe end is what ittruly is; and that precisely in this
consists its nature, viz., tobeactual, subject, the spontaneous becoming ofitself.
(Preface, 20)
We cannot know this result, the Absolute, unless it has beenachieved. In the
Introduction to the Phenomenology Hegel says:
The experience ofitselfwhich consciousness goes through can, in
accordance withitsNotion, comprehend nothing less than the entire
system ofconsciousness, orthe entire realm ofthetruth ofSpirit... In
pressing forward to its true existence, consciousness will arrive at a point
at which it gets rid ofits semblance of being burdened with something
�alien, with what is onlyfor it, and somesort of 'other', at a point where
appearance becomes identical with essence, sothat its exposition will
coincide at just this point withthe authentic Science of Spirit. Andfinally,
when consciousness itselfgraspsthis its own essence, it will signify the
nature of absolute knowledge itself. (Intro., 89)
Phenomenology ends with a section called Absolute Knowing. The passages I have
cited do more thanillustrate Hegel's confidence that theTruth, the whole, Absolute
Knowledge, can become available to the readers of his work. They also illustrate his
conviction thatthewhole is achieved by the development of spirit over time to its
completion. Inthis completion; thedistinction between subject and object, familiar
especially to readers ofKant and to grammarians ofall sorts, collapses. Absolute
Knowledge, Truth, simply is. The meaning ofthis claim isthe key to the movement of
the Phenomenology ofSpirit and to each ofits parts, including the assigned reading for
senior seminar. I will tryto cast some light onthose readings inthe course ofthis lecture.
But first a digression on the role ofhistory inilluminating the truth for human beings,
that is, on the development of consciousness overtime.
1. Background
We encounter first in Rousseau an insistence that we mustunderstand human beingsin
the light ofalterations that have occurred inour species over time. Inhis Discourse on
Inequality Rousseau presents us with the paradoxical position ofman in society: the
nature of man is obscured not only bygradual changes inour way ofbeing bu| also by
laws and conventions that shape contemporary society. But itis only through Imowledge
of nature that we can isolate the influence of law and evaluate its suitabilityto the beings
it governs:
4
�But as long as we are ignorant of natural man, it is futile for us to attempt
to determine the law he has received or what is best suited to his
constitution. All that we can see very clearlyregarding this law is that for
it to be law, not only mustthe will of himwho is obliged by it be capable
of knowing submission to it, but also, for it to be natural, it must speak
directly by the law ofnature. (Preface, Hackett, p. 35)
The paradox leads Rousseau to develop a hypothetical history of man designed to render
discernible a standard for just rule. Rousseau's Social Contract isa necessary sequel to
hisDiscourse onInequality, which ends withthis scathing attack on contemporary
inequality:
... ittbllows that moral inequality, authorized by private ri^t alone, is
contrary to natural right whenever it is notcombined inthesame
proportion with physical inequality: a distinction that is sufficient to
determine what one should think in this regard about the sortof inequality
that reigns among all civilized people, for it is obviously contrary tothe
law ofnature, however it may bedefined, for a child to command an old
man, for animbecile to lead a wise man, and for a handful ofpeople to
gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitude lacks
necessities, (p. 81)
The Social Contract begins "Iwant to inquire whether there can be some legitimate and
surerule of administration in the civil order, taking menas theyare and laws as they
might be. I will always try in this inquiry tobring together what right penmts with what
interest prescribes " There isno guarantee that such a solution can be fully achieved,
butRousseau outlines inthis workwhat would be required. Rousseau ends Book I of Ow
the Social Contract this way:
,.. instead ofdestroying natural equality, the fundamental compact, on the
contrary, substitutes a moral and legitimate equality to whatever physical
inequality nature may have been able to impose upon men, and that,
however unequal in force or intelligence they may be, men all become
equal by convention and by right.
�No less than a complete transformation ofthe human subjects and the freedom that
characterizes them must take place.
Hegel too is concerned with what I have described as the paradoxical position ofmodem
man. Unlike Rousseau, however, he sees theparadox dissolving through its spontaneous
development in the unfolding ofconsciousness. Rousseau points to ihtpei^ectibility of
natural man a term with a rather elusive meaning that refers both to theabsence ofa
static limiting nature and to the possibility ofa variety ofdevelopments. There is no
natural human whole. Hegel by contrast indicates that the course ofhuman history
correlates with the development ofspirit and culminates in aperfected state in which
human beings can combine without alienation or loss offreedom in an ordered, coherent
whole. The beginnings ofthis development are visible in the Lordship and Bondage
section ofthe Phenomenology, one ofthe most easily misunderstood passages in the
assigned readings from that book. While Rousseau sees human society as requiring the
development ofapolitical and moral freedom that completely supplants natural freedom,
Hegel understands autonomy ofmind and the political freedom ofindividuals to coincide
in principle in his time. The modem state is the concrete manifestation ofanecessary
process ofthe development ofmind or spirit. The loss ofunselfconscious nature that for
Rousseau precipitates the establishment oframpant injustice is for Hegel no loss.
Freedom is nothing if it is not rational.
The problem ofwhat itmeans to be free is more visible in Rousseau than in Hegel
precisely in that Rousseau sees no satisfactory solution for modem man; natural freedom
�is unattainable and moral or political freedom requires, to putit bluntly, submission to a
lie. (See especially Bk. n, Ch.Vn of The SocialContract.) Both Kant and Hegel were
powerfully affected by their readings ofRousseau. The solution offered byKant, to
recognize both thepower ofnatural science and the limits to human reason, along with
the moral freedom he claims any nine yearold knows by experience that she has, leaves
our desire for a comprehensive account no more satisfied than Rousseau's. We must live
intwo worlds, that defined by thelaws ofnature and that weenvision as governed bythe
moral laws. Kant gives voice openly to his own imperfect acceptai^ ofthis split in his
essays on history, inwhich he envisions a republic characterized by freedom as a
culmination ofhuman development for which there is no guarantee. Hegel's work isa
valiant attempt to unify the world as it isunderstood by modem natural science with the
freedom that he understood to characterize human beings. His solution involves the
dissolution of all paradox, all contradiction intheunity of absolute spirit. For uswho
acknowledge great difficulties ingrasping things asthey are, Hegel's work isboth
implausible and profoundly compelling. It would befoolhardy to dismiss out of
ignorance Hegel's claim that he articulated a knowledge ofthe whole. As inSocrates'
second sailing {Phaedo, 99d-100a), in considering Hegel's solution weembark onan
inquiry into things through the words ofanother human being, inparticular one who has
developed articulate speech to an extraordinary degree. We must examine Hegel's claim
thattheproper meaning ofwords is revealed inthe whole as it is manifest inthe process
represented inthe Phenomenology and that this process is a development ofthethings
themselves. Hegel's claim is that hehas brought together inresponsible, coherent speech
allthat characterizes modem, i.e., rational man. If this account founders, it is for usto
�bear witness to its defects and to continueto strive for recognition ofthings as they are.
Even more important, wemust pursue clarity about the desire for intellectual mastery that
Hegel's system exemplifies and whether it is in some way at odds with a true
understanding ofwhat is.
n. Consciousness
A. Sense-Certainty and Perception
Obviously +be pmal] po'^ion ofHegei's-corpus thatweread allows only thatwebegin, to
embark on the perhaps quixotic project I have outlined. But the beginning is crucial.
Disdaining attempts to articulate a method for reason, to define his terms orto list a set of
c criteria, Hegel begins with Sense-Certainty, theimmediate awareness ofall that our
senses convey. One of themost important observations thereader will make is that
Hegel's (inevitable) use of language here renders it impossible to grasp particulars
immediately as particular: the words 'here' and 'now,' as he points out, have no single
referent. "Here' isjust as much where I stand aswhere you sit, and the word 'now' is
similarly ambiguous. Conscious awareness may have forms thatavoid theproblem. My
son'sbearded dragon, for example, is not entirely lacking in consciousness but
presumably makes no attempt to name things and so avoids the trap Hegel describes.
When something outside him seems edible, he eats. ForHegel a merely functional sort
of consciousness is not good enough. In sense-certainty the conscious subject presumes
the existence of a substance outside itself something that one may failto grasp as it is.
Knowledge may or may not beavailable, but it is crucial that there besomething outside
of the potential knower that istrue. The universals we use illustrate the diifiiculty we
�have in knowing that we graspthe truth: language is evidently inadequate to the
experience. In recognizing this inadequacy we become aware of what it is to be a
subject, while implicitly in our speech we acknowledge notthe individuals we thought
we weretalking about, but Being in general. Hegel jokesthat this is just the divine
character of language - to reverse the meaning ofwhat is said and make it into something
else. Sense-certainty with the help of language utterly fails in the attempt to grasp
individual particulars. There is notruth in sense-certainty on its own. In the effort to get
back towhatever the potentially knowing subject attempts to grasp in sense-certainty,
consciousness becomes the perceiving consciousness, and the object of its consciousness
becomes the thing.
We are familiar with the contrastbetweensensation and perception from Anstotle: one
perceives an object through a kind ofcommon sense that relates sensations and identifies
them with a thing. Hegel would welcome the association with Anstotle who, like Hegel,
appears at least to consider the mind adequate to its object, but the language of motion
that Hegel uses inthe section onperception differentiates his treatment from anything we
read in De Anima:
Perception takes what ispresent to it asuniversal. Just asumversality is
its principle in general, the immediately self-differentiating moments
within perception are universal... With theemergence ofthe principle, the
two moments which in their appearing merely occur, also come into being:
one being the act of perceiving, the other ... the object perceived. In
essence the object is the same as the movement.... (Ill)
Hegel goes on to discuss two different accounts of thinghood, i.e., as a collection or
plurality of properties, and as the medium inwhich these properties inhere (Section 113).
Thirdly, theproperties themselves can bethought of as independent ofthething observed
�(section 115). Hegelpresentsthese not as a list ofpossibilities from whichwe can
chooseas we endeavor to understand what it is to be a thing, but as aspects (moments) of
a development:
The sensuous universality, or the immediate unity ofbeingand the
negative, is thus aproperty only whenthe Oneandthe pure umversality
are developed from it and differentiated from each other, and when the
sensuous universality unites them, it is this relation of theumversahty to
thepure essential moments which at last completes theThing. (115)
It is no accident, but rather the fundamental meaning of consciousness, that it moves from
leRS iOrtnore adequate acrounts of its object, and it is fi.indamental to the object of
perception thatwhat it is for consciousness results from thismovement. More important
eventhanthe movement through various theoretical approaches to the thing,
consciousness moves from a less to a morethorough grasp of its own role. Here, in
perception as in sense-certainty, theobject is first of all considered primary. It is "the
True and universal, the self-identical, while consciousness is alterable and unessential
..." (116). Consciousness can err. Each new account oftheobject is not merely a
superior attempt to get atthe truth ofthe thing, to correct its previous errors, but also an
opportunity for consciousness towitness its own movement (118). It comes to recognize
that"The outcome and the truth of its perception is its dissolution, or its reflection outof
the Truth into itself." This leads to the claim that "We are ... the universal medium in
which such moments are kept apart and exist each onits own" (119). Awareness ofthe
variety ofthings intheworld gives us anopportunity to be aware of therole of the
perceiving consciousness, which itselfunites thevarious moments of perception.
10
�There is not only one Thing in the world. Thingsare understood in relation and in
contrast to one another (123). The recognition of this fact could leadto a discussion of
the various species ofthings that exist in the world. It could do so ifHegel had
confidence in the significance ofthe names language givesus to differentiate things from
one another or if he posited something Uke Nature as a whole, a unit that contains a
variety of individual typesthat one canaccurately identify and name. Instead Hegel
reflects uponthe relation between universals represented in the thing and the multiplicity
ofindividuals that are supposedly one with that universality. Therejs no 'red' without a
redthing, and there are many red things, but 'red' is none ofthem. Similarly, there is no
'dragon' simply, only a variety of individuals that fall under that category. Thegap
between the word that refers to onething andthe multiplicity of individuals signals the
problematic character of sensuous universality (130). "Sound common sense" is the
faculty of mind that corresponds to the sensuous universality: it takes itself to bea solid
realistic consciousness" (131), Hegel says, but it is in fact only the play of the
abstractions of singleness and universality, essence and theunessential, for it goes back
and forth between these pairs, never resting in anunambiguous account ofthebeings it
encounters. Hegel is casting doubt onthe naive awareness of what is inthe world. There
is no simple, reliable, unphilosophical grasp of things available to us, neither forthe
naive, uneducated human being or, it turns out, forthe modem empirical scientific
inquirer whopretends to impose nothing on whathe observes (for example. Bacon).
Only philosophy "... recognizes [mental entities] as the pure essences, the absolute
elementsand powers ... [and] in doing so, recognizes them in their specific
determinateness as well, and is therefore master over them, whereas perceptual
11
�understanding [or sound common sense] takes them for the truth and is led on by them
from one error to another*' (131). The section on perception ends with an attack upon the
pretensions of common sensewhich leadsto the crudely inadequate distinction between
what is essential and what is inessential. The fancy philosophical soundingterm "inert
simple essence" turns out to correlate with so-called common sense, which cannot by
itselfmake sense ofthe stability ofthings in the world along withtheir flux and
variability. It attributes to things first one essence or ^straction, then another, and can
never.escape-tb.eJpfinite series.ofabstr.^rtion*^ .Philosophy muRt bnngthem ^o^ether,
somehow getting beyond mere abstractions to thethings themselves. The work ofthe
next section ofthe Phenomenology, onForce and the Understanding, accomplishes this
by bringing closer together the conscious subject with itsobject ofinquiry through what
Hegel calls the Notion.
B. Transition through Force and Understanding to Self-Consciousness
Autonomy, the giving ofnomoi to and for oneself^ isthe fundamental characteristic of
consciousness, despite the appearance that conscious thought must conform itselfto the
way things are, discerning and articulating laws that underlie the flux ofperceived objects
in theworld. Modem (Baconian) scientific inquiry exemplifies the systematic response
to the fear thatthought imposes nonsense ontheworld if it does not restrict itselfto the
articulation of observed relations. It radically distrusts human thought, presuming as
superior the correlation of observable facts. It would freeze thedevelopment of
consciousness before it could attain to tmth and therefore to its autonomous activity.
However productive of useful tools formanipulating the environment, this radical self-
12
�restraintis ultimatelyquite wrong-headed, in Hegel's view. It is not thereforeworthless.
Rather, it was an appropriate response to the tradition of scholasticism and an important
stagein the development of self-conscious spirit. While a certain sortof (Cartesian)
skepticism is at the root of the development of modem science, allowing the investigator
of the world to put aside his presumptions and expectations, Hegel's work exhibits and
recounts a deeper and more enduring sort of skepticism directed against each form of
consciousness as it appears, including modem scientific methodology. The road ofthe
development ofnatural consciousness can
... beregarded asthepathway of doubt or more precisely astheway of
despair this path isthe conscious insight into the untmth ofphenomenal
knowledge .... The skepticism that isdirected against the whole range of
phenomenal consciousness ... renders the Spirit forthe first time
competent to examine whattmth is. (78)
In particular, inthe section onForce and theUnderstanding, consciousness must escape
the domination ofNewtonian science with its emphasis on laws.
The laws Newton articulates areinherent in the phenomena and consciousness, putting
aside its own character, must acknowledge and articulate them. In general, modem
scientific thought integrates awide range ofphenomena by means ofa limited set oflaws
that articulate objective relationships graspable by thehuman understanding. Kant's
categories ofthe understanding, which account for the possibility ofNewtonian science,
are thrown into question and finally overcome insofar as force and law are superseded in
Hegel's account. The section entitled Force andthe Understaaiding is, then, a challenge
to Kant's system as a definitive statement ofwhat human beings can know. In it Hegel
also challenges Kant's separation between natural science on the one hand and serious
13
�thought about ethics and politics on the other. Both take on a new appearance after the
transition from consciousness to self-consciousness. The section on force and the
understanding culminates in that transition.
Before we can see how to move past the sort ofthought that characterizes modem
science, we have first to grasp its character. "ForceandUnderstanding" is a section of the
Phenomenology which we at St. John's havethe goodluckto be particularly well
.„prepared.to .appreciate. Bythe. time we.read.Hegel we. have read and studied not only
Kant but also Newton. Asa community we resist slavish obedience to any doctnne, and
so wetend to becautiously skeptical of modem science with all itsinstmctions for the
proper useofthe most important tool wehave, ourminds. Hegel would approve. He,
more that any other thinker I know, disdains the sort of scientific inquiry that substitutes
even the most thorough description ofthe stmcture ofa corpse, for example one ofour
freshman lab specimens, for a living creature. Nevertheless, before consciousness can
emerge as anappropriate interpreter oforganic substance, it must develop and through its
own intemal motion supersede the limited understanding ofthe natural world that
becomes available for criticism once common sense recognizes its failings.
Force is theconcept thatallows fortheunderstanding oftherelation between dispersed,
independent elements and theunity outofwhich they arise and into which they retum.
This retum is simply the recognition that theforce (of attraction, for example), accounts
for a variety of observed occurrences thatare unintelligible ontheir own terms (136,
137). Since there is no intelligible account of how force canactdirectly on anobject.
14
�force must be imderstood to solicit another force. Newton himself was concerned with
the unintelligibility of action at a distance (see letters cited 'mPrincipia, Vol. D, pp 634
and 636, Motte translation). The force ofgravity, for example, cannot pull a ball towards
the earth the way I can throw it with my hand. Rather, the force of attraction ofthe ball
for the earth is met with the mutual attraction ofthe earth to the ball, and with the
resistance to this attraction that results from the force with which it was thrown. The
word 'force' has meaning here only in the context ofthe motion for which it accounts.
These two Forces_ eidst asindependent essences; but their e^stence is a
'Ihdvement dfVacEto^^Hs lh^lffief," such Mat
positednessor a beingthat isposited byanother, i.e.,their beinghas reallythe
significance of a sheer vanishing.
"Force" is in fact essential onlyto the account consciousness attempts to give of the
motion.
.. .the truth of Force remains only the thoughtof it; the moments of its
actuality, their substance andtheir movement, collapse unresistingly into
anundifferentiated unity, a unitywhich is notForce driven back into itself
(...), but is its Notion qua Notion (Be^iffe). Thusthe realization of Force
is at the same time the loss of reality; in that realization it has become
something quite different, viz., this universality, which the Understanding
knows at the outset, or immediately, to be its essence and which also
proves itselfto be such in the supposed reality ofForce, in the actual
substances. (141)
Thesesubstances are evidently Kantian objects of experience. But that is not all they are.
Part of the meaning of the term 'Notion' is that movement occurs suchthat earlier
inadequate formulations givewayto something more adequate. Herethis means thatthe
observed particulars fall away in favor of an account of force on its own terms, which is
truer than any mere collectionof observed (conceptually elusive) phenomena, and the
account of force in turn is taken as a description of concrete substances as they behave in
15
�the world. The Notion or Begriffe in general is something akin to a Platoniceidos
endowed with life (see paragraph 55, Preface): far jfrom holding itself in reserve from the
flux of nature and the world, it is one with it. It appears at first as characteristic ofthought
in contrast to external reality, but that contrast is not definitive. "Consciousness ...is
explicitly the Notion of itself. Hence it is something that goes beyond limits, and since
theselimits are its own, it is something that goesbeyond itself (Intro toPhenomenology,
80). The notion ofForceprovides an alternative to the language of universal and
Withinthis inner truth, as the absolute universal which has been purged
ofthe antithesis between the universal and the individual and has become
the object of the Understanding, therenow opens up above the sensuous
world, whichis the world oiappearance, a supersensible worldwhich
henceforth is the true world ... .(section 149)
Within a few sections Hegel pronounces this supersensible world to be "appearance qua
appearance.*' Bythis phrase Hegel does not mean to collapse the supersensible world
into what is sensuously perceived, butto indicate thatthe supersensible world does not
stand oilits own; in fact, the sensuous world (insofar as it is a world) turns out to be
nothing butthethought world thatreflection upon the sensuous elicits. Just asthere is no
world devoid of sensuous characteristics, there is no world available to sensealone. For
there to be any trueunderstanding, neither world canclaim victory over the other.
Rather, the two 'worlds' must be brought together and recognized as one. Similarly, law
and that which it governs turn out to be inseparable.
I started this section of my talk(IIB) with a discussion of law, and sofar theaccount of
force has included no reference to law. Section 148 ends this way:
16
�... what there is in this universal flux is only difference as universal
difference,
This difference, as a universaldifference, is consequently
the simple element in theplay ofForce itself, and whatis true in it. It is
the law ofForce.
Further on (149) he declares
.. thesupersensible world is an inertrealm of laws ....
Hegel is aware ofthe tendency ofthe mind to unify all laws into a single, comprehensive
law (150). This tendency underlines and exacerbates the unsatisfying characteristic of
law asindifferent to that which it governs. One powerful example ofthis indifference is
the law of motion (153) which requires that time and space, ordistance and velocity, be
understood as independent ofone another inorder that they may be quantified and
related. This should remind some ofyou ofourdiscussions ofGalileo's treatment of
motion in his Two New Sciences, the Third Day, in contrast withthe Aristotelian
beginning point in which motion is something simple and immediately intelligible.
Hegel's impatience with the claim that laws reveal necessary relations (153) stems from
his criticism ofthe arbitrary distinction upon which the law is based, and anticipates later
scientific developments ofspace-time (Einstein, Minkowski). But when I use the word
*
criticism' here I do notmean to suggest that Hegel thinks the abstraction ofthese terms a
simple mistake, or even that itwas avoidable. Rather, the effort ofthe understanding to
grasp things as they are produces a division which leads to further dialectical movement
culminating, finally, infiill correspondence between knower and known. Consciousness
grasps that there must be a deeper unity behind the law ofmotion that accounts for the
relation oftheelements ofthelaw (155). It moves to a realm of its own, the
supersensible, as it attempts tobridge the gap between what isoutside ofconsciousness
and the thinking subject.
17
�The process by which the differences between subject and subsistence are overcome is
articulatedthroughout the Phenomenology ofSpirit, but one can see its character very
well here in the section on Force and the Understanding. The subject, in the form of
understanding,
... learns that it is a lawofappearance itself thatdifferences arise which
are no differences, or that what is self-same repels itselffrom itself....
And further that the differences thus created overcome themselves, ".. .what is not self
same is self-attractive." Hegel goes on to say here that
The Notion demands of the thoughtless thinkerthat he bring both laws
together [i.e,, the law of force and the law ofappearance] and become
aware of their antithesis.
I will notgointo all the details ofthecomplex ensuing movement, though for Hegel each
step is necessary and indispensable (not, I think, inevitable, but to argue that would
require a long discussion). For us tonight itwill be enough to see that the development of
the understanding produces first, a supersensible world, whose purpose isto explain the
sensible world, second an inverted world, thesecond supersensible world inwhich the
kingdom oflaws is shown to contain abstractions from a deeper unity. Hegel draws an
analogy here (158) between physical and social science, orrather points out that the same
sort ofreasoning finds its way into both:
The punishment which under thelaw ofthefirst world disgraces and
destroys a man istransformed in its inverted world into the pardon which
preserves his essential being and brings himto honor.
Ingeneral, this sort ofreasoning is first an attempt to identify causes (aitiai) or, inthe
case ofcrime, guilt, then to deal with itthrough manipulation (pumshment). In thecase
of crime one must also acknowledge theoriginally invisible intention (the second
18
�supersensible) ofthe criminal only to return to the act with the observation that "the truth
of intention is only the act itself (159). The inverted world does not substitutefor the
world of appearances but must be reconciled with it, just as a good intention does not
cancel the heinousness of one's acts. The nature ofthe act is not fully visible until the
intention is discerned, but the intention cannot subsist in a realm different and
permanently separate from the act. Hegel's juxtaposition of human issues with objective
natural laws imitates the general character of consciousness that moves between 'realms'
it separates. Tobegin with, Hegel reasons by analogy about theforces thatgovern human
acts. The understanding must recognize the differences it has noticed as inhering inthe
thing itself aswell as intheunderstanding (160), and therefore fmally as united. Just as
divine judgment must one day become manifest on earth, reconciling thedisparity
between internal truth and outward appearance, human thought must finally unify the
two. The supersensible world is "itselfand its opposite in one umty. (160)." Here Hegel
makes a claim that may surprise the reader, namely that the understanding itself (160)
and its differences are an infinity. Christianity provides away ofthinking that Hegel
transforms by recognizing init a response to theunstable separations inherent inmodem
scientific thought.
Readers of Aristotle ought to find Hegel's use of theword 'infinity' recogmzably
different from the actual infinity Aristotle repudiates, and different in important ways
from the potential infinity Aristotle accepts as real (theinfinite divisibility of a
magnitude, for example). Hegel offers a rather poetic (Dantesque?) description which I
will cite and attempt to interpret.
19
�This simple infinity, or the absoluteNotion, may be called the simple
essence of life, the soul ofthe world, the universal blood, whose
omnipresence is neitherdisturbed nor interrupted by any difference, but
rather is itself every difference, as also their supersession; it pulsates
within itself but does not move, inwardly vibrates, yet is at rest. It is selfidentical, for the differences are tautological; they are differences that are
none. This self-identical essence is therefore related only to itself;....
(162).
Simple infinity is self-absorption with no isolation: all relations have turned out to be
relations within itself. Without dissolving differences, infinity is the deeper unityof
these differences from which they differentiate themselves and then return. Wewould
have no reason to think sucha thing is real except that it corresponds notonly to the
history ofthought about thething, butto the nature ofthought ingeneral. In thinking
about our experience oftheworld, we make abstractions and articulate distinctions which
later we must reconcile, knowing thatwecan do so because the distinctions arose inthe
first place from the singleness ofour minds. Hegel is more optimistic than many thinkers
about the successful outcome of this activity: while we wish that in putting together that
which we have analyzed in the attempt to understand it, we will return to the
phenomenon or experience as it originally was, weoften believe wehave reason to
wonderwhat effect our intervention has caused. HegeTs confidence takes the form not
ofa happy coincidence ofour mental powers with our object ofinquiry, the world, but of
the recognition that all this activity has been taking place within consciousness itself.
The world that appears attimes to agree and attimes to disagree with our account of it is
always theworld for consciousness, which inturnreflects upon their relation. Our
thinking about "objective," nonhuman matters and about human things is akin but notyet
unified. It cries out for a reconciliationthat can occur only in a consciousness that grasps
20
�more fully the origin ofthe differences. The end ofthe section on force and
understanding is therefore the turn to self-consciousness.
This curtain of [appearance] hanging before the inner world is therefore
drawn away, and we have the inner being [the T*] gazing into the inner
world - the vision ofthe undifferentiated selfsame being, which repels
itself jBrom itself, posits itself as an inner being containing different
moments, but for which equallythese momentsare immediately not
different - self-consciousness. It is manifest that behind the so-called
curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be
seenunless we go behindit ourselves, as much in orderthat we may see,
as that theremay be something behind therewhich canbe seen. (165)
This is hot ah~end to the discussion of howwe know, but a newbeginning.
Before wego onto self-consciousness a briefrecapitulation is appropriate here. Hegel
begins his quest for truth inthe Phenomenology with sense-certainty, a sort ofknowing
that atfirst appears both rich and immediately accessible. But the consciousness of
sensory experience turns outto yield no truth at all. Infact, it yields no more than an
awareness of the distinction between the potential knower and what h6 would know. The
elusive other ofsense-certainty must then bean independent thing that can begrasped
through perception. But inperception consciousness confronts the problem of how to
combine a plethora ofindividual things with theuniversal under which they must be
thought. 'Force' isthe name wegive to thatwhich turns outto unify particulars. It
cannot be perceived butcan be understood. The articulation of laws, ingeneral theLaw
of Force, leadsto the establishment of a realmseparate from the world forces were
originally intended to explain. The work ofreconciling law and force on the one hand
with the world on the other leadsconsciousness to recognize that the differences to be
reconciled arise out of its own activity. Kantian understanding transforms into an
21
�awareness of itself as the consciousness that has relied on the law of force and now must
reconcile it with the world. This is a transformation that Kant did not endeavor to
accomplish, for it requires that consciousness go beyond thedistinguishing ofthevarious
faculties of the thinking mind to see how they inhere in self-consciousness.
m Self-Consciousness
The section ofthe Phenomenology Hegel calls 'Self-consciousness' begins with "The
truth of
a s^ibdivi?ion that inchid?.? the diseiission ofT -ordship and
Bondage. The phrase that best characterizes Hegel's introductory remarks here is
"certainty gives place totruth" (166). This phrase should call to mind Descartes'
standard ofclarity and distinctness, a standard that does not require orinvolve the perfect
Correspondence ofwhat is known to the object, and which Hegel unambiguously rejects.
The influence ofDescartes is however, inescapable, and Hegel builds his anti-Cartesian
epistemology, or account (logos) ofknowledge, on the even more fundamental Cartesian
turn, toward the self. Here then'... the certainty isto itself its own object, and
consciousness isto itselfthetruth" (166). Farther down inthe same paragraph Hegel
says
Opposed to an other, the T isits own self, and atthe same time it
overarches this other which, for the T is onlythe T itself.
With self-consciousness, then, we have therefore entered the realm of
truth. (169)
While conscious thought set itselfthe goal ofgrasping truth, to achieve this goal requires
that the thinker get beyond the artificial distinction between knower and known. This is
no leap offaith, but israther the honest awareness ofthe fact that one can distinguish and
22
�reconcile only what is already present in thought, i.e., that thought cannot step outside
itselfto another realm external to itself. If this sounds like a call for a Kantian critique,
distinguishing allthat we canknow and reason aboutfrom the inaccessible thing-in-itself,
Hegel's response is that he hasgoneKantone better: since the recognition of the limits
of reason and the positing of thething-in-itselfto which reason cannot reach arewithin,
notoutside of consciousness, he argues that this distinction, like all others within thought,
can be overcome. As Hegel points out (167),
As self-consciousness, it is movement; but sincewhat it distinguishes
from itselfis only itself itself, the difference, as an otherness, is
immediately supersededfor it....
The significance of this step thatHegel makes is very great. Forone thing, it leads
naturally to an account ofliving beings superior to any that the laws ofmatter inmotion
canoffer. Such an account is to differing degrees elusive forBacon, Descartes and even
ICant, who hesitate to attribute to the object about which one theorizes any tendencies that
are not verifiable in accord with laws. Aristotle of course knew better: in observing the
living being one must begin by trusting that one sees init impulses and tendencies akin to
one's own purposiveness, for example. Like Hegel, Kant accepts (in the Critique of
Judgment, Preface) that one cannot dispense with purposiveness inthe attempt to
understand living beings, but theplace ofthis third critique inKant's system is
problematic enough tohave justified the acceptance ofmany doctoral dissertations.
'Purposiveness' has no place inthe table ofcategories Kant presents in the First Critique
inthe attempt to give a definitive account ofthe basis for scientific imderstanding ofthe
world of experience.
23
�Just as Hegel offers no definitivelist ofthe categories, he denies that there is any need of
a set of rules or techniques for self-consciousness in the attempt to understand life, for
life is precisely the correlate of self-consciousness:
Butfor us, or in itself, the objectwhichfor self-consciousness is the
negative element has, on its side, returned intoitself, just as on the other
side consciousness has done. Throughthis reflection into itselfthe object
has become Life. (168)
But the living being is not merely the object of naive or scientific inquiry; it is
furthermore the object of desire (168). It is at the same timea whole independent of the
desiring subject:
Life consists rather in beingthe self-developing wholewhichdissolves its
development and in this movement simply preserves itself. (171)
Independent as it is, though, life also "...points to something other than itself, viz. to
consciousness, for which life exists as this unity, or as genus (172)".The individual preconscious living being is, according to Hegel, radically incomplete.
The discussion of life in the introductory paragraphs of Self-consciousness leads rather
quickly to thefollowing pregnant and powerful claim: "Self-consciousness achieves its
satisfaction only in another self-consciousness." (175). How does Hegel amveat this
claim? The key to making sense ofthis transition is to see what it means thatthe living
being is both dependent and independent. I have cited Hegefs claim that lifeis a 'selfdeveloping whole (171, end)'. Hehas already moved in his discussion to 'life as a living
thing,' confusing life in general with a particular organism. Hegel is notbeing sloppy.
Rather, he is acknowledging that life is intelligible only via the individual living thing. It
is obvious that no single organism lives simply self-sufficiently. Equally important for
24
�Hegel, its character is to develop in accord with a process that characterizes not only
itself but also many other individualsthat together comprisea genus or a species, a
processthat is in fact determined by its species. There is no species existing on its own.
The characteristic activity of a living being in general, namely to absorb otherness (for
example, food) within it and make it one's own, is always of a particular sort.
Consciousness alone canrecognize it for what it is. But further, the only consciousness
capable of recognizing the living being for what it is is self-consciousness (cf. A on nous
containing the forms). And the primary way the T' of self-consciousness relates to other
living things is through desire. Like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Hegel knows that
human beings want the goods of food, shelter, sexual satisfaction, etc., and therefore the
power to acquire and possess them. Thedesire forfood is the easiest to grasp butit is not
the most illustrative here, for one ordinarily eats only what is already dead, and is soon
hungry again. Eating is nottherefore a model forthe satisfaction of self-consciousness.
"Onaccount of the independence ofthe object, therefore, it canachieve
satisfaction only when theobject itselfeffects thenegation within itself;
and it must carry outthis negation of itselfin itself,... In the sphere of
Life, which is the object ofDesire, negation is present in an other, viz in
Desire, or as a determinateness opposed to another indifferent form, or as
the inorganic universal nature ofLife. Butthis universal independent
nature in whichnegation is present as absolute negation, is the genus as
such, orthe genus asself-consciousness. Self-consciousness achieves its
sati^action only in anotherself-consciousness. (175)
Living among other independent living beings which onestrives to understand is a step
forward, butto satisfy conscious desire requires that thedesiring subject recognize itself
and that it be recognized by another. It requires thatcertainty become truth. "Butthe
truth ofthis certainty is really a double reflection, the duplication of self-consciousness."
(176) Just as consuming food cannot be a genuine end{telos) for human beings andthe
25
�proper labeling of various beings is not by itself folly satisfying to the conscious mind, so
for self-consciousness to be at all requires that its object retain its characterwhen it
submits to the knowing subject, that i t . is equallyindependent in the negativity of
itself; and thus it isfor itself a genus, a universal fluid element in the peculiarity of its
own separate being ...Hegel rejects as a model ofknowledge mastery of natureby a
creature alienatedfrom it and therefore barred from the deepest understanding of its
meaning. Followers of Baconian science sellthemselves too short, according to Hegel.
TriTth is availableto the human know-r^ bu^ only if he/she knows what to seek
Hegel responds to anurging superficially similar to that which moves Socrates in the
'second sailing' he describes inthePhaedo. We cannot know theworld directly butonly
through the speeches and the deeds of other self-consciousnesses. For Socrates this
implies the need to engage in dialectic discourse with other men and examine the
accounts they form in speech. It isunclear whether thisdialectic will produce adequate
knowledge ofthe topic of discussion but it will at least illuminate something about the
souls ofthe speakers. (See Gorgios). ForHegel the need to rely onother self-conscious
beings takes a very different form. Since theknowing subject has no proper object than
another self-consciousness, for which it is an object as well, two (and later, more)
embodied consciousnesses must come to recognize themselves in one another. Truth
requires foil reciprocity between 'subject' and 'object'.
A self-consciousness, in being an object, is just as muchI' as object. With
this we already have before us the notion ofSpirit. 'What still lies ahead
for consciousness is the experience ofwhat Spirit is — absolute
this
substance which is the unity ofthe different, independent self-
26
�consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfectjfreedom and
independence. (177).
Modem science has destroyed the natural world in illuminating the relations that
characterize it because the 'natural world' never was the realm oftmth; it was merely the
realm the mind constmcted (seeKant) to account for observed appearances. Truth, or
science inthefiill Hegelian sense, is spirit fully conscious ofitself. It must be shared in a
community of conscious persons. (See Preface, section 69). Similarly, appropriate
humanlaws cannot arise out of a detached scientific analysis of human need and passions
(Hobbes), but only in a real community of persons. This is the insight that informs
Hegel's discussion of lordship and bondage.
I said earlier that the lordship and bondage section ofJiegQVsPhenomenology ofSpirit is
frequently misunderstood. One ofthe most common misunderstandings arises from an
assumption about Hegelian idealism that X
would like to lay to rest first ofall. Where
Hegel asserts "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational." (Preface, p. 10 of
Philosophy ofRight), many readers take him to be saying that only what we spin out of
ourown minds counts as real, thatthe apparently real world, insofar as it is anything at
all, arises from the mind's own creative activity. Similarly, the reader bent on seeing
Hegel asan idealist inthis sense views thelord and thebondsman asaspects ofthe
mental activity of a single individual: thestruggle between them isthen nothing more
than the mental anguish of a divided mind incapable of self-respect forthe
straightforward reason that it lacks integrity. Hegel leaves such struggles for others to
explore (there are many literary examples, ranging from Dmitri Karamazov to Gollum).
27
�Hegel, by contrast, in direct conversation withHobbes, Locke and Rousseau, is
addressing the question of how two human beings independent of lawand society interact
with one another. Having been educated bythose thinkers, especially Rousseau, Hegel
does not claim that two men once confronted one another in preciselythe fashion he
describes and followed precisely the steps he recounts in theapproach to mutual
recognition. Similarly, no human being need ever imdertake precisely the transformation
ofspirit the Phenomenology describes. Rather, following Hegel, one can recognize the
progression from one st.age to another.as intelligible now that they have occurred m
human experience. The lord and bondsman arearchetypes ofreal flesh and blood
humans who confront one another in an effort to become what they must be if they are to
be at all: autonomous beings who share a world with others akin to themselves.
Self-consciousness exists in and for itself, when and by the fact that, it
exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged. (178)
The account ofhow this acknowledgement develops is clearly not a report of historical
event: it isworked overand clarified by coherent thought. Hegel's description is a
description ofhow "... the process ofthe pure Notion ofrecogmtion, ofthe duplicating
ofself-consciousness inits oneness, appears to self-consciousness" (185).The process has
already occurred inthe sense that real humans beings have recognized the authority ofa
master, worked theland, discovered inthemselves abilities they were unaware of and that
even render them superior to those they serve, etc. Even more importantly, this process
has been seen (by Hegel at least) forwhat it is, an essential part ofthedevelopment of
autonomous spirit.
28
�The distinction Hegel drew earlier (166) between certainly andtruth figures here again as
crucial. The two consciousnesses that soon emerge as lord and bondmanat first appear to
one another
.. like ordinary objects, independent shapes, individuals submerged in the
being [orimmediacy] of Life .... Each is indeed certain ofits own self, but
not of the other, andtherefore its own self-certainty still has no truth.
(186)
Such 'truth' is ".. .possible only when each is forthe other what theother is for it..
subject and object must correspond perfectly. In order forthetwo consciousnesses to
achieve this correspondence, seif-consciOusness must stake its life, showing itself not to
be attached to any specific existence. Hegel says explicitly "each seeks thedeath ofthe
other" (187). In ourcomfortable community of learning, in which forthe most part we
attempt to recognize one another asworthy participants through cooperative discourse,
theclaim thatmutual recognition requires a fight to the death may seem absurd. We are
fortunate in sharing theassumption that theoretical .inquiry can betheoccasion for
creating a community and that no particular practical activity must precede that creation.
But we arrive at the College asself-conscious beings. The question then remains: is
Hegel correct indenying that a self-consciousness with integrity can emerge without a
crisis inwhich the very being ofthat self-consciousness isinquestion? Once the first
known fight to the death has occurred, Hegel thinks weneed not take up arms again as
longas we cantruly grasp the meaning ofthe experience. (This is nota comment on
international peace, merely on the relations of individuals capable of forming a particular
community). Hegel's lord and bondsman display what it means for potential human
beings entirely stripped of convention to strive to be human inthe fullest sense. We
frequently repeat the Socratic dictum that "theunexamined life is not worth living." For
29
�Hegel, one'slife can only beworth living if one is recognizable and recognized as a selfconscious human being, and to be recognizable as such requires that one seek full selfconsciousness at all costs. To this goal, everything else must give way.
The modem state as Hegel outlines it in The Philosophy ofRight presumably cushions its
citizens against such dire conflicts while it facilitates thedevelopment offree selfconsciousness. How that is sowould require a lengthy discussion. Suffice itto say here
thatHesel roundlv reiects Hobbes' account of the origin of civil society. The ground for
this rejection is not that Hegel considers it impossible that humans would enter into a
social contract out of fear and in order to avoid the danger of violent death. Rather, a
society based upon the mere tendency to flee such a danger must be a society ofinferior,
infact slavish, human beings. Hegel rejects Hobbes' argument for the foundation of
political right. He is moved, as no doubt Hobbes was, by the real terrors ofwar. For
Hegel, theoretical inquiry into the basis ofpolitical life must follow the e^qperience of
war, at least vicarious experience; the theoretical understanding ofpolitics follows from
the previous stage of conscious existence.
I noted above that Hegel asserts that the two individuals who will become lord and
bondsman seek each other's death. Clearly a trial that indeed issues in death is no wayto
begin a mutually satisfying relationship between any two human beings (188). The
interesting case occurs when one ofthe two individuals confronting the other brings him
to the brink ofviolent death and that other "... leams that life is essential to it as pure
self-consciousness" (189). This learning process so far has a good deal incommon with
30
�Hobbesian fear. Everything for thebondsman has 'beenshaken to thefoundations' in his
experience ofthefear ofviolent death and hehas therefore been put intouch with the "...
simple, essential nature of consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self, which
consequently is implicit in consciousness." Fear ofviolent death and the aggressive
attempt to conquer nature constitute a good beginning, but they are not sufficient for
developing self-consciousness: "...although the fear ofthe lord isindeed the begmnmg of
wisdom, consciousness is not therein aware that it is a being-for-self' (195). Having
learned that he mustlive if he is to be conscious, the unlucky participant in the life and
death struggle submits to his conqueror and becomes his slave, an apparently thankless
life of subordination that eventually reverses itself into a kind ofvictory. The reversal is
hardly inevitable, butwhen it occurs it constitutes thedevelopment ofreal selfconsciousness. According to Hegel it reveals a greater truth than is visible through the
eyes ofthe brute ofa master who has access to the world only through the labor ofhis
slave, and who experiences the other only as the instrument of hisdesires.
The picture Hegel presents ofthe life oflord and bondsman is straightforward: the
bondsman works to satisfy the needs and desires ofthe lord, who never sullies his hands.
Thelord seems to have allthe advantages of lifewithout its disadvantages: he enjoys
things without ever having to experience their resistance and he is honored. The
arrangement is unequal, to be sure, but from thepoint ofview ofthe master not obviously
defective. Butthere have been tyrants who remained permanently dissatisfied, no matter
how easily their desires are satisfied. Hegel makes sense ofthis phenomenon with the
observation thatthe lord receives homage only from a dependent, notanindependent
31
�consciousness akin to himself. This does not suffice probably because the tyrant
somehow realizes that there is or can be something better. Thebondsman by contrasthas
the independent consciousness of the master as his *
essential reality,' Hegel says, or at
least in his purview. He need not invent the moment of 'pure being-for-self: it is there
before his eyes in the form of another human being. Similarly, he neednot strain his
faculties to imagine what it is for everything in natureto dissolve (194); but he
accomplishes thisdissolution. "Through his service he rids himself of hisattachment to
natural existence in ever\'detail, and gets rid ofit b}^ working on it" (194). He is
intimately aware of the possibility of destroying and reforming natural objects in order to
make them serve human needs.
The bondsman then has a great deal in common withthe modem scientist even in a free
state inhis attempt to conquer and manipulate nature. More importantly, work is the
means by which the bondsman develops the awareness of who he is.By working to
reshape natural objects hebecomes concretely aware oftheindependence notonly of
those objects but also ofhimself:"... thebondsman realizes that it is precisely in his
work wherein he seemed to have only analienated existence thathe acquires a mind of
his own" (195 and 196). While to have a mind of one's own is only a nascent form of
freedom, it constitutes a superiority of the bondsman overhis master, who recognizes
nothing intheworld capable ofresisting his will, which is therefore not even really his
ownas opposed to another's. (Children share some of the constraint ofthe bondsman's
life and therefore the need to make claims of mastery. My son's response at 31/2 or 4
wasto assert hisconquest of nature thisway, after tolerating undoubtedly excessive
32
�expressions of maternal concern: "I never get thirsty; I never get cold; and I never have
to go pee.") The dialectic between master and bondsman continues through Stoicism,
Scepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness (one level ofHegel's interpretation of
Christianity) until within self-conscious spirit develops what Hegel calls Reason "... the
certainty that, in its particular individuality, it has being absolutely in itself, or is all
reality" (230). This isthe implicit identification ofsubject and substance ofwhich Hegel
proceeds to articulate the development inthe section ofthe Phenomenology entitled
'Absolute Spirit.'
Conclusion
I will nottry to analyze here in detail the movement fi'om thebondsman's willfulness to
Reason. For all the refined grandeur ofHegelian Reason and ofhis emphasis on Spirit in
its fiilly developed form as the goal ofeven the most ordinary human activity, firiendship
provides the best analogy for the goal ultimately sought by participants in the dialectic of
lord and bondsman. While it is quite clear thatthese two particular human beings will
never be fiiends, the autonomy of mind that can be secured only through such a struggle
astheirs isthecondition for fiiendship, or atleast forthekind of political community
Hegel envisions. The insight that no constitutional provisions can create political
fi*eedom ifthe proper habits are not first established, ifthepeople do not know how to be
jfree members of a political community, is nowhere sodeeply acknowledged than in
Hegel's political thought. But even ifit istrue that theright understanding ofwhat it is
for a hiiman being to befi"ee has developed inthecourse ofthe history ofhuman thought,
will political fi"eedom arise and maintain itself inthe modem state once humans are in
33
�principle capable of governing themselves? Doesthe ability for self-governance emerge
once thetruth of absolute spirit has taken shape and appeared in an articulated form?
The end and thegoal ofthePhenomenology ofSpirit is Absolute Knowing, thought
complete in itselfand untainted with any externality. I have elucidated how the early
sections ofthePhenomenology that we read participate inthe movement towards this
goal. Absolute Knowing is not mere freedom tothink for oneself in a world ridden with
Oinly perfect clarity and thorough comprehension ofthe tn.ith would
mind to be at rest with itself and this is only achievable if substance and subject areone,
if mind (or spirit, Geist) finally isall. It is no accident that Hegel's writing inthe
Phenomenology integrates the rational working through ofphilosophical quandaries with
reference to practical experience, for both the theoretical and the practical are the activity
ofSpirit. But while Hegel sees autonomous thought as the goal ofacollective lifetime of
inquiry and self-examination, until we ourselves attain such knowledge we must doubt
that such a goal can ever be won. We atthe College are well trained both to appreciate
the greatness ofHegel's work and to assess it soberly. The familiarity we share with the
work ofgreat thinkers who encourage us to doubt fiiat knowledge ofthe whole is
available must help to protect us against Hegel's perhaps seductive charm. Can the
autonomy of Absolute Knowledge beall that humans strive for, all that isgood?
The tense relationship between the good ofthe individual and the good ofthe city which
Plato illustrates inthe city in speech, the deliberate absurdity of Socrates' request that the
city ofAthens commit funds to support him so that he can continue to be a gadfly to his
34
�fellow citizens, are notobviously anachronistic in our age, despite Hegel's
accomplishment on the one hand and our treasured citizen freedoms on the other. To
discern what it takes for human beings to be free requires calmreflection on what is
knowable independently of practical considerations. It requires that the thinkerbe wary
of succumbing to the oppressive powerofprejudice. It requires no lessthat one resist the
temptationsto disdain politics and to turn political life into a visible aspect of reason
alone. I dare to wonder whether Hegel, for all his greatness, allowed the latter tendency
tpjnar his political ^ well as Ms pMJospphicdjhpu^t
35
�
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On reading Hegel before the age of eighty
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Transcript of a lecture given on October 8, 2004 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. Phänomenologie des Geistes.
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24003322
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The tragedy of Oedipus at Colonus
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Transcript of a lecture given on April 29, 1994 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.
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Organum and Persona:
The Philosophical Significance ofEarly Polyphony
Peter Pesic
Theflowering of polyphony in WesternEuropean music has long seemed singular and
remarkable. Until well into the twentieth century, polyphony was considered unique in
world music, especially by comparison with ancient Greek and Roman practice, which
had long been considered purely monophonic.^ Western music historians seemed
unaware of anything in other musical repertoires comparable to complex, many-voiced
compositions such as medieval motets. The growth of ethnomusicology as a
sophisticated, wide-ranging investigation of musical anthropology has provided much
more information that has greatly complicated the picture. Though ethnomusicologists
now regard polyphony not as exceptional but almost ubiquitous in world musical
practice, the Western emphasis on polyphony remains noteworthy for its insistence on
particular kinds of independence yet coordination between voices. Given the intense
theoretic, philosophical, and theological milieux that surrounded medieval music, it
seems natural to ask: what is the significance of the turn of Western music towards
polyphony since the ninth century? What theological or philosophical considerations
bore on its status compared to monophony? Responding to these questions will involve
consideration of the nature of the mind, whether human, angelic, or divine.
These begin with the nature of our own minds. Can we really understand many
things at once? In our ordinary experience, we seem to attend to one thing at a time, for
even a person who is "multitasking" usually does not work on all those tasks at once but
turns from one to another as needed, in effect "time-sharing." To say that "something
else was on my mind" implies that I was not really paying attention to the matter at
hand. Then too, when surrounded by several nearby conversations, equally loud (say at
a restaurant), I cannot understand them all but may try to switch my attention from one
to another, though with difficulty because their very multiplicity distracts. Aristotle had
taught that the human cannot think many things at once, for "it is possible to know
many things but not to be thinking of them" {Topics 11.10114b34). Here Aristotle
distinguishes potential subjects of thought, which may be multiple, from the one thing
we are actually thinking right now.
If indeed we cannot understand multiple spoken conversations, how can we
make sense of musical polyphony? This paradox ofpolyphony (as we shall refer to it)
poses sharp difficulties for the intelligibility of polyphony, much less its aesthetic
appeal, for it seems to contravene Aristotle's general assertion about the unified quality
of each act of human thought. Is each of our minds one or many? If each mind is
This lecture was given on Friday, October 30,2009 at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM and is dedicated
to Philip LeCuyer, remembering thirty years as colleagues and friends, especially the conversations in
which he first directed me to this topic and illuminated its relation to concept of personhood in the
writings of Thomas Aquinas.
�^
. ,
essentially one, how can we reconcile this with the manifold differentiation and
multiplicity of the world? If each mind is not a single thing but a collection of many
sub-minds (as Freud and Proust suggest), how then is it that we seem to understand or
grasp anything as one? How could we even form the concept of unity?
If, as ethnomusicologists argue, polyphony is a universal tendency, then we
should not be surprised that the chant tradition was also subject to this tendency.
Consider, for instance, this description of informal music-making in the British isles by
Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambriensis, 1198), a Welsh churchman and historian:
When they made music together, they sing their tunes not in unison, as is done
elsewhere, but in part with many simultaneous modes and phrases. Therefore, in
a group of singers (which one very often meets with in Wales) you will hear as
many melodies as there are people, and a distinct variety of parts; yet, they all
accord in one consonant and properly constituted composition. In the northern
districts of Britain, beyond the Humber and round about York, the inhabitants
use a similar kind of singing in harmony, but in only two different parts, one
singing quietly in a low register, and the other soothing and charming the ear
above. This specialty of the race is no product of trained musicians, but was
acquired through long-standing popular practices.^
Such practiceswere probably long-standing, along with their 'Yapid and lively" playing
of musical instruments he also notes. One might imagine that monastic novices might
have been familiar with such part-singing in their villages, which choirmasters might
have tried to discourage so that they could conform to the prescribed practice of singing
in disciplined unison with the other choir monks, again assuming monophony as the
prevalent canonical practice. Yet the temptation to try a bit of polyphony might have
remained, or perhaps was an alternative tradition that had never really died, even in
ecclesiastical practice, but was even more likely to surface in secular or popular singing,
given the general tendencies toward heterophony that ethnomusicologists have noted.
Thus, early polyphonic church music might have reflected a new synthesis with
secular music, of which we know very little because it was scarcely recorded. So the
question we are facing is not so much "why polyphony?" if indeed that was such a
natural development. Instead, we are trying to understand how and why polyphonic
music would be not merely tolerated as a regrettable backwash of popular practice but
was taken up with interest by certain elements of the learned clergy, even enshrined as
important adjuncts to the high solemnity of great feasts.
Ecclesiastical polyphony no less than chant should first of all be considered in its
liturgical context. From later descriptions, down to the present day, in the Roman
Catholic liturgy polyphony is considered to add "solemnity," which has the specific
meaning in this context not merely of pomp or seriousness, but an elevation of protocol
appropriate to certain important ecclesiastical occasions. Liturgical solemnity
specifically calls for several independent personages (such as the celebrant, deacon, subdeacon) to take different parts in the service, not to speak of the choir that would sing
responses in an ordinary high mass. From early Christian times, the choir itself was
often divided into two sub-choirs that would alternate, answering back and forth across
�the church, thus providing another possible invitation to multiplicity of vocal parts.
Thus, ecclesiastical solemnity has a kind of incipient or potential polyphony in its
multiple clerical voices, which might have encouraged the use of polyphonic music for
such services. Early liturgical dramas also emerged from the many voices of the solemn
services for the highest feasts, such as the recitations of the Passion narrative by several
voices. For instance, the dramatic dialogue Quemquaeritis? between the disciples
seeking the body of Christ and the angel guarding his tomb began as part of the services
for Holy Week, a natural development given the drama of this encounter as described
in the Gospels read during the services. But any further assessment of the felt
implications of polyphony needs comparison with the ancient practices from which it
emerged.
Polyphony in Ancient Musical Practice
Though the nineteenth-century insistence on the uniqueness of Western polyphony was
overstated, ancient musical practice (as presently understood) does seem to have been
largely monophonic. The presently extant works of Greek musical theory concentrated
on a single melodic voice; those available in the Middle Ages were even more
monophonically oriented. If the Greeks did add accompaniments, they scarcely
commented on them anywhere, in comparison with their voluminous discussions of the
modes. Yet Plato's Athenian Stranger does say in the Laxos (812d) that the lyre "must
produce notes that are identical in pitch to the words being sung," implying that singers
would accompany themselves by playing on the lyre, if only to give themselves their
starting pitch and support their melodic line. In fact, such practices of accompaniment
(now commonly called heterophony) have been observed in Ethiopian singing to the
lyre, as well as in many other traditions involving the performing needs of a singercomposer, including Homeric bards who sang to the lyre-like phorminx.^
Though aware of this, the Athenian Stranger nevertheless argues that "the lyre
should not be used to play an elaborate independent melody [heterophonia]: that is, its
strings must produce no notes except those of the composer of the melody being
played; small intervals should not be combined with large, nor quick tempo with slow,
nor low notes with high. Similarly, the rhythms of the music of the lyre must not be
tricked out with all sorts of frills and adornments. All this sort of thing must be kept
from students who are going to acquire a working knowledge of music in three years,
without wasting time. Such conflict and confusion makes learning difficult..." This
critique implies that such things did indeed happen frequently enough to annoy Plato's
Stranger, though he does not disclaim what he considers the proper or seemly use of the
lyre accompanying the voice. Viewed in the larger context of the musical discussions in
Plato's Laxvs, such elaborate and increasingly polyphonic developments seem to have
been part of newer musical currents that disturbed his conservative sense of received
musical practice. For Plato, such new developments had a political import because he
judged they would lead to an increasingly individualistic, fragmented polity. The
Stranger regrets the divergence between accompaniment and song, whose "conflict and
�confusion" distract learners. Virtuoso performers would be tempted to show off their
skills through heterophonia, a word Plato seems to have used to denote departures from
strict unison music, as compared to its modern usage to refer to the simultaneous use of
different forms of the same melody in different voices, as when an accompaniment adds
extra tones or ornaments to the singer's melody. Singing together, as one, may be one of
the deepest ways political order is consummated; certainly Plato himself brings his
ideal city into life through singing and dancing. From Plato's point of view, the ideal
city would be nurtured by all its citizens singing a melody in unison, perhaps
underlined by instruments that do not seek to rival that song by counterposing a
distinct, contradictory voice. Conversely, heterophonia might instill or encourage
divisions within the soul of each person as well as in the commonwealth as a whole.
The evidence of ethnomusicology suggests that it is difficult to decide what is
truly natural and what represents socially ordained behavior. It may be as "unnatural" - or as "natural" ~ to make a group of singers achieve a completely unified unison as it
is to make them sing divergent melodic lines. Achieving either extreme requires
discipline and practice. The consummate rendition of Gregorian chant with seamless
ensemble and unanimity requires expert coordination from a chorus master of great
skill, subtlety, and taste, along with active collaboration from the choristers. The
difficulties of polyphony are more evident; a group of people who could sing passably
in unison might well struggle to sing separate, independent parts. The training of truly
independent voices requires each one to maintain its own line while maintaining its
coordination with the other voices.
Compared to these extremes, the middle ground of mild heterophony may be
more comfortable and more widespread. Among many peoples, singers do not use
exact unison but join the ensemble more freely, not diverging exactly from the other
voices but perhaps starting a bit late or varying the melodic line a little as they join in.
Besides the common use of such informal heterophony, Georgian folk music (for
instance) has a well-developed tradition of more elaborate heterophony. Then too,
African music often includes complex polyrhythms, each line of which is played by
percussion instruments, far more intricate than common European folk practice. Such
examples, among many others, have left little ground supporting older views of
"primitive" versus "high" art, or of simple presumptions about "natural" musical style.
In the case of ancient Greek musical practice, our knowledge has grown in the
past century, thanks to recently discovered manuscripts. The surviving ancient musical
texts use a special code of alphabet-like symbols written above the sung syllables,
lacking all the customary visual clues of "rising" or "falling" melodic line that singers
can use to grasp the "shape" of the melodic line intuitively, as in the Guidonian staff
notation.'^ The ancient alphabetic-symbolic notation called for a highly trained "reader"
to decode it, perhaps conforming to a very different sense that musical literacy ought to
be reserved to the few so as to guard the guild secrets of the bards. Very few such
readers (if any) could have sight-read an unknown melody, as Guido boasted his boys
could do. The ancient system of notation was well suited to monophony because each
syllable of text is naturally matched with a single sequence of melodic symbols written
�above it. Any other simultaneous pitch would require yet another horizontal register
beside the two already present. That no other extra registers have been found both
confirms the basic monophony and also reinforces the insight that ancient music was
deeply dependent on its verbal text because the alphabetic musical notation acts as a
kind of meta-text written above the text whose melody it notates, as if indicating the
close union of both within a single melos. Even apart from this melodic meta-notation,
Greek syllables have built-in rhythms, inherently short and long in quantity, as well as
intrinsic pitch-accents (against which the musical line may well have played). Thus, the
Greek language itself is a kind of monophony, so musically rich that tibe overlay of
additional melodies might well have felt excessive or at least would detract from the
melodic qualities of the single line of text/music.
Thus, scholars were surprised to find in the Euripides Orestes fragment (for
instance) certain notation-symbols without any text syllable underneath; the consensus
seems to be that these represent notes of the accompaniment, perhaps giving cues for
the aulos players who were known to have accompanied such tragic choruses. In the
modem transcription (figure 1), these pitches have been enclosed in parentheses, often
sounding the note D that is the final of the fragment.
ka-lo-lo-phy TO* inai, ka*to-Io*ph?*n»-mai
0 w u .
^ H(»)
h<S s'a-na-bac-chcu-ci.
•
17—=—
ho md-gas <jl - bos ou
' f'
a-na dc lai-phosh5s
1
sin en
ky - ma-sin
p6-non
short"or long —). The symbols t and i
in6-ni-mosen bro-lois.
li* V
tis a - kd-iou tho - as
ka-id-kly-sen dei-non
ma - t^Tos hai-ma sas
ti - na - xas dai -mon
ill " =
p6n-iou
[Figure 1: Euripides, Orestes, lines 388344, indicating words whose musical
setting was lost on the papyrus by
indicating their syllabic length (whether
la-broij o-lc-thri-oi
respectively denote pitches raised or
lowered by one quarter-tone (diesis).
Notes in parentheses were assigned to
an aulos accompaniment, according to
the opinion of modem scholars. Text:
[Chorus of women of Argos] "I grieve, 1
grieve ~ your mother's blood that drives
you wild. Great prosperity among
mortals is not lasting: upsetting it like
the sail of a swift sloop some higher
power swamps it in the rough doomwaves of fearful toils, as of the sea.'']
Current scholarship interprets these extra notes as drone pitches, sustained by the
instruments against the moving choral line. The shrill, nasal sound of the aulos would
have prolonged this D in a way that would have sounded quite different than had it
been plucked on a lyre as a drone note to accompany a Homeric bard. Nor does this
secondary pitch remain fixed; for several measures, the drone changes to two pitches, F
and C, as the melody itself shifts, indicating a certain dynamic function for the changing
drone-notes, which here act to underline a melodic shift (emphasizing the notes Bb and
�F) as the text describes the way divine power can swamp the ship symbolizing human
pride "in the rough doom-waves of fearful toils."
All this might have been acceptable to Plato's Stranger, for in every visible
respect these additional notes (whether sustained as drones or not) seem to act to frame
the main musical line and its text, which remains the predominant musical determinant
throughout. Perhaps the treatises considered such drones and auxiliary notes to be so
universally known and accepted that they were not worth much commentary because
they were not substantively independent of the melody. At one point in his Manual of
Harmonics, the Greek theorist Nichomachus (writing in the first century A.D.) explicitly
refers to striking "two strings simultaneously," though most of his other references
seem to concern successive, rather than simultaneous, sounds.^ Indeed, the auxiliary
notes in the Orestes chorus really do not form a melodic voice of their own, but remains
entirely accompanimental, providing backdrop for the vocal line. Though the Stranger's
critique points to the existence of more daring heterophonia than the few surviving
manuscripts evidence, his description does not go further than indicating increasingly
ornate instrumental accompaniment to a vocal line.
The Harmony of the Spheres
/Ais,
As the deepest archetype of music, though, Plato probably had in mind the "music of
the spheres," for he held that both the soul and the cosmos were made out of music
{Timaeus 35b-37a). In both cases, that primal music seems to have been monophonic,
despite some puzzles. For instance, the Republic ends with an mythic description of
looking down on heaven and earth, viewing the cosmic spindle of Necessity and hearing
its circular whorls, each associated with a planet: "And up above on each of the rims of
the circles stood a Siren, who accompanied its revolution, uttering a single sound, one
single note. And the concord of the eight notes produced a single harmony [harmonia]"
(617b). Yet the word harmonia (literally a joint, as between ship's planks, or a
framework, agreement) seems to have meant a single melodic line, as opposed to our
"harmony" with its predominant sense of blending different notes into a simultaneous
chord. Still, it is hard to imagine those eight Sirens, each singing a single note, without
thinking of their simultaneous sound as a chord, rather than as a melody composed of
those notes. Nor do such Roman accounts as Macrobius's commentary on Cicero's
Dream ofScipio alter this sense that the music of the spheres was a pure melody.
The earliest text that considers the celestial music to be a "harmony" in our sense
comes in a later Roman work, Martianus Capella's The Marriage of Philology and Mercury
(written sometime between 410-439 A.D.), an important source transmitting ancient
ideas about the liberal arts to the Middle Ages. Seeking Apollo's advice. Mercury finds
him in mysterious cave, calling up visions of the physical world, both past and present,
including a musical grove: there,
a tuneful melody caused by the whispering winds in the trees rustled with a
certain musical vibration. The topmost layers of the tall trees, correspondingly
stretched tight, reverberated a high sound, but whatever was close and near to
�the ground resounded a deep, heavy note through the down-turning branches.
The middle portions of the trees, coming in contact with each other, sang
together in the accompaniments [succentibus] of the octave [2:1], the fifth [3:2], the
fourth [4:3], and even the whole tone [9:8], without any discontinuities, as long as
the semitones were included. In this way, the grove sounded the full harmony
and song of the gods in melodic concordance. When the Cyllenian [Mercury]
explained this. Virtue became aware that even in the heavens the spheres
produce harmony according to the same ratios or combine with other voices in
accompaniment [succentibus]; so it is not strange that the grove of Apollo should
be so full of harmony, when the same god, in the sun, modulates the spheres of
the heavens also.^
Thus, we leam that some spheres accompany others in the celestial ''harmony,'' implying
simultaneous sound as confirmed by the striking image of the grove of trees
reverberating that heavenly music at once in low, middle, and high registers.
Later, Martianus makes even clearer his awareness of polyphony in his
description of the feast at which Harmony appears as the last of the prospective brides
for Mercury. "Immediately a sweet new sound burst forth, like the strains of auloi, and
echoing melodies, surpassing the delight of all sounds, filled the ears of the enchanted
gods. For the sound was not a simple one, monotonously produced from one
instrument, but a blending of all instrumental sounds creating a full symphony of
delectable music" [905]. Martianus emphasizes the newness of this kind of
simultaneous music-making, whose novelty and extravagance fits it for a divine feast.
When Harmony herself appears, she carries a circular shield "with many inner circles...
The encompassing circles of this shield were attuned to each other, and from the
circular chords there poured forth a concord of all the modes... All other music - which,
by contrast with its sweetness, seemed dissonant - now became silent. Then Jupiter and
the other heavenly beings, recognizing the grandeur of the more exalted melodies,
which were pouring forth in honor of a certain secret fire and inextinguishable flame,
reverenced the profound ancestral song, and one by one arose in homage to
extramundane intelligence" [909-910], Thus, the gods bear witness to Martianus's
Neoplatonic convictions, for they honor the primal Mind that is higher than they and
that here is revealed to be fundamentally polyphonic. Harmony goes on to speak at
length of how "the Monad and first hypostasis of intellectual life" [922] ordered her to
be the governess of souls emanating from that primal source, though her lengthy
description of Pythagorean mathematics does not cast any more light on the question of
polyphony versus monophony. Her mention of hypostasis will resonate strongly with
our subsequent considerations
The Christian Significance of Simultaneous Intervals
A common Neoplatonic heritage may help explain the coincidence that, at nearly the
same time as Martianus or perhaps a few years earlier, musical simultaneity emerged at
�the center of a seminal Christian text. St. Augustine's discussion of the nature of the
divine incarnationin On the Trinity (written in the first decades after 400 A.D.) draws
upon his own extensive musical and rhetorical education as a brilliant young pagan in
Carthage. About ten years earlier, prior to his conversion, he had written a short treatise
On Music, which concentrated on poetic rhythm and prosody, rather than melody, but
testifies to the depth of Augustine's musical studies and interests. He calls on these
concepts at the crux of his discussion of how the divine Word could become flesh.
Augustine uses the accord between "single" and "double" in the 1:2 ratio of the
octave to describe "how the single [simplum] of our Lord Jesus Christ matches our
double [congruit duplo nostro], and in some fashion enters into a harmony of salvation
with it."7Though Augustine was steeped in Neoplatonic ideas of the One and of the
Dyad, yet there is no precedent in those Neoplatonic writings for Augustine's daring
synthesis in his extended metaphor of the octave, which incarnates ideal concepts in
audible sounds comparable to the way Christ was the Word made flesh nor did
Plotinus's treatment of the One emanating the Two did not make mention of the ratio
between them.® In this context, Augustine's rhetorical struggle to find the right word
mirrors and intensifies the felt effect of his sonic imagery, leading to the climactic point
at which he adapts a new term to match his sense:
This match - or agreement or concord or consonance or whatever the right word
is for the proportion of one to two - is of enormous importance in every
construction or interlock [coaptione] - that is the word I want - of creation. What 1
mean by this interlock, it has just occurred to me, is what the Greeks call
harmonia. This is not the place to show the far-reaching importance of the
consonant proportion of the single to the double. It is found extensively in us,
and is so naturally ingrained in us (and who by, if not by him who created us?),
that even the unskilled feel it whether singing themselves or listening to others. It
is what makes concord [consonantid\ between high-pitched and deep voices, and
if anyone strays discordantly away from it, it is not our knowledge, which many
lack, but our very sense of hearing that is painfully offended. To explain it would
require a long lecture; but anyone who knows how can demonstrate it to our ears
with a monochord.
This fascinating passage describes high- and low-pitched voices (such as boys and men)
singing in octaves. Though the singers may not be educated and do not know the
learned mathematics Augustine refers to, they feel acutely and immediately whether
their interval is exactly in tune. Indeed, such practices of singing at the octave are
almost inevitable (and often happen unintentionally) when mixed groups sing together
whose vocal ranges are sufficiently diverse.
Augustine may also have been acquainted with the ancient stringed instrument
called "magadis," which was strung so that the same tune could be played in two
octaves simultaneously. Using the name of this instrument as a term for octave singing
("magadizing"), students of Aristotle included in their collection of Problems (long,
though incorrectly, ascribed to their teacher himself) the question "Why do people sing
only the concord of the octave? For they magadize in this concord, but no other."^ The
�students' speculations go on to explore the special character of the octave as it would be
experienced when sung simultaneously: "Is it because it alone is constituted out of
corresponding notes, and in corresponding notes, whichever of them one sings, the
effectis the same? For the one of them contains in some way the sounds of both, so that
when one of them is sung in this concord the concord is sung, and when people sing
both, or when one is sung and the other played on the aulos, it is as if they both sing
one note. Hence that note along is sung, since things in correspondence have the sound
of a single note." Thus Aristotle's students wondered at the peculiar resonance of a
simultaneously sounded octave, in which two sounds somehow merge into one,
whether instruments and voices combine or voices alone. They resolved the problem of
two sounds becoming one by arguing that "one of them contains in some way the
sounds of both."
By taking this insight much further, Augustine turns what had been a purely
musical practice into something of great theological significance. His use of the image of
octave singing makes clear that Christ, as the One, "matches our double" simultaneously,
for if not, his divine nature would never finally blend with ours and we could never
"participate in the Word, that is, in that life which is the light ofmen" Thus, Augustine
uses our natural reaction to the octave to show that we have an innate awareness that is
not externally learned; his daring comparison of the octave with the "interlock"
(coaptione) between soul and Christ expresses the divine origin of both, for how else
could such perfection be found in our flawed human understanding? He takes the
simultaneous octave to symbolize Christian incarnation and human redemption.
Compared to his Neoplatonic masters, Augustine is far more interested in the
physicality of sound precisely because he understands it as the perfect image of the
union of human and divine natures essential to Christian teaching. At the same time, he
retains touch with the Neoplatonic argument that "all that is eternal is a simultaneous
whole." Augustine uses this significant simultaneity as the crux of his musical
metaphor, in which the human soul tastes eternity in simultaneous sonorities,
reverberating the eternal Word.^o
Person, Substance, and Hypostasis
Augustine here is addressing what was arguably the most difficult and controversial
theological question of his time, the relation between the divine and human natures in
the person of the Christ. By the First Council of Nicea (325), the essential outlines of the
doctrine of the Trinity had been agreed by the Eastern and Western Churches, though
Augustine himself was involved in further controversies about the procession of the
Holy Spirit that to this day remain points of disagreement between those two churches
(though those disagreements only really emerged later and still share the fundamental
premises of the Trinity as such). Yet as difficult as the concept of the Trinity was, the
problem of the two natures was even more vexed; during Augustine's lifetime and into
the centuries beyond it, the Arian contention that Christ was a created, though divine,
being, divided the Christian world far more directly than other Trinitarian issues. As
�we will see, powerful ecclesiastical and politicalfigures took up the Arian cause,
including barbarian warlords and even ruling emperors.
The passage in Augustine we have just been considering uses the musical
analogy of the octave to instantiate his contention that Christ had both divine and
human natures. In this context, Augustine carried his argument further by using the
term "person," which had first been introduced by Tertullian as a way of emphasizing
the differences between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, lest they seem merely different
aspects of a single entity, rather than three distinct beings.
Here, we need to recover the original Greek terms that were at stake in these
Latin controversies. These arguments rely on the distinction between "being" {ousia, in
Greek, rendered into Latin as essentia but sometimes as substantia) and "substance"
(hypostasis, which Latin rendered as substantia). Partly because of these overlapping and
confusing Latin renderings, we need to go back to the Greek to discern what otherwise
may be obscured or even falsified by our common words. The Greek noun ousia,
derived from the verb "to be" {einai), has the general sense of "being-ness." Originally it
meant "that which is one's own, one's substance, property," as in the English phrase "a
man of substance," someone who has substantial assets, in the first instance land, which
is the "reality" implicit in the term "real estate." From this, ousia came also to denote
stable being, immutable reality, hence essence and substance as an abstract term, which
the Romans rendered as essentia. On the other hand, hypostasis means literally "standing
under, supporting" (hypo-stasis)^ as "hypothesis" means "that which is put under,"
(hypo-thesis) in the way a premise "underlies" an argument. Tellingly, we have taken
"hypothesis" into our language, but not "hypostasis," for which we follow the Latin
translation of this as "substance," literally "standing-under" (sub-stantia). In Greek,
hypostasis denotes the foundation of a temple (for instance), the courage or steadfastness
of soldiers, a promise or resolution, hence substance or reality in the sense of the full
expression of something (such as the soldiers' resoluteness, manifest in their courage).
But where ousia might denote real estate, hypostasis in the plural (hypostaseis) could
designate the title deeds or documents that record and express ownership. Figuratively,
ousia is the land itself, while hypostasis denotes the foundation or groundwork of the
temple standing on that land.
When Augustine was trying to explain "three what?" are in the Trinity, he noted
that the Greeks
make a distinction that is rather obscure to me between ousia and hypostasis, so
that most of our people who treat of these matters in Greek are accustomed to
say mia ousia, treis hypostaseis, which in English is literally one being, three
substances. But because we have grown accustomed in our usage to meaning the
same thing by "being" as "substance," we do not dare say one being, three
substances. Rather, one being or substance, three persons is what many Latin
authors, whose authority carries weight, have said when treating of these
matters, being able to find no more suitable way of expressing in words what
they understood without words.^^
10
�Thus, Augustine adopts the term ''person" rather than "hypostasis" out of convenience
and to conformto the usage of other Latinauthors, but he does not really make a sharp
distinctionbetween them and thinks that the Greeks, "if they like, could also say three
persons, triaprosopa, just as they say three substances, treis hypostaseis. But they prefer
this latter expression, because I imagine it fits the usage of their language better."^^
Augustine is aware that "scripture calls these three neither one person nor three
persons - we read of the person ofthe Jjord, but not of the Lord called person —we are
allowed to talk about three persons and the needs of discussionand argument require;
not because scripture says it, but because it does not gainsay it. Whereas if we were to
say three Gods scripture would gainsay us, saying Hear, O Israel, the Lord yourGod is one
God."'^^ In his view, we choose the word "person" not so much because it is the only
possible term but as a concession to the inadequacy of human words in response to "the
sheer necessity of saying something, when the fullest possible argument was calledfor
against the traps or the errors of the heretics." Augustine's famous Confessions are
notably personal, in the modern senseof the word, vivid and emotionally fraught,
including many aspects of his inner and outer lives that he considers shameful but
essential parts of his spiritual journey. In so doing, Augustine discloses a new depth of
interiority that have more to do with the radically self-reflexive notion of "self" than
with the less reflexive "soul" knownto ancient philosophy.^^ Yet, though Augustine
was arguably the first thinker in the Westto emphasize and analyzethe concept of
person, he still seems not to put the greatest possible weight on the term itself.
Persona and Personhood
In order to weigh the full nature and consequences of the conceptof personhood, which
we tend to takefor granted, we need to consider its origins and history. In Latin, persona
namedthe mask worn by an actorin tragic drama,the visible facade through which
their voice sounded (per-sonare). Fromthis, it cameto have a legalconnotation of
someone who could appear in the "theater" of the law courts, address the court, give
evidence, take oaths. In Romantimes, personhoodwas a high and exclusive distinction,
reserved in each family only to the paterfamilias, not to his wife, sons, daughters, or
slavesunless he conferred it on them in a special ceremony conducted beforean
appropriate tribunal. There, the paterfamilias couldgivethem personhood through the
process of manumission, literally"releasingby hand." Because so many Romancitizens
did not speak Latin, this ceremony sometimes took the form of a wordless charade: the
paterfamilias would face the court, his son (or whoeverwas receiving manumission)
facing him, hence with his back to the court. The father would then strike his son a
ceremonial slap in the face that would then turn him around to face the court, after
which the son would then be a person in his own right, able to address the court. Nor
was personhood reserved to individual human beings; Romanlaw began the conceptof
corporation, an "artificial person" that was also able to appear in court and was
immortal (unlike "natural persons").
11
�As suggestive as these Roman ceremonies and symbols are, the concept of
person has still deeper roots that go beyond masks, facades, legal surrogates. The Latin
word persona ultimately goes back to the Greek prosopon, literally ''that which is
before/across from the eyes (pros-apsis)/' first of all meaning the face or countenance.
Greek literature set the precedent for a larger, more subtle understanding of what
prosopon meant. Homer already uses this word in a plural form (prosdpa) even when
referring to a single person, implicitly indicating that even a single solitary "face" is
implicitly regarded by another face, part of a larger world of faces. The word also
means "one's look, countenance," which also implies some onlooker, someone "before
one's eyes." Prosopon also came to mean "character" in the sense of a dramatic part and
hence also was used for the masks in the theater that expressed the character of each
personage in the drama. But here too the concept of "character" should be taken in the
larger sense of how each character is embedded in the whole drama, not standing
purely by him- or herself, apart from the other characters.
Thus, the Greek concept of person rested on an implicit communion ofpersons, in
which personhood is here understood as essentially a relation between persons, as
opposed to some quality each person could be said to have independent of the others.^^
As touchstone of personhood, rather than external formalities of masks or legal
charades, we should think of intimate conversation,/ace to face, as we still call
encounters person toperson. Such language already is important in the Hebrew
Scriptures, in which Moses speaks to God "face to face, as a man talks with his friend."
Hence the concept of person became an important point of reference as Christians
struggled to express their novel concept of the Godhead without either connoting
polytheism or conflating the distinct relations within the Trinity. But the even more
difficult challenge was to reconcile the different natures of Christ within one person.
Boethius and the Concept of Personhood
Compared to Augustine, his younger contemporary Boethius defined personhood more
closely in his theological writings. Boethius also wrote the Fundamentals ofMusic, the
most important text transmitting ancient musical theory for the next thousand years.
Boethius considered himself a translator, rather than an innovator; writing after the fall
of Rome at the hands of barbarian invaders and himself the chief minister to the
Ostrogothic king Theodoric, he felt the need to record Greek philosophy in the Latin
language, as if he sensed that it would soon be lost. He himself only was able to
complete a small part of his plan.
His dilemma comes forward in his Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in
prison, awaiting execution on trumped-up charges brought by his suspicious king. This
brief book became one of the most popular books throughout the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, translated successively by the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred, Geoffrey
Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I. In fact, Boethius was trying to mediate between
Theodoric, an Arian, and the orthodox emperor, seeking a compromise solution to the
controversy about the two natures of Christ. Theodoric took this as evidence that
12
�Boethius was conspiring against him with the emperor. Facing imminent death,
Boethius sought consolationand reassurance from Philosophy in person, a grave, tall
woman who rebukes his tears. Her stern response brings to mind his life's project, to
translate Aristotle, Plato, and other ancients into contemporary Latin. By comparison
with Augustine's Confessions, the way Boethius depicts himself in his Consolation of
Philosophy is less inward and self-reflexive but nevertheless gives a notably personal
shape to his dialogue. Though he takes Plato's dialogues as his model, he uses his own
dilemma as the central occasion of the dialogue with Philosophy; his personal agony
takes the work beyond conventionalized allegory to something with the kind of
existential force that must have touched medieval readers, as it still continues to do.
Even Boethius'snotable avoidance of Christian theology in this work seems to speak to
his personal relationwith Philosophy herself, apart from the theological issues that
engaged him elsewhere; his own loyalties included both the pagan philosophic
tradition and the new faith.
Though he attributes his inspiration to Augustine's On the Trinity, in his dialogue
On Person and the Two Natures Against Eutyches andNestorius, Boethius specifically
grapples with the problem of the dual nature of Christ as man and God, for which he
provides a definition of person as "the individual substance of a rational nature." Even
as he follows and respects Augustine, Boethius's definition stresses both individuality
and rationality because a stone, a tree, or a horsecannotbe a person, "but we say there
is a personof a man, of God, of an angel."^® Using this criterion, Boethius then rejects
the Nestorian heresy that the two natures in Christimply that He is two persons. In that
case, Boethius objects, there would be no union between those two persons, human and
divine, onlya mere juxtaposition, hence "Christ is,according to Nestorius, in no respect
one, and therefore He is absolutely nothing." We can only conceive that Christ saved
the human race, Boethius insists, if he united human and divine natures in his one
person. On the other hand, that single personhood of the Redeemerdoes not imply that
he has, as Eutyches had argued, only one single nature that utterly absorbed human
into divine nature. For Boethius, personhood is precisely the way in which the
multiplicity of natures (human and divine) can stillsubsist in the oneness of the person
of the Christ, a oneness Boethiusconsidered a precondition for human salvation. Where
Augustine reserves the term "person" for the exalted individuals in the Trinity,
Boethius also used it for angels and human beings, thus extending the concept of
personhood widely. He also emphasizes that personare comes from sonus, sound "and
for this reason, that the hollow mask necessarily produces a largersound" so that, by
thoseamplifying masks, we can recognize each personage in a tragedy. Thus, Boethius
explicitly directs us to sound, to voice, as essential to personhood. This connection will
remain important as we apply these concepts to polyphony.
Organum and its Ninth-Century Philosophical Context
Four centuries pass before the ideas we have been discussing come to light again; only
in the ninth century did Boethiusand Martianus Capella became available again in
13
�manuscript, along with the earliest written examples of polyphony in Musica enchiriadis
and Scholica enchiriadis. These texts described ''organum'' built on a plainchant voice
(called the "tenor" or "vox principalis"), practices probably already well established
before these treatises were written. Because the earliestsurviving written evidence of
the chant is roughly contemporary with these treatises, we cannot assume that
monophony simply preceded polyphony; morelikely, both traditions coexisted, though
ecclesiastical practice gave a special place to the monophonic chant.^^ Then too, these
anonymous treatises seem to have been written somewhere to the north of the
Carolingian realm, perhaps bringing contemporary practices to more remote regions,
rather than themselves making any claim to innovation.
These and other early collections of organum seem to follow an intelligible
pattern of gradually growing independence of voices, beginning with the monophonic
chant and adding parallel organal voices to form what the Enchiriadis treatises call
"symphonies" (fig. 2), each ofwhich is "asweet combination of different pitches joined
to one another."20
qui vivimus benedicimus do -
tni - num
qui vivimus benedtcimus do - mi - num
qui vivtmus benedicimus do - mi - num
quI vivimus benedicimus do - mi • num
qui vivimus benedicimus do •
—
exhocnune
1.
e(
us • que
in
mi - num
w
sc - cu - lum.
_
>L
'
ex hoe nunc
el
ex hoc nunc ct
us - que
m... *
in
us • quc in
* ....m
,
ex hoc nunc ct
us - que
in
se - cu - lum.
ex hoc nunc et
us - quc
in
se - cu - lum.
se . cu - lum.
sc - cu - turn.
Figure x8
[Fig. 2: Examples of parallel organum (a) at the octaveand (b) at the fifth, from the
Scolica enchiriadis (ca. 850 A.D.). Text: We who live bless the Lord, both now and to the
ages.]
Other examples involve freer motion of the organal voice against a "drone," in which
the organal voice will sometimesconverge on that same final pitch {occursus), a natural
way of accommodating the separate voices to their mutual conclusion (fig. 3).
Rex cae - 11
Ty - tan - is
14
do - mi - ne
ma - ris
un - di - so - ni.
ni - li - di
qua! - li - di - que so - li.
�[Fig. 3: Example of obliquely moving organum from Musicaenchiriadis, in which each
line move towards a unison close (occursus) on the final note, E.]
As they stand, the Enchiriadis texts came near the beginning of an extraordinary
flowering of polyphonic music that involved the most innovative intellectual centers of
Europe. How did the partisans of polyphony conceive what they were promoting in
terms of their intellectual priorities? How did they understand polyphony in relation to
the great monophonic tradition of chant? If indeed polyphony opened a new
intellectual as well as musical door, to what exactly did they think it led? How did they
conceive it to be related to the sources and traditions they knew?
Another contemporary author, Remigius of Auxerre (d. 908), directly connects
these developments with the text of Martianus, commenting on his description of the
mysterious grove we considered earlier: "Concentus is the uniting of tones that are alike.
Succentus occurs when different tones sound together, as, for example, in organum.^'^i
Remigius specifically understands what was heard in Apollo's grove - and hence in the
music of the spheres resounding there - to be essentially the same as the contemporary
organum he knew.
The most likely source about commonalitiesbetween polyphony and theology
may be Boethius himself, the main authority cited by the Enchiriadis treatises, which call
him doctor magnificus. ^ Where Boethius used the term symphonia to mean "consonance,"
the Enchiriadis treatises use this term to refer to "a sweet combination of different
pitches joined to one another," specifically when sounded simultaneously in organum.
Though most of Boethiuscan be read as referring only to a single melodic line whose
notes are sounded successively, not simultaneously, the Enchiriadis treatise quotes his
discussion of two strings plucked at once, which he in turn drew from Nicomachus:
when tuned an octave apart, two strings "combine and are united together in sound so
that one pitch \vox\, as if produced from one string and not mixed from two, strike the
hearing."23
"Thus says Boethius," the treatise notes, invoking his authority on a matter it
considers especially important and difficult, noting that "why some tones agree with
each other in a sweet commingling, whereas others disagree unpleasantly, being
unwilling to blend with each other, has a rather profound and divine explanation, and
in some respects is among the most hidden things of nature."24 Here, the agreement or
disagreement of specifically simultaneous tones has a special importance for the
Enchiriadis author, which he connects with larger issues: "This principle, whose
operations in this realm the Lord also permits us to penetrate, is treated in the writings
of the ancients. In these is asserted, with most convincing arguments, that the same
guiding principle that controls the concord of pitches regulates the natures of mortals.
Through these numerical relationships, by which unlike sounds concord with each
other, the eternal harmony of life and of the conflicting elements of the whole world is
united as one with material things."
Thus, the Enchiriadis treatise connects the problem of concord and discord
between simultaneous voices with "the natures of mortals," specifically with the way
"the eternal harmony of life" is united with "material things." This indeed describes the
15
�exact problem of the possible "concord'' of divine and human nature in the person of
the Christ; the author's reference to the Lord (the first and only such in this treatise,
except for its concluding prayer) also signals that we are in fact dealing with a matter
whose mysterious hiddenness specifically depends on matters that only the Lord can
enable us to penetrate, hence also presumably implying also that they have to do with
the Lord Himself. The author of the Enchiriadis treatises was probably also aware of the
theological works of Boethius (whose manuscripts were extant even before those of his
mathematical and musical writings) and hence his reference to the Lord and the
problem of the dual nature may well also refer to Boethius's formulation and his
teachings about personhood. If so, this gives contemporary evidence connecting the
problem of musical polyphony with the "theological polyphony" inherent in the person
of Christ, giving us some indication of how this early treatise on polyphony thought
about its nature and implications in its larger theological and philosophic context. In
this nexus of interconnected references and problems, Boethius was a central figure.
Persona and Polyphony
Returning now to the Enchiriadis treatise in light of these distinctions, we can view a
polyphonic composition as a kind of virtual person because it unites several separate
"natures" (here, the distinct voices) into one persona, the unified individuality of the
musical work itself. Because the theological concept of person seems to have explicitly
informed the way the author of Enchiriadis spoke about polyphony, we may infer that
he implicitly understood polyphony as analogous to the way in which we encounter
persons, as opposed to the ways we encounter beings that are not persons. Augustine,
following the usage of philosophers before him, spoke of human souls, rather than
human persons; the distinction is subtle but telling precisely because the soul (anima or
psyche in Greek) denotes some life-giving, animating principle within each animated
being, whereas person is more deeply social, denoting a face surrounded by other faces,
or (in the case of Christ) two distinct natures that are together unified into one person.
That is, "person" seems to indicate the encounter as a unity with a certain kind of
multiplicity. For Boethius, the encounter with Christ involves human and divine
natures united within one person. For the Enchiriadis author, the encounter with
polyphony "permits us to penetrate ... that the same guiding principle that controls the
concord of pitches regulates the natures of mortals." In that way, polyphony becomes a
privileged new way to apprehend the mysterious truths of theology not just as concepts
but in the intimate experience of our own polyphonic persona.
These considerations illuminate also the further innovations associated with the
School of Notre Dame. For instance, in Leonin's setting of the Gregorian Gradual for
Christmas Day, Viderunt omnes, the chant is heard in long, unmeasured notes held in the
lower of the two voices. Above the chant, the organal voice (called the "discant" by
Anonymous IV) weaves a free course that touches on the chant pitch but also uses
many other notes freely against it, some quite dissonant (such as the initial E).
Compared to the restrained pitch range of the chant, the discant's range is huge (an
16
�octave plus a fourth) and its fioriture demanding, requiring a virtuoso executant, not
just one of the anonymous choir singers intoning the chant. Though this development
was already underway in the increasingly elaborate free organum (such as that of St.
Martial), Leonin's piece implies a whole new "political" reality of the soloist set against
the chant (presumably intoned by a chorus), which cannot help but alter our perception
of the chant as "holding" (as the word "tenor" literally indicates) the musical
background against which the discant shines forth.
M1. Viwrufit
I—»
'
[Fig. 4: Leonin, Viderunt omnes, based on the Gradual for Christmas Day. Text: All [the
ends of the earth] shall see [the salvation of our God: all the earth shall rejoice in God.]]
The sense of the chant syllable (much less the complete word) is lost behind in the play of
the discant. The timeless quality of the chant is further heightened by this fading of
linguistic coherence: a single word of text now occupies so long a time that the mind only
dimly tracks it.
In Perotin's setting of this same Gradual, not only is the number of voices greater
but the sheer extension of each syllable of the chant is also immensely dilated; we hear
forty measures of "Vi-" before changing to "-de-." Though using the same rhythmic mode
as Leonin, Perotin's three voices result in a qualitatively very different texture, so closely
spaced and overlapping in range that one often cannot tell one of them from the other. The
ear is dazzled, unsure of when the voices intertwine and cross, when they move apart.
This confusion results partly from the greater multiplicity of voices: the ear attends
differently to four voices than to two. Perotin seems to want a new texture of interwoven
17
�voices, as compared with one or more distinct voices. Here texture enters music in a new.
way, denoting a complex effect emerging from the synthesis of a number of elements that
together produce a net effect qualitatively different than their mere sum. Compared to the
soaring individuality of Leonin's discant, Perotin's voices have a wholly other mode of
being, independent yet indistinguishable in their intricate interconnection. Though their
overall structural plans are similar, by radically extending the outer organum sections
(over 100 measures compared to Leonin's 17), one no longer perceives Perotin's structure
in anything like the same way. Perotin's organum goes on at such length that one really
looses oneself in it, far more so than in Leonin's much more compact setting. The very
excess of Perotin's proceeding suggests that he himself was not merely carried away by
exuberance but more intended his hearers to be agape, perhaps as those might feel when
first entering in a Gothic cathedral with much higher vaults and ceilings than they had
ever before encountered. Such a person might well feel disoriented, overwhelmed,
perhaps experience a kind of vertigo gazing into the heights. Leonin and Perotin reduced
their texts almost to incomprehensibility, at least to a human mind that can only
understand words pronounced near their normal speeds, not so radically slowed and
prolonged.
Though we confront their works as written compositions, we should bear in mind
the strong evidence that ecclesiastical polyphony was probably improvised according to
carefulformulae committed to memory, each prescribingpossible counterpoints to a given
intervallic motion in the underlying chant.^s For example, careful examination of the
account-books of the Cathedral of Notre Dame has indicated that its allotment of candles
was not great enough to allow music to have been read in the dim light, only performed
by heart. In that case, the written music may have been more a reminder or sample than a
definitive, exclusive text. If so, those improvisers confronted even more directly the
difficulties of generating (as well as apprehending) and coordinating many musical lines
at once.
Thomas's Polyphonic Mind
These arguments remind us of the relation between polyphony and the mind. In the
slow unfolding of this subtle and complex issue, it will prove helpful to begin by looking
back from the vantage point of the mature works of Thomas Aquinas, writing a century
after Leoriinwrote his Magnus liber organi. Born about the time that Perotin died (ca.1220),
Thomas himself was a product of the University of Paris, whose intellectual milieu literally
and figuratively surrounded the School of Notre Dame and its cathedral. As the historian
William of Armorica noted,
in that time [1210] letters flourished at Paris. Never before in any time or in any part
of the world, whether in Athens or in Egypt, had there been such a multitude of
students. The reason for this must be sought not only in the admirable beauty of
Paris, but also in the special privileges which King Philip and his father before him
conferred upon the scholars. In that great city the study of the trivium and the
quadrivium, of canon and civil law, as also of the science which empowers one to
preserve the health of the body and cure its ills, were held in high esteem. But the
crowd pressed with a special zeal about the chairs where Holy Scripture was
taught, or where problems of theology were solved.^^
18
�That unprecedented body ofstudents (who themselves constituted a city within the city of
Paris, proudly defending their own privileges and power) may have affected the reception
and understanding of the new polyphony in the Cathedral in ways that may be
comparable to the theological debates Thomas encountered after he himself arrived in
Paris in 1245 as a student.27 We see something of the spirit and method of these debates in
the "questions'' Thomas used throughout his Summa Theologiae. Each question begins with
a statement of the issue at hand (for example, "is God a person?"), to which Thomas first
givesa series of objections, each in the voice of those who hold it, along with their
reasoning, followed by what Thomas considers, "on the contrary," to be the decisive
argument against the view held by these objections. Then Thomas responds "I answer
that....," summarizing the theological crux in lightofthat decisive argument, followed by
a reply to each objection.
Given their keen attention to these theological debates, Parisian students would
likely have been struck by the question about polyphony. Indeed, the multiple conflicting
"voices" in a scholastic "question" themselves form a kind ofintellectual polyphony. The
students' thinking would have beenshapedlargely by Boethius's Fundamentals ofMusic,
which they all studied as part of the quadrivium. Thomas too would have known this text
well, no less than Boethius's theological works such as On the Trinity, on which Thomas as
a young man wrote the only commentary dating from his century.28 Thomas also adopted
as canonic Boethius's definition of the concept of person.
In his Summa Theologiae, Thomas cites the argument of Augustine that "this word
person of itself expresses absolutely the divine essence, as this name God and this word
Wise." 29 But Thomas alsoreviews the subsequent controversies whether "person" really
signified an essence or a relation, to which he answers that "the name personsignifies
relationdirectly, and the essence indirectly." In this way, Thomas phrases the orthodox
viewby sayingthat the Trinity comprises three persons and one hypostasis (underlying
substance, as discussed above), which formulates both the unity and trinity essential to the
triune God. The personhood of the Son is his sonship, in relation to the Father, whose
fatherhood only emerges in relationto his Son, continuing on through all the interrelations
that are essential to the Trinity, where "relation" implies both the common ground of the
two related persons and also their difference (between Father and Son, for instance).
These relations were famously controversial; part of the schism between Eastern and
Western churches concerned whether or not the Spirit could proceed from the Father and
from the Son (thefilioque of the Roman creed) or only from the Father (as the orthodox East
insisted).
Thomas, with Aristotle, held that the human mind cannot think many things at
once, for "itmay happen that many things are known, but only one understood.''^®
Thinking back to the example of listening to multiple conversations at once, Thomas might
argue that they are so distinct that we cannot know them "through the one form of the
whole," namely through "one species it [the mind] can understand at the same time; hence
it is that God sees all things at the same time, because He sees all in one, that is, in His
Essence. But whatever things the intellect understands under different species, it does not
understand at the same time," for the same reason that "it is impossible for one and the
same body at the same time to have different colors or different shapes," which in this
example correspond to the "different species" that in general characterize the
differentiating qualities through which we recognize different beings in the world.
19
�In confronting the general paradox of polyphony, Thomas never refers directly to
polyphonyor music but is very much engaged with the closely related consideration of
the differences between divine, angelic, and human minds. In assessingthese distinctions
of his, we should bear in mind that they do not necessarily require some doctrinal
acceptance of revealed truth or religious dogma; in this phase of his work, Thomas is
trying to reach the furthest implications that can be drawn by ordinary human reason,
withoutthe benefit of revdation, to establish the logical truths that ought to be accepted
by any reasonable mind. In the process, it is importantto establish the character and scope
of such a mind, which may most readily be done by comparison with other kinds of mind
that are more or less than human; whether they are actual or merely hypothetical
possibilities goes beyond this discussion and requires addressing issues of experience and
revelation. In his time as well as our own, the human mind persistently reaches out
toward and beyond its own limitations (whateverthey may be, whether a result of a
presumed, given "nature'' or as a productofsocial convention), towards what may be
more than human.
Looking to the extreme side of such trans-human possibilities in one direction, a
supreme and infinite Being would be the ultimate logical extrapolation. Yet even were
sucha Being to exist, the question would remain whether and how a purelyfinite human
intellect couldever know such a transcendent Being. After all, such a Being couldexist so
far above human knowledge as to be utterly unknowable to humans and hence entirely
disconnected from any human concern. SoThomas's questions about the nature and
existence of divine and angelic beingsconcern their possible interaction with humans,not
merely their existence in themselves, absolutely apartfrom humanintelligence, hence his
project require determining how far beyond itselfhuman intelligence can reach.
Theself-contradictory quality of trying to reachbeyond oneself returns us to what
we can know, by and in ourselves. Here Aristotle helps Thomasexpress how it is that we
see, and hence know: "Twothings are required both for sensible and intellectual vision namely, power of sight, and union of the thing seen with the sight. Forvisionis made
actual only when the things seen is in a certain way in the seer.... Therefore in order to see
God, there mustbesome likeness ofGod on the part oftheseeing power whereby the
intellect is made capable ofseeing God."^^ We could only see — understand —
or
something
beyond ourselves if there is something ofthat higher being in us; otherwise, it would
remain utterly unfamiliar and incomprehensible to us. Our recurrent aspiration to seea
higher power beyond ourselves is thus read as evidence that that higher power does exist
and alsothat we share enough in common with it that we might aspire towards it, to come
into contact with it or perhaps even to become morelike it. Thomas argues that our
aspiration to know a being higher than ourselves means that some human intellects will
actually see the essence of God, not merely His bare possibility or a few of His attributes,
because God, as supreme actuality, "is in Himself supremely knowable," in the sense that
knowledge in general is the actualization of some potential for knowing, as Aristotle had
argued.32
Thomas divides all created beingsinto those that are either purely corporeal (such
as inanimate matter), those that are partly corporeal and partly spiritual (suchas humans),
and those that are purely spiritual, hence wholly incorporeal (such as those called "angels"
in theScriptures). As such, the angels form an interesting middle groundbetween purely
finite, corporeal beings, such as ourselves, and a purely incorporeal, infinite God. Thomas
20
�argues that, as entirely actualized spiritual beings, such angels would naturallyknow God
"by His own likeness refulgent in the angel itself.In his Treatise onAngels, Thomas goes
on to exploremany aspects of angelic knowledge and action. Angelswould be far closerto
the ultimate actualization of the supremeBeing and hence would then know God through
their own natural powers (ascan humans also, through reason, Thomas argues, though
less completely). Angels would accordingly know themselves perfectly, thus fulfilling the
ancient injunction of the Delphic oracle: know thyself.
Despite this, even angelic minds have their limitations, which Thomas does not
merelyclaimto be coincidental but deduces as logically necessary, given their nature and
essence. He argues that angels cannot know the future or the secret thoughts of men.^^
Angels cannot be in several places at once, nor can several angels be in the same place at
the same time; they move through space sequentiallywith finite speed, not
instantaneously.36 These deductions all follow from angels sharing the fundamental
aspects and limitations of all finite entities. On the other hand, Thomasargues that "an
angel can understand many things at the same time." In this, the angels show their
essential kinship with God, who "sees all things in one thing, which is Himself. Therefore
God sees all things together, and not successively as we have held."37 in contrast, "we
understand [many things] simultaneously if we see them in some one thing; if,for
instance, we understand the parts in the whole, or see different things in a mirror."
Thomas takes up this image of a mirror as the crux of our reflections, both literal and
figurative. "A mirror and what is in it are seen by means of one species," meaning a
certain mode of likeness or of shared being, in this case the species of light common to
luminous objects and to the seeing eye. "But all things are seen in God as in an intelligible
mirror," bringing to mind the paradox of a supreme mirror, whose perfect reflectivity,
even apart from all objects, seems virtually to shine in the darkness.
Thomas sununarizes the argument we have just been considering by noting that
God's own knowledge is not discursive, unlike our common modes of cognition, which
proceed through separating and delineating the strands of succession and causality in
ways necessary to human understanding. God, in contrast, sees all in Himself, and the
angels, beholding Him directly, can also see many things as one, through Him.
Thereby we receive a resolution of our paradox of polyphony: only a completely
unified mind can see many things as one, through itself, a superlative form of vision which
then becomes a possibility for those who behold that mind. Here the unity of God as
supreme Being is essential, rather than His infinity - or perhaps we here confront unity as
an essential, surprising face of infinity. Our puzzlement may also reflect our unexamined
modern presupposition that "one" is merely a number, the first in a series of integers: one,
two, three, four,,... But in ancient mathematics, "one" is not included as a number, which
begins with two, three,... The Greek word for "one," monad, comes from monos, alone,
solitary, with the sense of preeminence: the One. In this exalted sense, oneness is a
transcendent state, something superhuman and divine, not to be put on the same level
with twoness or threeness or multiplicity in general. Thomas was well aware of the
tradition of Neoplatonic philosophy and theology that reflected centrally on the supreme
mystery of the One and how it could "overflow" into the Many. As did Augustine,
Thomas relies on the Neoplatonic argument that "all that is eternal is a simultaneous
whole," implying that understanding the eternal means grasping the simultaneity of all the
diverse voices in the universe.^s
21
�Here, then, we may bestsituate the paradox of polyphony in its full philosophical
and theological context. Ifindeed the mind ofGod is polyphonic, in the sense ofuniting
together many thingsas one,simultaneously, then those who practice polyphony are
implicitly attemptingto turn their minds towards that divine potentiality. Butgiven what
we havejust heard from Aristotle and Thomas, this is not possible for human beings, as
such - hence the paradox. In the context of the Enchiriadis treatises, its true resolution lies
more in the context of the theological controversies about the nature of Christ, whose
divine and human natures unite in the mystery of personhood. Thus, polyphony calls
attention to the way personhood represents the exact point of connection between human
and divine natures crucial for Christology.
By comparison with our earlier discussion of human and divine minds, Thomas
implies that understanding such a god-man requires that we step beyond what is
knowable to the unaided human reason, at leastin certain respects. Themere possibility of
sucha being is important, quite apart from the question of whether it ever actually existed,
which (Thomas judges) we could onlyknow through revelation. With that hypothetical
question in mind, then, we can ask: what would be required for some being to partake
equally of divine and human natures, or is that logically self-contradictory to the point of
impossibility, like a round square or an odd even number?
Thomas's answer relies on the language of personhood, which opens new
possibilities of phrasing a complex combination of unity and multiplicity in ways that
emphasizestrong parallels between these theological problems and the novel paradoxes of
polyphony. Granting that a purely "natural man" cannot grasp the many-in-one of the
Trinity,Thomas relies on the concept of personhood to give an intelligibleform to the
mysterious sacred texts he is interpreting. He is working within a theological tradition that
views human psychology in terms of a "trinity" of faculties in the soul, each of which are
explicit images of the Trinity that made man. Augustine had described a number of such
"trinities" in the human soul, such as memory, understanding, and will, or wisdom,
understanding, and memory, or lover, beloved, and love.^^ Ultimately, Thomas considers
that human beings have been given the capacity to contemplate the divine Trinity and its
personhood because they themselves are persons, through the grace of God. Thus, the
interplay of polyphonic voices may reflect the interplay of separate but deeply unified and
correlated persons within the godhead as well as the parallel inner faculties by which
humans might be attuned to them.
Indeed, the connection of humanity to this divine unity-in-multiplicity is the crux of
the most radical and controversial Christian doctrine of the union of divine and human
natures in Christ Himself. Having established that He is a person co-equal to the other
persons in the Trinity, Thomas argues that "the union of the two natures [human and
divine] in Christ is the greatest of all unions" and that union "took place in the Person of
the Word, and not in the nature.''^^ In this case, the personhood of Christ is precisely the
way He could unify two seemingly antithetical natures, human and divine, mortal and
immortal. According to this view, a newly extended concept of person is the essential
precondition for the coherence and logical consistency of Christian doctrine.
Understanding and hearing polyphony also required the new capability to hear that
such a sublime conception of personhood implied: the process of apprehending the
mysterious truth of the union of the two natures in the person of Christ parallels hearing
two different polyphonic voices as one, while still noticing their differences. Here we
22
�return to our starting point, Aristotle's (and Thomas's) insistence that we can finally only
know one thing at a time, which now is extended (but not violated) by this new kind of
polyphonic apprehension, in whichwe grasp many things as one precisely through a kind
ofbroadening or deepening ofthe human personthat is intrinsic to the Christian message.
For if,as Thomas seems to imply, Aristotle really describedthe full potentialities of human
nature (at least in broad outline), both Christian revelation and polyphony require and
demonstrate the ways in which rationalhumanity can expand or extend its capabilities
through the actions of divine grace. In this reading, polyphony may then be a kind of
experimental demonstration of the effect of Christian grace on human hearing, as
Thomas'sextension of Aristotle manifests the effect of that grace on ancient wisdom.
To be sure, we lack any direct testimony to these inferences from contemporary
sources, whichreally do not address the questionof how they understood polyphony or
what sense they made of it, philosophically. Yet the parallels we have drawn are so strong
and directthat it is hard to believe that they werenot noticed at the time, even thoughwe
do not possess any directevidence. Thesamecrowds of excited students who pressed
around the chairs of theology, hearing arguments about personhood and the union of the
two natures or about the Trinity, probably alsoheard (or even sang) the new polyphony of
theSchool ofNotre Dame. The theme ofnewness iscommon and worth remarking: the
works of Leonin and Perotinwere obviously new, as Anonymous IVmakesclear, as were
the teachings of Thomas. And here we recall also that "newness" was not then a term of
praise, as it generally is for us; Thomas himself came under investigation for heresy, which
precisely seeks out dangerous and misleading novelties. His new use of the ancient
philosophers, especially Aristotle, was highly controversial; Thomas used his immense
rhetorical and logical skill to persuade hiscontemporaries to accept this new synthesis of
faith and reason, for which his model was Boethius, who had brought knowledge of
Aristotle to the Christian West.
Throughout this period, polyphony remained controversial. In 1159, John of
Salisbury (aclose associate of Thomas a Becket) argued that "musicsullies the Divine
Service" on account ofthe "effete emotings oftheir before-singing and theirafter-singing,
theirsinging and their counter-singing, their in-between-singing and their ill-advised
singing... to such an extent are the highest notes mixed together with the low or lowest
ones. Indeed, when such practices go too far, they can more easily occasion titillation
between the legs than a senseof devotion in the brain."'*^ In 1323, PopeJohnXXII's bull
Docta sanctorum proscribed manyforms of polyphonic music, quoting Boethius that "a
person who is intrinsically sensuous will delight in hearing these indecent melodies and
onewholistens to themfrequently will be weakened thereby and lose his virility of
soul."42 The pope referred to polyphony as a "common" state of things, whichimplies that
objections must also have become common; he exempts "the occasional use of some
consonances, which heighten the beauty of the melody," indicating ways in which
polyphonic practice was by then deeply ingrained.
Though he did not write directly on music, some ofThomas's otherwritings give us
insight into hisviews. We know that he composed the liturgical texts for the newly
established feast ofCorpus Christ, instituted in 1264 by Pope Urban IV, whose liturgy
involved newly composed chantssettingThomas's texts, including the famous Tantum
ergo sacramentum. One wonders how he would have regarded these musicalsettings,
especially in relation to the mystical theology of the Eucharist to which Thomas seems to
23
�have been deeply drawn. We have unambiguous evidence of his concern with sound in
his Eucharistic poem Adoro te, which includes the revealing lines "Visus, tactus, gustus in
^ • te fallitur, / Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.'' As Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered it,
''Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived: / How says trusty hearing? that shall be
believed." Just as Augustine was finally converted by a mysterious childlike voice that
piped over and over again the sing-song words "Take it and read," Thomas here asserts
the peculiar importance of hearing as a mode through which the divine may made known
to the human soul. Accordingly, he implicitly places a high value on music, which may
well have complemented in his mind the heard quality of the disputations and questions
that formed the body of his theological works.
This emphasis on hearing also is manifest in the spoken quality of his work. After his
youth, Thomas customarily dictated, rather than wrote, his works. His output was
staggering, amoimting (on careful calculation) to more than twelve printed pages a day of
closely argued prose, on a pace maintained over many years. In order to do this, several
independent accounts by his associates noted that he "dictated at the same time on diverse
subjects to three secretaries and sometimesfourThus, Thomas's own mind seemed to have
operated in a way that was distinctly polyphonic. One of his amanuenses even recorded
that once "after dictating to him and to two other secretaries that he [Thomas] had, sitting
to rest for a bit, he fell asleep and continued dictating even while sleeping."^^ Such stories
of simultaneous dictation also were told of Caesar as evidence that his abilities exceeded
the human norm. But where his prodigious feats merely indicated his superhuman talents,
in Thomas's case, his ability to function polyphonically corresponds strikingly with the
questions about human, angelic, and divine minds he had argued so closely, perhaps to
several secretaries simultaneously. Thomas's multiple dictation indicates how far a human
mind could go into the polyphonic realm of angelic mentality. Though his secretaries
might have considered his feats to be miracles, Thomas himself would probably not have
agreed, given his respect for what human reason and willpower could accomplish without
presuming to draw on divine grace. Thomas also knew his limitations and evidently
became so weary that he would fall asleep while trying to work, as you or I might. But,
unlike us, he just kept on dictating. A monk whose cell was nearby "frequently heard him
talking and disputing with himself when he remained alone and without anyone else in
his cell." That singular mind, capable of dictating several complex texts at once, may have
been shaped by those solitary, ceaseless disputations, as if those intricate arguments in
which spoke aloud and heard himself as advocate, opponent, and judge were the crucible
in which that polyphonic mind was formed.
The Overflowing Source
Though his perspective on the general questions of mind and person is rich and
suggestive, Thomas wrote centuries after polyphony had begun to flower; its sources
should, therefore, be sought closer in time to its beginnings. On the basis of the texts we
have assembled, those sources seem to be Neoplatonic, as evidenced especially by
Martianus's specific examples. The fundamental importance of the overflowing of the One
into the Many in Neoplatonic thought is deeply congruent with the historical unfolding of
polyphony, the One of chant bifurcating into the two voices of early organum, at first
strictly parallel and then more freely independent. After these early dyads, then three and
24
�more voices emerged. Even apart from this close analogy between Neoplatonic ontology
and music history, that ontology grounds the relation of the successive voices to the One
in just the way that the One overflows into the Many in every facet of Becoming.
The question at issue here not only concerns the nature of the mind but the very
heart of what it means to grasp anything as one. The Neoplatonic sources look back to the
initial statement of the fundamental question in Plato's Phaedo 97a-b, where Socrates is
recounting his early experiences with natural philosophy:
I will not even allow myself to say that where one is added to one either the one to
which it is added or the one that is added becomes two, or that the one added and
the one to which it is added become two because of the addition of the one to the
other. I wonder that, when each of them is separate from the other, each of them is
one, nor are then then two, but that, when they come near to one another, this is the
cause of their becoming two, the coming together and being placed closer to one
another. Nor can I any longer be persuaded that when one thing is divided, this
division is the cause of its becomingtwo, for just now the cause of becoming two
was the opposite. At that time it was their coming close together and one was
added to the other, but now it is because one is taken and separated from the other.
Theprimalarithmetic assertion that "one plus one is two" turns out to be a profound
mystery; we seem only to parrot this statement (and so many other mathematical truths
that follow upon it) withoutreally understanding anything about what it really means or
how the Onecould ever be said to "turn into" the Dyad, a paradox that verges on flat selfcontradiction. NeitherSocrates nor Platoseem to resolve this enigma, at onceso simple
and so deep, nor can the Neoplatonists, save perhaps through a kind of poetic evocation.
When Plotinus {Enneads VI.6.1), addresses the origin of number, he falls back not so much
on argument in any ordinary sense as a kind of inspired description:
A thing, in fact, becomes a manifold when, unable to remain self-centered, it flows
outward and by that dissipation takes extension: utterly losingunity it becomes a
manifold since there is nothing to bind part to part; when, with all this outflowing, it
becomessomething definite, there is a magnitude.
The very concept of "outflowing" may stand for us as a kind of intuition that the One is not
static or self-contained but seems to pour forth states of higher multiplicity that still bear
the mark of the One insofar as we grasp their unity: the three upper voices of Perotin seem
to be emanations of the chant voicebelow them, so that all four voices really are a mask of
the One.But we remain at the very begirming of this deep and perennial question: how can
we grasp anything as One? and how, then, can we grasp the Many as One, or One in
Many?
Here we may outline two possible roads. The Roman manifestationsof polyphony
such as Martianus described may have hewed to the Neoplatonic ascent that begins with
the Many but leaves the Many behind as it reaches past reason to grasp the One. Plotinus
understands this as utterly transcending all multiplicityand returning to the One as "selfseeing": "In this seeing, we neither hold an object nor trace distinction; there is no two. The
man is changed, no longer himselfnor self-belonging; he is merged with the Supreme...
Therewere not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a
25
�unity apprehended.... When the soul begins again to mount, it comesnot to something
alien but to its very self... the flight of the alone to the alone" (Enneads VI.9.10-11). The
Christians, on the other hand, seem to understand that One still to maintain Trinity, even at
the height of mystical vision, a One that is not our "very self" in its supreme aloneness but
something Wholly Other Who ultimately meets us person to person, face to face. These
questions of mystical theology are desperately difficult, for they defy reason and speech,
according both to Christians or Neoplatonists. Perhaps only the felt experience and
interrogation of the works of music themselves may help us. Is the experience of
polyphony the evocation of emergence from and return to a monophonic Unity, or is the
deepest ground of reality finally polyphonic?
^Georgiades, T. G. (1973). Greek music, verse, and dance. New York,, Da Capo Press., 23-38,
argues that (according to his reading) the nature of Greek rhythms made polyphony "impossible,"
in the later Western sense.
2Weiss, P. and R. Taruskin (2008). Music in the Western World : a history in documents. Australia;
Belmont, CA, Thomson/Schirmer., 60-61.
^West, M. L. (1992). Ancient Greek music. Oxford, Clarendon Press., 205-207 at 207, discusses the
surviving evidence of heterophony in Greek music, including its mentions in Aristoxenus's
important treatise.
^For a general overview of this and other ancient musical notations, see Ibid., 254-276.
®
Nicomachus and F. R. Levin(1994). The manual of harmonics of Nicomachus the Pythagorean.
Grand Rapids, MI, USA, Phanes Press., 84; see also 173.
®Cited and translated in the excellent articleby Sullivan, B. (1997). "The Polyphony of the Spheres."
Viator 28:33-43., 36.See also Martianus, C., W. H. Stahl, et al. (1977). The marriage of Philology
and Mercury. New York, Columbia University Press., 2:9-10, [11]-[12].
Augustine, E. Hill, et al. (1990). The works of Saint Augustine : a translation for the 21st century.
Brooklyn, N.Y., New City Press., 155-157, at 155 (4.4-5). For a general discussion of Augustine's
work on music, see Schueller, H. M. (1988). The idea of music: an introduction to musical
aesthetics in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Kalamazoo, MI, Medieval Institute Publications,
Western Michigan University., 239-256.
®See Plotinus, Enneads V.4.
' Barker, A. (2004). Greek musical writings. Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press.,
194-195; for the attribution of these Problems to his school, see 190.
Proclus, D. and E. R. Dodds (1963). The elements of theology =Stoichei*osis theologik*e. Oxford,,
ClarendonPress., 51, proposition 52; Augustine refersto this seminal text on many occasions in his
work on the Trinity.
" Augustine, E. Hill, et al. (1990). The works of SaintAugustine: a translation for the 21st century.
Brooklyn, N.Y., New City Press., 196 (5.10).
Ibid., 228 (7.11). Tertullian addresses the concept of person in Against Praxeas (written not earlier
than 208 A.D.), Roberts, A., J. Donaldson, et al. (1885). The Ante-Nicene fathers. Translations of the
writings of the fathers down to A.D. 325. Buffalo,, The Christian literature publishing company.,
3:597-627, especially ch. 7 (601-602), and may have been the earliest Latin Christian author
Augustine may have had in mind.
26
�" Ibid., 226-227 (7.8); the scriptural citations are from 2 Cor. 2:10 and Deut. 6:4.
" For instance, Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: the making of the modem identity. •
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press., 131, argues that Augustine "introduced the
inwardness of radical reflexivity and bequeathed it to the Western tradition of thought."
Henry, P. (1960). Saint Augustine on personality. Macmillan. argues that "in the history of
thought and civilization Saint Augustine appears to me to be the first thinker who brought into
prominence and undertook an analysis of the philosophical and psychological concepts of person
and personality" (1). While granting this, I would like also to bring forward the ways in which
Augustine also expressed his hesitations about this concept, leaving room for the later additions of
Boethius and Thomas, among others.
For a general survey, see Borkowski, J. A. (1997). Textbook on Roman law. London, Blackstone
Press., 84-87;see also Duff, P. W. (1971). Personality in Roman private law. New York,, A. M.
Kelley. and Watson, A. (1967). The law of persons in the later Roman Republic. Oxford,, Clarendon
P..
Here I am indebted to the insights of Bruce Venable, "The Name and Nature of the Person," in
(Stickney 1993), 260-274. See also Peacocke, A. R., G. Gillett, et al. (1987). Persons and personality:
a contemporary inquiry. Oxford, UK; New York, NY, USA, B. Blackwell..
Boethius, H. F. Stewart, et al. (1936). The theological tractates. Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University press., 83-85.
Taruskin, R. (2005). The Oxford history of western music. Oxford; New York, Oxford University
Press.,l:147-148 argues this point cogently.
2" Erickson, R. and C. V. Palisca (1995). Musica enchiriadis : and. Scolica enchiriadis. New Haven,
YaleUniversity Press., 13, which contains a full translation and excellent commentary on these
works. For Guidons somewhat different treatment of "diaphony" or organum, see Hucbald, Guido,
et al. (1978). Hucbald. Guido. and Tohn on music: three medieval treatises. New Haven, Yale
University Press., 77-82. For the Syrian practice of organum, see Husmann, H. (1966). The Practice
of Organum in the Liturgical Singing of the Syrian Chruches of the Near and Middle East. Aspects
of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustav Reese. J. LaRue. New York, W.
W. Norton: 433-439..
Discussed in (Sullivan 1997), 39.
22 Because the ninth-century Irish theologian Johannes Scottus Eriugena used the phrase organicum
melos, which the Musica enchiriadis treatise used in reference to polyphony, some musicologists
(including Hugo Riemann) took this as indicating that Eriugena was referring to this treatise and
to contemporary organum or alternatively that the treatise drew its Neoplatonic elements from
Eriugena. Yet subsequent investigations showed that the phrase organicum melos could also refer to
non-polyphonic practice (such as fixed mathematical ratios used to build instruments, organa).
Also, the Neoplatonic references in the Enchiriadistreatises all could have been derived from
writings of Boethius or Augustine, whom the treatises explicitly mention, as opposed to Eriugena,
whom they never mention. Raymond Erickson and Claude V. Palisca, Musica enchiriadis; and,
Scolica enchiriadis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), xliv-xlvi, and also Erickson, R., Ed.
(1992). Eriugena. Boethius and the Neoplatonism of Musica and Scolica Enchiriadis. Stuyvesant,
NY, Pendragon Press., which gives a detailed account of the controversy; some eminent
musicologists, such as Michel Huglo, still remain persuaded of the Eriugena connection.
27
�23 Erickson, R. and C. V. Palisca (1995). Musica enchiriadis: and. Scolica enchiriadis. New Haven,
Yale University Press., 26, citing Boethius, C. M. Bower, et al. (1989). Fundamentals of music. New
Haven, Yale University Press., 169 (5.9). Nicomachus and F. R. Levin (1994). The manual of
harmonics of Nicomachus the Pythagorean. Grand Rapids, MI, USA, Phanes Press., 173, one of
Boethius's most important Greek sources, also notes that "systems [i.e., combinations of two or
more intervals] are consonant when the notes comprising them, though different in compass, are,
when struck simultaneously or sounded in some way, intermingled with one another in such a
manner that there is produced from them a single sound like one voice."
2'» Erickson, R. and C. V. Palisca (1995). Musica enchiriadis : and. Scolica enchiriadis. New Haven,
Yale University Press., 30.
25 See Berger, A. M. B. (2005). Medieval music and the art of memory. Berkeley, University of
California Press..
2^ Cited in Waite, W. G. and Leonin (1973). The rhythm of twelfth-century polyphony, its theory
and practice. Westport, Conn.,, Greenwood Press., 1-2.
22 Torrell, J.-P. and R. Royal (2005). Saint Thomas Aquinas. Volume 1. the person and his work.
Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, gives a particularly clear account of the
career of Thomas in light of recent research; for his Parisian studies (1245-1248) under Albertus
Magnus, see 18-35.Thomas served two periods as a master in Paris, from 1252-1259 (36-95) and
then again from 1268-1272 (179-223).
28 For Thomas's relation to Boethius, see ibid., 68, 226. Thomas's commentary on Boethius's On the
Trinityis one of his earliest writings (ca. 1257-1259) and shows his close study of Boethius's
theological work; see Thomas, Thomas, et al. (1946). The Trinity and The unicity of the intellect. St.
Louis, Mo., London,, B. Herder book co.
25 STI, Q. 29, art. 4. Though he did not know Greek, Thomas considers the Greek word prosopon
important enough to quote verbatim, noting that it refers to masks that were "placed on the face
and covered the features before the eyes." ST I, Q. 29, art. 3.
58 Aristotle, Topics 11.10 (114b34), which is cited by Thomas in ST IQ. 12, art. 10, obj. 1; Q. 58, art. 2,
obj. 1, and Q. 85, art. 5, which gives his sustained discussion of "whether we can understand many
things at the same time?"
31 ST IQ. 12, art. 2.
32 ST IQ. 12.
35 ST IQ. 12., art. 4, repl. obj. 1.
34 ST
35 ST
35 ST
32 ST
I, Q. 56, art. 3,1.
IQ. 57, art. 3,4.
IQ. 52, art. 1-3; Q. 53, art. 1-3.
IQ. 14, art. 7.
38 Proclus, D. and E. R. Dodds (1963). The elements of theology = Stoichei^osis theologik*e. Oxford,,
Clarendon Press., 51.
35 Augustine, E. Hill, et al. (1990). The works of Saint Augustine : a translation for the 21st century.
Brooklyn, N.Y., New City Press., 403-404 (15.12).
48 ST III, Q. 2, art. 9, 2.
Weiss, P. and R. Taruskin (2008). Music in the Western World : a history in documents. Australia
; Belmont, CA, Thomson/Schirmer., 62.
28
�Ibid., 70-71 (excerpt).
43 Torrell, J.-P. and R. Royal (2005). Saint Thomas Aquinas. Volume 1. the person and his work.
Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press., 239-244, reviews all these stories,
including the two cited here (241-242).
29
�
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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Organum and persona : the philosophical significance of early polyphony
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Transcript of a lecture given on October 30, 2009 by Peter Pesic as part of
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Pesic, Peter
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Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274.
Polyphony
Trinity
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24003673
Friday night lecture
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