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Summer Lectures (1979)
8 June
Michael Dink
15 June
Elliot Zuckerman
22 June
Jon Lenkowski
29 June
Samuel Kutler
6 July
David Lachterman
13 July
John White
20 July
ESSAYS DUE
27 July
Mary Hannah Jones
3 August James Carey
Friendship in Plato’s Phaedo
An Opinion about Major and Minor
On Definitions
Play and Seriousness
On Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Aristotle’s Poetics
Muθos in the Odyssey
Aristotle and the Problems of Intelligibility
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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Graduate Institute
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Summer Lectures (1979)
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1979
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Schedule of lectures and concerts in Summer 1979, sponsored by the Graduate Institute.
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Lecture Schedule 1979 Summer
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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Dink, Michael
Zuckerman, Elliott
Lenkowski, Jon
Kulter, Samuel
Lachterman, David Rapport, 1944-
White, John
Jones, Mary Hannah
Carey, James
Graduate Institute
Lecture schedule
Summer lecture series
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THE
St. o
's Review
Winter, 1986
�The cover is the work of Lydia Sparrow.
Editor:
J. Walter Sterling
Managing Editor:
Maria Coughlin
Poetry Editor:
Richard Freis
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis,
Alumni representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems
are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned
comments are also welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the
Dean. St. john' s College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. William Dyal, President, Thomas Slakey, Dean. Published
thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and
summer. For those not on the distribu-
tion list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly,
$24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three
years.. payable in advance. Address all
correspondence to The St. John's Review,
St. john' s College,
Maryland 21404.
Annapolis,
Volume XXXVII, Number 1
Winter 1986
©1987 St. john' s College; All rights
reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Composition: Best Impressions, Inc.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing
Company
�Contents
m
1
Memorial Addresses
The Writings of William O'Grady
ON THE POETS
1
6
8
10
16
23
28
Odysseus Among the Phaiakians
Odysseus With His Father
A Scene from Electra
About Sophocles' Philoctetes
The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus
On Almost Seeing Miracles
About The Winter's Tale
ON THE PHIWSOPHERS
30
37
44
46
Platds Republic and the Search for Common Objects
About Human Knowing
Reflections on Beginning Ptolemy
Negation, Willing, and the Places of the Soul
ON CHRISTIAN THEMES
53
57
61
65
About Dante's Purgatory
A Way to Think about Dark Times
Sadness and Courage
The Bible and the Human Heart
FROM HIS STUDENT YEARS
70
90
105
Hegel and Marx: Studies in Man's Self-Assertion
Kant's Moral Philosophy
Theory and Practice in Hegel's Phenomenology
�Bill O'Grady died in his sleep on January 6, 1986; his death
entirely unexpected, preceded by no sign of illness. He was 40
years old. He had been teaching at St. John's since 1970. This
issue of his occasional pieces is preceded by memorials to him
delivered at services in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Joe Sachs, his
colleague and friend, has gathered his writings together and prepared them for publication.
To those who knew him, Bill O'Grady was a touchstone of
the soul. He was teacher to his colleagues no less than to his
students. We are fortunate that some of his words were written
so that he may continue to teach at St. John's College.
Walter Sterling
�WILLIAM O'GRADY
1945-1986
�ii
�Memorial Addresses
Robert Bart, Tutor, Santa Fe
Mr. Bart's words were prefaced with a title, "The Starry Messenger," and the inscription: In memory of William Walsh O'Grady
who died on January 6, the day of the Epiphany, when the Redeemer was first shown forth to men.
When the terrible news of Bill O'Grady's death came to me last week, my heart froze. He died a young man, barely
40, within months after he had gotten married, a lover who had waited and watched all night until the dawn came
to suffuse his day with its pure light. Of his loss and of his wife's loss, I cannot speak. These are mysteries no man
can approach save in silence and humility.
I do want to share a few thoughts with you about our loss. One of his friends said of him a week ago: I will never
have a better friend and the College will never have a better teacher. These striking words have echoed and re-echoed
since, as more and more of us who were his friends have felt that we could rightly say the saine thing. How is it that
the broken heart can endure such loss? How can it begin to recover, as it does? That is a mystery of which we must
speak, inadequate as our words will be.
Bill O'Grady's death is the worst news I ever expect to hear. Why? Because always and everywhere he was the bringer
of good news, the good news that the heart in hiding no longer dared to hope for, that it was sure it was dead to forever.
Such news is life in the desert, and its bearer is an angel of mercy, a wonder past all telling, yet the only thing worth
telling. To lose such a messenger seems like death itself. Yet there is worse, my stubborn heart protested. It is worse
by far to lose the message. Bill's ardor was all for the truth; his presence was always the presence of something beyond
him that he saw and felt keenly and set about expressing with sovereign eloquence. Bill never came empty-handed.
When he came he would announce, earnestly, I have three things to say, or maybe four, and that burden he would
always uufold each time, carefully, in all its severe beauty.
Bill loved the truth with a fierce and knowing love. It possessed him wholly when he spoke so that one forgot him
and attended to his words alone. He spoke boldly because of the clarity with which he saw and the faithfulness, yet
he spoke shyly because of his own modesty. Maybe others had a different experience of him, but to me he never came
by chance, if there is such a thing as chance, but always deliberately, to bring me good news. He never failed to be
present at the times of greatest distress and his presence itself was always a blessing. For the heart in its deepest anguish cries out for the beloved as Philoctetes did for ten long years on Lemnos, and Job through awful days and nights:
the heart cries, Will he never appear? Yet when God comes to Job and Hercules to Philoctetes, they do not say: I am
here, be content. They come with a message and a message whose harsh and humbling truth is the only possible consolation. It brings hope.
Bill's ways were mostly gentler, more human and humane, for he rarely presumed or cared to speak the hard truths
that his kind words sometimes implied. Yet despite his tender heart he was a hero like Hercules. Not of course to look
iii
�at. He was slight, always tense, straining, awkward when he moved. Early in our acquaintance in a rare moment of
laughing at himself, he told a few of us at Eva Brann's, how he was the despair of his shop teacher at school, since
he couldn't learn to do a single thing right. He was always ashamed of his clumsiness, but through that whole tale
one also saw how he had suffered for his teacher and loved him in his frustration, and made him a friend for life.
Bill's labors were mighty, and twelve times twelve, at least.
Apparently it was easy from a distance to think him romantic or sentimental, Irish, and impractical. Irish he was
to the core, but of all the rest it is enough to say that he was a lover, and love has no traffic with mere romance. Its
business is tougher, its joys are solid. Love, as Socrates says, is endlessly inventive. Being poor, it must be, yet it is
the child of resource. Love in practice is a contriver of incomparable skill, awkward and even at a glance unlovely,
godlike, but no god. Yet it is the infallible messenger and bond between gods and men, without whose help we will
never know anything worth knowing. Such was Bill O'Grady.
What then was Bill's message? Like any great healer's it was in every case utterly specific. Though he drew inspiration always from books, he was never so lazy, abstract and sentimental as to rest content with formulae. So too his
teaching could not possibly invite imitation. He was a great artist. He dealt with the concrete. With unerring diagnostic
power, he would bring to a sufferer the exact words that were needed, words that were as true as they were unexpected. Love and art are always original. It is the curse of our imagination that in our weakness and our illusion we recreate
the world in our own imperfect image and believe it is as we imagine it. In our darker moments such lies cause much
of our despair. Bill fought against those illusions. He was always ready with sympathy, but he always found deeper
and surer consolation. More often than not he came to me to tell of the honest or generous word or deed of a person
I had not trusted; or in general, when all things seemed to have turned to ashes, he would tell me what was really
going on while my gaze was distracted by my own foolish feelings. The brilliance of the treasures he unearthed gave
me joy and relief, and shame and courage. His memory was one of the wonders of this world; it is right that we should
struggle to remember him always, as we are doing this afternoon, but if we knew him Rt all, we knew that we could
never remember him as he remembered us, just as we could not know him as he knew us. In that knowledge he could
detect the words we needed to hear, words of his own for sure, and precious for that reason, but his words were almost
always words about others, about what they were doing and saying. Gently he turned our thoughts away from our
grief or pain. His words had the marks of true revelation, they brought joy, and sorrow as well, joy that things are
as they are, sorrow that we had not, after all, seen them for what they were. But the joy and the peace were always
predominant: In discovering the poverty of our vision, we discovered the riches of what he knew and saw. It would
be merely foolish to speak of him as sentimental, since the mark of sentimentality is its abstraction, its falsehood. He
was always immediate and concrete. It was enough to hear him quote one's own words, to know his grasp of fact.
Days and years after the event he could report words one had spoken truly. It was in a way a terror to know him,
a holy terror, not so much because he was so good, which he was, but because his knowledge of each of us was both
strict and generous, and because of course, we are often unworthy of generosity as we are unworthy of our true selves.
He fought with himself not to judge, though he was drawn that way mightily. He almost always won. As a result,
his love was uncompromising, his loyalty perfect. He saw what he saw as surely and as relentlessly as the truths of
mathematics and his brilliant vision of each person purged defects. Love which purifies can afford to seem blind.
He was deeply concerned with forgiveness. He believed ardently in Purgatory, perhaps as a hope for himself. He
thought of forgiveness as an absolute obliteration of evil; by means of forgiveness evil passes into the nothingness from
which it arises. Such forgiving is a hard taskmaster, to which Bill submitted eagerly. He was not blind to evil. He hated
it when it forced itself on him, but it took force. His rage, which was not infrequent, was like the sharp sword of Justice.
He set himself to overcome evil by his courage and love. He won that battle over and over, in the College no less than
in the lives of those who were privileged to know him; their number is legion. He was always a private person, yet
he had more friends and true lovers than anyone I have ever known.
At times he was bone-tired and weary. I wonder if anyone ever suffered more. For that reason he respected the weariness of his friends. At times, before he was married, one might have thought, with Kent as he looks on Lear,
he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.
But Bill believed in the Divine Comedy of this world and the Next; he loved the girls too much, he once said, to be
a priest. Marriage was his unfailing hope. Hope is one of the three heavenly virtues and true hope is a strenuous discipline. Straining toward that and loving his friends and his teachers and the words men have written in books made
life good to him, if not easy. Such hope and faith and love are hard to sustain. But with Lear, holding in his arms
the dead Cordelia, one could hear him say:
iv
�Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, Look there,
in wonder at bright life renascent from the dross in his hands.
Who more surely than Bill O'Grady would confirm one's faith in the toughness of the soul and the innate power
of life to endure the most terrible onslaught, withdrawing briefly, only to reappear in memory, in hope and in truth.
Please rejoice with me then in the memory of William Walsh O'Grady.
Curtis Wilson, Tutor, Annapolis
"Not ignorant of evil," Dido says when she first meets Aeneas, "I know at least one thing-to help the afflicted."
It was characteristic of Bill O'Grady to insist that what he knew or was clear about was something simple, some one
thing amidst many others unknown, put forth usually with an apology for its inadequacy to the full complexity of what
there is, yet put forth with a certain insistence. And then the one thing, with further articulation, would break into
a wondrous multitude of things, like light through a prism; for his fellow-feeling, and his sense of the suffering of
others, was combined with a remarkable acuity of discernment and intellectual force. The dominant quality was the
concern with the wisdom of the heart; a wisdom that he sought with moral intensity as much in everyday relations
as in the study of Homer or Sophocles or Nietzsche.
Bill 0' Grady has been such a unique presence in this College; that presence has had so much to do with the soul
of the College; and he has been taken from us so suddenly, and so sadly. For months I have known that, for me, this
particular week in January would be packed with busy-ness; I did not know that in the midst of other doings I would
be stumbling to find the right words to characterize so unique a presence as Bill O'Grady has been; nor have I any
confidence that with more time I could be even moderately successful. In fact, the situation is one that Kierkegaard
would characterize as a repetition: it is exactly the situation that Bill O'Grady has repeatedly found me out in; that
is to say, he has repeatedly found me busy, involved in trying to decipher intellectual puzzles whose solution would
not necessarily touch the heart. I am grateful to him for never blaming me for my acquisitive curiosity. His presence
was inevitably a demand, a kindly but insistent demand, that the human heart be taken into account. I have wanted
to respect that demand, to live up to it. Others, I imagine, have felt something similar.
I'm grateful to Bill for a number of insights into a number of books. I am grateful to him for a letter he wrote me,
when he was on the Instruction Committee and I was dean, and he had discerned how exhausted I had allowed myself
to become, and how dispirited; the only thing to be done with me, I knew, was to put myself in wraps until the animal
spirits regained their resilience. Such mere mechanisms were not in his thoughts. He wrote me a letter, a lovely letter
of comfort. So few of us manage to do things like that. More than once, when I was dean, Bill helped me by telling
me what the real situation was that I was confronted with, how it was that the words that X had spoken meant the
opposite of what they seemed to say, or what it was that Y would have said if Y had had the confidence to speak to
me, or what some student was undergoing, that I knew nothing about. Such revelations are precious to any mere administrator.
I know that there are uncounted students who owe debts of gratitude to Bill O'Grady, back through the years. I
remember how during his first and only sabbatical year he was to be seen at the oddest hours, in the coffee shop, paired
in earnest conversation with one senior after another, over senior essays, reminding me, no doubt inappropriately,
of Lear's line near the end of the play about two birds in a cage.
No, it is not within my reach to say here the right words, about what Bill O'Grady has meant to so many of us,
and will always mean. I have in my hands a letter to Bill from his father, written when Bill was about to finish his
first year of college at Notre Dame. Joie has given me permission to read from it.
''Hope the exams have been going as well as possible, but don't worry about 'em. As the man said, your main objective is to become a sophomore, and I believe you have that just about accomplished ...
"There is one thing I would like to say in this last epistle. The year, I am sure, has been a rewarding and stimulating
one for you. It has possibly opened up many new byways for you to explore ... you have learned that, in addition
to the selfish and the self-seekers and the just plain no-damn-goods in this world (and there seem to be too many),
there are also intelligent, brilliant, selfless people, who love their fellow men (and there are more such people in the
world than we realize).
"But I am sure, too, the year has also brought to you disappointment in various measures, a certain kind of loneliness, a difficult adjustment to college life, to people of all kinds, a diminishing, perhaps, in some areas of your ideals
as feet of clay become more apparent, and, in short, all the trials and tribulations that go to make up this none-tooperfect world. All of this while you were facing, up to this time, at least, the most difficult adjustment of your life.
v
�"And despondent though you must have felt many times, you never showed it in your letters, in your visits home,
and in your own blithe spirit.
"In other words, you were the epitome of plain old-fashioned guts, the kind that never shows up on an athletic
field, on a battlefield, or in other facets of life.
"It is the kind that is unseen, unknown (for the most part) and always unheralded.
"You displayed rare courage, true courage. You displayed maturity in its purest sense ... the kind we all strive
for but seldom accomplish.
"I am so very, very proud of you.
Love,
Dad''
The last line, applied to Bill's all-too-short life as a whole, speaks, I am sure, for many that are here. We are so very
proud of him.
Marilyn Higuera, Tutor, Annapolis
That singular command
I do not understand:
Bless what there is for being.
Which has to be obeyed, for
What else am I made for,
Agreeing or disagreeing?
Most people would attribute these words toW. H. Auden, but in my mind they will always belong more to William
O'Grady. For they were a gift, a blessing, one of many, he gave to me. They are supporting me today in more than
one way in my remembrance of Bill. For I'm going to try to "bless what there is for being."
You see, I have these tangible forms of memory: little scraps of paper with such poems or lines of C. S. Lewis as
Bill thought would cheer me or remind me of a vision obscured. I have books, favorites of Bill's that are now, of course,
mine too. And I have little essays, opening new worlds of thought to me. Bill knew that these were things which could
give comfort.
It is, however, the mere fact that Bill would share such things with me that leaves me full of wonder. I know he
would sometimes overcome the restraints of convention and the habits of the year to share his private readings with
his classes, too. How fortunate we, to have known such a man-someone who would reveal so much of his heart and
soul, share the most important things, offer them to so many, and hope so humbly for response.
And there are other blessings. The words, so wonderfully crafted, freely flowing forth, prompted by the purest of
generous intention. What I remember most are his stories: tales of characters known, seemingly allegorical events of
his life, tales of tales. They weren't anecdotes; Bill didn't tell them for their charm or wit. He told them because he
hoped truths could be seen, and comfort had, in such histories. These highly polished, many-faceted offerings of his
shine yet among us.
My personal experience of Bill 0' Grady is an invaluable treasure, and I know that very many of you knew-and
treasure- him in the same way. We didn't seem to need the slow, indirect approach to friendship, the caution of sharing backgrounds, trading opinions. Out of immediate trust, we were friends. It is this unconditional openness, the
ever-ready heart, the loss of which I feel most acutely.
But there remain the scraps of paper, the precious jeweled stories, the glimpses of the possibilities for the human
heart; these exist and they are blessings of William 0' Grady.
Cary Stickney, Tutor, Santa Fe
"To heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." These words oflsaiah have echoed in my mind since I heard of Bill O'Grady's
death. How often those sound like impossibilities: healing the broken-hearted, opening blind eyes. But they are what
he did. He liked a line from Don Quixote in which the knight replies to Sancho's plea that he give up his beliefs, "You
only say that, Sancho, because you love me. Moreover you do not know the world very well-therefore you suppose
to be impossible things which are merely very difficult.'' One of his colleagues on this campus who had co-led a semi-
vi
�nar with him said, "He made things possible for me, ways of reading and speaking, that had never seemed possible
before.''
It does not seem possible for me now to say anything worthy of who Bill O'Grady was and how much he taught
me. Nevertheless I must try. One of his friends in Annapolis said of him, "He knew that the proper work of the human
intellect is to affirm, and that anything else, however impressive it may seem, is wasted unless it serves that end."
That seems altogether right to me. Yet no one was better aware than he of all there is in the world of sorrow and suffering to make the question "How may I praise?" seem unanswerable. But he was able to enter the suffering, to understand it, in a way that could both reveal it for what it was, and in the very act of doing it this justice, reveal the wisdom
that comes in suffering, the grace that comes somehow violent, the chance to love and bless and forgive even in the
midst of darkness, anger, and pain. To those who have heard or read his lectures it is enough to mention Priam in
the tent of Achilles, Oedipus and his word of love, King Lear and his final vision.
He taught by example. He never wasted time showing off or sparring; he spoke only of things he truly cared about.
And so his students learned to speak their hearts and minds. He knew that we cannot learn to think well or speak
well or write well without first discovering what the things are that call out to be thought, spoken and written, that
matter to us, that move us. I don't know how many books first called out to me because of something he said in a
class or a lecture or a question period. I do know that one has led to another and that the process does not stop. He
has helped me to ways of seeing that I will have with me always. I don't know for how many students it is true over
his seventeen years of teaching at the college that they would not have gone on to graduate but for an encounter with
him; nor do I know how many others might have emerged from four years study of the great books without anything
more than a jaded bewilderment posing as sophistication, had it not been for something Bill said. He spoke to the heart.
He could say things of such depth and power in words both so simple and so penetrating that often when he had
finished there seemed nothing more left to say on a subject. When towards the end of a question period he would
speak from where he had been sitting on the floor to say that he had been trying to think about one of the questions
raised earlier and that he had three things to say, people would smile at his characteristic beginning; but when he had
said the three things there was usually a silence full of gratitude and respect as both the lecturer and the audience were
realizing how much had suddenly appeared in a new light, and that his question and his answer were what they would
remember most of all from the evening.
Homer speaks of winged words, Isaiah of words that do not come back empty. Bill strove for those kinds of words,
and reached them more often in his forty years than I shall if I live to be eighty. He spent hours in long-distance calls
to friends around the country, and had a nearly insatiable appetite for conversation. Once I asked him how a vacation
had gone, and he replied, "Not so well: I hardly had any good conversations." His own lectures he saw as preparations for conversation. Learned as he was, devoted to reading as he was, it was the living, spoken word, "the word
of the heart signified by the word of the voice" that he loved. And he loved the people who spoke; loved them in
a way that took joy in their being who they were and that praised their unfolding and growing and flourishing and
that shared his courage to go on growing with them. No one could say better or truer things about students in Don Rags.
Some of his words that have meant the most to me I do not think occur in any of his lectures, though they shine
through ail of them. I no longer remember when or where I heard them, nor just how he said them, for I have thought
them and tried to understand other things by their help so many times that I can only say them in my own way now:
Everything that is best and most important for us
is a gift. It is not what we are able to prove,
or what we deserve, or what we possess, that finally
matters, but what we are sometimes able to give
and receive.
Michael Littleton, Tutor, Annapolis
Mr. Littleton spoke extemporaneously. He read from a lecture Bill had written on "Dark Times," from a passage on the Iliad.
Achilles discovers that the question that had seemed all-important to him, that of much time or little time, is not the one that matters
most. The most important question is rather whether enough time has been received, and has been given. Mr. Littleton read also,
from the end of The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha's speech to the boys from the grave of Ilusha.
Mr. Littleton's talk included reminiscences of a sophomore seminar in which he and Bill were together. The students complained,
he said, that not only did the two tutors look alike, they asked equally incomprehensible questions. A disagreement developed between
the two of them through the year, he said, over the question whether the image of God includes anger.
vii
�Nancy Buchenauer, Tutor, Santa Fe
I have few words to say here, largely because I feel so strongly how inadequate I am to say the smallest part of what
there is to say of William O'Grady.
William 0' Grady was a great man and a great teacher. In a few words he could make vivid and urgently important
the contents of a book; he would find a sentence which one saw at once was vital to the subject and which made the
reading something greater and more wonderful. When he pulled together a few strands of the text, a new understanding rose up to delight the mind and to make one certain that the author could have had no less to say.
During the year I was in seminar with Bill I learned more than I ever had before; I learned how to read books with
my whole being and not to keep what they said at a distance from myself. My life was transformed by the discovery
that the books were addressing me, and that I never would be the same again after reading them. I discovered a spiritual world which I could no longer bear not belonging to or striving to attain. My eyes were opened and taught to see
clearly for the first time that there is no truth without love, for the truth of love is the greatest truth of all.
Bill O'Grady was a kind man who knew of the sufferings of others and suffered much pain himself. He advised 16
senior essays at a time in order to say no to no one; he taught preceptorials in addition to seminar so there might be
more for the students to choose from; he talked endlessly and glaclly with students at all hours and helped them with
the pains and joys of living. He called out of the people around him what was most serious in them, and what was
most virtuous. He taught those of us who were new tutors while he was here what being a tutor could be, and he
would meet with us ungrudgingly and open-heartedly to show us a passage in Kepler or a letter of Plato which would
open our minds with erilightenment about our whole endeavor, and he would send us off full of excitement to read
again the texts he had made "new and beautiful" as Plato made Socrates.
Bill O'Grady gave all he had to others. We who were his friends will never live without the blessing of his gifts to us.
George Doskow, Tutor, Annapolis
We are here this afternoon to commemorate the loss of our friend and colleague, Bill O'Grady. Like many of you,
I have known Bill for a long time. We were co-leaders in a Freshman Seminar in his first year at St. John's, and my
impressions of that year are as clear now as they were fifteen years ago. There were two things in particular that stand
out for me about Bill at that time, and they are things that didn't change during the intervening years. I don't know
how to rank them, for they seemed equally important to him, so the order I give them now is of no significance. The
first was his passion for learning and understanding. The only times I saw him unhappy were when he would say
things like, "I didn't discover anything interesting during this rereading of ... " whatever book we happened to be
reading for that evening. He fully expected to find something new and exciting every time he read a book, and was
discouraged and thought that there was something going wrong for him whenever he didn't. He never thought he
had finally come to the center of anything and merely had to tie up the loose ends. For him, the books we read were
an inexhaustible resource, and the freshness and love with which he came to them each time he reread them bespoke
his enclless curiosity and passion for knowing. For him, learning was an adventure. I remember him once remarking
that he would never do anything heroic or magnificent in the world, and that writing an essay was his one way of
being heroic, it was his encounter with the world.
But Bill was not only a passionate student; he was a passionate teacher as well. He expected each seminar or tutorial
he went into to be as much an adventure for each student in the class as it was for him. His idea of a good seminar
was not one in which there was a reasonable conversation in which some ideas were worked out or some good points
made. It was one in which he saw someone really learn something, when he saw something happen to a student which
might transform her or him. For him, learning was not the acquisition of knowledge but the expansion of a soul, and
he worked tirelessly to try to make it happen. He had endless time to spend with students one on one whether they
were in his classes or not, and he would talk with them not only about their books and studies but about them. He
cared about each and every student he knew, and he tried to give each student what that student needed. He really
listened when others spoke. I remember his being able to recount what some student had said in a seminar months
before, so long before that I could scarcely remember what book we had been reading, and to recount it in almost the
exact words the student had used. Partly, of course, that was a function of his remarkable memory. But it was even
more a function of his caring, of his always trying to understand not only what was said, but more importantly what
it meant to the person saying it, and his way of putting the various things a student had said over the course of time
into a composite picture of that student. And, unlike most of us, he did that over and over, year after year, sometimes
to a state near exhaustion.
Bill was a good friend and colleague, generous and caring, helpful and sympathetic. I will miss his presence deeply.
viii
�Phil LeCuyer, Tutor, Santa Fe
In the midst of our grief we wish to speak our thoughts and feelings for Bill 0' Grady. Centermost each of us knows
what is lost. But from our different temperaments, abilities, and kinds of friendship with Bill, each of us knows a loss
something different from the person next to him.
Our deepest griefs are here unutterable. Yet we wish to speak our thoughts and feeliogs for Bill O'Grady.
I had heard much about him before his first lecture in Santa Fe. I was excited for him to be here, but unprepared
for how joyous and skillful and encouraging he was to those of us coming to the Odyssey for the first time. The discussion continued beyond all hours, and yet at the end we were not exhausted-we were exalted. Later when Bill had
come to live here, we visited each other many times to talk about the Odyssey or about King Lear or about the Brothers
Karamazov, or on other occasions to talk about our College in the strength of its vision, in its limitations, its need.
At some point I became aware that Bill cared about the College by caring correctly for each of us who participate
in it. Caring correctly-what is that? When Bill turned his attention to me, I felt as if he expected me to say something
true, or even better, something genuinely desirous of a deeper truth. Bill believed in the distinction between truth and
untruth, between genuine and fake. Mere information meant little to him. He aspired to insight, and his aspiration
was often and amply fulfilled.
In meetings Bill would sometimes preface his remarks with the phrase, "There are three reasons why ... "or "There
are five reasons why .... " This way of beginning often struck me as slightly comical, because Bill's reasons were not
connected to each other or ordered as numbers are. They were always fused one to another by his steadfast love for
his friends, his authors, and his College.
I, among many others, am nourished by that love, by his presence in my soul, by his life.
Edward Sparrow, Tutor, Annapolis
Mr. Sparrow spoke extemporaneously. He composed the following text for this collection.
Bill always seemed to me completely concentrated wherever he was. It was impossible not to feel the intensity of
the man whenever I would see him on campus, the total bearing of his intelligence and sympathy on whatever he
was doing, his excluding, only because of his including more important things, anything that was not significant to
the occasion, his generous focusing of his time and his ability on the concerns of students.
Because at the college we spend most of our time, and the most significant parts of it, reading, thinking, and talking
to one another, and because the college was Bill's real home, his concentration of himself into the passionate vitality
of the moment would show up in conversations-the conversations I would have with him and the conversations which
I would see him having with other faculty members and, especially, with students. I so well remember him standing
by the stairs outside McDowell, his feet crossed, and, as he talked, his face showing quickly changing expressions of
reflection, puzzlement, recognition, sorrow, and pleasure. I especially remember the way his eyebrows would go up
and his face assume a look combining reflection with concern for the understanding of the person he was talking with.
And then sometimes he would smile, with a suggestion of embarrassment and sorrow, incline his head slightly, and
the encounter would cease, leaving a distinct and poignant absence in a place which had been filled with the presence
of his sensitive, delicate, and penetrating, intelligence.
It now occurs to me that it was this intense and total presence in what was occupying his mind at the time that was
responsible for his use in his speech of unusually many adverbs. I had often noticed this way of talking of his, for
not many do it. One who uses many adverbs, it seems to me, is concentrating his thought not only on the precise
subject of his thinking but also on the way it is related to other things, to the how of it, and the when and the where.
Bill's intensity with the things of the mind and of the heart naturally led to his giving the impression of not caring
much about anything else. It always struck me, when he would come to the house, that he would never have anything
to say about the appearance of things, or their taste or smell. One felt that he was rather waiting-but not deliberately
so-when something that was then closer to the man, and in itself more important, would come up.
For Bill was a passionately mindful man. Remarkably intelligent, yes, remarkably astute "philosophically" yes, remarkably well read, yes-how surprised I was to learn, when speaking to him about some of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems,
that he was familiar not only with all of them but also with Hopkins' original Greek and Latin poems-but, I thought
increasingly as I saw him during the passing years, a man for whom concerns of the heart, and especially of the pain
of the world, became more and more paramount. How deeply he was touched by the sorrows, efforts, and perplexities
of his students! How much, how deeply, he was moved by Homer-by Odysseus in tears recalling in Phaeacia the
horrors of the war; by the meeting between the old and nobly begging Priam and the young and nobly touched Achilles!
ix
�How much many of us were benefited by his introducing us to the wrenching story of Kristin Lavransdatter and to
the short stories of Flannery O'Connor! And how much, in later years, Bill seemed to find more and more questions
and answers and meanings in the Psalms and the Gospels.
It is impossible ever to forget Bill. A mind alive with insight, a sensitive and sorrowing heart supremely dedicated
to the intellectual and moral good of his students, he seems to have passed through the world as one not touched by
it. Yet he draws after him the admiration, gratitude, affection, and love of those privileged to have known him.
Frank Durgin, Student, Annapolis
Mr. Durgin spoke extemporaneously. One of the things he spoke of was the name of God told to Moses in the third chapter of
Exodus. It is usually translated "I am who I am." Mr. O'Grady had said in a seminar that it might instead be translated "I
shall be present who shall be present." Mr. Durgin said that name applied to Mr. O'Grady himself: to him and to many other
students, Mr. O'Grady was always present when he was needed.
Michael Dink, Tutor, Annapolis
Mr. Dink, at the request of Mrs. O'Grady, read some passages from a favorite book of Bill's, The Diary of a Country Priest
by Georges Bernanos. They included the following.
I have been trying once more to get some sleep. It seems hopeless . . .
I know now that youth is a gift of God, and like all His gifts, carries no regret. They alone shall be young, really
young, whom He has chosen never to survive their youth. I belong to such a race of men. I used to wonder: what
shall I be doing at fifty, at sixty? And of course I couldn't find an answer, I couldn't even make one up. There was
no old man in me . . .
I have tried to open my eyes to death in all the simplicity of surrender, yet with no secret wish to soften or disarm
it ... I can understand how a man, sure of himself and his courage, might wish to make of his death a perfect end.
As that isn't in my line, my death shall be what it can be and nothing more ...
God might possibly wish my death as some form of example to others. But I would rather have their pity. Why shouldn't
I? I have loved men greatly, and I feel this world of living creatures has been so pleasant. I cannot go without tears.
Nothing is farther removed from me than stoic indifference, so how can I hope for the death of a stoic? Plutarch's heroes
both terrify and bore me. If I were to go to heaven wearing such a mask, I think even my guardian angel would laugh
at me.
Why worry, why look ahead? If I feel afraid I shall say: I am afraid, and not be ashamed of it. As soon as Our Lord
appears before me, may His eyes set me at rest ...
How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to
love oneself in all simplicity-as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ.
Paula Rustan, Alumna, Santa Fe
A tribute to William O'Grady, written as part of a fellowship proposal, was read by Sharon Garvey, a former tutor.
I remember hearing this tutor speak for the very first time. I was standing with a group of sophomores like myself.
After a few moments, I realized as I looked upon the faces of my classmates that we were all feeling the same thing-we
were simply awestruck. At first we believed it was what he said; every word seemed extraordinarily thoughtful and
his way of speaking was very beautiful. It wasn't until much later that I came to understand the true cause of our astonishment that day. This tutor was moved by the most beautiful and the most sad things, and above all, he was willing
to share his deepest thoughts and feelings about these things, with us. Because of this we thought him fearless. His
trust in us made us love him, and we wanted more than anything else to match his gift of sincerity with a gift of our
own. So we tried very hard to be like him. We too tried to speak from the heart. We recognized his love for the books,
and we too wanted to love the books. Attempts to pattern ourselves after this tutor led us to consider the books more
carefully than ever before, and likewise to give greater weight to our own infant feelings and thoughts. We tried to
love him by loving the things he loved best; and, as it should be, we ended up loving those things, the books, in and
for themselves.
X
�Joe Sachs, Tutor, Annapolis
I will never have a better friend, and the college will never have a better tutor. Everything important I know about
how to be a tutor I learned from Bill, and I think I am not alone. He knew, first of all, that the proper work of the
human intellect is to affirm, and that if its other work of criticizing, questioning, and negating is not in the service of
affirmation it is a waste of time. He knew, too, that everything worth studying is bigger than we are, so that the life
of every good student is an almost daily battle with discouragement. That was why he never made demands on students, or on anyone but himself. All he did was offer each of us all he had to give, all the time.
He knew everything there was to know about giving. No man ever accumulated fewer possessions in forty years.
He just couldn't see the point in having anything, except to give it away. He had a car for a little while when I first
knew him, until he thought of someone he could give it to. And his was a marriage of true minds. Almost the first
thing Joie did after they were married was give away her car. She has a wisdom we older friends of Bill didn't have.
She didn't try to change him by one iota.
But he changed us. To name some obvious ways: when Bill came to the college we did not read The Brothers Karamazov
or the Philoctetes, we read the Divine Comedy in three seminars, and the sophomores had five classes to try, or pretend,
to prepare. The program is incomparably better because he was here and was such a fighter. I can tell you that he
didn't like to fight. It cost him more misery to win a fight than to avoid it, but he couldn't help fighting when someone
else had no other champion. He never compromised because he was never fighting for principles, just for people.
Bill's first year in the college, the dean had the good sense to tell him that St. John's wanted him to stay for the rest
of his life, if he could find some livable way of being here. I think we all know he never did. There was not a day
for him when St. John's was not an agony of too many needs to answer. But his eyes were open, and this agony was
an inseparable part of his happiness. He was here a long time before he decided finally to commit his life to St. John's.
He saw that choice with complete clarity the day Mr. Klein was buried, in the spot where he too now lies. What was
worthy of that good life was worthy also of Bill's.
Bill loved Mr. Klein's insistence that Socrates meant just what he said in the Republic, that the love of wisdom and
the Jove of learning are the same. There is truth. If we are learning, we are learning it, and that is our way of having
it. Bill read the same books over and over and over, with an intensity that never lessened. Just a week ago he told
me that he now had the Iliad pretty well by heart.
The best books never fail us, no matter how often we fail them. The twenty-second psalm begins: "My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But it is followed by the twenty-third, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."
Bill knew that there was no way to the twenty-third except through the twenty-second. And he loved a little meditation of C. S. Lewis on the death of Charles Williams. Let me appropriate its last sentence. When the idea of Bill O'Grady
and the idea of death had met, it was the idea of death that had to change.
Martin Cohen, Tutor, Santa Fe
In the Fall of 1982 I was a student in Bill O'Grady's Graduate Institute tutorial. I think that during the first few sessions especially, he came across to some of the students as nervous, or apologetic, or somewhat afraid. Something
of his stature, I suspect, was apparent even at the beginning to all: the comments he made were too good not to earn
respect; he listened, sometimes for a long stretch, as we glanced off the book, and when we needed him, he spoke
in a voice which conveyed such consideration, such living with the realities that the book addresses, that the class was
transformed from a sequence of reported impressions about a book that was blandly assumed to be great, into a collective endeavor to understand. There was such tenderness in his voice. He was a powerful man, and no special generosity of perception from others was needed for that to be seen. I was shown something about Lear's reunion with Cordelia,
Caliban's humanity, courage in facing death in Hopkin's Wreck of the Deutschland, and many other matters, that will
remain with me imperishably, and that I could have learned from no one else. For me, I would guess for others, too,
the neat partition into strengths and weaknesses that his personality allowed a person willing to judge, or to condescend,
to make, did not fundamentally make sense, it did not correspond to the music of his voice or his being. I did not
hear a man who was afraid, but a man tremulous before the truth. Each nervous gesture was a Jesson in what a person
with the integrity to challenge himself every instant might well choose to be nervous about; his apologies were a disclosure of the workings of aspiration, humility and respect for others.
xi
�This is my impression of Bill, looking at him, as best I can, with a kind of sight I think he used to transfigure his
perception of others-a kind of sight that does not latch on to isolated qualities in order to diminish another human
being. I do not know what Bill saw as he looked at the students in his class. I can guess that the person who could
easily have been dismissed as stupid, always engaging with the surface of the book, was perceived as offering a sensibleness, an antidote to intellectual presumption, a grounding to the discussion; that he not only saw through the person who wanted to impress others with smart-sounding phrases, but saw through the seeing through, to the core of
desire for knowledge that made the person bother with this form of falseness. I know that he felt honored to be with
us in that class. And what a kindness it was that he was so free of condescension that he could feel that way. I don't
mean that blatant condescensions that many exorcise from their actions, or even subdue in their mind and heart. The
lack of condescension I attribute to him is one that is hard to envision, let alone enact, one which opens into a respect
so vibrant and unfettered that it becomes reverence.
I do not know at all well what heart is in that interesting sense that marries with and enlarges what the mind is,
and enlivens such concepts as spirit and soul. As much as any man I ever met, Bill earned the right to use these words
in his speech. It is, perhaps, a start to say that the heart sees to the heart of things, and sees the wholeness that is
given some meaning and unity by that central core. It was his gift to see us that way; it was also his gift to let us see
him that way. His enormous and manifest intensity and caring knit together and pervaded all of his qualities, so that
when I discern, for example, that a quality of his like hesitancy is replete with integrity and self-scrutiny, I am not
achieving a delving perception of a hidden essence, but accepting an insight he offered me by having the power to
so visibly invest every fiber of himself with caring about honesty, integrity, truth and love. But the person who accomplishes such an integration through intensity and caring about the good can, perhaps, see the beginniogs of such a
situation in others, and perceive and love what is not so visible in them.
Yet Bill did not stop there. He understood not only that frailties are sometimes the radiant emanations from a beautiful heart of things, but that frailties are also frailties, to be answered with compassion and courage, not just explained
away. There is greatness in understanding this only after the person knows, through the power of loving appreciation,
how not to understand it. Weakness and wrongness cannot be explained away. The simple lyricism of Bill's speech
and writing has a firmness and honesty that did not explain away difficulties, but met them with compassion and courage.
He could be sharply critical. When I try to look at the heart of this, I imagine I see several things: I see that his harshness was often directed toward harshness, his condescension, if it could be called that, was directed toward condescension, and was not a fundamental condescension of the heart. I glimpse a depth of perception he had, which knows
how to simultaneously embrace the glory and the painful deficiency of reality, but is bound by the nature of words
and emotions to sometimes emphasize one, sometimes another, of these aspects. I see a man who had the courage
to throw himself so fully into the awareness of the radiance of others that occasionally he shielded his eyes, due to
the vulnerability that was the other face of this courage. He embodied an understanding of that event, which for many
remains a strange rhapsody limited to the realm of literature, that radiance is, at once, what we most need, and what
we protect ourselves against. Most of all, I remember a statement Bill made that we do not have enough wisdom to
be dishonest. His criticisms, and his multi-faceted responses, had great honesty.
Bill taught something about heart, without at all abdicating the moral and intellectual imperative of discrimination.
To this community, whose mission is so clearly connected with discrimination, and so deeply and elusively connected
with other matters, his loss, and the legacy and challenge I think he leaves behind, are incalculable. It is hard, perhaps
unwise, perhaps impossible, to institutionalize a commitment to heart, in the same way that one can insist on increasing clarity of discrimination. We can caress a small fragment about heart and mind in Pascal, hoping it will yield its
secret, or find other writings that explicitly talk about heart, but we have lost a man who brought huge resources of
mind and heart to all the works. I know he loved St. John's; I know he wanted it to be better than it is. And while
I cannot claim to know what he hoped for, or to be a mediator who could articulate his legacy, I offer a last impression:
Bill knew how to revere a book, and bring a steady commitment to intelligent inquiry, yet I imagine him saying, tenderly, and only to those who want to listen, that one can read book after book, and talk about them with a kind of intelligence, but it doesn't matter unless something else is present. Remember to look for, and long for, what that might be.
Once, after another memorial service in this room, I spoke with Bill briefly. He made a comment about the way a
community acknowledges the passing of one of its members. Somehow, in a sentence, he conveyed a depth of respect
for the way a community can perform that function, can show a collective grace and appropriateness that a single person cannot presume to possess. And in that moment, I felt his gratitude that he was a part of a community.
He lived his life with a perception of the preciousness of people and things, that is, perhaps, only given to those
who know something about their own mortality. I offer my prayer that this man, who gave so many gifts, receive a
gift of goodness and peace.
Xll
�Mary Hannah Jones, Alumna, Annapolis
The following text was composed for this collection.
Bill O'Grady was the best teacher I have ever known, the best teacher I can even imagine. He set no limit on the
time and attention and concern he gave to St. John's students. He gave to all of us without measure. He told me once
that he had chosen to be a teacher because teaching is the life of service. I never understood fully what he meant by
the life of service or what it was for him to lead that life, but I do know that Bill 0' Grady was always holding himself
out for other people, always straining every nerve to be of service to his students and his friends.
As we all know, the life of service took its toll on Bill O'Grady. That generosity which he made his life's work required everything of him. The strength to sustain the effort it demanded and the courage to endure the vulnerability
it entailed took every ounce of resolution he could summon up. It was, I think, the common experience of his students
and friends to find that for all his frankness and openness there was finally something mysterious and even awesome
about Bill O'Grady. The thing that was mysterious about him was also what was most moving about him: the strength
and the passion that sustained his arduous life of service.
Once when he was teaching a class on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colon us I heard him say something about what he hoped
would come out of his teaching. He said that he hoped that some day, when his students were much older and in
some sort of despair, they would be able to remember how beautiful Sophocles was, and that memory would somehow
sustain them. He thought it was possible that the beauty and wisdom of certain old stories might have the power to
sustain us through all the sorrow and dismal failure of ordinary human life, which is a wonderful possibility indeed.
He was always striving, despite all the darkness of the world which he so keenly felt, to hold out certain possibilities
to his students and friends: that passion might add something to intellect and the heart inform the mind, that even
pain and sadness might be a sign that something is still alive in us that is worth keeping alive, that after the experience
of a thousand failures it might still be a good thing to make one more attempt, that the world might after all be a place
in which there could be shining deeds of virtue and secret acts of love. Perhaps all the darkness of the world has now
been utterly dissolved for Bill 0' Grady. It is now our task in our loneliness for him to keep ourselves open to those
possibilities he spoke of so passionately.
It is difficult to compare Bill O'Grady with anyone else-he was always so completely himself. But there is a man
in one of Nabokov's essays who reminds me of Bill. This friend of Nabokov's had, Nabokov says, the moral equivalent
of perfect pitch. I think something like that could be said about Bill. He had some sort of inner orientation that gave
him an unfailing sense of what was important in books and in life. He knew what mattered and he had the courage
and resolve to stake everything on what mattered. And this also was something he shared with his students and friends.
Bill was somehow able to elicit by virtue of his own moral seriousness a truth in our minds and hearts that but for
him would never have existed.
Though I doubt that he would approve of my saying so, I think Bill had a deeper feeling for justice than anyone
I have known. I don't mean justice in the ordinary sense of the word (he told me once that devils were just) but in
the sense he gives the word in his Oedipus at Colonus lecture, which is not unrelated to the ordinary sense. Bill could
give voice to truths he felt deeply and let them fill the world for that moment for him and for us. There is a kind of
justice in that, the justice of allowing each thing to speak out what is in it. He could find in his wide sympathy a place
for everything and time to tell its story. I think Bill was a little like his own characterization of Philoctetes. What seemed
true to him at the time he gave complete expression to, and though those things might not be logically compatible
with what he said at some other time, it would have been unjust to have left them unsaid.
It is difficult to find words adequate to describe the experience of being in one of his classes. He was unlike any other
teacher I have ever known. I remember the first few days I was in his sophomore Greek class. The keenness and concentrated intensity of his intelligence were almost frightening. We were all stunned into silence by his brilliance, until
we realized that the intensity of his mind was matched by the depth of his patience. He was able to extend his sympathy to any student's thoughts however feeble.
His love and knowledge of the texts was astounding, but still more impressive to me now is his never losing sight
of who we were and what we were awkwardly trying to do. He always conveyed the sense that those monuments
of unaging intellect which we properly venerate are themselves in the service of ordinary, obscure human beings, and
our own most important task as students of the liberal arts was to begin to discover whether we were beasts like Typhon or gentler, simpler animals.
He told me once that the things he said in class and in conversation came from the students-he could not have said
those things without them. At the time that puzzled me enormously. I could not believe that he said such wonderful
xiii
�things just on the spur of the moment, still less that those things came somehow from the students. But now I think
I understand what he meant. When I was in class with him I felt that I could share his vision of the world-it was
as if I could see things for the moment with his eyes. And I think that was partially true for him also. The way he
saw things changed a little on account of the students and that is what he meant by saying he could not have spoken
so well without them. He said his writings always came out of his classes. I like to think that there is some faint trace
of those of us who were his students in those wonderful things he wrote. That sense of having had a shared vision
of the world means more to me now than any specific thing I learned from him. The gesture of his I most loved and
most associated with him as a teacher was his outstretched right hand, extended so generously to so many students
over so many years.
I think it always came as a surprise to his students that Bill could speak with such vehemence and passion about
what he thought needed to be said, but also listen with such discernment and sympathy to what other people had
to say. He had a kind of reticent courtesy and delicacy about other people's thoughts and feelings that was amazing.
Something that particularly moved me about him was that although he hated guile and deceit he would on occasion
allow deceit to be practiced on him. He told me that one of his favorite parts of the Odyssey is where Nausicaa tells
her father that she wants to clean all the linen for the sake of her brothers, who are eitheoi thalethontes and always calling
for fresh clothes for the dance, but her father knows in his heart that she is thinking of her marriage and yields to
her request. I think Bill was always allowing things to pass unnoticed to spare other people embarrassment or distress,
knowing full well in his heart that the truth was otherwise.
His sense of the suffering in other people's lives, even in the most ordinary lives, was remarkable. He told me once
that the most important thing the Judeo-Christian tradition had brought to the heritage of the Greeks was the capacity
to give weight to the suffering of obscure people and to enable us to see a kind of tragedy in their lives. There is a
passage in Middlemarch that reminded me of Bill as soon as I read it. Speaking of common sorrows Eliot says, "That
element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind;
and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,
it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the
other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity." Bill knew that element of
tragedy if anyone ever did, and perhaps that is why his frame had to bear so much.
Bill told me once that the surest proof of the resurrection for the disciples was not the opened empty tomb but the
abundant joy flowing into the hearts of the faithful. I am not one of the faithful but I cannot make my heart dark and
empty enough to accord with a world in which his spirit has been extinguished forever. Many of us used to be angry
with Bill for not caring for and protecting that seed of fire in him as Odysseus does when first in the land of the Phaiacians. But now I hope that the God in whom Bill trusted has done that for him, has blown that spark into a flame
with the brightness of a star, and has given him the beauty that all of us who loved him thought he already possessed
but which he could somehow never see. I know that Bill thought that something like that was possible. I want to believe
that he was right in that, as he was right in so many other things.
xiv
�The earliest of the writings in this collection is from
Bill O'Grady's twenty-first year. As a senior at Notre
Dame, he was already the master of a powerfully direct
style, and of an intellect that cut to the heart of
whatever was before it. One can discern changes in
his later writings: he never again buried any of his
thinking in footnotes; he revised his opinion of the
course of Hegel's political thinking; and he probably
moderated his revulsion at Aristotle's "natural slaves"
and Plato's "noble lie." But there is nothing that one
could call development in his thinking; it was fully mature when he stepped from college. The final paragraphs of that earliest essay outline the program for
a life from which he never departed, and of which the
publication of these writings is an extension: to make
his own experience of the eternal accessible to others,
to share the grace of the gifts he possessed, and to use
teaching as a way to let the love of truth overflow into
a love of human beings.
The authors with whom he chose to dwell did
change through the years, from the modern
philosophers to the ancient, and finally to half-adozen or so poets with whom his spirit was most at
home. There is, however, no necessary or best order
in which to read his writings. Each of them lets its topic
occupy the whole world while it is being considered,
a way of proceeding which he called "justice" in his
lecture on Oedipus at Colonus. And the division here
into groups is an arbitrary separation of things that
overlap and impinge everywhere and in every way.
Lear finds his way into a lecture on De Anima, because
whatever is to be filled from outside must first become
empty. But if that were the whole story of human life,
Diotima's definition of love would be the last word on
it; since it is not, Duns Scotus' re-definition of love
turns up in every kind of context. Poets, philosophers,
psalmists, and theologians were not in rivalry, as Bill
0' Grady read them, but complementary: each helped
him press his thinking and imagination toward their
ultimate object, with an intensity of intelligent passion
that blazed into light in lecture after lecture.
Only two of Bill O'Grady's lectures have appeared
before in this journal, and only one ever found its way
into the college bookstore. Many were given on only
one campus, and then sometimes only in the summer
or outside the regular Friday night series. Two lectures
were originally written for audiences outside the college and on prescribed topics (courage and "dark
times"), and three brief pieces were composed to be
read to one or another of his classes. A few of these
writings have been published in Energeia and other student magazines. Bill made no effort to get any of his
writings to a wider audience, but he always said yes
when any editor asked him for one. Everything that
could readily be found appears here, including his
three remarkable student theses. Gratitude for help in
unearthing various of these buried treasures is due to
William O'Brien, Burnet Davis, Mary Hannah Jones,
and Kathryn Kinzer; and Walter Sterling has been the
most generous of editors.
Joe Sachs
XV
��THE
ST.
WINTER
JoHN's REVIEW
1986
Odysseus
Among the Phaiakians
When Odysseus awakens alone on Ithaka after an absence of twenty years, the land looks strange to him and
he fears that he has been betrayed by the Phaiakians, who
promised to take him home. Odysseus says, "Come, let
me count my goods and look them over," lest something
have been taken away. "So speaking, he counted up the
surpassingly beautiful tripods and caldrons, and the gold
and all the fine woven clothing. Of these things nothing
at all was missing." Having returned home, Odysseus
needs to know what he has brought with him, what he
has to offer. The most important things, the things he
most cares about, the things he must possess if he is again
to be husband to Penelope, father to Telemachus, son to
Laertes, king to his people, are not things that can be
counted and looked over. Still there is some solace in
counting what can be counted, and finding that of these
nothing is lacking. But in the measure that Odysseus is
able to trust that he has also managed to return home
with what is most important, with a heart that is whole
and brave, he is greatly indebted to the Phaiakians, the
people of Scheria, among whom he stayed for three days.
They are indebted to him as well, as I shall try to show.
My attempt here is to understand something of what happens while Odysseus is among the Phaiakians.
Odysseus' encounter with the Phaiakians immediately prior to his homecoming is not a chance encounter.
Two assemblies of the gods on Olympus (recounted in
books one and five) have been held to arrange that his
return, which is clearly a big and difficult matter, should
come about in the right way. In particular, both when
Athena comes to Nausikaa in the form of a dream, bid-
''Odysseus Among the Phaiakians'' appeared in the July 1979
issue of The Review.
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ding her to think of her marriage and to do her laundry,
and when Athena herself goes through the city calling
the Phaiakians to assembly, she is said by Homer to be
"devising the return of great-hearted Odysseus." The
assembly culminates with Odysseus weeping bounclless
tears as he hears the story of the fall of Troy. We must
try to understand in what way the encounter with
Nausikaa is important for Odysseus, supplies him with
something needful; and, we must try to understand the
meaning of the tears shed by Odysseus as he hears his
greatest victory sung. The premise of my attempt to understand is that according to Homer the gods sometimes
make available to human beings what they need most.
That Odysseus' needs as he comes to the land of the
Phaiakians are urgent and delicate appears most vividly
in this simile describing his shelter during the first night.
''As when a man buries a firebrand beneath the dark embers in a remote place where there are no neighbors, and
saves the seed of fire, having nowhere else from which
to kindle fire, so Odysseus buried himself in the leaves."
The fire has almost died in Odysseus; only a seed remains
from which however the full blaze of fire might grow
again. But if the seed dies, there is no other source from
which fire might be kindled. And this seed has come to
be, in a strange way, outside of Odysseus: he must
dispose of it, protect it, care for it, in an anxiously selfconscious way.
Odysseus and Nausikaa are together only twice, the
second time very briefly. Nausikaa asks Odysseus to
remember her, since he owes her his life. Odysseus,
promising to remember her always, uses a different and
extraordinary word: "You have given me my human life"
(the difference in Greek between bios and zoe). One could
almost translate: "You have en-humaned me." Odysseus means, to begin with, that when he first saw
1
�Nausikaa in her loveliness and innocence he knew for
certain that the world does not contain only, or even
chiefly, monsters. He has, after all, seen so many monsters that as he swims toward the island of Scheria Athena
must specially intervene to supply him with presence of
mind when, afraid of being dashed against the sharp
rocks or, again, of being carried farther out to sea, a third
fear suddenly rises up-a monster may appear. Thus the
wholly convincing gentleness of N ausikaa' s appearance
is immeasurably important. But even more important,
perhaps, is a discovery Odysseus is led to make about
himself. He hears himself saying to Nausikaa: "I have
never seen anything like you, neither man nor woman.
Wonder takes me as I look on you. Yet in Delos once I
saw such a thing, by Apollo's altar. I saw the stalk of a
young palm shooting up. I had gone there once, and with
a following of a great many people, on that journey which
was to mean hard suffering for me. And as, when I
looked upon that tree, my heart admired it long, since
such a tree had never yet sprung up from the earth, so
now, lady, I admire you and wonder." Not only is
Nausikaa herself invincibly lovely and innocent, but she
reminds of other lovely and innocent things seen long
ago and almost forgotten: there have always been such
things in the world. Above all, Odysseus becomes aware
that just as long ago-so much violence ago and so much
hideousness ago-his heart was capable of responding
in awe and gratitude to the appearance of lovely and innocent things, wholly without reference to how they
might be useful to him; so now his heart is capable of
the same: it is somehow the same heart. This is a very
difficult thing to know, and it is the sort of thing that human beings, sometimes, most need to know. This is the
deepest meaning, perhaps, of Odysseus' gratitude to
Nausikaa for having been an indispensable source of his
human life.
Athena in arousing Nausikaa to go to the river where
she will meet Odysseus is said to be devising the return
of Odysseus. The very same words are used as she summons the Phaiakians to assembly. Why is the assembly,
described in book eight, of such importance for Odysseus, even before he begins to tell his story? Near the beginning of the meeting Odysseus weeps, though he tries
to conceal it, as he hears the minstrel sing of a quarrel
between Achilles and Odysseus. Then athletic contests
take place, and Odysseus' heart seems to lighten. After
his victory in throwing the discus, he speaks "in language
more blithe," as Lattimore translates. Again, Odysseus
seems to share fully in the enjoyment of all the Phaiakians as Demodicus sings of the adultery of Aphrodite with
Ares, although this enjoyment is perhaps not altogether
easy to understand. (The gods are of course inunortal,
so that their doings always seem somehow comic, but
here Hephaestus is so pained as to utter the wish that
2
he had not been born; moreover, Poseidon's urgent attempts, apparently inspired by compassion for
Hephaestus, to bring to an end the unseemly spectacle
of the vulgar laughter of Apollo and Hermes, remind us
disconcertingly that Poseidon is other and more than the
mere persecutor of Odysseus.)
After these incidents, and before he reveals his name,
Odysseus weeps again, but this time in a vastly deeper
and wider way, as he hears the song, which he himself
requested, of the strategem of the horse and the fall of
Troy. What do these tears mean? How have they come
about? Is it good that Odysseus should shed them? Before trying to understand this happening, let us listen to
a translation of Homer's astounding words: "So the famous singer sang his tale, but Odysseus melted, and from
under his eyes the tears ran down, drenching his cheeks.
As a woman weeps, lying over the body of her dear husband, who fell fighting for his city and people, as he tried
to beat off the pitiless day from city and children; she sees
him dying and gasping for breath, and winding her body
around him she cries high and shrill, while the men behind her, hitting her with their spears on the back and
shoulders, force her up and lead her away into slavery
to have hard work and sorrow, and her cheeks are
wracked with pitiful weeping. So Odysseus shed piteous tears from under his brows."
The earlier tears, the tears over the quarrel with Achilles
who has died, are perhaps not too difficult to understand.
But what of these final tears, necessary before Odysseus
can name himself? How can the tears of the victor be
likened to the tears of the vanquished, the tears of the
sacker of cities to the tears of a woman trying to hold on
to her dying husband, which she cannot, to shelter him
from further blows from his enemies, which she cannot?
I think the pain in Odysseus' soul at this moment has
two sources. The first has to do with Odysseus' request
to the singer that he sing kosmos hippou which means, to
begin with, the ornament of the horse, the device of the
horse, the horse as the product of resourcefulness, artfulness, cleverness, the horse as the manifestation of wit
and talent considered in isolation from all else. But kosmos hippou, as the singer well knows and truthfully sings,
means finally and fully the world of the horse, the world
out of which the horse came to be, the world of prodigious single-mindedness, of goals to which all else becomes subject, of the breaching of Troy as the end, an end
justifying all things, including the perversion of worship
represented by the horse. Again, the world of the horse
is the world the horse leads to, the fall of a holy city, the
broken-heartedness, homelessness and utter forlornness
of Andromache. Odysseus weeps because he is deeply
implicated in the perversion of high things and in vast
human suffering, and because his delight in the play and
display of his own incomparable resourcefulness has in
WINTER 1986
�some way distracted his attention from what he has been
implicated in.
But this sorrow felt by Odysseus, a deeper sorrow
perhaps than most human beings ever know, is not the
deepest sorrow felt by Odysseus, who has come to
Scheria from the island of Calypso, where deathlessness
and agelessness are available to human beings. The
deepest and widest sorrow that Odysseus feels, which
somehow makes bearable all that is involved in facing his
responsibility for the fall of a city whose men and women also prayed to Zeus, is sorrow over a world-the world
of mortals-in which all dear things are doomed to failure;
which attempts, however, except in the eyes of utterly
base human beings, are never objects of scorn or condescension.
The breadth and impartiality of Odysseus' sorrow
shows itself again in book twenty-three. When Odysseus
and Penelope are finally in their bed together, and after
they have made love, Odysseus tells stories. He begins
after the fall of Troy, and what he tells are "all cares, both
so many as he had placed upon human beings and so
many as he himself, sorrowing, toiled through."
As Odysseus weeps these tears in which the whole
mortal world is bathed, Alkinous, king of the Phaiakians, asks Demodicus to cease from singing, and tells
Odysseus that the time has come for the stranger to reveal his name. But Alkinous, who surely suspects strongly that this stranger is Odysseus, in whom Poseidon is
going to be exceptionally interested, if he is in the fate
of any storm-driven wanderer, "digresses" remarkably.
After requiring of Odysseus that he declare his name, he
recounts what he has heard from his father, namely that
some day Poseidon, angry with the Phaiakians for giving conveyance to some man, will turn the returning ship
to stone and surround the city with a great wall to hide
it. Alkinous gives Odysseus a chance to lie, to deny that
he is Odysseus, or at least to present himself as an Odysseus on good terms with Poseidon. At any rate, if Odysseus does present himself as persecuted by Poseidon, he
had better have some great good thing to offer the Phaiakians, in gratitude for which this people would be willing
to run a very great risk-this people which has enjoyed,
ever since its removal from the vicinity of the Cyclops
who harried them savagely, a perfectly riskless existence;
an existence, moreover, requiring no patience: the fruit
trees are always in season, and human sorrows are understood to be fashioned by the gods "so that there will
be a song for men who are to come" -as if to say: let's
get the sorrows and the lives over with, so that the song
can begin.
And it turns out, after Odysseus has told his story, that
it seems to the Phaiakians that he has given them a great
good thing, namely, the most wonderful stories they or
anyone else have ever heard; moreover, he has somehow
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
brought them to understand that it is not quite right for
human beings who live and choose to live a riskless existence to delight in stories about human beings whose
lives are full of risks. The Phaiakians somehow understand, when Odysseus has finished speaking, not only
that sheer gratitude for a wonderful gift requires that they
try to give Odysseus some good thing in return, namely,
conveyance to his homeland, regardless of the risk to
themselves; but also that in order truly to possess Odysseus' wonderful stories, genuinely to enter into them,
they themselves must run risks, must not lead an altogether sheltered-hence storyless-existence. And so
they risk the thing they love best, their access to the sea,
for the sake of Odysseus, and for their own sake. It is
not entirely clear how their risk turns out, partly because
of a textual question: Zeus says to Poseidon either "Turn
the ship to stone but do not surround the city with a
mountain to hide it" or "Turn the ship to stone and surround it with a huge mountain to hid it" (in Greek the
difference between mi!de and mega). But in either case, we
are told by Homer that Poseidon turned the returning
ship to stone "and then he went away."
II.
Now let us consider for awhile the tales Odysseus tells
to the Phaiakians during the wondrously long night of
the assembly. The tales are full of monsters of various
kinds and it is difficult for us to understand the status
of these beings. Perhaps it would be good for us to keep
in mind Socrates' statement in the Phaedrus that to know
myself includes knowing whether I am a being as fierce
and complicated as the monster Typhon or one to whom
a gentler and simpler nature belongs-it seems difficult
to speak of the human soul without speaking of monsters
of one kind or another.
But however uncertain we m(ly be about what account
to give of the Cyclops, Skylla, the Siren and others, Odysseus' tale is never unintelligible to us. This is so, I think,
because centrally the tale is about human companionship,
human pain at its being fractured, and human joy at its
being restored.
As we read in the first lines of the Odyssey, Odysseus
suffered many sorrows deep in his heart struggling to
achieve his soul and the return of his companions. These
two objects of his striving seem to involve each other
deeply. The return of his companions turns out to be impossible. This impossibility is rooted both in the nature
of the world-the adverse winds holding Odysseus and
his companions on the island of the Sun cannot change
until the prohibition against eating the sacred cattle has
been violated; and in the nature of the companions-as
the encounter with the Lotus-eaters indicates, to become
forgetful of one's return follows from not being ready to
3
�bring back tidings: unlike Odysseus, his companions are
not able in imagination and speech to make their life before the departure to Troy and their life after that moment into one life-that is why they cannot return. But,
as the next line informs us, what Odysseus desired most
of all was to draw his companions to himself (erusthai).
This was his ultimate task in relation to them, as theirs
was actively to allow themselves to be drawn to Odysseus. In this task both Odysseus and his companions succeed. Their success receives its perfect seal in Elpenor's
words to Odysseus in the underworld, that is, from beyond life in which of course it is always possible to reappraise what has happened. Elpenor, the youngest of
Odysseus' companions, wholly affirms his life in the companionship. He asks Odysseus to remember him, and he
asks that the oar with which he rowed be erected on his
burial mound as a memorial to the time when ''I was
among my companions." These final words spoken by
Elpenor, and the affirmation they contain, render articulate and therefore somehow bearable the sheer gesture
which Odysseus describes as "the most piteous sight my
eyes beheld in my sufferings as I questioned the ways
of the sea": six of his companions seized by Skylla reach
out their hands toward an impotent Odysseus and utter
his name.
Let me try to sketch briefly what happens to this companionship in the tale he tells the Phaiakians from the
Adventure of the Bag of Winds to the Adventure of the
Stag, and then make a suggestion about how such stories
come to take shape.
When Odysseus sleeps, and while his ships are within
sight of lthaka, his companions open the bag given to
Odysseus by King Aolius and a hurricane drives the ships
far from Ithaka. Odysseus immediately considers throwing himself into the sea and ending his life. The alternative, as he puts it to himself, is not simply to go on living,
but rather "to go on being among men." All that Odysseus and his companions have shared during ten years
at Troy seems to stand revealed as mutual infidelity: there
is mistrust, jealousy and resentment at ingratitude on the
one side, and on Odysseus' side absent-mindedness, lack
of imagination and complacency. That Odysseus brings
these charges against himself is clear from two considerations: first, in narrating the adventure to the Phaiakians, Odysseus speaks of the prospect of an early return
having been ruined by "our own folly;" and, second,
Odysseus after the fact is able to reconstruct in his previously inattentive imagination the pained and resentful
conversation among his men which he did not hear because he was asleep. Odysseus decides to endure in silence and remain, but he conceals himself (kaluptesthai)
and withdraws, as, we understand, do his men: no one
has the heart to look anyone else in the face.
In what follows the aloneness of Odysseus is not
4
spoken of, but rather presented in three tableaux. When
they come to the island of the Lastrygonians, after the
adventure of the winds, the other nine ships drop anchor inside the harbor, Odysseus' ship alone outside the
harbor. On this island, as again on the island of Circe,
Odysseus alone climbs up to a high place of outlook and
there takes his stand, a solitary figure against the sky.
But then, on the island of Circe, a sort of miracle happens: as Odysseus is returning to the ship, "Some one
of the gods pitied me, being alone, and sent a great stag
with towering antlers right in my very path.'' Odysseus
slays the stag and, with much trouble on account of its
size, manages to carry it back to the ship. And then "I
threw him down by the ship and roused my companions,
standing beside each man in turn and speaking to him
in kind words: 'Dear friends, sorry as we are, we shall
not yet go down to the house of Hades. Not until our
day is appointed. Come then, while there is something
to eat and drink by the fast ship, let us think of our food,
and not be worn out with hunger.' So I spoke, and they
listened at once to me and obeyed me, and unconcealing themselves (ek-kaluptesthai, the undoing of the concealment and withdrawal resulting from the Adventure
of the Bag of Winds), along the shore of the unresting
sea, they wondered at the stag; for truly he was a very
big beast. But after they had looked at him and their eyes
had enjoyed him, they washed their hands and set about
preparing a communal high feast."
Well, I think that it is not exactly the stag they are wondering at, big though it be, but rather, shyly, they are
wondering at the miracle of the restoration of companionship and the possibility of communion that has somehow taken place.
A number of important events affecting their reconstituted fellowship follow, events which show that not
only has their fellowship been re-constituted, but it has
been constituted at a deeper level. The next morning
Odysseus addresses his men in a way he has never addressed them before. He says that none of them, including himself, knows the place of the rising of the sun or
of its setting: they are deeply ignorant regarding the encompassing things. But perhaps, all the same, there is
some metis, some device, some plan, says polumetis Odysseus, the man of many devices. Then he says: "But I do
not think so." Odysseus is at a loss, and says so out loud.
Events, however, arrange themselves, and Odysseus
must risk emasculation, that is, in some way risk his relation to Penelope for the sake of his men whom Circe
has turned into swine. This adventure has a happy ending, and Odysseus' men, having feared that he was lost,
tell him in winged words, '"0 great Odysseus, we are
as happy to see you returning as if we had come back
to our own Ithakan country." But this moment is not
enough. As Circe says to all of them, "Now you are all
WINTER 1986
�dried out, dispirited from the constant thought of your
hard wandering, nor is there any spirit in your festivity,
because of so much suffering."
Odysseus recognizes the truth of this: the companionship, which is not forever, needs festive time spent
together. And Odysseus must let his companions tell him
how much time is necessary. They come to him at the
end of a year spent on Circe's island and say that the time
has come to go. Once more they make for home. But of
course only Odysseus returns.
The others perish at sea for having eaten the sacred cattle of the Sun, after valiantly resisting this temptation for
a long time. In response to their urgent plea not to measure their endurance by his own endurance, nor to ask
of them that they make his endurance their own measure, Odysseus wanders off while his companions choose
likely death at sea over starvation. Once again, Odysseus
knows exactly what they say to each other without having been present. He knows their ways and respects their
dignity. Above all, he has heard Elpenor, the youngest
and most foolish of them all, who fell to his death because of athesphatos oinos, IDOre wine than even a god
could say," pronounce his blessing upon the time "I was
among my companions."
Let me try to say a few words concerning this story
Odysseus tells to the Phaiakians about his experiences
in companionship in the middle of a world populated by
monsters. How does it become a story rather than a mere
sequence of happenings? For me this question means especially: how does Odysseus know that the appearing
of the mighty stag was brought about by some one of the
gods-he does not say which one-who pitied him because he was alone? For after all, only on this "interpretation" of the appearing of the stag does the stag become
the beginning of reconciliation and the restoration of communion. My suggestion would be that, although· at the
11
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
time of this happening Odysseus was somehow aware
of its meaning, he comes to comprehend its full meaning only when he puts it into a story. I mean two things
by this. First, Odysseus does not describe his feelings of
loneliness; rather, he describes one ship outside a harbor and nine within, and a man twice taking his stand
by himself on a high place of outlook. Again, he describes
himself and the others withdrawing into concealment and
emerging from concealment. Happenings seem to be
more important than feelings for story-telling.
But second, and more important, and in some way
qualifying my first suggestion, I think it is of decisive importance that Odysseus tells his story to Alkinous and
Arete, not to himself. It is probably true that important
stories, true stories, the narration of the truth of what
happened, must be prepared in solitude: perhaps Odysseus could have said nothing true about what happened
if he had spent any fewer than seven years in concealment with Calypso. But, I suggest, the most important
truths of any story are the truths we hear for the first time
as we tell the story to someone else, try to reach his soul
with our words, try to make him understand how it was.
I cannot, of course, prove this, but I firmly believe that
when Odysseus heard himself telling Allcinous and Arete
that the stag appeared because some one of the gods
pitied him in his aloneness, he knew immediately that
this was the truth of the matter, although he had never
before said any such thing to himself, even tentatively.
Let us leave Odysseus for now. He has many troubles
still to face when he reaches Ithaka. But for now we can
with Homer be happy as the ship of the Phaiakians carries him homeward: "She carried a man with a mind like
the gods for counsel, one whose spirit up to this time had
endured much, suffering many pains: the wars of men,
hard crossing of the big waters; but now he slept still,
forgetful of all he had suffered."
5
�Odysseus with his Father
The Irishman Robert Fitzgerald, one of our translators,
writes this about the pertinence of the Odyssey: "Electronic brains may help us to use our heads but will not
excuse us from that duty, and as to our heartscardiograms cannot diagnose what may be most ill about
them, or confirm what is best. The faithful woman and
the versatile brave man, the wakeful intelligence open to
inspiration or grace-these are still exemplary for our
kind, as they always were and always will be."
What I want to ask is: what can we learn from the
Odyssey about how the wakeful intelligence, as we see it
in Penelope and Odysseus, can be open to inspiration
or grace, how it can keep itself open to these. This question is another version of the question we were wondering about at the end of our last meeting, and about which
Ann-Martine spoke so beautifully: how do the gods appear to human beings in time of peace?
Let me try to make this question more specific by
presenting some thoughts about the coming together of
Odysseus with his Jather. When Odysseus sees Laertes
for the first time in twenty years "with great misery in
his heart, and oppressed by old age, Odysseus stood under a towering pear tree and shed tears for him, and
deliberated then in his heart and his spirit whether to embrace his father and kiss him and tell him everything, how
he was come again to his dear native country, or question him first about everything, and make trial of him.
''Odysseus with his Father'' was originally written as a preceptorial paper (of the kind the students were asked to write) in
Santa Fe; the second paragraph refers to a student who read
a paper at a previous meeting. Later "Odysseus with his Father"
was delivered as a summer lecture in Annapolis.
6
In the division of his heart this way seemed best to him,
first to make trial of him, and speak in words of
mockery.''
Thus Lattimore. It is useful to know two things about
the Greek. First, "to make trial of" is the midclle-voice
peiraomai, which means as much "to make trial of oneself in relation to" as "to make trial of the other." Second, "mockery" translates kertomios, which means literally "heart-cutting." It is clear before long that the heart
into which Odysseus' words cut is his own. Why must
Odysseus come together with his father by speaking
words that cut into his own heart?
·
Let us listen to Fitzgerald's fine and revealing translation of the story polumetis Odysseus tells his father: "Yes,
he said, I can tell you all those things. I come from Rover's
Passage, where my home is, and I'm King Allwoe's only
son. My name is Quarrelman." And so on. This "story"
is inept, clumsy, unconvincing. It is the only such story
Odysseus tells in the whole poem. Why is this so?
I think that Odysseus tells his father a story because
he needs time to be near his father before revealing himself, and he gives himself time by doing what he knows
he can do-telling stories. The story is inept because
Odysseus is so full of feeling, so little "self-possessed"
in the ordinary sense of the term: the story is illcomposed because he is ill-composed. Why is this so, and
in particular why does Odysseus need to give himself
time before he can embrace his father?
I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that
it is never a light or easy matter to embrace in its actual
presence a long hoped-for thing, particularly when one's
hoping has been of that special kind that we call hoping
against hope. And indeed there has been for Odysseus
WINTER 1986
�much to hope against. Eight years before returning to
Ithaka Odysseus hears from his mother in Hades who
died from grief for him that his father's life is nothing
but sorrow and longing on his account and that harsh
old age is upon him. During the next eight years he hears
nothing of his father. In this time his imaginings about
coming together with Penelope and Telemachos must
have been full of uncertainties and anxieties. But of his
father-of the chances of finding him alive-how often
did he dare let his thoughts turn that way? And yet how
often, thinking or not, must this hope have died within
him and then been re-born, the re-birth being as painful as the death?
I think that somehow, as Odysseus stands in the orchard, all of this must repeat itself in him, so as to be finally settled. And that is one reason why he needs to give
himself time in his father's presence, before embracing
him.
A second reason is something very difficult to speak
of, and I shall say only a few words. I think that as people become middle-aged, it is hard for them to be willing to see how old their parents have become, and what
suffering is visible in their faces. This seems especially
so when one is aware, as Odysseus polustonos surely is,
of the extent of one's own responsibility for that suffering. And so Odysseus must force himself really to look
at his father.
Finally, his body tells him when he has had enough
time, or, rather, when he cannot stand to have any more:
"and now in his nostrils there was a shock of bitter force
as he looked on his father. He sprang to him and embraced and kissed and then said to him .... "
What is appropriate for Odysseus to say to his father?
What is the proper way for him to reveal himself? Laertes
is not Telemachos or Euricleia or Eumaios or Penelope.
Who are these two, father and son, for each other?
One might have expected Odysseus to have given
much thought to this matter; and to have composed a
plan. But clearly he has no plan, nor has he at this moment the self-possessionto design one on the spot. Casting about wildly, as it seems to me, he first tries the scar,
the wound inflicted by the tusk of a boar. But he immediately knows that this is not right.
Let us step back for a moment and think for ourselves
about who Laertes might be and what wanderings about
his son might be on his mind. In Book 1 Athena disguised
as an old family friend speaks to Telemachos of "the aged
hero Laertes." We readily see him as aged-we hear again
and again of the shroud being prepared for him-but how
is he a hero? ln Book 22 the vile hands of Melanthios hold
"the ancient shield, all fouled with mildew, of the hero
Laertes, which he had carried when he was a young man.
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
It had been lying there, and the stitches were gone on
the handstraps. '' In Book 4 a desperate Penelope thinks
to ask Laertes for help, but Eurucleia dissuades her from
adding to his afflictions, speaking as if he were nothing
but an afflicted one.
Moreover, our questions about Laertes as hero come
not only from his age and sorrow. We are pretty certain
that the Phaiakians know no songs about Laertes. In that
sense the son seems vastly to have surpassed the father.
And that is not an easy thing to live with, either for
fathers or for sons. We wonder why Odysseus became
king of Ithaka at so early an age (20 perhaps).
And yet we also know something altogether wonderful about Laertes. In the early books of the poem, we hear
from Mentor, Athena, and Penelope that Odysseus,
young as he was, was a wonderfully good and just king.
(A few years ago a young friend of mine, then 17, told
me she liked that part a lot-that someone young could
be good at something important-because in general what
she had learned from the Odyssey-which seemed true
to her but a little sad-is that nobody can understand anything abouHhe world until they're middle-aged.) All
three witnesses praise the young Odysseus above all for
having been, in his kingliness, "as gentle as a father."
Well, no one, I think, can be as gentle as a father
without having learned gentleness from his father, and
so Odysseus' debt is immeasurable, unsayable. But something must be said, at this very moment, by Odysseus
to Laertes. What words will come, and what will be their
source? We remember that long ago Athena told
Telemachos, as he was making his beginning in the
world: "Some of it you yourself will see in your own
heart, and some the divinity will put in your mind."
Odysseus says to his father after 20 years: "Let me tell
you of the trees in the well-worked orchard, which you
gave me once. I asked you of each one, when I was a
child, following you through the garden. We we,nt among
the trees, and you named them all and told me what each
one was, and you gave me 13 pear trees· and 10 apple
trees, and 40 fig trees; and so also you named the 50 vines
you would give. Each of them bore regularly, for there
were grapes at every stage upon them, whenever the seasons of Zeus came down from the sky upon them, to
make them heavy."
Odysseus tells his father that nothing in his life, which
to such an extent has become matter for song, has been
more important to him than a certain afternoon spent
with his father when he was 10 years old and beginning
to learn of the seasons of Zeus.
My question is whether children and parents can speak
and hear such words in the world without the grace of
the gods.
7
�A Scene from Electra
I would like to talk to you about a scene from Sophocles' drama called Electra, the scene in which Electra
recognizes the young man standing before her as her
brother Orestes, for whose return she has longed and
prayed, year after year, but whom she now believes, for
apparently "sufficient reason", to be dead. I shall use
this scene somewhat freely, though I hope not arbitrarily or arrogantly, because I really want to talk to you about
something else-that is, I shall take this extraordinary
recognition scene as a sort of parable for the advent of
hoped-for and saving truth into the soul, which advent
sometimes seems to be a kind of miracle. I shall read you
a translation of the scene, and then make a few
comments.
Let me explain that Orestes has come home in disguise,
preceded by a messenger who tells a richly circumstantial and plausible tale of Orestes' death in a chariot race,
and himself claiming that the urn he bears contains the
ashes of Orestes. Electra now holds the urn. Orestes
makes certain the chorus is friendly. Now I quote.
Orestes: Then give up this urn, so that you may understand everything.
Electra: Do not in the name of God do this to me, stranger.
Orestes: Obey him who now speaks, and you shall never
go amiss.
Electra: Do not, I beseech you, take from me the dearest
things.
Orestes: I refuse to permit you to keep this.
"A Scene from Electra " was written for one of his classes in
one of his first years at the college.
8
Electra: 0, I am wretched over you, Orestes, if I shall be
deprived of your burial.
Orestes: Do not blaspheme. Your lament is not just.
Electra: How is it not just that I lament my dead brother?
Orestes: It is not fitting for you to utter this phrase.
Electra: Am I held in such dishonor by the dead?
Orestes: You are held in dishonor by no one; but this is
not for you.
Electra: It is, if this is indeed the body of Orestes I hold
here.
Orestes: But it is not the body of Orestes, except dressed
up in speech.
Electra: Where then is the grave of that miserable one?
Orestes: It does not exist; for of the living there is no grave.
Electra: What are you saying, lad?
Orestes: There is nothing false among the things which
I say.
Electra: Can it be that the man lives?
Orestes: If I have life.
Electra: Can you be that one?
Orestes: Having looked at my signet-ring, once our
father's, learn if I speak true.
Electra: 0 dearest light.
Orestes: Dearest, I bear witness with you.
Electra: 0 voice, have you come?
Orestes: No longer learn from another place.
Electra: Do I hold you in my arms?
Orestes: May you hold me always.
Now for my comments:
Before she can "understand everything", Electra is required to give up the urn supposed to contain the remains
of Orestes. This urn fits perfectly into, and hence
WINTER 1986
�represents, the whole context formed by what Electra "already knows". It represents the web of "well-attested
facts" into which any new truth must fit, the verisimilar
or ''truth-like'', the coherently circumstantial, hence
plausible-thus the messenger's description of Orestes'
fatal accident during the chariot race is full of detail both
highly technical and vivid. And finally it represents the
"realistic", i.e. the resigned and the proudly disenchanted, as opposed to the urge to hope against hope. All of
this-the merely verisimilar as well as the pathos of having cast off all comforting illusions-Electra must give up
if she is to have Truth Itself.
And why must she do this? Not because it inherently
makes sense, still less because it is the correct method
of attaining truth so that universally it should be our policy, but because truth requires it of her here and now.
Thus Orestes in response points not to the content of the
requirement but to that which, at this moment, utters the
requirement: "Obey him who is speaking and you shall
never go amiss.''
Moments later, these words break forth from Electra:
ua dearest light" -not, we must understand, any socalled "light of reason" within Electra which has searchingly and critically scrutinized a would-be truth and
found it admissible, but a light whose source is outside
of Electra and which has flooded into the darkest places
of her dark and bitter soul.
Is it indeed the signet-ring, once their father's, now
in the possession of the man claiming to be Orestes,
which causes Electra to know that the man who stands
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
before her is in truth the hoped-for deliverer from the
agonies of her existence?
Let us see: Electra: "0 voice, have you come? IOrestes:
"No longer learn from another place." The word translated as "learn" is punthanomai, which means "to learn
by hearsay, having inquired" or in general to learn
second-hand, which meaning was decisively determined
by the usage of Herodotus. That is, Orestes is saying:
Learn that it is I who have come, not through any external signs or proofs, e.g. the signet-ring, or some other
human witness, or some coherent account of how my being alive is to be reconciled with the report, including the
report given by me, that I was dead-but rather, know
that it is I through the very experiencing of my voice; not
through the plausibility of the content of what I say but
through the joy in your heart when you hear me-that
joy must be so strong and deep that it could not possibly
have been caused by an imposter or based on delusion.
Profoundest joy is caused by a being, not be the mere
idea (which may be true or false) of a being.
Finally, Electra says "Do I hold you in my arms?"
Orestes replies-in the optative mood; it is a prayer"May you hold me always." With the miraculous advent
of hoped-for and saving truth into the soul, the agonies
of one's life are not yet over. Serene security is not established. But it is possible, in the midst of all agonies,
to hold the truth tight against one's breast. Because, in
the end, the reason why men have arms is not in order
· to ward off, but in order to embrace.
I wish you happiness.
9
�About Sophocles' Philoctetes
In Sophocles' Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, son of Achilles,
addresses to Philoctetes this question: "Then is there not
in the world also room for changing one's rrtind back
again?" I propose in this lecture to reflect on the meaning of this question within the play (and beyond it) and
on the answer given by the play. To do this it will be
necessary for me to explore the meanings of two words
which occur in the play, the word analabein used by Neoptolemus and the word daimon used by Philoctetes.
When N eoptolemus is confronted by Odysseus on his
way back to Philoctetes' cave to restore the bow, he
declares his intention in this way: "Having sinned a
shameful sin, I shall attempt to take-up-and-back-again
(analabein)." At the play's end, Philoctetes declares his
willingness to go "whither the great destiny (megala
Moira) brings me, and the judgment of friends, and the
all-subduing daimon, who brought these things to fulfillment.''
(Let me remark parenthetically: my interpretation of
these two words does not precede my interpretation of
the play as a whole. This procedure implies that one does
not understand what a play says from understanding
what all the words say but rather that one comes to understand what certain crucial words say from understanding what the play as a whole says. This in tum implies
that poetry, dramatic poetry as well as lyric, is essentially
a matter of naming things, of pronouncing a revelatory
word, prior to which the thing named is not fully present
in the world.)
Let us return to analabein and daimon. Familiarity with
"About Sophocles' Philoctetes" was delivered as a Wednesday
night lecture in the spring of 1975.
10
the main lines of action in the play must be presupposed,
but it will be helpful to take explicit notice of certain utterances first of Neoptolemus, then of Philoctetes, in the
scenes in which we are first introduced to them.
Neoptolemus' initial resistance to Odysseus' proposal
for capturing Philoctetes' bow by guile culrrtinates in this
assertion: "For I was bom to do nothing from base artfulness, neither I myself nor, so they say, he who fathered
me forth (ho ekphusas)." Neoptolemus wishes to be worthy of his father, whom he first saw when Achilles lay
on his funeral pyre, of whom, living, he has only heard.
But the word by which Neoptolemus characterizes
Achilles appears to bear special emphasis in this context.
(Compare Philoctetes' later denial-more hopeful than
confident-that Neoptolemus has done anything exo tou
phuteusantos-outside of and alien to him who fathered.)
Ho phusas by itself would mean the father, the one who
begot, who fathered. But Neoptolemus speaks of himself as having been fathered forth (ek-phusas), fathered out
from, placed out from, exposed. Philoctetes is not the
only solitary figure in the play.
Odysseus counters this assertion by Neoptolemus, as
he also couhters his other objections. His blandishments
culrrtinate in this promise, whose involuted form brings
out the most important point: "Wise (sophos) as well
as, the same man, also valiant (agathos) you would be
called at the same time (hama)." Odysseus seems to hold
out to the New Warrior-the meaning of the name
Neoptolemus-the prospect of a wholly new and unprecedented mode of being human. Some men, Nestor
for example, are widely called wise; others, perhaps
Achilles above all, are widely called valiant; if there is anyone who is-the same man-called both wise and vali-
WINTER 1986
�ant it is Odysseus, but only in a certain manner. As he
himself says: "Of whatever sort there is need at a given
time, such a one am 1''-that is, valiant when circumstances require, wise when that is appropriate. But Odysseus holds out to Neoptolemus a still more prodigious
prospect: he, the same man, would be called both wise
and valiant at the same time. He would not be subject to
that fragmentation and dispersion in tiroe which has been
the lot of even the most excellent men hitherto. Neoptolemus' natural endowments and the configuration of
events are so in harmony that the world may have a
chance to behold in his person and action a fullness
hitherto only dreamt of. The young man immediately
responds: "I shall act, having dismissed once for all all
shame." He uses the aorist participle, indicating that the
dismissing of shame is here understood not as a continuing struggle to which one may or may not prove equal,
but rather as an event which occupies a moment a moment which recedes further and further into the past as
time goes by.
Let us now consider Philoctetes' first speech as he addresses Neoptolemus and the sailors: "Do not, having
feared me, be struck with hesitation and shrinking back
in the face of one who has grown savage away from himself (from apo-agriomaz). '' Philoctetes knows well enough
what sort of aspect he must present to strangers, nor does
he say that his having grown savage or wild is a matter
of appearance only. He does however insist that in growing savage he has grown away (apo) from himself, not,
we must understand, merely away from what he once
was, so that kindness should be extended in memory of
what once had been, but away from what he is right now,
from what he truly is. The terrible tension of this position emerges more sharply from the immediate sequel:
"But having pitied a wretched man, alone, afflicted so
very lonely and friendless, utter a sound." Let us consider the sequence of adjectives: along (monos), lonely
(eremos) and friendless (aphilos). A rock lying in the middle of a field can be alone-there can be only one rock, not
two-but it cannot be lonely, and no more can it be friendless. That a rock has no friends does not make it aphilos.
Only a being which is in itself referred to friendship, to
living with friends, only a social being, can be friendless.
But the inner referredness to living with friends, without
which one is incapable even of being friendless, may not
be a simply secure, automatically viable possession.
Within the experience of a man who is forced to live for
a long time without friends, may not the very referredness to friends and friendship atrophy, so that the man's
soul, in respect of its openness to and (prior even to any
specific yearning) its relatedness to other men, will shrivel
up toward and into the mode of being of a rock, no more
capable of being friendless than of having friends? Does
not the resistance to this shrivelling up require a sustain1
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing of the capacity for friendlessness, an active refusal
to cease to feel a lack? Thus it seems that there may be
brave affirmation, even perhaps a sort of pride, as well
as an appeal to pity, in Philoctetes' characterization of
himself as "alone, lonely and friendless". Whether or not
there is pride in this appeal, there is surely magnificent
pride in what Philoctetes says next: "Make exchange. For
it is not right, either for me to fail of having you, at least
in this matter of exchanging speech, nor for you to fail
of having me". Philoctetes asserts that he, too, for all his
pain and poverty, has something to offer. What he has
to offer Neoptolemus in particular is what we must try
to see. But first we must know what it is that Neoptolemus needs and hopes for. This is summoned up by the
word analabein, which occurs only this once in Sophocles'
extant writings.
In his encounter with Odysseus after he has decided
to restore the bow, Neoptolemus says that he has sinned
(hamartanein), that his sin (hamartia) is shameful and that
"I shall attempt to take-up-and-back-again (analabein)".
The name of what he hopes to do is analabein. What does
this mean? For the moment I shall translate labein as
"take". Ana used as a prefix may mean up (anablepo, I
look up; anabaino, I go up, I mount) or it may mean back,
backwards (anachOreo, I go back, I retreat or withdraw) or
it may mean again (anagignosko, I know again, recognize;
anamnesis, recollection). Here we are permitted and disposed by the play to take it in all three senses at once.
Neoptolemus must attempt to take up-that is, in the
first place, take up responsibility for what he has done
and is doing. In the scene with Philoctetes in which N eoptolemus reveals his intention to take the archer to Troy,
Neoptolemus' resolve to carry out Odysseus' plan is
shaken as he touches Philoctetes, weakened by a fresh
attack of his sore, in helping him to his feet. The young
man says: "I know not whither it is useful to turn the
wayless word" and" All is disgusting (literally: "unhandy", duschereia) whenever someone, leaving his own nature, does things which are not fitting for him". But
instead of acting on these impulses, or on the other hand
setting himself in opposition to them, he literally abdicates, denying that he is an agent at all in the affair. He
says: "A great necessity rules over these things". And
when Philoctetes says climactically: "I am destroyed,
wretch that I am, I have been betrayed. What have you
done to me, stranger? Return the weapons to me irnmediately."-his reply is not that he will not or even that he
cannot but rather that "it is not possible", not perhaps
because of some choice he has made but rather because
"both the just and the advantageous make me (poiein)
obey those in authority" as if "the just and the advantageous" were authentically agents; the 'T' has disappeared in favor of a "me" who is the object of a making
(poiein). The taking-up which Neoptolemus must at-
11
�tempt, which he has already begun but which he must
sustain, shunning all evasions, is primarily the takingup of responsibility as an I who is a center of choice.
But analabein also means "to take back". It is not clear
that Neoptolemus can take back his deed of betrayal, restore to their pristine condition Philoctetes' soul as well
as his own. According to the words of Odysseus' original commission, the proper object of Neoptolemus' act
of kleptein (which may mean "deceive" but primarily
means "steal") was not, as one expected, Philoctetes' bow
but rather his soul. Hence the bare act of restoring the
bow hardly constitutes the taking-back of what Neoptolemus has done. But whether or not a taking-back in
the decisive sense is possible, a movement backwards/
a going back, is part of what Neoptolemus must attempt.
Thus Odysseus describes him as "turned back again (au
palintropos) on the road" and he himself says that he is
"about to undo so much as I did sinfully in the time before". Whatever else may be involved in Neoptolemus'
"repentance", one necessary ingredient is a retracing of
his steps and a submitting to having his action determined by what he has already sinfully done-"so much
as" means "no more than" as well as TIO less than";
there is no margin for spontaneity. Taking-up responsibility as an agent after one has sinned requires takingback, that is, requires accepting in a manly spirit the
melancholy prospect of the absolute loss of spontaneity.
But analabein also means "taking again" or "taking
anew" as anagignOskein means knowing again, recognizing and anamnesis means remembering again. It suggests
that a kind of newness, or at least renewal, is indeed possible. One must suppose that Neo-ptolemus, the new
warrior, the young warrior, hopes so with all his heart.
For he must feel that what he has lost is most of all his
youth. But this means, in Greek, which speaks of the
young as hoi neoi, the new ones, that he has lost his newness and his capacity for beginning something new,
something which not only has never been before, but
which is moreover not simply the consequence of what
has been before. Although it is indeliberate, it must seem
to Neoptolemus a cruel irony when Odysseus asks "Surely you do not plan something new?" "Nothing new",
Neoptolemus replies-that means, nothing new, nothing
young, nothing spontaneous, no new beginnings, not
now nor ever; nothing but, inwardly, one staggering and
reeling reaction, ending only in death, to one premature
and confused action; and outwardly, the attempt to walk
with measured and manly tread while supporting the
chain of events which one forged unknowingly.
From this point of view, Neoptolemus' attempt at
analabein must be an attempt to take again and take anew
his being young, his being an originator of new things,
his being a genuine beginner. But it seems that here the
labein of analabein must be not a "taking" but rather a
0
12
"receiving" as this ambiguous verb permits. His youth
and his newness seem to be something which Neoptolemus must receive anew rather than take anew. Hence his
"I shall attempt" must mean in this case "I shall hope".
Analabein in the sense of taking up responsibility is within
Neoptolemus' power to do; analabein in the sense of taking back what he has done is, at least, within his power
to attempt; but analabein in the sense of receiving anew
his newness can finally be only an object of his hoping-it
is only within his power to the extent that the attempt
to take up and to take back, which are its necessary but
not sufficient conditions, are within his power. Beyond
that, Neoptolemus must renounce all claims on what will
follow; nothing is owed him. Neoptolemus indeed performs this renunciation: "Let the future be what it will".
But if his being young and being new is something
which Neoptolemus can only receive, not take, anew, it
must be from Philoctetes if from anyone that Neoptolemus can receive this. It is to Philoctetes that he addresses the question: "Then is there not in the world also room
for changing one's mind back again (metagnonai)?" It is
for Philoctetes to answer this question not only because
he is more experienced in the ways of the world than is
Neoptolemus, but above all because the relevant world is
his world, the world of the island of Lemnos. The answer seems to be for him a matter of resolution, not mere
declaration. (Even in the world of Lemnos, however, it
is not clear that Philoctetes' will is the final court of appeal: Philoctetes himself, as he bids the island farewell,
asks that it send him on his voyage "without blame"perhaps there is an important connection between the island as such and the megala Moira-the great destiny-of
which Philoctetes speaks at the end of the play.)
But what exactly does Neoptolemus hope to receive
from Philoctetes? It seems that one cannot quite answer
"forgiveness". The New Testament word which is translated as "forgive" (as in "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors") is aphienai. This word occurs in the
play only in contexts which strictly preclude this rendering. Two notable instances are: Neoptolemus "having dismissed all shame" and Philoctetes praying that he be
"released" from the light of day so that he might do down
to Hades. Nor is there any other word in the play which
can be translated as "forgiveness". This perhaps surprising "omission" may be connected with another "omission". The verb iasthai, to heal, cure, and its derivatives
such as iasis, healing and iatros, one who heals, do not
occur in the play. Again and again with regard to Philoctetes' disease one speaks of cessation, respite, relief,
softening, but never quite of healing. Could this mean
that in the most radical sense no healing either takes place
or is promised in the play? And could this in turn be because no forgiveness is granted, if by "forgiveness" we
mean that which is commensurate with our deepest
WINTER 1986
�need? To understand the point of this last question one
must ask oneself: what if, as might have happened, Neoptolemus had indeed "changed his mind back again"
but it had not been within his power to restore the bow
(suppose for example that Odysseus had it securely in
his possession). And suppose it had not been in Neoptolemus' power to take Philoctetes home; and again, that
a glorious success for Philoctetes at Troy had not been
ordained and hence could not be promised. In a word,
suppose that Neoptolemus really had, through his sin,
brought Philoctetes to doom and destruction for which
on the level of action there was no remedy; and yet that
Neoptolemus had truly and sincerely changed his mind
back again. Would there have been an answering movement within the heart of Philoctetes, in acceptance of Neoptolemus' hopeful proffer of friendship, and in pity for
the suffering of Neoptolemus, the suffering of contrition?
To be sure, the play does not permit one to answer such
a question definitively, but the exclusion of the words
"forgiveness" and "healing" from the world of the play
perhaps indicates the limits of Sophocles' most generous
hope in this matter, and also, perhaps, provides some
insight into the celebration of the mystery of the literal
undoing of the deeds and life of Oedipus-their procession into non-being-in Oedipus at Colonus, the play immediately following Philoctetes, with which Sophocles
ends his life as a dramatist at the age of 90.
But all of this appears to be what the play is not about.
Let us try to re-enter the play itself. If what Neoptolemus hopes from Philoctetes is not radical forgiveness,
what does he hope? What may be required of Philoctetes?
More revealing than anything else are the two imperatives which Neoptolemus addresses to Philoctetes as he
attempts to restore the bow, both of which, remarkably,
are progressive imperatives, expressing continuing action
rather than a discrete event whose definite end is clearly
envisaged, such as is expressed by the aorist imperative.
Neoptolemus says: "Be accepting from my hand these
weapons" and again "Be stretching forth your right hand
and be master of your weapons" (as if to say: the moment must be prolonged into a lifetime, Philoctetes being rightful master of the weapons only so long as he is
stretching forth his hand in trust and exposedness).
But is Philoctetes capable of so sustained and persevering an effort? Is he willing to undertake it? What support
must he require, in what may he place his trust, as he
exposes himself thus indefinitely? In any case, the play
is rightly named for Philoctetes: the disposition of the
plight of Neoptolemus as well as the disposition of the
plight of Philoctetes depends upon Philoctetes.
By the play's end Philoctetes has assented to the words
of Heracles and has paid homage to the "all-subduing
daimon, who has brought these things to fulfillment".
What is the connection between the words of Heracles
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and the all-subduing daimon in which Philoctetes now
places his trust? Let us consider the situation of Philoctetes immediately before the appearance of Heracles.
Philoctetes has been an archer. His inescapable arrows,
as Odysseus puts it, "send death on ahead" (propempein).
That is, he does not expose himself as other warriors do;
it is almost an occupational deformation in him to
separate himself from other men, not to run the risks of
nearness which others run. When once he did "draw
near" (pelazein) a hidden-because-uncovered shrine (a
pun on kalupteinlakaluptos) he was bitten by a viper. Now
on his island, he has already rejected the invitation of the
chorus to "draw near (pelazein) to one who draws near
to you wholly well-intentioned." And his very last words
prior to the appearance of Heracles will be "I shall prevent the Greeks from drawing near" (pelazein, again).
It is from out of this sort of experience that Philoctetes
speaks as he now considers whether he might return with
Neoptolemus to Troy: "For not the pain of the things
which have already gone by bites me, but I seem to foresee the sort which it is necessary still to suffer from these
men. For in those in whom the mind has once become
the mother of evils, it teaches them to be evil in other
things too." This ascription of utter uniformity, hence
reliability, to the souls of those who have once been guilty
of betrayal permits one to orient oneself unequivocally
in the world, to enjoy an impervious security in the disposition of one's soul, though not of course in one's body.
But is it true? Does it not involve an arrogant foreclosing
of possibilities which are not legitimately at Philoctetes'
disposal to foreclose?
Against the background of this general attitude,
however, Philoctetes takes up a radically different attitude toward Neoptolemus in particular. Now instead of
ascribing utter uniformity, hence predictability, to the
soul of Neoptolemus, understood as the source and
ground of his actions-which ascription would seem to
make friendship and trust between the two men impossible, since Neoptolemus' soul has once become mother
of evils-Philoctetes in effect denies that Neoptolemus has
a soul, that is, he denies that there is any constant source
and ground, uniform and predictable or otherwise, of Neoptolemus' actions.
Sufficiently telling in this respect is Philoctetes' use,
three times within the crucial conversation in which N eoptolemus restores the weapons, attempts to persuade
him to come to Troy, and finally agrees to take him home,
of vocative participles (which are rare in Greek, and indeed
have no distinctive endings of their own, being indistinguishable rather from nominative participles): "0 one
who just spoke the dearest things, if you say genuine
things" (Here the participle is aorist in aspect). Again:
"0 one who just gave dread counsel" (another aorist participle). And again: "0 one who has spoken a noble
13
�word" (here the participle is perfect in aspect).
What does it mean to address someone repeatedly in
terms of what he has done, indeed what he has just now
done, this very moment? It means to identify the doer
with the doing, to deny that there is a self which grounds
the doing, which is its responsible and somehow dependable cause, which stands behind it and disposes of it,
which transcends it in such a way that it is not exhausted by the sum of all its doings, far less by any one of
them. We are reminded perhaps of the Aristotelian equation of divine nous and noein, the equation of a noun and
a verb, pointing to a mode of being which is sheer doing. But to use participles whose aspect is aorist as Philoctetes does in the first two instances means, in
contradistinction to Aristotle's God in whom the absence
of mere capability ensures perfect changelessness-utter
chaos, an unconnected sequence of sheer happenings,
each one passing quickly away, giving one no hint about
what to expect next, so that one clutches at the happening now momentarily manifest if its content is favorable
to one. Within the realm in which the doer is identified
with his doing (in the present case most especially with
his saying) the only cure for the unbearable anxiety thus
engendered is to convert, with all the energy of hope and
insistence at one's disposal, some primarily discrete and
singular action (expressed by the aorist participle) into
the perfect tense, constituting some one doing or saying
as the definitive, stable, reliable one: "0 one who has
spoken, definitively and permanently, beyond all possibility of revocation or alteration, a noble word".
This is how the play would end, it appears, save for
the intervention of Heracles, after which a new answer
is provided to the question, in what can one place one's
trust in a world in which men's doings and sufferings
cannot be foreseen. The new answer is-in the allsubduing daimon. What does this mean? But first, what
does the appearance of Heracles accomplish? Why is it
necessary? That is not easy to say, but I would make two
suggestions.
In general the appearance of Heracles seems necessary
as the remedy for the partial but powerful truth enunciated by Odysseus: experience seems to refute positively, but to confirm only negatively. Odysseus tells
Neoptolemus that he too, being young once, had an active hand and an inactive tongue, but that now, "going
forth into the test (elenchos)," he sees that among mortals the tongue, not the deeds, rules in all things. The
use of the word elenchos is remarkable. It signifies a test
of a particular kind, namely a testing with a view to refutation, so that to come through the test successfully is
nothing positive, but only the absence of refutation, the
non-experience which is not-being-overthrown. Greek
has a number of words for test or trial which are not negative in this way: peira, krisis, agon. But for Odysseus there
14
is evidently no affirmative experience of being vindicated, being confirmed in the rightness of one's action, the
goodness of one's being. Odysseus' view finds some support in certain of our ordinary ways of speaking: by "having a good conscience'' we mostly mean ''having a clear
conscience", that is, the absence of a bad conscience, the
silence of conscience itself. For Philoctetes this situation
must be particularly acute, since his long experience with
his disease is that "it comes from time to time, perhaps
when it has had its fill of wandering", so that his wellbeing is its absence and its absence is its not yet having
returned. The apparition of Heracles perhaps means within the terms of the play that at some moments men are
justified in requiring more than the negative indication
of not having been refuted ("a silent conscience") as a
basis for their actions.
But the words of Heracles have a much more particular significance as well. The core of their significance, I
believe, lies in his use of the dual number (for both nouns
and verbs), indicating not mere twoness but rather a
"natural pairing" with respect to Philoctetes and Neoptolemus. The dual forms occur in this powerful affirmation: ''For you are not strong apart from this one to take
Troy, nor this one apart from you, but as twain lions,
ranging together, the two of you keep guard, this one
over you and you over him". The use of the dual had
not been dared by Neoptolemus himself; here it is used
to yoke Philoctetes and Neoptolemus by someone who
had earned the right to apply it to himself and Philoctetes, by Heracles, the old companion of Philoctetes. Thus
in the Philoctetes the motion of the Antigone is reversed
in one crucial respect: there in the beginning dual forms
are used both by Antigone and Ismene to refer to the two
of them, but this is soon shattered and never repaired
within the play; here the action concludes with dual
forms, having begun with the absolute isolation of Philoctetes and a reminder of the abandonment of Neoptolemus by "the one who fathered me forth".
But if Neoptolemus and Philoctetes can become companions, Neoptolemus must be, and be acknowledged
as, a being somehow like Philoctetes. But Philoctetes is
above all a being who lives through his doings and sufferings: he invites Neoptolemus to see his "homeless home
within" so that the younger man may learn "from out
of what I was living through (dia-zen) and how stouthearted I am by nature." Philoctetes himself is not any
of his doings and sufferings, nor is he all of them put
together; Philoctetes himself lived through them. (We
should notice that sufferings and doings are not sharply
distinguished within the play. When Heracles, playing
on the double meaning of ponein as ''to labor'' and ''to
suffer'', says that he will tell Philoctetes ''how great were
the sufferings I labored at and came utterly through",
we are reminded of Philoctetes' own fierce pride in
WINTER 1986
�"feeding" -not merely passively suffering-the insatiable disease for ten long years.)
Thus when Philoctetes recognizes in Neoptolemus a
genuine companion for himself-when, moved above all
by the vividness of the prospect which Heracles announces ("like twain lions hunting together"), he assents
to Heracles' pairing of them, he must recognize in Neoptolemus too a constant (literally: standing with) ground
of his doings. But the play tells us that this constant
ground cannot be understood in the sense of Aristotelian
character (ethos) which is a sort of second nature, namely a definitely and fully formed form whence characteristic
actions flow and in the formation of which habitual
choice, gradually accumulatirig, looms large, the very
word ethos (character) being a lengthened form of ethos
(habit), as Aristotle says in the beginning of book two of
the Nichomechean Ethics. Rather, on the basis of the play
we would have to say that this constant ground, in which
Philoctetes may and must trust, is Aristotelian character
supplemented by something which Aristotle seems to leave
out of consideration, namely the possibility of radically
changing one's mind back again. The play gives a name
to this constant ground-it is the all-subduing daimon.
It is as Heracleitus writes (fragment 119): "ethos is a
man's daimOn." Or rather, since this saying seems to indicate that the extraordinary and strange thing-daim
on-is to be understood in terms of that which is more
ordinary and less problematical-ethos, we should
perhaps, in faithfulness to Sophocles, reverse this saying: daimon is a man's ethos-that thing whose structure
and limits we imagine we know well enough under the
title of character, is in truth deeply mysterious and
perhaps not simply human.
That there is something in man which is not simply
human-what might this mean? Let us close with two
questions.
Heracles concludes his speech by admonishing Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, whenever they ravage the earth,
"to reverence the things in relation to gods (ta pros theous)". Ordinarily one supposes that Heracles is referring
to such things as altars, and one is reminded of the story
according to which Neoptolemus, at the sack of Troy,
savagely and impiously slays Priam as he clings to the
altar of Zeus, a suppliant. But such a phrase as Ia pros
theous is inevitably heard differently by different men.
Might some man, having learned something from Sophocles, be justified in understanding "the things in relation
to gods" to include, and somehow to culminate in, the
daimonic within man, the mysterious source of freedom
and constancy, which would then be par excellence the
proper object of reverence, the gods themselves being too
far away?
Again, in the final moments of Oedipus at Colonus, the
sightless Oedipus, who for twenty years has had to be
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
led and guided, now becomes leader and guide of his
daughters and Theseus. At a certain moment, audibly to
all, "A god calls him many times and in many ways" and
the rest is incommunicable. But before that moment,
Oedipus himself says, as he leads his followers: "That
from god which is present urges me on (to ek theou paron). "That from god which is present, which is nearby,
is not god. And yet its being from god seems not at all
external to it-it is no mere messenger-no more than it
itself seems external to Oedipus. "That from god which
is present, which is nearby" -what or who is it? Themessage who recounts the final moments of Oedipus' life on
earth says: "When we had gone away, we looked back
after a short time and saw the man nowhere still being
present (ton andra oudamou paronta)." Oedipus' being is
a being present, just as the being of that which is from
god is a being present. When the man is present nowhere, that from god which is present seems also to have
departed. Is what urges on the ancient Oedipus as he
comes to his final end-that from god which is present,
that presence which is somehow divine-anything different from Oedipus himself?
And yet in indicating that for Sophocles there seems
to be a divine presence indistinguishable from Oedipus
himself, at any rate in his last moments, we must not forget that there is also, and irreducibly other, the god who
calls to him many times in many ways and speaks only
these words: "You there, you there Oedipus, why do we
delay to go? For a long time there has been delay from
your side". This god (who is called simply theos, with no
article, and who seems to be, one is tempted to say, beyond Zeus and Apollo and Hermes and the others who
have been named frequently throughout the play) accepts
Oedipus into his company; he refers to Oedipus and himself as "we". The ineffable communion between that
which is present from god within Oedipus and theos itself seems to be the last word of Sophocles' last play.
In the wholly mysterious light of the Oedipus at Colonus, we can perhaps see a little more clearly into the
Philoctetes. It seemed to us that the answer given by that
play to the question, on what can one rely and in what
hope within the realm of human affairs is: the allsubduing daimon. The twofold nature of this daimonhence the range of meaning of Ia pros theous (the things
in relation to gods) if not of theos itself-is perhaps clearer now: there is both the constant presence of the "daimonic" within man and the sometimes-unpredictable
and incalculable-blazing into this-worldly manifestness
of the "daimonic" without man, which however must
be longed for if it is to appear. For, at the end of the play,
in his only address to Heracles, Philoctetes first reveals
to us the secret of his heart: the voice which he has just
heard and which he will obey has been for him for quite
a while phthegma potheinon, the longed-for voice.
15
�•
The Power of the Word In
Oedipus at Colonus
Shortly before his disappearance from the human
world, Oedipus speaks these words to his daughters:
"All the things that are mine have perished, and no
longer will you have the toilsome tendance of me. It was
hard, I know, daughters. But one word by itself cancels
all these agonies: to philein, the action of loving .... "
But we ask: even if love itself could be thought to prevail over great suffering, could be thought somehow to
count for more than suffering within a life shared between
persons, why should the power of the word be so exalted?
How can a mere word dissolve actual sufferings? The
strangeness of the matter is accentuated by the Greek
word order, which by postponing the word epos (which
means "word") first pits one thing against many, hen
monon against ta panta tauta, and then, as starkly as may
be, finishes the line by placing epos immediately and
tensely next to mochthemata (agonies, sufferings).
To understand a little the meaning of the power of to
epos in this drama of Sophocles' old age will be the attempt of this lecture.
But first a number of other matters must be discussed.
I shall organize my thoughts under these headings: the
terrible darkness acknowledged by the play; the significance of the Athens of Theseus as worthy receptacle
for Oedipus; Oedipus himself-how he thinks of himself
and what he hopes for and demands; what happens at
the end of the play, or at any rate how this happening
can be distantly characterized; and finally how the utterly
mysterious ending of the play throws us back upon the
"The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus" appeared in
The Review in April 1977.
16
saying, just as mysterious in its own way, about the
power of to philein, with its strange dependence upon the
power of to epos.
I.
The most terrible words uttered in any play of Sophocles are uttered in the play he wrote when he was ninety
years old. The chorus says: "Not to be born (me phunai)
prevails over all meaning uttered in words. By far the second best, when one has come to light, is to go to that
very place from which one came as swiftly as may be."
We must try to understand what moves the chorus to
speak as it does. Let us listen to a translation of the
strophe which immediately precedes the words just
quoted: "Whoever craves the greater portion in living,
having disdained the moderate, will be manifest in my
judgment as cherishing perversity. For the long days pile
up many things closer to pain; as for the things which
give delight, you would not see them anywhere, whenever one falls into more than is fitting." So far we seem
to be hearing a lament upon old age: life is without delight
and full of pain for the old. As we learn later (to our surprise, until we reflect a little on how such things are likely
to be), the chorus is thinking not so much of the ancient
Oedipus as of itself: the second strophe begins: "In such
a condition is this wretched one, not I alone." We must
remember that the chorus of old men have recently been
humiliated, have had their impotence unmistakably
demonstrated as Creon's forces have carried off Antigone
and Ismene in their presence despite their pledge of protection to Oedipus.
But as the chorus hears itself uttering this lamentation,
a more universal lamentation is kindled: "The Ally brings
WINTER 1986
�equal fulfillment to all when the doom of Hades has
blazed up, without wedding-song, without lyre, without
festive dance-death in the end." That death comes to
men as an ally or deliverer (the Greek word, epikouros
even suggests that there is something youthful about
death), that it comes equally to all and somehow fulfills,
might seem to make death not at all inimical to men. But
in describing its coming the chorus hears itself stringing
together privatives whose very sounds seem mournfulanumenaios, aluros, achoros. Wedding-song and the lyre
and festive dance are things which give genuine delight;
to be deprived of them is a cruel pain. What if, as sometimes seems true, the delights are simply in the service
of the pain, for the sake of the pain, are made briefly available only so that the great pain of losing them may sweep
over men? Then might one not be impelled to say: Not
to be born is ineffably the best. Second best is to leave,
as swiftly as may be, this world of torture, of grievous
pains and of delights which mock by their transience?
But do we not object: that might be true if there were
only one generation of humankind, but in fact men and
women leave sons and daughters behind them-there is
always delight in the lyre, not indeed for me but for some
human being, and even for some human being whose
life would not have come to be without my life. But can
the chorus do justice to this fact, the fact of generation
following generation so that delight in the lyre never dies,
without doing a terrible injustice to the spectacle which
has just been present before its eyes? We recall: Oedipus has just been told that his son wishes to speak with
him. He says: "My son, King, hateful to me, whose
words I would endure hearing most painfully of any
man's." It has come to this in the life of Oedipus-exactly
how the blame is to be apportioned seems of secondary
importance-that his son's voice is the most painful thing
in the world for him to hear. And, the chorus knows, he
must nevertheless endure hearing it: he will not be spared
even this final agony. Of all the terrors and grievous spectacles in the tragedies of the Greeks, there is perhaps
none more excruciating than this, that a father has come,
irreconcilably, to hate his son. It is under the impact of
this spectacle most of all, I think, that the chorus says
that it would be better never to have been born.
But is this not, after all, an unwarranted generalization
from an insufficient number of cases? In some lives things
turn out very painfully indeed, but surely most lives are
not so full of agony as the life of Oedipus. Would not
a broader, more balanced view be more just? I do not
think so. For the chorus is not really engaging in "generalization,'' in such a way that it is appropriate to adduce
counter-examples, to survey in detachment, having
stepped back from the immediate event, the full range
of human experience and to find therein the proper place,
alongside other happenings, of such a happening. The
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
chorus is constitutionally incapable of such a steppingback. And for that very "limitation" we must be grateful to it. For as the chorus allows the intensely painful
spectacle before its eyes to fill up the whole world for a
moment-the intensive finding expression in the unlimitedly extensive-a sort of justice is accomplished: the moment receives its due, finds truthful voice in the human
world. I do not mean merely that the chorus is (psychologically) incapable of stepping back and placing this
moment alongside other moments in some sort of
"balanced" way or even merely that (morally) it would
be somehow indecent for the chorus to try to do that. I
mean fully that truthfulness about such momentary spectacles requires that they be allowed, for a moment, to occupy the whole world and all time. There is indeed-and
it is to be cherished-a kind of truthfulness which tries
to do justice to human experience in its wholeness, but
that presupposes truthfulness about particular experiences, and this truthfulness, it seems to me, is greatly
jeopardized by objections against the "exaggerated,"
"one-sided," "insufficiently detached and comprehen:
sive'' mode in which certain terrible spectacles are origi-
nally spoken of, given voice to, and hence not only
allowed to enter the human world, but in a manner secured there against annihilation by the human propensity to ignore and forget and scale down to manageable
dimensions, a propensity understandable enough as
flowing from the soul's desire-with which, however,
others of its desires and needs may conflict-to shelter
itself against what cannot be somehow mastered in
thought, allocated and defined, against what Antigone
later calls ta alogista. But the needs of our psychic
economy-even if it could be established that those needs
include distortion of what is-is not the only legitimate
consideration; there is also the requirement in justice that
what has happened, what has appeared, be given its due,
be given a place in the human world in and through human speech, however "irrational" that speech may be.
For Athens to be a proper place for the appearing of the
disappearing of Oedipus, not only the detachment,
balance and capacity to generalize of Theseus is
required-of Theseus who says, upon encountering Oedipus for the first time: "I know that I too am a man, and
that tomorrow my share of the day is no greater than
yours" -but also the capacity of the chorus to lend its
voice unreservedly to certain terrible moments, maintain-
ing no "broader horizon," and thereby allowing those
moments to appear as what they are.
II.
But if Theseus without the chorus does not constitute
an Athens which is a proper receptacle for Oedipus,
neither does the chorus without Theseus constitute such
17
�an Athens. What is the Athens of Theseus? Theseus himsell declares its aspiration in these beautiful words: "Not
by speeches but by great deeds done are we zealous to
make life radiant for ourselves (ton bion Iampron
poieisthai)." To make life radiant, to create and sustain
a realm in which deeds of shining brightness may be
done, may appear without distortion or obfuscation, may
be seen and spoken of and remembered, may inspire and
measure-all of this (it is, of course, object of hope and
energy rather than secured fact) takes on its full meaning only against the background of the identification
throughout the play-by no means only in the chorus
which we have considered-of phunai and phanein, of being born and of appearing, coming to light. For the
Athens of Theseus' aspiration the right response to the
miracle of appearance-! appear in a world which appears
to me -is not the longing for disappearance, but the
transfiguration of appearance into radiant appearance, of
coming into the light of day into coming into the light
of glory-this transfiguration understood, however, not
as a violent alteration but as a sort of continuation and
culmination.
That Athens longs to shine, to make life radiant for herself, is somehow understood by Oedipus even prior to
Theseus' declaration. In charging the chorus not to repel
him, not to make the gods to be nothing for themselves
by failing to honor them in the only form in which they
can be immediately encountered, namely in the presence
of such bearers of divine dooms as Oedipus hirnsell, he
enjoins them: "Do not, by giving service to unholy deeds,
obscure happy Athens (eudaimonas Athenas kaluptein)."
Eudaimonia must be understood as something essentially
visible-earlier a stranger says to Oedipus: "You are noble, to one who sees you, except for your daimon "-and
to obscure it, to darken and conceal it, is the worst injury
Athens could suffer. For eudaimonia is not happiness in
our sense, something which may or may not show from
the outside-even if it usually does, we regard it primarily as a quality of consciousness, which must then be expressed in order to become visible-but is essentially and
originally a mode of appearance within the world: to
make it less manifest is to make it less.
Connected with Theseus' serious eagerness for a radiant space of appearances is his abstention from intimacy
with Oedipus, from the compassionate closeness which
the presence of great suffering seems to urge. His first
address to Oedipus is truly wonderful in this way, in the
way of preserving the distance which respect requires between persons who do not know each other well. For
Theseus not to preserve this distance would be for him
to see nothing in Oedipus except what calls forth compassion; it would not only annihilate that in Oedipus
which transcends fitness for compassion, but it would
make it impossible for Theseus and Oedipus to appear
18
to each other at all. For such appearing seems to require
not only separateness, but even some measure of distance; it is likely that lovers only seldom appear to each
other, and then as disconcertingly alien.
At any rate, Theseus' attitude is clear from the wording of his fundamental promise to Oedipus. Twice he
uses in the first person singular verbs which one expects
to take a personal object, namely Oedipus. But in both
instances Theseus avoids so direct a relation between
himself and Oedipus. First, he says, "Something terrible would be the action you might happen to mention
to be of the sort from which I would stand aloof
(exaphistaimen)." And then -my translation here follows
the Greek word order as closely as possible-"so that no
one who is a stranger, just as you are now, would I turn
away from (hupektrapoimen)"-it looks as if Theseus is
promising not to turn away from Oedipus himself; but
then he completes the sentence-"helping to save." He
would not turn away from the action of helping to save
Oedipus: an action, not a person, is directly intended by
his pledge. The "impersonal" character of Theseus' discourse, this preserving of distance out of respect, seems
to me a marvel of Athenian civility, when it is joined, as
of course it is here, with a willingness to act and to incur
risk on behalf of the suppliant.
III.
But who is this Oedipus, what does he think of himself, what does he hope for and demand? Perhaps his crucial statement is that who he is, who he is in his very
nature (phusin) or taken by himself (kathauton) as he variously puts it, has not yet been revealed. His story, known
to all,-the story of the murder of his father and marriage
with his mother-does not reveal who he is: such is his
claim. At first he tries desperately to keep the chorus from
learning his name, not because he thinks that name designates a monstrous self, but because it has come to designate the protagonist of a monstrous story, and he knows
from experience that the chorus is unlikely to make this
distinction: "You drive me away, having feared my name
alone," he says to the chorus. Men encounter his name
in such a way that an encounter with the man himself
seems impossible. This seeming impossibility drives
Oedipus to a breathtakingly radical defense. Not only
does he claim that in respect of his infamous deeds he
himself was more acted upon than acting-"My deeds
are things which have suffered rather than acted" -but
he indicates an apparently inhumanly severe criterion by
which acting must be distinguished from suffering. He
asks: "And yet how was I evil in my nature (phusin), who
having been acted upon was acting in return (antedran)?"
The immediate referent of this question-the whole passage is cast in extraordinarily unspecific, one is tempted
WINTER 1986
�to say distilled and metaphysical, language-must be the
provoked slaying of his father at the crossroads. But ultimately he is thinking of his whole life, which in his
twenty years of trying to understand-he calls himself the
wanderer Oedipus (in Greek, "the planet Oedipus"), but
his wanderings have had a hidden center-has formed
itself into a sort of standing now, removed from sequential time in which one moment follows another. For Oedipus as he thinks back upon his life every moment is
present in each moment. That is how we must understand what he says next: "As it was, knowing nothing,
I came where I came (we understand: to the crossroads
where he slew his father). I was being acted upon by
others, I was being destroyed by those who did know
(we understand: what they were doing when they exposed me as an infant).'' The earlier moment is not only
effective in the later moment; somehow in Oedipus'
thinking it has come to be indistinguishable from it. Time
as non-sequential, every moment fully present in each
moment-perhaps this experience of time is what Oedipus names when he speaks of "vast time which is with
me" (makros chronos suniin). Vast time is with him, not behind him as if he were within time in such a way that his
very existence creates a difference between future and
past, between what lies ahead and what lies behind, with
reference to which all moments can be sequentially
ordered.
But what we must primarily try to understand is the
meaning and bearing of Oedipus' claim that only those
actions reveal who one is, reveal one's own nature and
one's self taken by itself, which originate wholly within
the self, which are truly doings, not sufferings,
whereby-and this is the radical part of the claim acting-in-return is merely suffering in disguise. Only in
and through radically spontaneous action do I reveal who
I am. But who ever heard ofsuch a thing? Are not all of
our actions in one way or another actions-in-return, not
indeed mere conditioned reflexes, but actions considerably shaped by the fact that we are not absolute beginnings, but merely newcomers upon a scene in which
many things have happened before our appearance? Does
there exist anywhere in the world the sort of absolute freedom, the possibility of wholly unconditioned action
which Oedipus not merely dreams of but insists upon
if there is ever to be any action which can fairly be taken
to be revelatory of my very self, of who I am in my own
nature?
But on the other hand does Oedipus not have good reason for this insistence? Should he unprotestingly accept
as truly and adequately revelatory of who he is, the story
of which he has become the protagonist, in such a way
that the very name Oedipus has come to mean the protagonist of that story and now stands in the way of any
genuine encounter with the man himself? Cannot that
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
very self ever come to light, not merely so that others may
know it as Oedipus already knows it, but so that Oedipus himself may come to know it, in the measure that
men can know themselves? Oedipus' most far-reaching
claim at the beginning of the action of Oedipus at Colonus, whose premises are that a man's true self is revealed
by his doings rather than by his sufferings, and that
doings-in-return are merely sufferings in disguise, is that
Oedipus himself has been revealed not at all through all
that has happened. We shall have to consider later
whether the wondrous happenings at the end of playor, perhaps, which of the wondrous happenings-affect
this situation.
But although Oedipus does not know who he is in his
innermost self -except that he is sure that "the man who
murdered his father and married his mother" does not
even begin to answer the question -he does know that
he has come to be the bearer of certain characteristics,
and these he declares unequivocally. The only perplexity
is that the ·characteristics which he bears contradict each
other. He expresses to Theseus the contrast between the
unseemliness of his presence and the benefits which will
flow from it: ''I have come to give my wretched body to
you as a gift, not lovely to look upon, but the benefits
from it are greater than a beautiful form." And more intimate than the contrast between his looks and the consequences of his presence, though still not touching his
very self, still a matter of properties of which one happens to be the bearer, is the contradiction between these
two utterances of Oedipus: first, to the chorus: "I come
here sacred and pious" and then, in an access of gratitude to Theseus after the recovery of his daughters: "And
now, lord, stretch out your right hand to me so that I may
touch it and, if it is permitted, may kiss your head. And
yet, what do I utter? How could I, having become
wretched, wish you to touch a man in whom there dwells
every stain of evils?" Sacred and pious, yet so stained
by evils that having invited contact with an unstained
man fills him with horror. And we must notice that his
feelings are actually even more complex than this opposition, since it is clear from the context that Oedipus' piety
consists largely in the recognition of his own sacredness,
that is, in the recognition that in such bearers of divine
doom as he himself is the city encounters the divine more
authentically-and in a manner more subject to divine
judgment -than it does in ritual worship; and in this
recognition there is surely as much of bitterness as of
pride for Oedipus, who knows from within, though unprovably, how little being the bearer of this or that divine doom has to do with who one really is. And as there
is bitterness in his claim to be sacred and pious, so there
is pride in his avoiding contact with those who are not
polluted: certain sharings, he tells Theseus, are available only to the "experienced" (empeiros) among mortals.
19
�IV.
But what does happen to Oedipus at the end? This
question, though inevitable, must not be treated as a
problem to be solved or as a riddle to be guessed.
Theseus, after all, is not entrusted with a secret which
might or might not be kept depending upon the fidelity
of the trustee, but rather he witnesses a happening that
is essentially beyond words. Let us try to gather such indications as the play offers.
First, it appears that Oedipus cannot be said to die, if
by dying we mean coming to the end of a lifetime which
can be represented as a straight line whose beginning is
a point representing the moment of birth and whose end
is a point representing the moment of death (all questions
of the continued separate existence of the soul in another
place being left in abeyance). Rather, the drama induces
us to imagine a curve which returns to its place of origin, and which is the course for a motion of reversal, not
a mere retracing in opposite order of what has already
been traversed, but a reversing motion which cancels and
undoes.
This strange notion is hinted at in Oedipus' early prayer
to the Eumenides, in which he recounts an oracle given
to him from Apollo, according to which he would find
at the sanctuary of the Eumenides a termia chOra, a final
place, where he would kamptein ton bion, end his life,
bringing benefits to his friends and ruin to his enemies.
This at any rate is the most ordinary way of understanding these expressions. But immediately before uttering
his prayer Oedipus has said: "However much I may say,
all that I say will see." Oedipus does not claim that he
himself sees, even metaphorically, but he says emphatically that his words are knowing; his words, early in the
action, know more than he himself does. In view of this,
it seems important to observe the original and most concrete meanings of tenna and kamptein. For tenna means
originally not the end or final point but rather the post
or mark around which runners or chariots turned to complete the race by returning to the place from which they
began; similarly, kamptein means originally not to end or
conclude, but in general to bend, and in particular to
guide one's horses around the turning point as one enters
the home stretch. Has Oedipus come to Colonus, more
particularly to the sanctuary of the Eumenides, simply
in order to end his life or rather so that he might undergo a motion somehow opposite to the motion which has
brought him there, and which is to issue in a reversal of
the effects-and perhaps more than the effects-of the
original motion?
The same strange image is suggested by the chorus
which we considered earlier. Second best in relation to
me phunai, not to be born, is not thanein, to die (swiftly)
but rather "to go back to that very place from which one
20
came." Here again human life is not understood as following a rectilinear course.
But if there is somehow in the life of Oedipus at Colonus a motion which reverses the original motion, how
are its effects visible within the play? Without pretending to be exhaustive, I shall give three examples. First
Oedipus, who throughout his life, and even before he
was born, has been the object of prophecy, now becomes
the author of manifestly authoritative prophecy. Early in
the play, when Ismene comes reporting that there are
new oracles respecting Oedipus, he asks "Of what sort?
What has been prophesied, child?" Ismene answers, tellingly: "You have been prophesied as about to become a
thing sought." Not merely events involving Oedipus but
Oedipus himself is the object of prophecy. But by the end
of the play Oedipus himself is accepted both by Antigone
and Theseus as the one who issues authoritative prophecies. Theseus says: "I see you prophesying many things,
and none falsely." And Antigone says something similar about Oedipus' prophecies (in all three instances the
precise term thespizein is used) in trying to dissuade her
brother from his intended action.
Again, the word menis, meaning "wrath," a word
generally reserved for the anger of gods (the exception
being the anger of Achilles) also undergoes a striking
reversal in respect to Oedipus. He says to Creon regarding his own infamous deeds: "For so it was pleasing to
the gods, who were perhaps wroth with our family from
of old." But in the interview between Polyneices and
Oedipus, the son speaks of his father's "heavy wrath"
toward him and asks to hear fully the reasons why he
is so wroth.
But the most striking turnabout-we remember that
Oedipus had prayed to the Eumenides for tis katastrophe,
some catastrophe, which seems to mean, rather indefinitely, "some turnabout" -which the play presents
is visual (or imaginative) rather than verbal: from having been, from his first appearance before our eyes,
pathetically in need of a guide and leader, Oedipus becomes, in the closing moments of the action, himself the
leader: "Children, follow along this way. For I, new and
strange (kainos), have been made manifest as leader to
you in turn, just as you were to me.''
But the play's indications of a sort of reversal and return
- the replacement of the image of the straight line by
the image of a curve which returns, and the several verbal and visual specifications of katastrophe, turningabout-are only one aspect of the matter. Just as fundamentally the play seems to insist that life and death
must be understood essentially in terms of appearance
and disappearance, of being present and being absent.
The identification of phunai with phanein, of being born
with appearing, seems to require as well the identification of dying with disappearing. And the simplest an-
WINTER 1986
�swer to the question, "what happens to Oedipus at the
end of the play?" is-he disappears, he is no longer
present. Moreover, as the messenger reports, he is seen
no longer being present: "When we had gone away, after a short while we turned around, and we saw the man,
him, I mean, nowhere still being present (ton andra
oudamou paronta eti)." His absence itself is present in the
world. From this moment, the name of Oedipus is not
pronounced. Repeatedly he is called keinos, that one. He
is no longer houtos, this one, the one right here, but rather
that one, the one over there. In the closing lines of the
play the word keinos veritably clangs in our ear-we hear
it, emphatically placed, three times within nine lines. It
happens that keinos, as well as being a demonstrative
pronoun, is sometimes used for kenos, poets finding the
lengthened syllable useful. Kenos means "empty". We
are tempted to hear his new name as meaning that Oedipus has now become, within the human world, a shapely void, a definite nothingness-he has left a place in the
world which cannot be occupied by another.
But if we must say that Oedipus undergoes a sort of
reversal and return, and that in the end he becomes a
sort of well-formed nothingness, we must also say that
he becomes in some manner a god. This takes place both
indistinctly and distinctly (though not on that account
comprehensibly). lndistrinctly there is a sort of merging
of Oedipus with and into the Eumenides, the "fierceeyed mistresses" (potniai deinopes) who can be at the same
time "sweet daughters of ancient darkness" (glukeiai
paides archaiou skotou) because they are not exactly persons but rather powers. This merging, as it is adumbrated
within the play, emerges as these words uttered by the
chorus in prayer: "As we call them the Eumenides (those
of kindly temper}, may they receive with hearts kindly
in temper (eumenes) the suppliant unto salvation" are
echoed by these words of Theseus in reference to Oedipus: "Who would cast out the being kindly in temper
(eumeneia) of this sort of man?"
There is also a more distinct way in which Oedipus,
in a manner, achieves divinity: he is, audibly to the city
of Athens, admitted into the company of the god-there
is no article in the Greek-who speaks of himself and
Oedipus as "we." The messenger reports: "And god
calls him many times and in many ways. 'You there, you
there, Oedipus, why do we delay to go? For a long time
there has been delay from your side."' And Oedipus
hearkens to the call.
However difficult it may be to understand the merging of a human person with the somehow impersonalindividually nameless, for example-powers which are
the Eumenides, or the divinization through admittance
into the company of a god who addresses human beings
audibly to all in human-even homely-speech, the
difficulty is enormously compounded when we put
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
together-as we seem to be required to do-these indications of divinization with the indications already considered of annihilation or de-creation, a sort of creation
into nothingness. How can Oedipus both become a god,
and be undone (not merely have this or that feature of his
condition reversed, not even in some more intimate way
become other, become a "changed man", but proceed
from being into nothingness in a way comparable in its
radicalness to the bringing forth of something from nothing)? Is Oedipus more than a man as the play ends, or
less than a man, less even than a stone? Or can there
somehow be a unity of such opposites?
Let us withdraw from this question for a moment to
consider another opposition. At the play's end, Theseus
tells Antigone that it is not right to mourn since grace
(charis) has been made available to Oedipus in the form
of chthonian night-and-darkness (nux). Disappearance
from the human world, no longer standing in the light,
is equated with night and darkness. And yet the vision
itself of Oedipus disappearing leaves Theseus ''holding
his hand in front of his face shading (episkion) his eyes"
against what appeared. In the face of the brilliant radiance of Oedipus' disappearance, Theseus seeks shade
(skia), seeks darkness-one is as little able to see in superabundantly brilliant light as in utter darkness.
Divinization against de-creation, radiant light against
darkness-have these opposites perhaps some hidden
unity? Perhaps, without uncovering that unity itself, we
shall have gained something if we can come to see the
unity of these opposites as having its ultimate source in
the unity of another pair of opposites, the most primordial unity of all. I think the play guides us in this direction. Could it be that these oppositions are experienced
as mere stumbling-blocks, scandals, objectionable contradictions which do violence to human thinking, only
by those for whom the earth on which men walk and the
Olympos of the gods are ultimately two, not one? The
messenger reports that shortly after Theseus is seen shading his eyes, he is seen "reverencing the earth and the
Olympos of the gods together in the same speech (ho autos logos)." Theseus for a moment must somehow understand that the two are one-"the same logos" surely does
not indicate merely a prodigious synthesizing feat of human intellect. And if we are to understand Sophocles at
all-! do not pretend to understand him very well-we
must try to understand this oneness in such a way that
no reduction is performed: neither are the Olympian
gods-or anyhow the Olympos of the gods-merely a noble lie in the service of decent human life on earth, nor
is human life on earth a mere field for divine operationsmen are not in that sense the playthings of the gods-in
such a way that it is foolish for human beings to take their
own lives-their joys and their sorrows - seriously. But
it is very difficult to understand the oneness of the earth
21
�and the Olympos of the gods.
Let me add one remark. If I am right in thinking that
something like the de-creation of Oedipus-his creation
into nothingness-takes place in the play-not merely the
exalting of someone who has been cast down, or the rewarding of one who has passed a test, or the recompensing of someone whose sufferings were, after all, not
merited (or at any rate out of all proportion to merit)-if,
that is, I am right in thinking that we witness, however
obscurely, not merely the undoing of the effects of what
has happened, of what has been, but the very undoing
of what has happened itself, the creation of what has been
into what is not-then I think we are not very far from
the belief and hope in Him who takes away the sins of
the world, who takes away not merely their "natural"
consequences but who takes away the very sins themselves so that they are no more; or very far from the need
that there be a second Adam (deuteros and eschatos as Paul
says), not merely forgiveness of the sins of the first Adam.
Perhaps ultimately there can be no forgiveness without
annihilation. But this takes us far beyond the human
realm, since surely no human being has the power to
undo what has been done, although the experience that
nothing less than this would be sufficient does seem to
be a human experience, though perhaps not a common
one.
v.
But, we must ask, does the wonderful ending of his
mortal life, whatever its "content" be, satisfy Oedipus'
hope and demand that who he himself is be made
manifest? We must answer unequivocally that it does not.
We are glad, to be sure, for the mildness of his passing,
for the "kindly intent" (eunoun) displayed by the gods'
final visible action upon him. But we have heard .Oedipus insist fiercely and implacably that he himself must
be separated from the story of what has befallen him
(which includes even what seem to be his own actions).
The incomparably privileged passing is part of his story,
but it is not, any more than his earlier monstrous deeds,
part of himself. And yet the inclination to ascribe to Oedipus himself what properly belongs to the final action
upon him, is very difficult to resist. We hear the messenger succumb to it: ''For the man, not mourning nor
pained with disease, was being led forth, if ever anyone
among mortals, wonderful (thaumastos)." The properly
adverbial has been made adjectival; what properly characterizes the "how" of the being led forth is made part of
the "what" of the man himself. And does it not indeed
seem impossible that this marvelous happening should
have nothing at all to do with who Oedipus is in himself, in his very own nature? Yet is it not true that he is
now led into glory as earlier he was led into ruin, that
once more he is simply an object of divine action? The
chorus prays: "May a just divinity augment him back
22
again." He was acted upon before; he is acted upon again
in a way which, if it is not simply capriciously related to
who Oedipus is, at most manages to vindicate without
revealing, to deprive the earlier divine action of its appearance of having authoritatively revealed who Oedipus is.
Vindication without revelation, the nullification of a
previous pseudo-revelation-does this not leave Oedipus
still longing for the making manifest of who he is? Or has
this manifestation already occurred, without immediate
divine involvement? Perhaps the very opaqueness of the
ending of the story of Oedipus throws us back upon an
earlier moment, the moment when Oedipus says to his
daughters: "It was hard, I know, daughters. But one
word by itself cancels all these agonies: to philein, the action of loving." In this utterance we find one alone pitted against many, and not even the action of love pitted
against many sufferings, but the word, the mere word.
What can this possibly mean?
First we must understand: it is clearly the saying of the
word that counts, the human action of declaring it. And
the ultimate reason why this is so is that the declaring
of such a word is, in Oedipus' sense, the only truly free,
hence genuinely revelatory, human action. For consider:
how does one know that love cancels suffering, or fails
to cancel it? Surely not as one knows that in a given instance water quenches or fails to quench fire. There is in
the contest between love and suffering no process there
to be observed-not even an interior one from which outside observers are of course excluded but which the self
can observe. There is no process which is there to be observed so that its outcome-love quenching or failing to
quench suffering-can be accurately reported as the word
conforms itself to what is there. Nothing is there, in that
sense; there is no accomplished fact for the word to conform itself to. But that means that the saying of such a
word is a radically free act, not a being-acted-upon, not
an acting-in-return; and as radically free it is, according
to Oedipus' radical requirement- to which he has been
driven in his resistance to the reduction of himself to the
protagonist of a dreadful story-genuinely revelatory. Now
we know who Oedipus is in his own nature, taken by
himself, not as the bearer of this or that divine doom, not
even as the one who nobly endures such a doom or who
comes to be the conduit of certain effects or the bearer
of certain properties as the result of such a doom, but as
he himself is: Oedipus is the man who pronounces the
word philein, who says and means that the love in his
life is more important than the suffering, who says that
not as a result of observing an antecedently existing state
of affairs, as if the power of love in his life had triumphed
whether he affirmed it to triumph or not, but out of the
mysterious depths of human freedom in unconstrained
and unconformed affinnation, which creates the self even
as it reveals it.
WINTER 1986
�On Almost Seeing Miracles
I have called this lecture about King Lear "On Almost
Seeing Miracles" because I would like to talk with you
about seeing and almost seeing.
Before I speak directly about King Lear, however, let me
read you some words from a very great work which is
contemporary with Shakespeare's play. Late in Don Quixote the squire Sano Panza earnestly and even desperately
entreats his lord to giveup his mad faith in visions. Don
Quixote replies:
however, my main concern is with this statement made
by Quixote as he lies dying:
"you only say that, Sancho, because your love me. Moreover,
Don Quixote, the most serious and passionate reader
of books about whom we ourselves read, can renounce
books of knight-errantry only in favor of other books,
which he does not name. He clearly does not mean the
Gospels and the Letters of Paul, of which his speaking
and thinking has been full from beginning to end. Rather,
I think that Quixote supposes that at least for people of
a certain kind (a kind to which he belongs) there is the
need for certain other books -they are not likely to be
many - to help bring the Gospels together with our own
primary experience of the world: not to exemplify, prove
or bolster anything, but to help us begin to see in how
many ways Christ is in the world or, if not that, at least
where His absence is most felt. Since Quixote does not
give us a llst of such books, I shall venture one, quite personally, of course: The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, King
Lear, The Brothers Karamazov. I shall mention as well the
final plays of Sophocles - Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus:-and the Iliad, to make clear that I am not primarily
concerned with biographical or psychological questions
about whether this or that author is a Christian believer
- such questions seem to me not very answerable.
Let me now turn to King Lear itself. In the final scene
you do not know the world very well - therefore you suppose to be impossible things which are merely very difficult."
I think that all books really worth reading make us
wonder about who the people are who know the world
well.
I brought up Don Quixote for another reason as well.
As some of you know, the book ends with Don Quixote
on his deathbed apparently renouncing and recanting his
life as a knight-errant (on which he did not embark until
he was fifty years old). It is difficult to know how to understand this apparent recantation, and how to feel about
it. One thing to be borne in mind, I think, is that Quixote - or Alonso Quixana the Good, as he was known
for most of his life - is a deeply charitable man, who does
not wish to cause fruitless pain to his relatives and friends
gathered around his deathbed. For the moment,
''On Almost Seeing Miracles'' was originally written to be given
at the University of Chicago at the invitation of Leon Kass. It
was delivered as a formal lecture on April16, 1982 in Annapo-
lis and on April 30, 1982 in Santa Fe.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"My judgment is now clear and unfettered, and that dark
cloud of ignorance has disappeared, which the continual reading of those detestable books of knight-errantry had cast over
my understanding. Now I see their folly and fraud, and my
sole regret is that the discovery comes too late to allow me
to amend my ways by reading other books that would enlighten my soul."
23
�Lear says:
"I know when one is dead and when one lives."
The question is whether this is true. It is only Lear who,
in the moment before his own death, sees breath and life
on Cordelia's lips. Does his being the only one to see life
in Cordelia mean that he is deluded? If he is deluded,
are we pained because his long labor toward clarity and
integrity of vision is, in his final moments, rendered ineffectual? Or are we somehow grateful for his delusion,
unwilling to see the hugeness of his suffering explode
beyond endurance? This is a very difficult alternative to
face. There is, however, another possibility, although it
is not more than a possibility. Perhaps Lear alone sees
what is truly there to be seen because he alone has been
prepared to see it, he alone has learned to see. It should
not, after all, scandalize us that we are not able to follow
Lear to the very end of his immense passion - it is amazing that we, who indeed are not likely to live so long or
see so much, have been able to follow Lear so far as we
have.
If Lear truly sees a living Cordelia, it is not because souls
are immortal in some Platonic or Aristotelian sense - due
to their incomposite nature, for example -but rather because there is resurrection of the body in the Christian
sense. It seems to me that Lear speaks profoundly when
he says:
"She lives! If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all
sorrows that ever I have felt."
Only a chance, a happening, an event, something that
has come to be but might not have come to be, can redeem
sorrows. there are, of course, varieties of Stoicism somehow stemming from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
- which can help one to endure sorrows through some
insight into how things are and must be and, guided by
that insight, through the exercise of will power. But I
think that Lear is right in claiming that only some kind
of sight and insight into ap event can redeem another event
- and for Christians of course the happening which
redeems all happenings is the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
But what kind of sight and insight would this be? Faith
is the evidence of things unseen - that means, according to the Latin root of "evidence," what is visible, seeable in what is unseen; so the Letter to the Hebrews,
traditionally ascribed to St. Paul, tells us. I do not understand very well what this might mean, but let us, in
trying to understand, reflect together on what Kent says
in the stocks:
"Nothing almost sees miracles but misery."
24
This saying seems to leap out of its immediate context
and stand over the play as a whole, seeming too powerful to be tidily contained by its immediate context. That
immediate context is important, however. Kent, as he
awaits the sunrise- the scene begins minutes earlier with
Oswald saying to Kent, "Good dawning" - strains to
read a letter which has, almost miraculously, reached him
from Cordelia. He tries to make out the characters on the
page but is not quite able to do so. Perhaps we can say
that Kent "almost sees" in two senses. First, the time has
almost come - and he knows it - when he will plainly
see what the letter says: the sun is rising and soon, perfectly reliably, there will be abundant light. Second, even
now, at this moment, he almost sees - he knows that the
characters, which he can make out just so far as to descern
that there are characters, form meaningful words;
moreover, they come from Cordelia, who knows how to
love and who is remarkable for her good practical sense
and her energy.
I think it is good to keep this passage in mind as we
try to hold ourselves open to the possibility that Lear at
the play's close sees or almost sees a miracle. That this
possibility is the true one can neither be confidently asserted nor dismissed. I think that if we have been properly moved by the play, the one thing of which we are
sure is that the fact that no one else sees in the end what
Lear sees - a living Cordelia - by itself proves absolutely
nothing.
What I primarily want to do tonight, however, is to talk
with you more generally about seeing and almost seeing. How does Lear learn to see some things, at least,
that are truly part of the world and that he was incapable of seeing at the beginning of the action? What is the
role of misery in this learning? I propose to prepare a conversation with you about these questions by presenting
reflections on a number of moments or brief stretches
within the play's action.
Regan tells us that Lear "hath ever but slenderly known
himself." This realization begins to come to Lear himself when Goneril not only frowns upon him but begins
to talk to him in harsh and humiliating ways. Lear's
response is remarkable:
"Does any here know me? This is not Lear. Does Lear walk
thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes - Who is it that can
tell me who I am?"
Lear begins to see that indeed we need other people's
faces, their whole way of being toward us, in order to
know who we are. A mere mirror cannot tell us how we
look, since the smile and the eyes that a mirror sends back
to us is merely the look called forth by seeing our own
mirror-image - and how could there be beauty in such
a look? Lear, it turns out, is greatly blessed in having liv-
WINTER 1986
�ing mirrors to tell him who he is and even what he looks
like. First there is his shadow, the fool:
''But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee
after.''
Then Kent:
''You have that in your countenance which I would fain call
master. What's that? Authority.''
And finally Cordelia:
"These white flakes did challenge spite of them. Was this a
face to be opposed against the jarring winds?"
but rather to let something of the world be conveyed to
us through our passions; not to see our feelings, but to
see feelingly into the world, as Gloucester has it; or better, to let the world enter us feelingly- it seems that there
are truths in the world that can enter us in no other way.
Lear's exposure to the storm seems in some way to be
the answer to his prayer for patience and noble anger.
He suffers his passions as he suffers the wind and rain
and thunder and cold. He is determined to expose himself, without protection, as well to the one as to the other.
Later he expresses his gratitude to the storm. Lear has
discovered for himself some version of Aristotle's great
insight that the soul must be somehow nothing so that
it can become each of the things that are and thereby
know them. At the very least Lear discovers that the soul
must not be everything if it is to come to know the world.
It is just because the fool, Kent and Cordelia love Lear
not merely out of their own superabundance, without
reference to who he himself uniquely is, but rather love
what they see in him, that Kent can say truly to Lear after he has fully come together with Cordelia: "You are
in your own kingdom, sir.''
Some day, we are told, we shall know even as we are
known, shall see even as we are seen. But we know and
see so little of how we are known and seen. It seems that
a great task is to learn to see the seer, to pay serious
enough attention to other people to know whether they
are paying serious attention to us. Lear, at the beginning
of the play, has a great deal to learn about looking and
seeing. Even deep into the second act he is capable of
saying to Regan, after he has broken with Goneril: "Her
eyes are fierce, but thine do comfort and not burn." It
is simply not possible that Lear is really looking into Regan's eyes as he speaks these words, nor, it seems, has
he ever looked into them. The thing seems so strange and
unlikely, until we reflect that we, most of us, do it almost
all the time.
What cure, if any, is there for this inability to look, to
pay attention, to see what is present? Late in act two,
shortly before the storm, Lear tries hard to figure out what
he needs, what is his true need. His speech is immensely powerful, and is often said to be incoherent, its parts
not making sense together, as he asks first for "that patience, patience I need," and then asks "to be touched
with a noble anger." I think that there is confusion in
the speech, and great pain, but that at bottom Lear is beginning to know what he really needs: he needs to be
acted upon by what is truly present in the world, to be
patient in the sense of the Greek paschein, pathein, to
suffer, to be "pathetic." But in order to suffer what is
truly present to us we must be appropriately present to
it, and this seems to require that we summon up and sustain what is most our own. The point is not, of course,
to relish noble anger or any other passion for its own sake,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
'They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had the white
hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say 'ay'
and 'no' to everything I said! 'Ay' and .~no' too was no good
divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind
to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at
my bidding; there I found 'em out, there I smelt 'em out. Go
to, they are not men o' their words. They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie- I am not ague-proof."
Only when he has learned, thanks above all to the
storm, that he is not everything, is he capable of paying
attention to the plight of the "poor naked wretches," for
whom he had taken, he now knows, "too little care" because he had not "exposed himself to feel." A man who
thinks he is everything has no incentive to expose himself to feel what is not himself. But for one who has exposed himself to feel, paying attention to others leads to
praying for them - and also for oneself, so that one might
pay better attention to them - and this is Lear's prayer
in the storm.
But it would be wrong, I think, to understand Lear's
suffering in the storm as something that merely humbles
him in the sense of a painful, if necessary, mortification
of his self-importance. He also makes discoveries, in the
enduring of his exposedness to the storm, which fill him
with awe, amazement and even, a friend of mine has suggested, something that can almost be called delight. Let
me read Lear's speech to the fool, the speech for the sake
of which I first begin to love Lear.
'My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
And can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry for thee yet.'
One can begin to love Lear for the ''one part in my heart
25
�that's sorry for thee yet," but just as great a discovery,
and it does seem to bring a sort of delight to Lear, is contained in "Art cold? I am cold myself." No longer supposing oneself to be everything means not having to be
alone in the world: as his discovery requires Lear to say
"the others too" and finally "you too," it frees him as
well to say ''me too.''
Lear continues to learn after madness has overtaken
him. We say with Edgar "0 matter and impertinency
mixed; reason in madness.'' Lear discovers for himself
the Sermon on the Mount: he who commits adultery in
his heart has offended deeply; and there is a murderous
way of saying to one's brother "Thou fool." He comes
to perceive - surely shamefully late for a king - that
poverty and wealth radically affect the administration of
justice. Any he learns other things of similar sort.
How, we must ask, is Lear's "eye of anguish" finally
to be closed? How can healing take place? It is important,
I think, to keep the following words of Kent in mind,
which tell us that Lear's madness is only one of the things
that needs healing:
"Well sir, the poor distressed Lear's in the town
Who some time, in his better tune, remembers
What we are come about, and by no means
Will yield to see his daughter A sovereign shame so elbows him; his own unkindness,
That stripped her from his benediction, turned her
To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights
To his dog-hearted daughters - these things sting
His mind so venomously that burning shame
Detains him from Cordelia.''
The question is, are there in the world "blessed secrets
and unpublished virtues," as Cordelia hopes, more
powerful than the burning shame that detains us from
those who love us and whom we love? The burning of
Lear's shame is truly hellish: "but I am bound upon a
wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten
lead."
My words about the coming together of Lear and Cordelia will be very inadequate. I do wish to suggest several points. The first is simply that they do come together,
and each is somehow able to receive the best the other
has to offer. There is immense pain in the world of this
play - not only Gloucester is tempted to say: "As flies
to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their
sport" - but at least the powers that be in this world
do permit this moment for which "reconciliation" is far
too weak a word.
Second, the more I read the scene, the more I am
moved by Lear's concern to know where he is, where this
encounter is taking place. Let us listen:
"You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave; thou art a
soul in bliss; but!- You are a spirit, I know. Where did you
26
die?- Where have I been, where am I?- Methinks I should
know you, and know this man. Yet I am doubtful, for I am
mainly ignorant what place this is- nor I know not where
I did lodge last night - Am I in France?"
"In your own kingdom, sir," replies Kent.
Where does this meeting between Lear and Cordelia
take place? This meeting in which Lear's "I know you
do not love me; for your sisters have (as I do remember)
done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not"
is met by Cordelia's uNo cause, no cause"?
It is a place in our world, although our world does not
seem able fully to contain it - so, at least, it will seem
to Lear later as he and Cordelia are led to prison:
"No, no, no, no. Come let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,
And pray and sing, and tell old tales and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out -
And take upon us the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon."
The event of perfect mutual love, of Cordelia's asking for
her father's benediction as Lear asks for his daughter's
forgiveness, seems to Lear too huge to be contained by
the finite and brief time of its occurrence. The power of
the event seems to Lear uncontainable by any time - to
enact it day after day, again and again, would not begin
to exhaust its meaningfulness.
And yet the meeting has taken place in our world,
although what has made it possible seems to be something that is most of the time invisible - the "blessed
secrets" and "unpublished virtues" of the earth, of this
world, in which Cordelia has placed her hope.
It is of crucial importance, I think, to realize two things
about this happening. First, what Cordelia offers to Lear
is somethlng beyond forgiveness: ''no cause, no cause''
belongs to the realm of "Behold him who takes away the
sin of the world" rather than to that of "forgive us our
debts as we forgive our debtors."
Second, it would not be true, from Cordelia's point of
view, at any rate (nor from Kent's) to say that Cordelia
"has found it within herself" to forgive and more than
forgive. It is not that Cordelia has some extraordinary
power - that she is very good at forgiving, for example
- and is pleased to use it; but rather that, in looking upon
Lear's face as he sleeps, seeing
"these white flakes that should have challenged pity of them.
Was this a face to be opposed against the jarring winds?"
WINTER 1986
�- she sees nothing except what is worthy of love, she is
aware in herself of nothing but love for her father. "Nothing will come of nothing," Lear had said in the first scene.
Cordelia, as she looks upon her father, is aware of no
effect of not-loving in herself; therefore there is no cause
of not-loving in her father: the power belongs to Lear.
As it seems to Cordelia, Kent speaks truly when he says
that the place of the coming together of Lear and Cordelia is "your own kingdom, sir." Cordelia had said as
much earlier: "0 dear father, it is thy business that I go
about." And, much earlier, the fool had said the same:
"But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee
after.''
But the moment of "no cnuse, no cause," and the
recognition of the infinite depth of that moment in
"When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down and
ask of thee forgiveness," are not the final things to be
faced in the drama. Already Lear has spoken of himself
and Cordelia as "taking upon us the mystery of things,
as if we were God's spies." It seems that we know two
things about spies in general: they find themselves in
alien territory, in the service of an authority that is distant; and they are meant to spy, to look, to keep their
eyes open and to report what they see. There is, we suppose, danger in being a spy: not only that one may be
found out and seized and prevented from further seeing
- and also of course punished in some exemplary way
- but also that one may in one's spying see painful
things, since the territory is indeed alien. For a spy, at
any rate, there does not seem to be a clear distinction between mere contemplation, mere beholding from a distance, and being touched in the flesh. Lear in his way
seems to divine the failure of this distinction in the case
of spies: he and Cordelia will not merely be spectators
in the presence of the mystery of things; they will take
that mystery upon themselves.
We, who do for the most part seem to be, in the
presence of drama, mere spectators, learn painfully what
Lear means about the disappearance of the difference between merely seeing and being touched in the flesh because we are the kind of beings we are, really to see
is to be touched in the flesh.
In no other poem of which I know do we find words
such as these spoken by Lear in which the absolute scandal, the all but unspeakable outrage, of death is faced
directly:
"and my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no life? Why should
a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?"
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, why should
they go on breathing in and breathing out, and Cordelia
not at all? That is the outrage, pure and simple. Only
secondarily does Lear give her death reference to himself: HThou'lt come no more"- that is, of course, come
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to me, to Lear- "Never, never, never, never, never."
It is almost impossible, I think, for us to give full weight
to the immediacy, the wholly unsheltered and unsupported character of Lear's final, or next to final, seeing
and sight. Let me briefly compare this moment with the
other moment in the poetry I know in which the death
of a precious human being comes deeply home to us. I
am thinking of the lamentation for Hector in Book 24 of
the Iliad. That is a moment which makes us weep. But
there the great grief, the agonizing sense of loss in which
we somehow participate, is bearable. I think the most important reasons are two.
First, the utterances of Andromache, Hecabe and Helen find themselves in a context of ritual mourning:
"But the others, when they had brought him to the glorious
house, laid Hector on a corded bedstead, and by his side set
singers, leaders of the dirge, who led the song of lamentation- they chanted the dirge, and thereat the women made
lament."
The city, even a city that is about to fall, and that knows
it is about to fall, can provide a shared and known rhythm
into which heartbroken lamentation can insert itself: it
is somehow the public, ritual setting of her lamentation
that permits Andromache to speak so intimately to her
fallen husband:
"For at they death thou didst neither stretch out thy hands
to me from thy bed, nor speak to me any intimate word
whereon I might have pondered night and day with shedding of tears.''
The city somehow provides rhythm and measure for the
uttering of the most deeply personal feeling.
Second, Andromache does not bear exclusive responsibility for uttering the world's grief over the loss of Hector. There is also Hecabe, the mother, marvelling at the
look of her son, "all dewy fresh as one who has newly
appeared," by grace of the gods Apollo and Aphrodite,
by whose intervention the corpse has been miraculously
preserved; and there is even Helen to mourn Hector.
But for Lear, king though he has been, there is no city,
no ritual, no rhythm, no measure; nor are those about
him, even Kent who loves Cordelia dearly, able to participate in his experience, nor he in theirs. His only words
to them are accusing:
"Howl, howl, howl- 0 you are men of stones. Had I your
tongues and eyes I'd use them so that heaven's vault should
crack.''
Lear has learned to see, and since we cannot know
which sight is his final true sight, we cannot know
whether or not what he finally sees is bearable, for him
or for us.
27
�About The Winter's Tale
(To the memory of my father, William Walsh O'Grady, Sr.)
I. Perhaps we are meant to read act five (especially the
statue scene) of The Winter's Tale under the influence of
the "sleepy drinks" we were given in act four (the
sheep-shearing feast). Sleepiness need not mean dullness
and the anxious inability to think straight. (How do we
know, incidentally, that straightness is the most important quality of thinking?) Sometimes when we are very
sleepy we are wonderfully receptive, open, free from the
compulsion to challenge everything that offers itself to
us. Perhaps there are a number of things in act five which
we are not meant to ask questions about.
II. The play as a whole seems to be about two kinds
of imagination. One kind (which dominates the first half
of the play) is called "affection", whose intensity stabs
the center, which makes something of nothing, much of
little, which is aware of doing that and likes it, which
builds up a private dream world-Hermione truly says
"You speak a language that I understand not. My life
stands in the level of your dreams'' -which at some level of awareness it knows to be a private dream world and
to which it tries to subjugate that part of the world which
is not its own creation (hence the contest against the
Delphic oracle involving the deliberately irreversible action of "commending strangely to chance" the infant
child). The second kind of imagination is called "faith".
It is the faith which Leontes must awaken if he is to behold a miracle, or anyhow a wondrous happening.
ill. What is the miracle? What does the statue scene
mean? Perhaps there are two miracles. First, the statue
of Hermione is called a ;'picture'' and even an ''image.''
"About The Winter's Tale" was written in 1976 and distributed
to his friends.
28
An image comes to life-that means, Hermione is released
by the awakened faith of Leontes from the rigid confines
of the image into which Leontes had turned her (quite
independently of her physical death) in his lust to be creator of heaven and earth. From being experienced by
Leontes as his own static creation, she comes to be experienced by him as offered to him, not created by him,
and as spontaneously moving and speaking, not static
as somehow our images of people always are. For Leontes
to experience Hermione as she truly is, as a living woman rather than an image, he must awaken his faith. Butand this may be the second miracle-for Hermione to be
a living woman means not only not to be an image in
Leontes' dream world but also not to be dead. It seems
possible that Hermione has indeed died, quite literally,
and been brought back to life. This would be a miracle
indeed. And yet it is not clear that it would be a greater
miracle than the first one, Leontes becoming capable of
letting Hermione be a living woman. (We may remember Jesus saying that although it is a big thing that a person be cured of bodily disease, it is a bigger thing that
he be released from his sins-the second requires greater power to accomplish.) At least one can say this much:
Hermione's return from death would do Leontes no good
unless he were also capable of seeing her no longer as
his own static creation (whether in the mode of jealousy
or adulation or in any other mode).
N. Of the two kinds of imagination, affection whose
intensity stabs the center, and faith, how does Leontes
go from one to the other? By being himself re-created,
it seems. And we are told what are the agents of his recreation: tears and flowers. He himself tells us that tears
will be his re-creation. And sixteen years later, as he looks
upon Florizel (The Floral One) and Perdita (who has lov-
WINTER 1986
�ingly and discerningly told us about flowers}, Leontes
says "Welcome hither, as is the spring to the earth".
Tears and flowers re-create Leontes: they heal his diseased imagination. We are not told in what way tears and
flowers can heal and re-create. Perhaps that cannot be
told. But perhaps it would be enough to know-if it could
be known-that it is tears and flowers that have such
power, even if we do not know how they work.
V. But something important has been left out of my account, namely the importance of tales, especially of old
tales, which seem to stand in still a third relation to imagination, different from the perverse imagination which
lusts to create heaven and earth and the holy imagination without which miracles cannot be seen. What is the
relation between old tales and truth? One thing seems to
be said about this in the play, but perhaps most deeply
the very opposite is being said. Three different speakers
say that because the wondrous things which have happened before their very eyes are so like an old tale, it is
hard to believe the things which have happened before
their very eyes-one must be suspicious of, on guard
against, what sounds so much like an old tale. And yet
I think the opposite may be true. Far from their sound-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing like an old tale making it more difficult to trust the
genuineness of the wondrous things which we experience, I think it is only the existence of old tales that
makes it possible to experience wonders as what they are
and to trust one's memory of them. If there were not already in existence, long before we come on the scene,
certain old tales-Cinderella, tales of King Arthur, the
wedding feast at Cana in Galilee-! think we would always succumb to the temptation to deprive the true
wonders that truly befall us of their wondrous character, to make them ordinary (or worse) and explain away
anything in them that is not of everyday. If in advance
of encountering the most wonderful moments of our lives
we did not already know in imagination that our world
might be, not necessarily is, but might be a place in which
wonders happen, perhaps we could never experience
wonders. But we can know this in advance, in imagination, so long as there are old tales in existence. And
Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale seems to have been
meant to be added to the already existing supply of tales.
That is why its truths are big and sirople truths-tears and
flowers.
29
�Platds Republic and the
Search for Common Objects
In this lecture I shall make suggestions about how to
understand the relation between the beginning of Plato's
Republic and the center of the dialogue; that is, between
the attempts in the first book to say what justice is, and
the account in the sixth and seventh books of the highest
principles of being as a whole and man's relation to those
principles.
In the first book of the Republic three opinions concerning justice are somehow "refuted" by Socrates. What is
a Socratic refutation? What does one mean by "refuted"?
One does not mean that the opinions in question are
shown to be altogether outside of the truth; rather, they
are shown to be one-sided, incomplete, they leave out
something important, they are partly right but by virtue
of taking themselves to be wholly right they are wrongthe whole truth, however, would have to do justice to
each partial truth.
However, this account does not yet make clear the drama and even violence of certain conversions of opinion:
it does not yet make clear that the "incompleteness" involved in a false opinion is often not of such a sort that
the person holding the opinion can keep all that he has
and simply add something to it; rather, he is very likely
going to be forced to deny something he had always affirmed. What induces him to do this? In the Platonic dialogue Gorgias Socrates says that in conversing with a man
whom he believes to hold a false opinion, he always tries
to bring the man to be a witness against himself, disregarding all other possible witnesses, while showing the
"Plato's Republic and the Search for Common Objects " was
delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis
in March, 1973. It was originally written for another audience.
30
man himself that what he mostly thinks, and what he
thinks he entirely thinks, is contradicted by something
else which he also knows, though he may have chosen
not to think about it much before. I think it is not incongruous to give an example of a "Socratic refutation" from
the Bible.
In the second book of Samuel it is recounted that David,
having been anointed king over Israel, having been delivered from the enmity of Saul and having received from
the Lord prosperity in all things, desired Bathsheeba, wife
of Uriah, whereupon he arranged to have Uriah killed
and took Bathsheeba for his own. Then "Yahweh sent
Nathan the prophet to David. He carne to him and said
'In the same town were two men, one rich, the other
poor. The rich man had flocks and herds in great abundance; the poor man had nothing but a ewe lamb, one
only, a small one he had bought. This he fed, and it grew
up with him and his children, eating his bread, drinking
from his cup, sleeping on his breast; it was like a daughter to him. When there carne a traveller to stay, the rich
man refused to take one of his own flock or herd to provide for the wayfarer who had come to him. Instead he
took the poor man's lamb, and prepared it for his guest.'
David's anger flared up against the man 'As Yahweh
lives,' he said to Nathan, 'the man who did this deserves
to die! He must make fourfold restitution for the lamb,
for doing such a thing and showing no compassion' Then
Nathan said to David 'You are the man.' "
Nathan says a few more words, and David says "I have
sinned against Yahweh."
Let us now turn to the first book of the Republic and
in particular to the opinion of Thrasyrnachus concerning
justice. After the mild and simple-minded view of Cepha-
WINTER 1986
�Ius and the shifting and confused view of Polemarchus
we are in a way grateful for the fierceness and intransigence of Thrasymachus' position. For all that it is intransigent and sharply stated, however, it is not quite clear.
In particular, it has two parts which are distinct, as Socrates brings out more clearly than Thrasymachus himself, who seems to think they come to the same. (They
are, however, connected.) First, justice is the advantage
of the stronger; and second, justice is the advantage of
the other-for oneself, injustice pays. The tacit premise
of the first part of Thrasymachus' position, which eventually becomes explicit, is that the just is identical with
the legal and that laws are framed by whoever is most
powerful in a state-the few in an oligarchy, the many
in a democracy-exclusively with a view to their own advantage. As regards the second part, that justice is the
advantage of the other, but injustice is one's own advantage, it is clear that not quite the same thing is meant by
justice: if justice were here identical with legality, justice
would be advantageous for oneself from the point of
view, say, of an oligarch in an oligarchical system of laws.
Rather, in this instance justice means, as Thrasymachus
makes reasonably clear, the opposite of "having more'';
not merely "having more" than other men-as though
it were simply and automatically true that justice requires
that all men have equal amounts of all good things-but
nhaving moren than one's share which, however proves
to be meaningless, since there is no share; that is, there
is perceived to be no possibility of a non-arbitrary allotment of shares, no fitting limit to what one might have
short of what one can get away with taking; so that injustice is "having more" simply, pleonexia.
There is a connection between the first part of
Thrasymachus' thesis and the second part, however: the
thesis that the practice of justice, i.e., recognizing and
deferring to limits to the fulfillment of one's desires different from the limits of one's power to fulfill them-is the
advantage of the other but folly for oneself, may emerge
when one has "seen through" the laws which pretend
to be just, i.e., pretend to be oriented upon the common
good. One sees through this pretense, discovering that
the laws aim at the partial and private good of those who
make the laws and one concludes, or anyhow
Thrasymachus concludes, that this could not be otherwise for the sufficient reason that there is no common
good-the only good things, the only truly desirable
things, the things for which a man might long with all
his heart, are essentially not common, are incommunicable, are essentially of such a sort that my having them
excludes your having them. And since the good things
cannot be shared, and since they are limited in number,
I would be an utter fool to spend my life giving way to
you with respect to those things which each of us most
wants-! would die with my hands empty, my heart's
1
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
desires unfulfilled. I may indeed have to give way to you
on occasion-we may have to devise some system of taking turns-lest you violently overpower and kill me as
I try to take what you also want, but such giving way
strictly depends on lack of power, on practical limits to
what I can get away with; and such giving way is,
moreover, a constant source of anxiety and pain, making bitter incursions upon my pleasure in such desirable
objects as I have been able to gather unto myself.
Such is Thrasymachus' view of existence, and it is one
which we must take utterly seriously as indeed, as contrary to superficial appearances, Socrates himself does.
The ordinary decent opinion about justice is that justice
is good and that men ought to do their best to be just,
or at least, surely, that they ought not to regard themselves as entitled to take whatever they can get away with
taking. It is the radicalness and passion of Thrasymachus'
attack upon this view which sustains the radicalness and
passion of that extraordinary conversation which fills the
rest of the Republic and which must have occupied fifteen
or sixteen hours. The patent insufficiency of Socrates' reply to Thrasymachus in the first book provokes the impassioned indignation of Glaucon and Adeimantus at the
beginning of the second book, who say that they would
like to be friends of justice but unless Thrasymachus' radical thesis can be radically refuted they don't see how they
can be.
Let us however, look at what appears to be the weakest
of the conspicuously inconclusive arguments which Socrates uses in the first book against Thrasymachus and
see whether even it may not point to a more adequate
response. Socrates bids Thrasymachus consider the manner of experts, of men who know, for example musicians
and doctors, with regard to the question of "having
more''. It turns out that the expert wants to know the same
with respect to his subject as another but to know differently (better, more) than the non-expert. But this seems
to say nothing about possessing the same and possessing
differently (more, better), unless knowing were somehow
a mode of having, and indeed such a mode as corresponds to an object the possession of which is nonexclusive, so that my having it does not exclude your having it. What if the shareable things were the knowable
things or, more precisely, the shareable things were
things as knowable? If there were utterly lovable objects
such that your having them did not exclude my having
them, might that not, not indeed eliminate, but somehow make bearable the ordinary condition of men which
is to long for goods of such a sort that your having them
excludes my having them-not that men would no longer
care about such things, but they would not place their
ultimate hope in such things so that the pain of giving
way in turn would seem not merely offset by what one
had received abundantly of another kind from another
31
�source, but might come to be seen, on occasion, as an
act of generosity of that source whence one had received
to one's heart's content that infinitely shareable good
thing.
But whoever heard of such a thing? Even if things as
knowable might be in some peculiar way shareable, is
it so clear that things are knowable? Again, are not things
as knowable, pallid, lifeless, ghostlike, mere abstractions
as we say? And again, not only would there have to be
genuine, nonfabricated beings of thought and not only
would they have to have a kind of splendor, but knowing them would have to be an activity which so fully engaged the soul that to know them would be to dwell
passionately among them. Finally, supposing all the rest
were possible, how could such an experience be possible for any but a very few men and how could it have
any politically relevant consequences?
These are the questions which the great images of the
sun, the divided line and the cave in books six and seven
of the Republic attempt to answer.
The center of Plato's Republic is dominated by three
great images: the sun, the divided line and the cave. They
occur in this order for very good reason within the dialogue, but for our purposes it seems best to consider the
divided line first, thus beginning at the center of the
center.
The line has two sections, each of which in turn has
two sections. Each section represents a human relationship to things, a theoretical rather than practical relationship, one is inclined to say, since there seems to be no
question of acting with respect to these things, of changing them. To understand in a provisional way the meaning and justification of the two main sections,
representing the intelligible and the sensible, it is necessary to reflect briefly on the presuppositions of meaningful speech: We say the sentence "this is a table" and we
mostly understand each other. There are a great many
things we are willing to call "table" but one name somehow names them all. Thus the possibility of meaningful
speech requires that there be somehow, somewherethere is room for enormous disagreement regarding the
mode and place-a one for the many, a one with reference
to which we call the many by the one name "table". Furthermore, although everything visible and tangible
changes, this one must be unchanging. For, if a particular table begins to change-to fall apart or to rot-there
comes a point beyond which we are no longer willing to
call it a table. This would not be so if the standard with
reference to which we call the table a table were itself
changeable; in that case its changes could perfectly well
keep pace with the changes of the visible table, and the
name need never cease to apply. Thus generally stated,
it seems that everyone would have to agree that there
must be a one for the many and an unchanging for the
32
changing if human speech is ever to be meaningful.
(Whether our naming of things corresponds to genuine
articulations in the world of things, or is rather determined by human utility-biologic necessity some might
say-need not be immediately decided.)
But of course we all know this. There are, as we all say,
"concepts" of things as well as things; there are "abstractions" or "universals" and it seems that we cannot get
along without them. But most of us are sure that,
however indispensable, ~~concepts" or abstractions~~ are
fundamentally pale and lifeless, even ghostlike; in particular we are sure that all the lovable things are visible
and tangible things.
Let us look more closely at the divided line to see
whether we can discover Socrates' opinion about this
matter. We are made wary by the fact that there is no
word used by Plato which can properly be translated as
''concept'' or ''abstraction'' or ''abstract'' or, incidentally,
as "absolute." Whenever one comes across one of these
words in a translation of Plato, he may be sure that the
translator has not understood Plato's thought.
However immediately understandable, at least provisionally, is the main division of the divided line into, let
us say, beings of sense on the one hand and beings of
speech or thought (the Greek word logos means inextricably both together) on the other, we are puzzled when we
face the full articulation of the line into eikasia (the faculty
of seeing images as images, e.g. the ability to recognize
the reflection of a tree in a pond as an image of the tree,
not the tree itself); pistis (the trust we habitually place in
what is given to the senses-above all to sight-so that
although we are of course sometimes deceived, these very
deceptions are usually uncovered by further looking or
smelling or tasting or touching); and then, on the second
main section dianoia (thinking things through, in the sense
of all deducing from hypotheses, the paradigm for which
is geometry) and noesis (suffice it for now to say that this
is understood as a higher kind of thinking than dianoia.)
I think the two main questions we are inclined to ask
are these: what have images-the fact that trees are
reflected in ponds, for example-and the ability to recognize them as images, to do with the admittedly important question of the relation of beings of sense to beings
of speech and though; and, how can there be a higher
kind of thinking than the energetic and restless motion
of thinking things through, descending from certain
hypotheses, certain posited beginnings, toward the consequences which ensue from them?
To the first question Socrates gives an astonishing answer: the structure of image-original, of the relation between the image and that of which it is the image, is the
best clue to understanding the relation between the beings of sense and the beings of thought. This is an utter
reversal of our habitual way of thinking. We are mostly
II
WINTER 1986
�inclined to think that abstractions and concepts, however
indispensable they may be, are surely derivative from,
and wholly dependent for their being upon, the beings
of sense. But if one claims that beings of sense stand to
beings of thought as the reflection of a tree in a pond
stands to the tree which stretches toward the sky, one
is saying precisely that, for their very being, beings of
sense depend upon, are founded upon, beings of
thought: without the original tree stretching toward the
sky, the reflection of the tree in the pond would not be.
What can such a claim possibly mean? I shall try in a few
minutes, in discussing the image of the sun, to indicate
Socrates' answer to this question. For now let us notice
another consequence of this understanding of the relation of the beings of sense to the beings of thought in
the light of the relation between image and original in
the visible world: the one which unifies the many is not
more "abstract" or universal than the many-the tree itself is, if anything, more concrete" than its image in a
pond.
A digression may be helpful here. Usually when one
reads in a translation of Plato such phrases as "the concept of justice" or "justice in the abstract" or "absolute
justice", what Plato has said is "the just itself" or, sometimes, "the just itself by itself". How we are to begin to
interpret this usage Plato has indicated to us in his dialogue Phaedo, in which immediately before speaking of
how we are, so to speak, "reminded" by the variety of
equal things of the "equal itself" and by the variety of
just things of the "just itself", Socrates mentions that by
the picture of a certain friend, we are reminded of "that
friend himself", who is surely not more "abstract" than
a picture of him. Precisely in the Phaedo, a dialogue which
reports a conversation among Socrates and his friends
concerning the question whether the soul is immortal,
a conversation taking place immediately before Socrates
is to be put to death by the city of Athens on charges of
impiety and corrupting the young, it is of crucial importance to know whether the so-called "ideas" or "forms",
the invisible beings of thought, have such "concreteness", such richness and splendor, that a man could actually make his home among them, could dwell
passionately among them. For, Socrates' justification for
having spent his life in philosophizing, in consequence
of which he is poor, without power or prestige and indeed under sentence of death, cannot be that he has
thereby succeeded in answering all questions or even all
of the most important questions-or even a single one
of the most important questions-since he confesses to
deep ignorance regarding every important question. His
apology must rather be that he has discovered a world,
a world of incredible splendor, and that he has learned
a little about how to live in it, how to move and how to
see in it. This world is the world of the beings of thought,
11
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of the invisible beings. This is the true Hades, the true
afterworld and place of inrmortality, Socrates claims, punning on the resemblance to the Greek word "Hades" of
a Greek word for "invisible". Thus in the great myth with
which the Phaedo closes, Socrates describes the dwelling
of the blessed after death in a world above the world
which we inhabit. This world above is said to be of such
brilliance and clarity, that as our air is to our water in
respect of transparency, so their air is to our air; and our
most beautiful emeralds are chips from their mountains.
But those who have understood the deep seriousness of
Socrates' playful pun on Hades and a-eides, (a word for
"invisible") thereby understand that in this myth Socrates is not speaking of life after death but of what he
himself has somehow experienced in his own passionate thinking in this life.
Let us return to the Republic. What of our second perplexity regarding the articulation of the divided line, our
perplexity as to how there could be a higher form of thinking than dianoia, that restless "thinking things through"
which deduces consequences from hypotheses? This
higher kind of thinking is called by Socrates noesis. He
seems to mean two things: first, that the arts and techniques, paradigmatically geometry but also for example,
contemporary mathematical physics, as fundamentally
hypothetical-deductive disciplines, although they charm
us by the clarity and certainty which they yield and the
facility with which we can proceed in and through them,
the competence with which we can master them and
through them master other things-that, despite all this
they exhibit a deeply inadequate relation to their beginnings, inasmuch as their characteristic movement is away
from those beginnings, deducing consequences from
them so as to encompass a wider and wider range of
phenomena, rather than returning to the beginnings, the
first principles and sources, again and again, not merely
to make certain they are "solid" enough to support the
edifice of a "system" (since "solidity" as such is compatible with utter opaqueness), but because the beginnings are in themselves most worthy of wondering and
questioning reflection. Against the charm of competence
engendered by the confident and facile movement away
from the beginnings characteristic of the arts and techniques, Socrates proposes the humility of the attempt to
question and wonder about those beginnings
themselves-humility, because in trying to do that one
finds oneself, again and again, proceeding awkwardly,
uncertainly, even ludicrously. Nevertheless, not indeed
because humility and being humbled are as such good
things, but because the beginnings (sources, principles)
are most worthy of being thought about, the highest kind
of thinking, though not the most elegant or masterful,
would be the consideration of these. Thus far the highest
section of the divided line stands for, not indeed a new
33
�set of objects of thought, but a different direction of thinking in regard to the beginnings and principles, for example of geometry, but also of other arts and techniques,
theoretical and practical.
There seems also to be another aspect to Socrates' claim
that there is a higher form of thinking or knowing than
dianoia, a form which, characteristically, lacks the prefix
dia-the "through" or "between" or "among" which indicates motion of thought. This higher form is pure noein,
pure taking in, not running through, bringing together
and separating, not, as we say, discursive thought, but
pure beholding, taking in and nothing but taking in, taking to heart, bearing in mind, rather than figuring out,
comparing, analyzing, deducing. That so still and restful a relation to the knowable things is possible for us as
a permanent possession, steadily at our disposal, Socrates
seems to deny. But that the hope for such a relation animates our thinking, and that from time to time we are
vouchsafed intimations and tokens and earnests of such
a relation-the relation with which, after all, our cognizant
relation to the world begins: we open our eyes and the
world appears to us, presents itself to us, prior to any
figuring out or thinking through on our part-seems to
be a deeply held Socratic opinion.
We turn now, briefly, to the image which, in Socrates'
presentation, precedes the image of the divided line and
of which, indeed, the image of the divided line is presented as an explication, namely the image of the sun. We
come to this with two questions especially: how are we
to understand the way in which the things of sense are
said to depend for their very being upon the things of
thought, as the analogy with the relation of the reflected
image of a tree to the original tree requires us to do?; and,
where is the sun itself in the image of the divided line,
which indeed seems to involve correlations of ways of
knowing and knowable things on various levels-eikasia,
pistis, dianoia, noesis-but which leaves no room for, and
does not seem to require, a third thing in addition to the
knowers with their ways of approaching things and the
knowable things with their ways of being available?
The greatest learnable thing, according to Socrates,
which in dignity and power is somehow beyond being,
is the idea of the good, or as seems to be said interchangeably, the good simply. Socrates declares himself incapable of speaking of it directly; he will speak instead of that
which is the offspring of the good and most like it, namely
the sun. The sun, and the light of which it is the source,
is first regarded as that which yokes together visibility
and the power of seeing; neither of these two alone, nor
both together, can become actual unless a third thing, the
sun (and its light) is present; only then is the visible actually seen and the sightful actual seeing. The mode of
being and doing of the sun and its light is characterized
first as a yoking and holding together, then as being the
34
source of a certain overflow, and finally as giving and conferring. Now Socrates says: as the sun in the visible
realm, so the good in the knowable realm: the good confers upon the would-be knower his knowledge, his actual knowing, and upon knowable things their truth, their
being actually known. Thus the full and authentic relation between knower and known depends upon something beyond that relation, upon a source which is neither
in the knower nor in the knowable. And if it should be
that man's most authentic relation to things altogether
is his relation to them as knower, then it would have to
be said that man's most authentic relation to things is sustained and even created by a source by no means at his
disposal, which is to say that he cannot regard himself
as master of the highest relation to things of which he
is capable. To live while perceiving the source of one's
most authentic relation to things to be outside of oneself,
to be moreover not at all at one's constant disposal and
to be finally, in its very being unfathomable, need not
mean to live in unrelieved anxiety. It does seem to mean,
however, that something like faith and hope and even
charity might be among the intellectual virtues, the virtues without which one cannot achieve fullness precisely as a knower. At any rate, it seems to be the perception
of certain consequences of depending for one's most
authentic relation to things upon a mysterious source not
simply at one's disposal that moves most men to choose
to live in caves, or as Socrates more precisely says, cavelike dwellings; for it is fairly clear from Socrates' account
that the men who live in the cave have chosen to do so,
have not simply found themselves in so sorry a plight.
And the deepest ground of that choice, indeed the very
meaning of living in the cave, seems to be the unwillingness to acknowledge one's dependence for one's own
happiness and for the rightness of one's relation to all
things, upon a source not at one's disposal. The pride
of competence which belongs to the arts and techniques,
the general disparagement of mere words, the scorn for
"abstractions" and the opinion that language, rather than
revealing for the first time the things which truly are, is
a mere instrument for communication with a view to all
sorts of practical ends, or, more subtly, the fierce loyalty
to "experience" which issues in the opinion that words
are always inadequate to experience without ever considering whether experience might not be inadequate to
words-all of these seem to be aspects of living in the cave
and to have as their source the unwillingness to be, as
we say, "insecure", to risk the sort of exposedness and
unshieldedness, the being disoriented and dazzled and
unable to defend oneself should need arise which, humanly speaking, is the decisive experience of those men
who in Socrates' account venture without the cave.
But there is another aspect of the sun image which we
must notice. After discussing the way in which the sun
WINTER 1986
�supplies to visible things their being actually seen, he reminds Glaucon that the sun also provides for visible
things their coming to be and growth and nurture. Similarly, he emphatically says, the things over which the good
presides-which means, finally, all things, since the sun
itself, hence also the world over which it presides, is said
to be the offspring of the good, begotten by it-receive
not only their being known, but also their very being itself, and the meaning of their being, from the good. He
uses a slightly different word for the two relationships,
however: the pareinai, the being present, being right
there, of the good supplies things with their intelligibility; the proseinai, the "being in relation to" of the good
supplies them with their being. This seems to mean that
the good is the cause of intelligibility in things in a somewhat more direct or immediate way than the way in
which it is the cause of their being. Could it be that in
and through its causing their being known the good causes
their very being, for the reason that "to be fully" finally
means "to be known," so that things which are not
known cannot be said to be fully, to be all that they might
be and, somehow, long to be? Could this be what is
meant, finally, by saying that the things of sense are
founded upon the things of thought (as the reflection of
the tree is founded upon the tree which stretches toward
the sky)? The claim might be, in other words, that the
things of thought are prior in being to the things of sense,
in such a way that the things of sense require, in order
to achieve their own fullness, to be known.
We have now, perhaps, caught some glimpse of the
ultimate answer proposed by Socrates to the radical
challenge of Thrasymachus: although not all lovable
things are shareable, there are lovable things which are
shareable; there are beings of thought of great splendor,
and knowing them is dwelling with them, and men can
do that together without any man giving up the full and
overfull enjoyment of that which his heart most desires.
But if such an answer makes any sense at all, surely it
makes sense only for a very few men, for the
philosophers, the lovers of wisdom who can somehow
make their home among the beings of thought. At most
those few men might find assaugement of the pain flowing from the disproportion between their strangely unlimited desires and the limitedness of that which, in the
visible world, answers to those desires; and might therefore find it bearable to be just men even after they have
seen the things which Thrasymachus has seen. But politically, for the city as a whole, this is surely a marginal
phenomenon. Has it any political relevance at all, in Plato's opinion and in ours? For Plato this question is inseparable from the question about the relation between
philosophy and poetry, which for Plato takes the form of
"the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry."
What this means in the context of the Republic and of
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Plato's thought as a whole, I shall not here pursue. In
closing I shall however turn, in the hope of clarifying a
little what might be involved in the quarrel between
philosophy and poetry, to the greatest champion of the
poets among the philosophers, and to the greatest poet.
I mean to Nietzsche and Homer.
Nietzsche is, of the great philosophers, at once the
greatest opponent of Plato and the greatest champion of
the poets. The connection between these two positions
emerges from the first two pages of the "Prologue" to
his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra comes forth from
his cave in the mountains on a certain morning as the
sun is rising. He addresses the sun: "You great star, what
would your happiness be had you not those for whom
you shine." We must understand: by the sun Nietzsche
means, after Plato, the highest principle of the being of
what is. The highest principle of being, and hence being
itself, is said to depend for its "happiness" on its relation to man. By "happiness" Nietzsche means what the
Greeks meant by eudaimonia, usually translated as ''happiness''. By eudaimonia is meant, however, no quality of
consciousness, no feeling or mood, but rather a sort of
radiant fullness of being. Thus Nietzsche says that the
highest principle of being, hence being itself, depends
upon man for its completion, its radiant fullness, for its
meaning and meaningfulness. How does man perform
his part? Not, according to Nietzsche, through an essentially passive contemplative activity, but through poetic
activity, through making in the widest sense-for example the making of festivals as well as the making of poems
in the ordinary sense.
But Nietzsche continues in a remarkable way, indicating that although the highest principle of being somehow
depends upon man, upon human activity-which seems
the opposite of Plato's view-that human activity itself
is not sheer ''creation''. Nietzsche writes: ''For ten years
you climbed to my cave; you would have tired of your
light and of the journey had it not been for me and my
eagle and my serpent. But we waited for you every morning, received your overflow from you, and blessed you
for it." Hence the fullness and the very meaning of being depends upon human poetic activity; but that poetic
activity is essentially a waiting, the receiving of an overflow,
and the returning of a blessing. We wonder whether
Nietzsche is in every way opposed to Plato, whether the
poets are in every way opposed to the philosophers. We
must consider a related thought of Nietzsche's.
Nietzsche's Zarathustra proclaims that God is dead. By
this he means not merely the Biblical God, however, but
rather Platonism in the widest sense. (He says that Christianity is Platonism for the many.) By "Platonism"
Nietzsche understands the distinguishing between a sensuous world and a supersensuous world in such a way
that the sensuous world is wholly depreciated: whatever
35
�meaning, whatever value it has is strictly derivative from
the supersensuous world, the world of eternal ideas and
of eternal being generally. For Nietzsche this represents
a slander upon the earth, upon what is given to the senses
and passions, upon what offers itself to us by simply appearing to us. Against this slander, Nietzsche calls upon
men to be faithful to the earth. The poets, he thinks, or
at least a certain kind of poet, are faithful to the earth in
this sense.
Is this a just rejection of Plato based upon a just understanding of Plato? I think it is not just, but it is partly
justified by a crucial ambiguity at the heart of Plato's writings. According to Nietzsche's understanding, the realm
of the supersensuous in Plato's thought is the measure of
the realm of the sensuous: that which offers itself to us
by appearing to us is allowed to count as true being only
in the measure that it measures up to the measure;
whatever does not fit within such confines is non-being,
darkness, contemptible aberration. And indeed one
sometimes does receive the impression that the Platonic
ideas, the invisible beings which are the truest beings,
are, above all, measures and standards.
But there is also another, very different, notion of the
ideas in Plato, above all in the Phaedrus, where it is said
by Socrates that all of the ideas-not only the idea of
beauty-are essentially beautiful, and the essence of the
beautiful is to be ekphanestaton, that which shines forth
most, not measuring, counting and discounting, delimiting and excluding, but rather illuminating in shining
brightness the darkness of the realm of human affairs.
This notion of the character and function of the beings
which most truly are seems to correspond more adequately to the origin of Socratic philosophizing, as Plato reports
that in the Theatetus, which origin is, not at all a search
for measures, but the pathos of thaumazein, the admiring
wonder at all that is as it is, no mere perplexity or puzzlement, which as such can be answered, cleared up and
dissolved, gotten rid of; but rather a sort of marvelling
called forth by the beautiful which can be articulated and
purified in various ways, but which terminates most fittingly in the beholding of the ultimate source of the shining quality of the world which originally called it forth.
This seems to be the deepest and truest understanding
of the character of the supersensuous-of that realm
which is opened up and finally dwelled in by passionate
thinking-to be found in Plato's thought. The notion of
the ideas as measures seems secondary and is, one suspects sadly, a consequence of Plato's anxiety lest
philosophy seem too "impractical": a glimpse of the
source of the light shed upon the darkness of human affairs by that which shines forth most, does not provide
one with the sort of immediate title to rule politically or
to advise political rulers, which is provided by the claim
to have seen measures and standards in accordance with
which one can directly distinguish between right and
36
wrong actions, good and bad men. At any rate, Nietzsche
seems never to have suspected that the ideas, the beings
of thought, were ever anything but supersensuous measures applied arrogantly to the sensuous world; and his
judgment of Plato develops accordingly.
But let us ask in conclusion: if the notion of the true
beings, the beings of thought, as ekphanestaton, as that
which shines forth most, seems genuinely correlative to
the genuine beginning of philosophy, thaumazein as admiring wonder, what can the poets tell us of this admiring wonder? The word thaumazein is used by Homer in
book twenty-four of the Iliad in a context of extraordinary
power and beauty.
Priam, the Trojan king, has come to Achilles to entreat
him to hand back for burial the body of Hector, Priam's
son, Troy's greatest warrior, whom Achilles has slain to
avenge the death of his own dearest friend Patroclus at
Hector's hand. Priam comes into Achilles' tent and kneeling down clasps Achilles' knees and, king though he is,
he begs Achilles for his son's body, and kisses Achilles'
hands, the hand of the murderer of his son. Achilles, who
has been dominated by a merciless and despairing rage
since the death of Patroclus for which he is himself in a
way responsible, begins to weep when Priam bids him
think of his own father. As they remain next to each
other, Achilles standing and Priam kneeling, Priam weeps
and Achilles weeps too. I shall quote: "So he spoke and
stirred in the other a passion of grieving for his own
father. He took the old man's hand and pushed him gently away, and the two remembered, as Priam sat huddled
at the feet of Achilles and wept close for manslaughtering Hector and Achilles wept now for his own
father, now again for Patroclus." Achilles relents from
his rage, agrees to give back the body, and behaves kindly
toward Priam. The source of their reconciliation is somehow that the tears they shed, Priam's tears for Hector,
Achilles' tears now for his own father, now for Patroclus,
form one stream and cannot be distinguished. When they
have done with weeping, Achilles prevails upon Priam
to eat dinner. After they eat, a moment occurs which is
the peak of humanity within the Iliad: "But when they
had put aside their desire for eating and drinking, Priam
son of Dardamus, gazed upon Achilles, wondering (thaumazein) at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision of Gods. Achilles in turn gazed on Dardanian
Priam and wondered, as he saw his brave looks, and
listened to him talking." One must imagine that as they
gaze upon one another, these enemies, this Greek and
this Trojan, with admiration and wonder, their eyes are
still moist from weeping, and it may be that their admiration has a kind of purity and clarity which it could not
have otherwise. This is perhaps what the poets know better than the philosophers: that one can sometimes see
most clearly what beauty there is when one's eyes are
wet with tears.
WINTER 1986
�About Human Knowing
I.
I propose to share with you some rather simple-rrrinded
reflections on certain formulations concerning human
knowing, formulations ventured by Aristotle in the later
parts of his treatise on the soul. But first I must tell you
something of the question which has guided my reflections, and to do this I must refer to a statement by Socrates in book seven of the Republic about the vision of
the idea of the good. There is something impetuous, to
put it mildly, about beginning on so lofty a peak; my only
justification is the simple and direct urgency which
characterizes Socrates' introduction of "the good" as
"that which every soul pursues and for its sake does all
that it does, divining it to be something, but being at a
loss and being unable to lay hold sufficiently of what in
the world it is or to make use of any abiding trust concerning it as concerning other things, and on account of
this failing of any possible benefit from other things."
In book seven Socrates says that having seen the idea
of the good, it is necessary to conclude that this is "the
responsible source for all things of all things right and
beautiful" (pasi panton orthan te kai kalOn). Two points in
this sentence seem to me remarkable. The first is the collocation pasi panton, "for all things of all things," that is,
"for all things of all things right and beautiful." The good
is responsible for all things right and beautiful, but it is
this for all things. The dative plural pasi is a so-called ethical dative or dative of interest: all things are affected by,
have a stake in, the things that are right and beautiful.
"About Human Knowing" was delivered as a formal lecture
at St. l,~hn's College, Santa Fe it; March, 1980. It was originally
titled
Reflections on Anstotle s Thmking of Thinking."
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
To say that all things have a stake in, are perhaps somehow redeemed by, the presence of right and beautiful
things in their midst, however few and fragile these may
be, seems to me a kind of correction of the terrifying indictment against the poets and against the world brought
by Socrates at the end of book two; namely, that the poets
fail to recognize that the god, who is good, can be responSible only for the good things in the world, which are
greatly outnumbered by the bad things; for these latter,
some other responsible source must be found. This, I
think, is the great Socratic objection against the poets
(outweighing any worry about the adulterous Zeus being a bad model, or about the poets dealing with mere
imitations of imitations and arousing passions which
ought to be subdued): the Iliad ends with the feasting of
a glonous feast; the whole is celebrated in such a way that
questions of the rightness or wrongness of particular actions, the goodness or badness of particular men, are
overwhelmed in the blessing that the poet pronounces
upon all that is. The poets confirm what Achilles tells Priam in book twenty-four: "So the gods have spun for
suffering mortals, for those sorrowing to live" (not, as it
is usually translated, "for mortals to live in sorrow") and
they know what Achilles also learns, that in the living
of human beings moments of grace and graciousness
appear--" So Achilles spoke, and took the aged king by
the nght hand at the wrist, so that his heart might have
no fear" --and in appearing irradiate all that is and has
been.
It seems to me that the Socrates who in book two
blames the poets for not blarrring most of what appears
m our world, blaming it for its failure to measure up to
the non-appe?ring measures which Socratic philosophizmg seeks to discover, says something importantly differ-
37
�ent in the pasi panton, the "of all things right and
beautiful for all things," of book seven: here he holds himself open in some way to the Homeric possibility of blessing all that is for being.
The matter remains ambiguous, however, as we can
see from a consideration of the second remarkable feature of the Socratic statement in book seven. The idea of
the good is said to be the responsible source, not of all
good things, but of all right and beautiful things (orthO te
kai kalii). The good can apparently be understood with
a view to what is right and straight and with a view to
what is beautiful. The two notions seem quite different.
That which is right or straight or correct seems to be a
kind of standard or measure in relation to which other
things are found to be deficient, to be crooked and perverse, and are thereby accused and condemned. The
beautiful, according to Socrates in the Phaedrus, is ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most and in shining
forth casts a kind of splendor upon the not-so-beautiful
things in whose midst it is encountered. It could appear
from the sentence which we have been considering that
the "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry" is
reflected within Socratic-Platonic philosophizing itself,
insofar as u quarrel" translates diaphora, which means
literally "being borne apart, bearing oneself apart" and
the good itself seems to bear itself apart between the right
and straight (measures and standards) and the beautiful
which as such calls forth measureless affirmation and
praise, which is the great action of Homeric poetry.
II.
The idea of the good is the responsible source not only
for the conjunction of knower and known but also for the
coming to be and being as it is of what is--so books six
and seven of the Republic tell us in the three great images
of sun, divided line, and cave. As to the manner of its being responsible, we find only a few hints. The following
seems important. Socrates says that being knoum is present
(pareinai) to the known things by virtue of the good and
that their very being and the meaning of that being belongs
to them (proseinai) by virtue of the good. Pareinai means
being present, being right alongside. Proseinai is not so
definite; it means to be in relation to, to be attached to,
to belong to. This difference suggests that the good is
somehow the source of the being of things through being
the source of our knowing of them. This suggestion bears
importantly on my inquiry. According to Socrates in the
Theatetus, philosophizing begins in the pathos of thaumazein, of admiring wonder. Does it properly complete
itself (not as a permanent condition, but rather in its
highest moments) in affirmation (not mere acquiescence)
and praise?--this is my question, and, following what I
take to be Socrates' suggestion, I am supposing that to
ask whether "to be" means "to be worthy of praise" in-
38
valves intimately the question of the relation between "to
be" and "to be known." It is for help with this question
that I turn to Aristotle's treatise on the soul, and in particular to his account of nous, the capacity to receive the
intelligible, the "part" of the soul by which we know.
Ill.
Aristotle's first important statement about nous occurs
late in book one of De Anima. It reads: "The capacity to
receive the intelligible seems to come to be in us and not
to perish ... The receiving of the intelligible and the beholding are extinguished when something else within us
perishes, but it itself is unaffected. Discursive thinking
(dianoeisthai) and loving and hating are not affections of
that (i.e., of nous) but rather of this thing here (a human
being) which has that, insofar as it has that. Therefore
also when this one (a human being) perishes, it (nous)
neither remembers nor loves. For these actions did not
belong to that, but to the common, which has perished.
Nous is perhaps something more divine and is unaffected."
At first glance this passage seems to proclaim the apartness or aloofness of the capacity to receive the intelligible within the individual human soul as a whole. Nous
seems to be imperishable, while I am perishable, I who
am distinguished from everyone else by the memories,
loves and hatreds that are uniquely mine, and whose discursive thinking, thinking things through by one path
rather than another, is permeated by my memories,
desires, hopes and fears.
But on closer inspection it is clear that nous is deeply
involved with what is my very own. Although "discursive thinking, loving and hating are not affections of that
(nous)," they are affections of the one who possesses nous
"insofar as he possesses it." At the very least, the presence
of nous appears to be a necessary condition for those actions and passions of the soul that are specifically human.
But nous seems to be still more deeply implicated in the
life of the human soul: to say that when this one here
perishes, nous does not remember or love, makes sense
only if in some way nous did share in memory and love
before this one here perished; or in other words that to
koinon, the common, to which remembering and loving
belong, is a genuine community in which nous genuinely shares, in contrast to some sort of arrangement whereby the imperishable and impersonal merely dwells as an
alien in the midst of other powers.
It is the original involvement of nous in the memories
and loves and hopes and fears that are uniquely mine that
seems to justify our speaking, not of the apartness or
aloofness of nous within the human soul, but rather of
its transcendence, that is, of a process of going beyond
and leaving behind. This process-character is more clearly
seen in the anamnesis thesis of the Meno, in "recollecting"
WINTER 1986
�as the soul's descent into itself beyond memory (the ana
of anamnesis and analabein indicating "up" as well as
"again"), so that it can bring up again, itself from out
of itself (autos ex hautou) the knowable things as known.
Aristotle himself focuses attention not on the descending (or transcending) but rather on the moment when,
having left behind what is uniquely my own, I am face
to face with the intelligible things. We shall return to this
matter later.
Let us now turn to the five great and simple propositions regarding knowing which Aristotle ventures in De
Anima. They are prepared by and worked out in analogy
to his analysis of sensing (aisthesis), primarily of seeing,
because "seeing is sensing most of all." (We remember
that in Greek oida, I know, is properly perfective: I have
seen.)
1. The soul is none of the beings (ouden ton oniOn), is
nothing.
2. The soul is in a way all things (panta Ia onta).
3. The soul becomes identical with what it knows.
4. To know is somehow to suffer (paschein, pathein).
5. The full actuality, the energeia, of what acts resides in
what is acted upon.
(None of these propositions contains more than eight
words in Aristotle's Greek.)
It is true that ultimately (in chapter five of book three)
Aristotle radically changes the perspective in which he
views human knowing. But these five propositions retain at least provisional validity even then, and in any
case these are the propositions Aristotle insists upon first
of all and for a long while. Let us try to gain some understanding of them.
IV.
The first two propositions-the soul is nothing, the soul
is all things-are closely connected. The soul can receive
all forms because it itself is formless. We are reminded
of "the receptacle" in the Timaeus, whose character is so
difficult to make out, seeming sometimes to be the in
which of the visible and tangible in the sense of their place
(topos), sometimes the of which in the sense of a mouldable material; again, the mouldable material sometimes
seems very much like the knowing soul. In any case, Plato
and Aristotle agree that what is to receive all forms
without deforming them must itself be formless--both argue, using the same uncommon word, paremphainein, that
anything appearing alongside what is received would
result in distortion.
It is no doubt difficult to understand in any articulate
way what Aristotle means by saying that the knowing
soul is in a way nothing. In general, Aristotle's literary
noesis noeseos, his knowing of knowing in the sense of being able to write a treatise about knowing, seems to have
three chief characteristics. First, his principal propositions
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
are extremely brief, and although they are sometimes amplified by way of examples and distinctions, they themselves are not presented as results of antecedent
reasoning. Second, the word pas, "somehow," occurs in
these propositions very frequently, strilcingly more frequently than in Aristotle's writings on other topics;
moreover, he does not seem eager to explore or articulate these "sornehows"--perhaps the rigidity of writing
and lecturing is not the proper form for such exploration.
Finally, in many ways Aristotle seems to follow a kind
of via negativa, a way of negation, in his discourse about
the knowing soul-perhaps it is not only easier, but essentially more fitting, to say mainly what the soul is not,
and to give preponderate weight to the other beings in
the world. Indeed, Aristotle twice in almost identical
words indicates his "method," his way of approach, in
a sense that virtually predetermines the "nothingness"
of the soul. He says that before considering the parts or
powers (moria or dunameis) of the soul, for example nous,
we must consider their deeds or works (erga), for example the action of noein; and before considering their
works, we must consider their objects, ta antikeimena, the
beings in the world that lie over against them. From this
point of view the soul might be thought of as nothing
but the "place" or "dimension" in which the things of
the world have their being as no longer "being over
against." One could even understand this in a Hegelian
way: through deeds of the soul which accomplish the
necessary ''mediation'' men make themselves at home
in a world which originally objects against them. But of
course what is decisive for Aristotle is that the things
which lie over against aisthesis and nous, receive their
names from these human powers: from the very beginning ta antikeimena are aistheta and noeta. What this means ultimately we can see only when we have considered
chapter five of book three.
Let me try to give a simple, non-conceptual example
of part of what might be involved in the proposition that
in order to be open to all the beings the soul must be nothing. I shall limit myself to claiming that the soul must not
be everything. We know from the words of King Lear that
only when the storm, by rnalcing him cold, wet and miserable, had taught him that, contrary to the claim of his
flatterers, he was not "everything," was he capable of
paying attention to the plight of "the poor naked
wretches," for whom he had taken "too little care" because he had not "exposed himself to feel." A man who
thinks he is everything has no incentive to expose himself to feel what is not himself.
Let us also listen to a description of the proper emptiness of thought by Simone Well, the French thinker and
writer, for whom attention is the essence both of corning
to understand and of prayer:
"Attention consists in suspending our thought, leav-
39
�ing it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by
the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach
of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact
with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which
we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in
relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts,
as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees
also below hiro, without actually looking at them, a great
many forests and plains. Above all our thought should
be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to
receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it."
v.
The third of Aristotle's vast and simple propositions
about the knowing soul holds that in the activity of knowing, the soul becomes what it knows, comes to be the
same as what it knows. His formulations vary slightly:
nous becomes all things; when knowledge (episteme) is at
work it is the same (to auto) with its object (pragma); the
activity of knowing (noesis) is one with the thing known.
What is striking about the latter two formulations is that
the object or thing known is named in the dative case" identical to" or 0ne with," indicating that the thing
known is the standard to which knowing must conform
itself, direct and adjust itself. As Aristotle states explicitly in book twelve of the Metaphysics, when he is speaking primarily of the divine knowing activity, this
conformation is perfectly accomplished in the case of
things without material--that is, in the case of knowers
in whom there is no material (hule), no mere capability;
that is, as we shall see, no distinction between the doer
and the doing, which is to say that the perfect knower
must be perfectly selfless. In the case of human knowing, original confonnation is "repeated" by achieved adjustment, which must involve perfect self-forgetfulness. What
this means will, I hope, become clearer later.
But if the knower is to come to be the known, a kind
of action is required on the side of the known as well.
In facing the thing we face, say an oak tree in the middle
of a field, we are primarily affected by the sensible form
(aistheton eidos) of the tree: we are made to know what
it is to be this oak tree. But, Aristotle says, there is an
intelligible form (noeton eidos) residing in the sensible
form, and in some wholly mysterious way that sensible
form can give way to the intelligible form, can allow the
intelligible form to shine through it, so that we are made
to understand not just what it is to be this oak tree, but
rather what it is to be oak tree simply.
Aristotle's understanding of what happens when, having been led properly (this is the meaning of epagoge,
usually translated as "induction") up to a particular tree
so as to stand face to face with it, we come to understand
what it is for a tree as such to be, is itself very difficult
to understand. Two misunderstandings are particularly
0
40
likely. The first stems from our habitual supposition that
in coming to know we do all the work: talk about sensible form "giving way" to intelligible form or "allowing
it to shine through" sounds very strange to us. The fourth
of Aristotle's great propositions addresses this issue, and
we shall consider it soon. But the other source of likely
misunderstanding is our habit of associating the terms
;/abstractions" and "universals" with Aristotle's thinking. I think these terms are very mischievous, and at the
risk of tediousness shall try to explain why.
As to the first, we must be aware that Aristotle never
speaks of "abstractions," but rather of "things in abstraction" (Ia en aphairesei) or more fully of "things said in abstraction" (Ia legomena en aphairesei), that is, things which
result from a "lifting off" or "taking away" (that is what
apo-haireo means) of some "parts" from the wholes of
which they are parts; or a "disregard of everything except ... (whatever we happen to be interested in),"
which disregard, although it is in some way a willful act
of attention on our part, seems also, at least in some cases,
to be invited and guided by the wholes themselves which
we primarily face. Above all, it is important to remember that aphairesis, "abstraction" -which names a process,
as en aphairesei names a mode of being resulting from this
process-is introduced by Aristotle primarily for the sake
of giving an account of the manner of being of mathematicals (for example, triangles or multitudes of pure
units) and is always related polemically to the Platonic
understanding of the mathematicals. Since the primary
issue is the manner of being of the mathematicals, Aristotle (unlike Thomas Aquinas, for example), shows no interest in the "mechanics" -the agents and stages-of the
"process" of abstraction.
The term "universal" comes from a word used more
broadly by Aristotle, with no special reference to mathematicals. Again, however, the main point is that Aristotle's word cannot be used in the plural; indeed it is not
even a noun. He speaks always of Ia katholou, that is
things considered kala holou, according to their wholeness;
the preposition kala and the genitive noun holou form an
adverbial phrase. Aristotle is always aware of a certain
tension between the generality of certain kinds of inquiry,
and the particularity of what in each instance we face:
a sign of this awareness is the clarity with which he can
distinguish between a consideration of magnitudes generally (such as we find in book five of Euclid) and a consideration of general magnitude (i.e., algebra). Again, the
famous doctrine of the four "causes" bears witness to
Aristotle's constant mindfulness of the presence of the
inquirer: an aitia, the Aristotelian word usually translated as "cause," does not cause anything; that is, there
is no verb related to the noun ailia which can be translated as "to cause"; the only verb formed from aitia is
aitiaomai, meaning "to hold responsible" (sometimes "to
WINTER 1986
�blame"), which clearly belongs to the point of view of
the inquirer.
Let me make one more observation about the proposition that we become identical with what we know as the
intelligible forms work on us through the sensible forms,
the "invisible look" of tree through the "visible look"
of this tree right here. Aristotle speaks of the intelligibles,
ta noeta, as residing in images as well as in sensed things,
and although his remarks in De Anima on the faculty of
imagination are sketchy and inconclusive, I believe that
the only way to understand his remark in the Poetics that
poetry is closer to philosophy than is history, is by supposing that the intelligibles are able to shine through images in whose shaping the imagination has enjoyed a
certain freedom-the Achilles of the Iliad, for examplenot only more vividly but also more precisely than
through what is simply given to the senses (mere history).
VI.
We have already seen that the fourth of Aristotle's great
propositions about knowing is called up immediately by
the third: as the knower comes to be identical to the
knowable, the knowable does all the work. Aristotle
writes: "To know is in some way to suffer, to be acted
upon." It is not that we, as would-be knowers, go to
work upon things, attempting to grasp them, comprehend or conceive them, order, 'analyze and synthesize
them; rather, our part is to be alert, to be awake, to be
prepared ourselves to be grasped and moulded by the
things themselves working upon us immediately by their
sensible forms and through these by their intelligible
forms (or as Aristotle say outside of De Anima, by the ti
en einai of tode ti, the "what it was to be" of "this here
something").
This way of understanding how we come to know
differs radically, I take it, from our habitual way of regarding the matter. Three explanatory remarks may help.
First, Aristotle's analysis singles out a special moment,
the highest moment, within our experience of coming to
know, what we sometimes speak of as a moment of insight, when we genuinely do come to understand what
it is we are facing. It is of this moment that he says that
we, as would-be knowers, are essentially not working
but are being worked upon. He thereby leaves temporarily out of account the work, which is ours, of trying to
"recollect" (that is, trying to free ourselves from those
particularities within ourselves which prevent us from being open to all the beings as they are); again, he temporarily leaves out of account all of our experimental divisions
and collections, analyses and syntheses, our step-bystep labors of all sorts; again, he temporarily leaves out
of account what follows the moment of noein as the pure
receiving of the intelligible, the pure being-formed by the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
intelligibles we face: in chapter six of book three, immediately following his most sublime discussion of that
"aspect" of nous which is imperishable and divine, we
read of nous as "one-making" (to hen poioun) in the sense
of the compounding of thoughts (sunthesis noematon),
what we sometimes call "predication," in which for the
first time we encounter the true and the false (to alethes
and to pseudos). Thus, the experience of suffering, of being acted upon by the knowable things, is not said to be
characteristic of all moments of our experience as wouldbe knowers. But I think that Aristotle means that the moment in which to know is to suffer is not merely the
highest moment, but also the moment which somehow
empowers and guides all the others: as the telos (fulfillment) of the would-be knower, it is present from the beginning, not merely as norm or proposed objective, but
as effectively moving.
Second, it is worth noting that Aristotle is very much
concerned lest the suffering, the being acted upon, of the
knowing soul be thought to be an indignity. Thus he
painstakingly distinguishes between the being acted upon
in which a contrary is destroyed by a contrary and the
being acted upon which entails the saving (soteria), of that
which is potentially, its coming into its own (eis auto) and
into full possession of what it was meant to be (entelecheia).
Finally, we must be aware that the kind of suffering
involved in coming to know is not exactly "passive"according to Aristotle it is rather a sustaining, a paying
attention, a holding oneself in readiness. Perhaps it might
again be helpful to think of Lear, who only seems to be
contradicting himself when he asks the gods first, not for
patience in general, but for "that patience I need" and
then, moments later, asks to be "touched with a noble
anger." To be acted upon truly by what is present to us
we must be appropriately present to it, and this requires
that we summon up and sustain what is most our own.
(What is most our own is of course a great question.)
We come now to the fifth and final of Aristotle's crucial propositions prior to the radical shift of perspective
in chapter five of book three. Aristotle writes: "The energeia, the being-at-work, the fullness of being, of that
which acts resides in that which is acted upon.'' That is,
although it is the sensible and intelligible being of the
things in the world that works upon our souls, rather than
our souls working upon them, those things themselves
are incomplete until they have acted upon us-the things
of the world receive their fulfillment in our souls. Aristotle
says that the einai, the sheer being, of the things in the
world and the einai of our souls, are different, but the energeia of the things in the world is one and the same with
the energeia of our souls; and that energeia is said by Aristotle to reside in (hyparchein en) our souls. Energeia means
literally being-at-work and can here, I think, be translat-
41
�ed as fulfillment (telos) or fullness of being; for as Aristotle says in chapter eight of book nine of the Metaphysics:
"The name energeia is said with a view to ergon, the work,
and converges toward entelecheia (possessing the end
within)" and "just as teachers think they have accomplished their end when they have displayed their pupil
being-at-work, so it is with nature (phusis)."
Aristotle's final two propositions-things work on our
souls and things have their completion in our soulsmight perhaps be understood in a provisional way by amplifying a phrase Aristotle uses apparently casually. He
speaks of the "producers (in Greek: poets) of actuality
(that is, of their own actuality as well as the actuality of
the knowers)" as being outside of us. It seems plausible
to say that the poet, in achieving the actuality of his poem,
thereby achieves his own actuality. He is not sheer superabundance; he is somehow deficient until his fullness
comes to be in the poem. And yet presumably it makes
more sense to say that he is working on the poem rather
than that the poem is working on him.
VII.
We come now at last to the famous fifth chapter of book
three of De Anima in which Aristotle radically shifts the
ground of his discussion by distinguishing two "aspects"
of nous. This chapter, consisting of nineteen lines, has
been the subject of centuries of interpretation and contention. I can say only a little about it here.
Aristotle distinguishes between "the sort of nous that
is such in respect of becoming all things, and the sort that
is such in respect of making all things, a sort of condition [Greek hexis from echein, the action of holding oneself in a certain way] such as light. For in a certain manner
light too makes things which are potentially colored actually colored [so that they can then, and only then, work
on the soul's power of sensing, of receiving the sensible
form-this must be the point of the comparison]."
It seems-! submit this interpretation with great
tentativeness-that one would now have to say that the
knowable must be actually known in order for it to work
on the human knowing soul (which is, Aristotle says
here, "pathetic"). Thus it is only provisionally true that
the knowable works on that which knows rather than that
which knows working on the knowable-more adequately one would have to say: there is an eternally perfect
active condition in which all of the knowable things are
fully known. The human knowing soul must enter into
that already existing active condition, must somehow allow itself to be invaded by that active condition; that eternally perfect active condition in which the knowable is
known, and not the knowable as such, is what forms and
transforms my soul when I achieve insight into what
something is. Thus in the last analysis the intelligible is
not "poetic" with respect both to things knowable and
42
to our souls.
Of this nous, which is not "at one time thinking, at
another time not thinking,'' it is not said in the present
chapter that it is divine or that it is god. It is however
said to be separate, unaffected, unmixed, fully at work,
deathless and eternal-attributes which Aristotle ascribes
to god in book twelve of the Metaphysics, where it is
declared that the true name of god, of the first mover
upon which as upon their ruling beginning (arche) the
heavens and the whole of nature depend, is noesis noeseos, thinking of thinking (where "thinking means not
"thinking about" but rather something like "being in
contact with," thigganein). In a moment I shall try to suggest something about how we might understand this
strange name of god as we encounter it in the Metaphysics. But first let me suggest a possible reason why god
is not mentioned in chapter five of book three of De Anima, at the peak of Aristotle's analysis of human knowing. In chapter five this second aspect of nous, that which
''makes all things,'' is characterized as choristos, separate.
But six lines later we find the aorist passive participle of
the verb chorizein, and we must translate: "When it has
been separated, it is alone the very thing which it is."
But if there is a time when it has been separated, then
there must have been a time when it was not yet separate,
when it was deeply involved in the life of "the common"
of which Aristotle speaks in book one. Despite the enormous gulf between the perishable and the imperishable,
Aristotle is unwilling to assert unconditionally the "aloofness" of nous within us while we are alive.
VIII.
Let me now try to say something about noesis noeseos,
thinking of thinking (or knowing of knowing) as the name
Aristotle gives to his god. It is clear from Aristotle's
presentation in book twelve of the Metaphysics that the
formulation noesis noeseos is derivative from the formulation hauton noein, "to think itself," and that this formulation is a paradox meant to make us see what is of
decisive importance about Aristotle's god, namely that
he has no self. For by "the self'' we mean, I think, that
which stands behind and disposes of its possible activities, now perhaps placing itself, as we say, "umeservedly" into one activity rather than another, but always with
the possibility of withdrawing itself from the first activity. In the divine no us, which for this very reason is identical with noein, with the activity of knowing, there is no
possibility, no mere capability, no hule-its being is exhausted by its doing; its very being is to be completely
at work. The perfect self-forgetfulness which we seem
occasionally to approximate when we are, as we say,
"completely absorbed" in some matter we are thinking
about, is according to Aristotle an approximation to a kind
of merging with the divine nous which, being perfectly
WINTER 1986
�selfless, need not forget itself.
I have been speaking as if book twelve of the Metaphysics, in which Aristotle presents his theology, his account
of nous or noesis noeseos as the first and highest being on
which depends the being and being in motion of all the
other beings, were nothing but the culmination of the
analysis of human knowing in book three of De Anima.
That of course is not true. But for my purposes the most
useful characterization of the Metaphysics as a whole is
the following.
Aristotle gives two accounts of the proper subject matter of what we call his metaphysics and what he called
"first philosophy (prole philosophia)." These accounts are
importantly different: first philosophy considers being qua
being (to on he on), attempts to answer the question what
does it mean to be; and first philosophy asks about the
highest being, the first being, the being that is most of
all-Aristotle expressly identifies first philosophy and thealogia. What is remarkable is that neither of these questions seems to be simply prior to the other for Aristotle.
It might seem to us that either of two procedures is possible. One could upon consideration decide what it means
to be: for example "to be created" or "to be an object
placed before itself by a subject" or "to be material for
the will to power" or "to be at work in the self-forming
of well-formed things"; having thus decided what it
means to be, one could look around to discover which
particular being fulfills this criterion in the highest degree.
Or else one could upon consideration single out one being as first and highest and then, keeping in view what
is most characteristic of this being, not only rank the other
beings according to the degree in which they possess this
characteristic, but also conclude perfectly generally that
to be means to be, in some degree, in this way, to possess this characteristic.
We know that the two great words in Aristotle's first
philosophy are energeia and noesis noeseos. To be means
to be at work, to be active, and the highest being, the
being that is in the fullest sense, is noesis noeseos. My own
impression is that neither of these great words is prior
to the other in Aristotle's thinking; that, on the contrary,
Aristotle presents us with the most glorious example of
circular reasoning that has ever been. But this much we
can say, I think: for Aristotle thinking is the highest human activity not because it is the purest or the least bodily
or the most needful with a view to guiding conduct or
even-at least not directly-because by virtue of communion with what is imperishable, it itself is least vulnerable
to the wounds of time; but rather precisely because it is
the most active activity. Aristotle, his eyes wide open, sees
activity all around him: acorns coming to be oak trees,
baby squirrels growing to maturity and generating offspring, the stars circling, as it seems, endlessly; he sees
human beings running around busily in their households
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and workshops and cities; but none of these activities is
sufficiently active for him. To think what is-this for
Aristotle is the most active activity. Perhaps as a metaphor
for the relentlessly, resistlessly "energetic" character of
the activity of thinking what is, we can use these wordsHegel, I think, would approve-from the Antigone in
which the chorus speaks of the awesome strangeness of
man: "And she, the greatest of gods, the earth, ageless
she is and unwearied-he wears her away as the ploughs
go up and down from year to year and his mules turn
up the soil." The relation between thinking and Being
is like that.
IX.
Let me now, at the end of these reflections, return to
the question which, I said, has been somehow guiding
them. I said that, following a clue offered by what seemed
to me to be a connection between two statements by Socrates at the heart of the Republic, my inquiry into the
question concerning the knowing soul and its relation to
the being of things in the world, was for the sake of understanding whether to be could mean to be worthy of
praise. I have of course managed to show little or, more
likely, nothing, about the praiseworthy character of the
being of things in the world. But I think I have learned
something about the relation of knowing and praising:
only a genuine self-and therefore neither divine nous nor
we ourselves insofar as we lose ourselves in merging with
the divine nous-is capable of praising, of taking a position with regard to what faces it, of affirming and praising, and this for the reason that affirmation and praise
are meaningful only when they are chosen by a being for
whom refusal and rejection are also possible.
That is why I cannot agree with what I understand
Aristotle to be saying in his discussion of human happiness in book ten of the Ethics. He writes: "It would seem
that each of us is his nous, since indeed it is the sovereign and better part. Therefore it would be absurd if
someone would choose not the life of himself [hautou,
now identified with nous], but rather of someone else."
Because I think with Augustine that the greatest delight
for human beings is found in affirming and praising, and
that delight is the sign of fullness of being, I think it is
better to say, not that nous is the highest in man, or is
man most of all, but rather that the will is, with the understanding that the will's most perfect action-which is
a free action-is to love. In the words of John Duns Scotus, the thirteenth century Franciscan thinker who
learned from Augustine as well as from Aristotle: Amo:
Vola ut sis-"I love you: I will that you be." This is,
perhaps, what the Bible means when it tells us that we
are created in the image of a Creator God; not only are
we able to know, in our way, the beings of the world,
but we are also able-though not at all constrained-to
say yes to them, to affirm them and love them.
43
�Reflections on Beginning Ptolemy
I.
. In the first paragraph of the Almagest Ptolemy emphaSIZes that, in contradistinction to practical science, theoretical science is essentially progressive: there is no need
for a continual return to the beginnings; the characteristic movement of theoretical sciences is expansion outward
to encompass, via deduction from the original
hypotheses, more and more phenomena. This appears
to be a wholly un-Platon.ic procedure. For Plato, who goes
so far as to call arithmetic "the study of the one" (which
is, strictly speaking, prior to all arithmoi), the beginnings
are the object of reflection; they are never possessed securely, never simply at our disposal as knowers; we must
return to them again and again, in order that the radiance of their evidence may grow for us and in us; the
mere solidity of any edifice, any "system," which may
be constructed upon them, proves nothing, and above
all does not still the eros of the knowing soul, which longs,
not to be filled up with one thing after another, but rather
to know, and thereby somehow to dwell with, those beings which truly are and which as such illuminate in
shining brightness, the other beings which somehow ~re.
(According to the Phaedrus the true beings, the eide, are
essentially beautiful, and the essence of beauty is to be
ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most. This notion
seems very different from, and even in conflict with the
notion also found in Plato of the eide as measures, as ~tan
dards in accordance with which we determine in what
m:asure that which offers itself to us by appearing to us
w1ll be allowed to count as true being. A measure must,
by definition, be confined within its own confines, while
the beautiful "shines forth.")
. Specifically, the beginning from which Ptolemy contmuously advances, never to return, is the postulate that
the movement of the heavenly bodies must be account''Reflections on Beginning Ptolemy'' was probably written for
his freshman math class in his first year at the col1ege.
44
ed for strictly in terms of regular circular motion. Ptolemy does not elaborate the theological and physical
grounds for this postulate. He seems to suppose that this
has been done adequately by Aristotle, the metaphysician, and that he himself, as a mathematician, need assume no original responsibility in the matter. For Aristotle
the superiority of circular motion to rectilinear motion is
a reflection of the superiority of energeia to kinesis, of activity which is self-contained, seeking nothing outside
of Itself, to activity which seeks what it does not yet have
(1t 1s noteworthy, however, that Aristotle in De Anima
Book I, rejects Plato's or Timaeus' notion that circularit;
IS an appropriate image of thinking-Aristotle says that
both prac!Jcal and speculative thinking move toward an
end, which they reach). For Aristotle the mode of being
of God, on which the mode of being of the heavens and
the wh~le of the kosmos depends, is sheer energeia; nous
IS md1stinguishable from noein; God is radically self-less,
if by the self we mean that which stands behind its activities and disposes of them, placing itself, perhaps, "unreservedly" in a given activity, but always capable of
withdrawing itself, wholly or in part, from that activity.
Such a mode of being, in its radical self-lessness, is very
diff1cult to understand, and there is nothing in the whole
of Aristotle's writings more disconcerting than the ninth
chapter of the twelfth (theological) book of the Metaphysics
wh1ch begms, "The things concerning nous (God) contam certain perplexities,'' and concludes forty lines later
with all important perplexities apparently cleared up.
Ptolemy, many case, who agrees with Aristotle that God
is sheer energeia and must be imagined "high above somewhere near the loftiest things in the universe," must have
been satisfied .
From the foregoing it is possible to characterize Ptolemy's astronomy in two ways: first, astronomy is not autonomous, but rather moral and theological
considerations are relevant, though one hopes not tyrannically so, in determining its own first principles; but second, the astronomer himself, though submitting to
WINTER 1986
�moral and theological considerations, does not undertake
any original responsibility for these-hence the absence
of any need for returning to the beginnings in an attempt
to deepen, on the basis of new insight into the celestial
manifestations of the divine, one's understanding of the
mode of being of the God so manifested.
If Aristotelian theological considerations form the proximate foundation for Ptolemy's astronomy, however, Plato's Timaeus forms the broadest and deepest foundation.
The claim of the Timaeus seems to be that the question
regarding the constitution of the physical world must be
raised within a perspective which is not at all indifferent
to, but rather urgently concerned with, the distinctioneven the contest-between human nobility and human
baseness. The physical kosmos, whatever else may be true
of it, is a place within which acts of moral heroism
(Athens of old vs. Atlantis) occur and have very great evidence, not as something else-something lower-in disguise, but as themselves; it is also a kosmos in which men
attempt to understand, and do in fact succeed in understanding some few things, in such a way that one long
conversation about important matters can make men
eager for another long conversation the very next day.
The question therefore arises, whether human excellence,
moral and intellectual, are at home in the physical kosmos, are not merely occasionally possible, in spite of
everything, but are somehow supported by that kosmos,
so that there is some sort of kinship between the human
and the non-human, such a kinship as elevates the human rather than reducing it-all of this independently,
it would seem, of any question of particular providence,
such as the Biblical tradition might affirm. That such a
kinship indeed obtains seems to be what is meant by calling the visible kosmos a living (and knowing) being: the
whole is living by virtue of certain of its parts, which are,
however, absolutely essential parts, in no way mere accretions which might just as well not have been; that is, part
of the being of the lifeless is to form the setting for life
(and ultimately for knowing); if life were not, it itself
would have intrinsically a different meaning. In a word
(and the distinction between logos and mythos is not so
clear in the clialogue as appears at first glance: within
thirty lines of the first mention of eikos mythos, eikos logos
occurs), the kosmos is good because it was made by a good
and nonenvious God to be as much like Himself as possible. There are indeed limits to that possibility: there is
the realm of necessity, of the errant cause, never wholly
conquered by ordering Nous. Thus at the beginning of
Timaeus' second account, it is well to invoke, not the gods
in general as at the beginning of the first account, but
"God the Savior," as thought descends into that from
which it might well need to be saved.
II.
What is the meaning of anomaly or irregularity in the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
appearances which the astronomer beholds? Should it be
accounted for, as the Republic and Timaeus seem to suggest, with reference to the imperfectness of the material
in which the "original" is "imaged" or should it be accounted for by the addition of special mathematical
hypothesis (e.g. epicycles upon deferents with definite
ratios between their radii) to the primary mathematical
hypothesis (e.g. regular circular motion of the same and
the other)? If we follow what Plato seems to say in this
matter instead of what Ptolemy does, isn't astronomy
redundant with respect to geometry-that is, if we look
at imperfect circles in the heavens only to "see through"
them to the perfect originals, why not just look in the first
place at the perfect originals, which at least for Plato are
independently available (unless, to anticipate, the point
were precisely to recognize that we must "see through"
mere appearances in order to reach those beings with
which, as knowers, we truly belong)? But Plato presumably would have approved of some version of what Ptolemy does, if that tradition is accurate according to which
Plato "sets the mathematician the problem of ... saving
the appearances," that is, not saying right off "what can
one expect of mere appearances" so that one is well advised to "let the things in the heavens go." Still, the
meaning of Timaeus 37B and following seems to be that
the knowing soul has access to the sensible world, the
world of appearances, through the otherness within itself and to the thinkable world through the sameness within itself (though the Sophist surely maintains that
otherness pervades the eidetic realm as well; but this
seems to be from a quite different perspective). If this is
so, then u anomalies" or "irregularities" in the sensible
world would be necessary in the sense that mind would
not experience the sensible world as other-hence would
not rightly know itself-if the sensible world were adequate to logos.
Perhaps from this point of view the introduction of
specific mathematical hypotheses to account for apparent
anomalies is a way in which mind, having recognized
otherness, overcomes it and comes home, so to speak.
That is, "to let the heavenly things go" as imperfect
imitations-due to the recalcitrance of their material-of
perfect originals is to be radically homeless in this world,
the world overarched by the visible heavens; to show that
"behind" even these apparent anomalies there might be
thought to be rationality (that which is adequate to logos)
would be a sort of conquest rather than dismissal of what
seemed alien to mind. Thus, there is rationality "above"
(in the realm of the "originals"); there might be thought
to be rationality "behind," whereby in "thought to be"
one emphasizes "thought" -one could almost say
"thought into being" or "brought into being through
thought," so as to accomplish a less remote sort of transcendence, whether playfully or desperately one hardly
knows.
45
�Negation, Willing,
and the Places of the Soul
This lecture has three parts. In the first part I shall
sketch Hegel's presentation of the primacy of the subject in modern metaphysics and of negativity as the meaning of subjectivity. In the second part I shall sketch
Heidegger' s attempt to expose willing as the core of thinking not only in the thought of Nietzsche but already in
that of Descartes and even in that of Plato. In the third
part I shall try to bring out some suggestions contained
in Plato's Timaeus, not indeed about the subject or the
self, but about what human soul might be. I hope that
the coherence of the three parts will emerge in the course
of the lecture.
I.
In the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel
writes: "According to my view, which must justify itself
by the presentation of the system, everything depends
on this, that we comprehend and express the true not
only as substance but just as much as subject." We must
try to understand this statement, which is central in
Hegel's thinlcing. But two preliminary considerations may
help us orient ourselves toward that thinking.
First, one of the most important words in the language
of Hegel's thinking is "concrete." By it he means almost
the opposite of what we might suppose. We are in the
habit of saying, for example, that to experience a tree concretely we must walk into the middle of a field and stand
face to face with the tree; if we read a book about trees,
we are encountering the tree only abstractly. For Hegel
"Negation, Willing, and the Places of the Soul" was delivered
as a formal lecture at St. john' s College, Santa Fe in April, 1981.
It was later delivered as a summer lecture in Annapolis.
46
the situation is reversed: to read a book about a tree is
to experience the tree as concretely as may be. The reason for the reversal is this. To experience a tree concretely is to experience it in its concrescence, its having grown
together with the other things on which it depends and
with which it deeply belongs: air, water, soil, sunshine,
but also human thinking. The tree and human thinking
about the tree have already grown together by the time
any of us appears on the scene. Moreover, this concrescence, this having grown together, belongs to the being
of the tree as well as to the being of human thinkingthis is one of Hegel's great thoughts, which he learned
from Aristotle. Thus in reading a book about trees I am
facing the tree and human thinking about the tree as having grown together; I am thinking about the tree concretely, as is not possible for me as I stand in a field facing
the tree in what now appears as its nakedness.
Hegel took his experience of reading books very seriously. In that experience he felt himself to be most deeply in touch with the world in the fullness of its being.
The books he took most seriously-this brings us to the
second preliminary consideration-were those of Aristotle. In two matters of utmost importance he simply follows Aristotle. At the end of his Encylopedia, presenting
the all-encompassing circular education, Hegel says that
Aristotle alone named God truly: noesis noi!seos, thinking
of thinking. That means for Hegel: thinking is the most
active activity, the most energetic energy, both as worldbuilding (thinking produces the Roman world, thinking
produces the Aeneid) and as self-contained: thinking is
of all activities the one in which sheer aliveness is most
concentrated. Second, Hegel never wavers in following
Aristotle's view that in the most important motions the
end is effectively present in the beginning, as the oak tree
WINTER 1986
�is at work in the acorn.
Hegel however disagrees with Aristotle in two points
that are almost as decisive. He thinks Aristotle is wrong
in supposing that the part of the soul that thinks is
separate from the part that loves, hates and remembers.
From Hegel's point of view Aristotelian nous-the capacity to receive the intelligible-is merely inhuman rather
that authentically divine. Hegel has learned from the
Christian doctrine of the incarnation and passion of God
Himself that the relation of human and divine can be truly
understood only under the symbol of the crucifixion: thus
we read on the final page of the Phenomenology that absolute knowing is accomplished through the "recollection and Golgotha of Absolute Spirit." Second, and
connected with this, Hegel thinks the tragic poets were
right as against Aristotle: the truth about the divine is revealed in the fate of human beings within human communities rather than in the coming to be and passing away
of things without special reference to human communities.
Let us return to Hegel's assertion that what is crucial
is to understand the true not only as substance but just
as much as subject. It is a commonplace to say that since
Descartes the subject, the ''I think,'' has been the beginning for metaphysics and that in Kant's "Copernican
Revolution" human subjectivity wins its decisive victory.
But the Cartesian and Kantian positions, though important for Hegel, are not sufficient. For in them the so-called
subject, which has indeed been accorded primacy, is still
being understood fundamentally as a substance: Descartes speaks of a "thinking substance" and Kant of a
"transcendental I," which is always one and the same,
which was never young, which does not tremble in the
face of death.
Against these insufficiently radical attempts to establish the primacy of the subject, Hegel insists that subjectivity is a movement, the movement of self-positing, of
throwing itself under (sub-jacere) a world of things so as
to become what it is, rather than a constant standing under or lying under (substance, hupokeimenon).
To secure the being of the subject against being construed on the model of substance, Hegel speaks of subjectivity as negativity. Being as a whole is revealed in and
through the being that can think and say "no" and,
moreover, can carry this "no" out in practice. In Hegel's
· discussion the work of negativity is unfolded in three
stages.
First, the process of lifting off" chair" from "this chair
here" (which process since Aristotle-and on the basis
of a misunderstanding of him-has been called "abstraction," that is aphairesis, that is "lifting off") is understood
by Hegel in a dramatic and violent way. To lift off "chair"
from "this chair here" is to destroy uthis hereness," to
do away with "immediate existence," the being here or
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
there of particular beings as they are given to us. It is,
by the power of our thinlcing, to overcome mere giveness.
Second, the very discursiveness of human thinking, the
motion of thought from part to part, is understood by
Hegel as exhibiting what he calls "the tremendous power of the negative." That we think and speak at all means, according to Hegel, not only that we transform "this
chair here'' into ''chair'' but also that we separate ''chair''
from all other things in the world; in general, in our thinking and speaking we separate parts from the concrete
wholes to which they belong and which alone are actual. In Hegel's language, the discursiveness of human understanding introduces "the unactual" -but this
introduction of the unactual is the very action which
makes change possible by making room for change: change
can only mean re-arrangement of parts; to say "no" to
the whole does not generate progress but rather annihilation in the form of suicide or merely theoretical nihilism.
Finally, the power of human thinking to destroy immediate existence in the form of the this-hereness" in
which things are given to us, and to tear particular things
out of the contexts in which we encounter them, is seen
in its full prodigiousness only when we follow Hegel in
supposing that the self is passionately disposed to say
no to what it primarily faces-that it is radically restless
and dissatisfied-and this because at bottom it is passionately disposed to say no to itself: it is in every respect
"unhappy consciousness," the telling name given by
Hegel to the hero of his greatest book. The difference, according to Hegel in the "Introduction" to the Phenomenology, between natural things and human existence is
that "consciousness destroys every form of limited satisfaction for itself" so that serious education for human beings is a "way of despair," that is, as the German word
Verzweiflung suggests, a way of being torn in two as a violent conversation takes place within each of us between
"natural conciousness" and "real knowledge." Or, as
we may say, the ultimate meaning of Hegel's claim that
the subject belongs within the true just as deeply as do
the beings which the subject faces, and that the core of
subjectivity is negativity, is that thinking is willing and
that willing properly issues, not in praise and love-"!
love you: I will that you be" as the Franciscan thinker
Duns Scotus has it-but rather in revolution.
Here, however, Hegel's thinking takes a somewhat unexpected turn. For, in his understanding, revolution is
for the sake of the fullness of being. What I have called
the fullness of being, Hegel designates as "living substance" in contrast to substance thought of as constituted
by the beings in the world opposed to subject. From the
point of view of "living substance," Hegel says: "What
seems to happen outside it, as an activity directed against
it, is its own doing; and thus the substance shows that
it is essentially subject. When it has shown this complete11
47
�ly, the spirit has made its existence equal to its essence"
and, we may add, history has come to its proper end.
Or, as Hegel said earlier, in and through the discursiveness of human thinking, understood as "the tremendous
power of the negative," "the concrete separates itself and
makes itself unactual," so that it can move itself. There
is no more fundamental thought in Hegel than that the
oak tree is effectively present in the acorn. In this final
point, of course, Hegel is by no means a representative
modern thinker. For our purposes let us return to the assertion that the deepest posture of human beings toward
the world in which they primarily find themselves is
negative, that thinking is willing and that willing issues
not in affirmation or praise, but in destruction. Heidegger can help us with this.
II.
I shall draw primarily on a long essay called
"Nietzsche's Word 'God is dead'" in which Heidegger
in a set of wide-ranging reflections interprets section 125
of Nietzsche's Gay Science. In that section, entitled "The
Madman," a madman carrying a lantern in the bright
morning hours runs into the market place to announce
that God is dead and, just as astounding, that we are his
murderers, you and I. It is this second assertion which
Heidegger is especially concerned to understand. As his
interpretation develops, the murdering of God is understood as the murdering of the meaningfulness of all that
is.
In other words, guided by Nietzsche but going beyond
his analysis, Heidegger tries to understand nihilism, "that
uncanniest of guests that stands at our door." According to Nietzsche, nihilism means that "the highest values
hitherto are devaluing themselves," so that what is required is a "revaluation of all values," as the subtitle of
Nietzsche's unfinished masterwork, The Will to Power, has
it. But Heidegger is led to wonder about the very language of "value" which abounds in Nietzsche's writings:
valuing, devaluing, creating new values. Perhaps nihilism
means not that the highest values devalue themselves but
rather that what is, what offers itself to us by appearing
to us, should be evaluated at all, should be driven into
some sort of order by reference to one extrinsic standard
or other. The central attempt of Heidegger' s essay is to
explore whether nihilism can be understood in this second sense and, if so, where its origins are to be found.
We cannot follow Heidegger's discussion in all its richness and complexity. Its decisive steps are: first, to show
the dependence of Nietzsche's understanding of value
on his understanding of will, and second, to point to the
presence of a willful element in thinking as understood
by Descartes and even by Plato. As he writes sweepingly in another place: "Thinking, understood in the traditional way, is a kind of willing."
48
According to Heidegger, the most important thought
in the final phase of Nietzsche's philosophizing is "will
to power." Will to power is said by Nietzsche to be "the
innermost essence of Being." But the phrase "will to
power" is likely to mislead us, as Heidegger points out,
since according to Nietzsche's understanding willing as
such generates power: the will to humility is just as
powerful, just as power-generating, as the will to domination over others. Therefore he proposes that we understand will to power as will to will; that is, the
''innermost essence of Being'' is to be understood as the
will willing itself, the willing of willing.
Heidegger goes on to claim that "Modern metaphysics, as the metaphysics of subjectness, thinks the Being
of what is in the sense of will." He understands
Nietzsche's great thought as the culmination of modern
metaphysics, completing the elevation of willing to unchallenged supremacy within the relation of human being to being as a whole, so that in our time "the earth
itself can show itself only as the object of assault, an assault that, in human willing, establishes itself as total objectification."
Heidegger identifies the grounding principle of
Nietzsche's metaphysics, the metaphysics of the will to
power, and notices that it is a value-principle: "Art is
worth more than truth." He wonders about evaluative
thinking altogether, and this leads him back to a consideration of Descartes, Plato and the pre-Socratic thinkers.
I shall present a sketch of the sketch he gives.
In Descartes' thought, that which constantly underlies
everything that is, (the hypokeimenon in Aristotle's language) is the cogito, the "I think" of the fundamental
proposition "I think, therefore I am." But the Cartesian
cogito means co-agito; to cogitate means to co-agitate; ''I
think" means "I drive together into the unity of a system." Cartesian thinking, according to Heidegger, is fundamentally willful, doing violence to beings rather than
letting them be what they are. Nothing is more characteristic of Heidegger' s own late writing than the passionate insistence on the will-not-to-will, which is meant to
prepare the way for the tranquility of "letting-be," that
is, of thinking that lets things be what they are.
Heidegger perceives the same element of willfulness,
which refuses to let beings be what they are, in the
thought of Plato, though in a less blatant form. For there
the eidi!, the non-appearing beings of thought, are ultimately understood as measures, in relation to which everything that offers itself to us by appearing to us must
inevitably fail to measure up, and hence is said to be only
in a certain measure. The positing of the idea of the Good
is murderous of Being, that is, destroys the meaningfulness of what appears. Meaningfulness is now conferred only by the willfully established frame within
which what appears is allowed to appear. Heidegger
WINTER 1986
�writes in another place: "From the standpoint of space,
the difference is this: appearing in the first and authentic sense of bringing-itself-to-stand in togetherness involves space, which it first conquers; as it stands there,
it creates space for itself; it produces space and everything
pertaining to it; it is not something copied. Appearing
in the second sense (i.e., Platonically understood)
emerges from an already finished space; it is situated in
the rigid measures of this space, and we see it by looking toward it. The vision makes the thing. Now the vision becomes decisive, instead of the thing itself.
Appearing in the first sense opens up space. Appearing
in the (Platonic) sense merely circumscribes and measures the space that has already been opened."
Thus in order to encounter a kind of thinking that does
not represent to itself what it thinks about but rather allows it to be present in its own way, that places nothing
before itself (Kant's characteristic word vorstellen, usually translated "represent" means literally "to place before") but rather heeds what comes before it, we must
turn to the pre-Socratic thinkers. And this Heidegger has
done repeatedly, with the greatest seriousness and with
the greatest and most imaginative sympathy. But even
in Heracleitus and Parmenides, Heidegger concludes,
"Being is not thought as Being." In these thinkers there
is indeed no distortion through willfulness, but there is
a kind of obliviousness of the mystery of Being. What is
lacking even in Heracleitus and Parmenides is insight into
the tragic character of the thinker's relation to Being, the
insight that Being must be thought historically with a vision to its withholding itself from man, withdrawing from
man variously in various epochs, thereby engendering
a variety of tragedies of thought. Heidegger, who seems
never to have given thought to tragedies of action such
as Sophocles and Shakespeare present, regards the history of metaphysics not skeptically or negatively but tragically as a sequence of shatterings against fatefully
appointed limits of which the configuration changes from
epoch to epoch, but never the immensity. Thus his final
word on the "willfulness" that characterizes the traditional understanding of thinking is this: "The false opinion easily arises that the human will is the origin of the
will to will. In fact, on the contrary, man is being willed
by the will to will without even experiencing the essence
of this willing."
III.
We began by considering a little the meaning of Hegel's
claim that to comprehend the true we must begin with
subjectivity of the subject and above all must understand
subjectivity as negativity. With the help of Heidegger's
reflections on the role of willing within metaphysical
speculation since Descartes, we tried to see Heger s view
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not merely as one of several important alternatives but
rather as a radicalization and unsurpassably acute expression of a tendency that has been powerful for centuries.
We have also been stirred-! at least have been
stirred-by two further claims of Heidegger: first, that the
traditional understanding of thinking, according to which
thinking is kind of willing, is so murderously destructive
of meaningfulness in our experience of the world that the
only hope for us is to attempt to renounce willing, to will
not to will, and then wait to see if we can learn to let
things be as they are; second, that this tradition in which
thinking is at bottom a kind of willing originates with
Plato.
Although these matters are difficult to judge, I believe
Heidegger may be right in his first claim. I doubt that his
second claim is true. But I think it might be worthwhile
for us now to pay some attention to Plato's way of speaking about the human soul. With this in view, I propose
that we look at the Timaeus. There are several reasons for
this choice. One is that while we are reading and talking
about the Timaeus, it is almost impossible for us to forget
that playfulness has a proper place in discussions of the
most important matters. I fear that our consideration of
Hegel and Heidegger may have induced us to forget this.
The Timaeus seems to me to be, in the guise of presentation of the genesis of the visible and touchable world,
above all an invitation to think about the human soul in
certain ways. This hypothesis is at least plausible: after
all, the "feast of words" offered to Socrates as recompense for his own gift of the day before-something like
the conversation recounted in the Republic-is meant to
delight Socrates; and Socrates seems to take delight most
of all in words about the human soul.
I shall consider certain statements about the soul contained in Timaeus' mythical account of how soul was
fashioned and apportioned, as well as what seems to be
implied about the soul in Timaeus' account of "the receptacle." But first we must notice a remarkable feature of
this dialogue altogether, namely its undercutting of oppositions that seem familiar and well-established in other
dialogues. Two examples seem especially important. The
most famous phrase from the Timaeus is eikos muthos, likely story. But 27 lines after the first occurrence of this
phrase, the very same set of words is referred to as eikos
logos. The difference between muthos and logos, so emphatically insisted upon in other dialogues, seems far
from clear-cut in the Timaeus. We shall have to try to understand why this is.
Again, the opposition at the heart of the Meno, the opposition between memory-understood as merely idiosyncratic and closely associated with Meno' s incapacity
to learn-and recollection as the soul's descent into itself
beyond memory, seems in the Timaeus to be somehow
undercut as we hear of Critias' attempt to reach back at
49
�once into himself and beyond himself in order to recover
an account he heard when young from his old grandfather who heard it from his father who heard it from Solon who heard it from an Egyptian priest who relied upon
written records extending back 8000 years-that is, to
within a thousand years of the time of the event to be
recovered.
Let us turn now to the introduction of soul within
Timaeus' account of the framing of the world in which
we find ourselves. The non-envious demiurge, we are
told, discovered upon consideration that among visible
things none Jacking intellect is more beautiful than what
has intellect, comparing wholes with wholes. But it was
not possible to place intellect directly into body. Rather,
it was necessary to place intellect in soul and soul in body.
Soul appears first within this account as a bonding thing,
necessary for the holding together of intellect and body.
Even more: Timaeus' account seems to imply that only
mortal soul can serve this function. For soon we encounter this powerful conjunction: "in order that there might
be mortal things and the whole might be truly a whole."
The wholeness, the oneness of the world is an acute
problem in the Timaeus as it is not in the great central images of the Republic. The divided line, though it has sections, has no gaps; it is one continuous line. Similarly the
path leading out of the cave into the sunlight is one path.
But in the Timaeus we are presented emphatically with
the image of a demiurge who looks up there to see the
changeless originals in the image of which he fashions
the material down here. We imagine him, as we imagine
any craftsman, looking repeatedly back and forth between
the model and the copy which is gradually taking shape.
As his gaze moves between model and copy, it encounters vacancy. Are there two widely separated worlds, one
unchanging and invisible, the other changing and visible, or are they somehow one? They are somehow one,
Timaeus' account implies, only because there are mortals, beings who live but do not live forever, who, themselves perishable, long for the imperishable, so that their
very longing holds the two worlds together bonds them
into one world. We shall return to this theme.
Various remarkable things are said by Timaeus about
the fashioning and distribution of soul. Let us consider
three which seem at first sight very strange and even outrageous: the world is an animal, the courses of the planets
are made of soul, and the soul itself is made of music.
I think that these propositions appear outrageous only
on the basis of essentially Hegelian premisses, namely
that human being have in the beginning a radically negative relation to the world, that there is no primary experience of feeling at home in the world, but rather one
experiences the urgent need to make oneself at home, by
violent deeds of mind and hand, in a world that is primarily alien. For, apart from these premisses, what is more
50
natural than to regard the world around us as composed
above all of what is alive and what sustains life, so that
the cosmos would most like to be called to zoon, the living being? And can it really be that what is alive is alien
to us? Descartes could suppose that dogs and horses, unlike human beings, are mere machines. But no one, I
think, who has looked into the eyes of an injured dog
he was trying to help, could take this supposition seriously: in such a gaze soul knows that it is indeed encountering soul.
Again, the soul does not seem to find the motion of
the heavenly lights alien: we wish upon stars, wonder
at times at their special brilliance, which we delight in
pointing out to each other; and investigating their complex regularities involves deep satisfaction. So little do
we find the motion of those lights alien that it makes
sense, to me at least, to say that their courses are made
of soul. I have always imagined that such men as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe and Kepler must have had deeply healthy souls and that Ptolemy was speaking from
authentic experience when he said that the benefit of his
astro-nomical studies was to train the imagination how
"not to forget in whatever things we happen upon the
consideration of their beautiful and well-ordered disposition."
I think that there are elements of our experience which
Hegel explains better than anyone else; but I do not think
that subjectivity understood as negativity and Abraham
understood as the archetypal unhappy consciousness
which refuses to be at home in the world are models that
illuminate our experience of living under the starry skies
and alongside all manner of living things.
Finally, if Timaeus' account makes any sense at all, that
is, if soul is what holds together intellect and body, and
thereby holds together that which is unchangeable and
that which is forever changing, then it makes sense to
say that if soul is made of anything, it is made of music.
For in music we face the mystery of the inseparable unity of number ratio (logos), than which nothing pleases intellect more, and sensibility of such depth that it seems
that without music we could hardly know who we are
as feeling beings existing in time. In the beginning of
Timaeus' account of the demiurge' s introduction of
intellect-in-soul into body, we hear not that the motions
of the visible world had been disorderly in general, but
rather that they had been "out of tune" (plemmelos).
That the soul is made of music seems to imply that our
relation to logoi, accounts of all kinds, is inseparable from
such things as Critias' memory of his grandfather's eagerness in telling and his own delight in hearing the account
of Athens of old, the telling itself having taken place during a religious festival in honor of Dionysus in which children born during the year were admitted into the
companionship of the city. The question is whether there
WINTER 1986
�is anything in our experience more trustworthy than such
tales, tales inseparable from the circumstances of the telling of them. I think the dialogue suggests that there may
be nothing more trustworthy. We remember how the
Timaeus begins: "One, two, three-but where is the
fourth?" It is hard not to think, among other things, of
the fourth-that is the uppermost-section of the divided line. But if the fourth section is missing, the section
in which the soul exhibits its power of making its way
"without images by the forms (eide) themselves through
themselves," then the remaining three powers of the soul
must somehow comprehend the living whole which in
the Timaeus the soul faces. But that means that pistis, trust,
has become the in-between pqwer, the power of the soul
that sustains the movement from consideration of image
to consideration of original and back again. The most
beautiful example I know of the high dignity of the action of trusting within what seems a purely theoretical
consideration occurs near the end of the Sophist. The
stranger asks Theatetus whether he like almost everyone
else supposes that the world around us was thrown up
by chance, or whether he supposes that some sort of
provident care was involved. Theatetus, who is about 18
years old, says that he thinks about that question all the
time-what a wonderful young man! I cannot help
interjecting-but that, probably because he is young, he
at one time holds the one view, at another time the other.
But now, Theatetus continues, as I look upon your face
and know that you think there has been provident care
involved, I think that too. The stranger replies that he
suspects that, being the young man he is, Theatetus will
always somehow incline to that view. There is no hint
of apology or embarrassment in this exchange. I think
that the main purpose of the Timaeus is to speak of soul
in such a way that we can see why there should be no apology or embarrassment.
In following Timaeus' account of the fashioning and
distribution of soul, we have perhaps learned something
about the place-or better, the places-of soul in the world
that surrounds us. Could it make sense also to speak of
the places within the soul, of shallower or deeper places
within the soul from which our words variously come,
of places in our hearts into which we receive certain persons and certain things? I think that Timaeus' discussion
of the "receptacle" (hypodoche) is an attempt to address
this question. That discussion is after all an attempt to
speak of a "within which/~ a "place," having" depth,"
prior to the existence of body, namely at a (mythically conceived) time prior to the introduction of regular plane surfaces arranged in three dimensions. At this time we
encounter nothing of body except certain ''powers'' and
"traces" (dunameis and ichne).
Thus the being of the receptacle is said by Timaeus to
be reachable only with difficulty by a kind of "bastard
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
reasoning" with the help of "nonsensing" (the word
anaisthesia used strangely). I do not know exactly what
these strange phrases mean, but it seems clear that
Timaeus does not wish his speaking about the receptacle to be understood as merely metaphorical, that is, as
involving the mere transfer to another domain of words
belonging primarily and most properly to the domain of
body.
Again, there are moments during Timaeus' account
when it is difficult not to understand the receptacle as
"intellectual soul" pure and simple. Titis is especially true
if one has read the third book of Aristotle's treatise on
the soul. That which is to receive all incoming forms
without deforming them must itself be perfectly
formless-this language is used by Timaeus of the receptacle and by Aristotle of the soul's power of knowing.
The use by both of the uncommon word para-phainein,
to appear alongside, makes the coincidence all the more
striking.
Finally, Timaeus passes almost insensibly from speaking of the· receptacle as chora, place or room, which
receives all bodies (somata), to speaking of it as the genos
of place-roughly, the class of place-which receives not
things but classes of things. It looks very much as if an
attempt, perhaps bound not to succeed entirely, is being
made to speak of a way of being that underlies the being
of body and the being of soul. We must try to see how
far we can discern the results of this attempt.
First, however, we must backtrack and notice two
things about the introduction of the receptacle into
Timaeus' account. The first is rather obvious. The first
part of Timaeus' account had dealt chiefly with the things
fashioned through intellect-through nous. Now the role
of necessity must be taken into account, since the visible
whole has come into being. through the persuasion of
necessity by intellect, so that "for the most part" the
things coming into being might be led toward what is
best. Necessity, ananke, is said to have the form of the
~~errant cause," and as Timaeus' thlnking and ours
descend into its realm, the realm of mere ''powers'' and
"traces," we must invoke, not merely the gods in general
as at the beginning of the first account, but-the words
are said solemnly, I think-God the Savior (theos soter).
It is in connection with the confrontation of the possibility of chaos that the receptacle is introduced as a third
thing in addition to the model and its copy.
But there is also a second point to be noticed about
Timaeus' second beginning. We now distinguish in our
thinking among that which comes to be, that within
which it comes to be, and the source from which what
comes to be is born, springs forth. "Is born, springs
forth" is my translation of phuetai. The verb phuein, from
which is formed the noun phusis, usually translated "nature," means "to beget" or "to send forth shoots." In
51
�the passive it means "to be born" and "to grow." With
the use of this word we are emphatically in the realm of
what is alive as, we now realize, was not quite the case
in the first account. For then the two words repeatedly
used to characterize the activity of the demiurge were plattein, to fashion by molding (the source of our word "plastic", and sunhistemi, to bring to stand together. We were
at bottom still in the realm of statue-making. And surely
we do not forget that the whole "feast of words" to be
presented to Socrates was animated by Socrates' dissatisfaction with mere statues-he had wanted to see something alive. The dialogue seems to suggest that if we are
to see something truly alive, the form of the errant cause
must somehow be taken into account and God the Savior
invoked.
Let us return to the receptacle itself. How are we to understand its receiving function? It is said to be a place (topas) to provide room (chora). These are rather indefinite
and neutral words. But the receptacle is also said to provide hedra for all things that have birth. Hedra can be understood neutrally as "place," but its richest as well as
its quite frequent meaning is "shrine" or "temple." The
52
place provided by the receptacle seems to be a very special one. Above all, "receptacle" does not seem to be an
adequate translation for hypodoche, a noun formed from
the verb hypodechomai. The primary meaning of this verb
is ''to welcome.'' It is. the word that is used, for example, in book 14 of the Odyssey when the disguised Odysseus is said to delight in his heart because the swineherd
Eumaeus "knew how to give welcome."
Could this strangest of dialogues be suggesting that our
world is the sort of "within which" that gives welcome
to what is born into it; and that there are, as well, souls
in the world which are able to give still more intimate welcome to what springs forth? We do after all say such
things as: "she has a place in her heart for him." The
muthos or logos presented by Timaeus seems to me to
come closer than anything else in the Platonic dialogues
to suggesting that the place we have in our hearts for persons and things is the very best place to be, better even
than the hyperouranios tapas, the super-heavenly place,
spoken of in the Phaedrus as the abode of the changeless
originals which truly are. One wonders what the listening Socrates thinks about this suggestion.
WINTER 1986
�About Dante's Purgatory
(To the memory of my mother, Isabel Geddes O'Grady)
I would like to present some quite fragmentary
thoughts about Dante's Purgatory and about what the
purgation of the human spirit might mean, why human
beings might hope for it and why they might fear it. I
am very eager to know whether these thoughts make
sense to you.
I
Let me begin with a passage from Augustine's Confessions, occurring just before he recounts the moment in
the garden when he hears a voice "as of a child" inviting him to "take up and read' a passage from St. Paul
that seems addressed specially to him. He reads and "as
if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the
dark shadows of doubt fled away". But this is how Augustine describes his condition before receiving and
responding to the invitation:
What was there that I did not say against myself? With what
scourges of self-condemnation did I not lash my soul, so that
it would follow me as I strove to follow you? [All of these
words are spoken of course to God.] Yet it drew back; it refused to go on, and it offered no excuses for itself. All arguments [against being a Christian] were used up, and all had
been refuted. There remained only speechless dread and my
soul was fearful, as of death itself, of being kept back from
that flow of habit by which it was wasting away unto death.
In order to understand something of Augustine's
paralyzing dread, which only the most definite invitation
(as Augustine understood it) from God Himself could
''About Dante's Purgatory'' appeared in the Spring 1986 issue
of Energeia.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
overcome, we must understand somethlng of what he
means by "the force of habit", which is his remarkable
and bold paraphrase of what St. Paul calls "the law of
sin". I think he means by habit something very radical,
something that is perhaps suggested in some words
spoken by the adulteress-heroine in Graham Greene's
novel The End of the Affair. Sarah is resisting the renunciations-above all the renunciation of her lover-which she
is coming to believe God requires of her in fulfillment of
a bargain into which she entered out of desperation and
love. She writes in her diary:
Nothing to do till seven when Henry (her husband) would
be back. Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake.
Have I got to give up drinking too? If I eliminate everything,
how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice (her
lover) and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?
She means, I think, and Augustine means, that what
arouses dread is not so much the prospect of giving up
the reliable pleasures for the sake of something less well
known, nor even the anticipated pain of the straightening of what has been crooked in one's life and one's self;
but rather the possibility that there will be nothing left
to mean when I say "I"-the very word will no longer
have content. What am I, am I anything at all, when
stripped of the ways of being I have chosen to make my
own and have somehow placed myself into and taken
responsibility for in laboring through my life?
When the human spirit, my very own spirit, has been
purged of all that is displeasing to God, will there be anything left of me?-this most disquieting of questions is
felt by Dante the pilgrim as well as by ourselves.
53
�II
I think it is impossible to understand Dante without
holding fast to the realization that he insists with equal
passion on the legitimacy of two fundamental human
desires: the desire to enjoy the highest good, to be in the
loving presence of God, to be as full of His grace and light
as one may be; and the desire to be one's very self. Neither
of these desires must be sacrificed to the other-this is
the source of many of the great tensions of the Comedy
(as well as being the reason, I think, why there is no
regret, let alone resentment, in a hierarchical paradise:
Cunizza, for example, within the sphere of Venus, knows
that she could be a more perfect vessel for God's light
only by ceasing to be Cunizza-and this she cannot want).
Because of the properly irreducible duality which Dante
recognizes as fundamental to humankind's deepest
desire, the purgation of the human spirit is a complicated matter. But it is also of the greatest importance that
the journey of Dante the pilgrim does not begin at the
base of the mount of purgation. If that were so, some calculation of cost and benefit might be imaginable: how
much is one willing to sacrifice for how great a good. The
fact is, however, that Dante arrives at Purgatory having
emerged from Hell, having seen with the greatest
clarity-a clarity none of us, I take it, possesses-what
the alternative to purgation is. That alternative is unbearable. Therefore purgation is necessary: Dante cannot impose conditions or otherwise negotiate; he can only hope
that at the end of the purgation of his spirit, his "I myself" will still have some content, and indeed will have
its most proper content, whose properness is recogniza-
ble not only by God but also by Dante himself.
III
The alternative to purgation (whether in this life or afterwards) is Hell. Allow me to digress briefly upon what
I take to be the principle of the choice for Hell. I think
that according to Dante's presentation the principle of
that choice is, above all, the unwillingness to be moved
by another, to have the source of one's motion outside
of oneself. That is why the extreme of Hell is sheer frigid
immobility: those who were unwilling to be moved by
another are ultimately unable themselves to move; at the
furthest point from the unmoved mover Who draws all
beings to Himself, we encounter the unmoved movers
whose only power-an irresistible power, it seems-is to
repel.
It is important to be aware that the unwillingness to
have the source of one's motion outside of oneself can,
and often does, assume subtle guises. It is possible to seem
to be moved by another, by a being outside of oneself,
while in fact using that other as a mere substratum upon
which to project one's own fantasies, so that in fact one
54
is being moved by one's own fantasies, and the source
of one's motion is exclusively and securely within oneself. This appears to be part of the meaning of the dream
of the siren, the ancient witch, which Dante experiences
upon the terrace of sloth.
IV
I said earlier that Dante as a character in the poem possesses perfect clarity concerning the alternative to purgation, and that we do not. But we seem to have some
clarity about that alternative, and in any case neither
Dante's submission to purgation nor our own seems com-
prehensible as nothing but flight from; there is surely also
an element of the motion toward. After all, what overcomes
Dante's final dread of the flames through which he must
pass is the promise of Beatrice awaiting him on the far
side. But the elements of flight from and motion toward
seem to me intimately connected, as I shall try to indicate by distinguishing between two aspects of purgation
of the spirit as presented by Dante.
The first has to do with the so-called seven deadly sins.
Of three of these-pride, anger and lust-Dante knows
himself to be more guilty than he is of the others. These
sins, or perhaps roots of sin, are surely serious and dangerous matters; but one can, after all, do something about
them. At least within certain limits, willing avails to mortify pride, for example, and to restrain at least the outward eruptions of anger-one can undertake to practice
gentleness of speech.
But to be lost in the dark wood, to come to oneself again
in the dark wood, seems to involve more than recognition of one's entanglement in particular sinful ways.
Dante's own heart is not fully healed until at the top of
the mount of purgation, "the ice that was bound about
my heart turned to breath and water and with anguish
came forth from my breast by mouth and eyes". What
had happened to Dante, above and beyond his particular violations of the conduct proper for human beings,
is that his heart had grown hard and cold; and he knew
that; and he knew that he could not, by howsoever heroic
an act of will-power, undo that hardness and coldness.
The most he could do-and that was difficult enoughwas to sustain his sorrow that it was so, his sadness that
his heart was no longer capable, as the heart of the young
boy had been capable, of opening in awe and gratitude
in the presence of the beauty presented to him in the
figure of a little girl, and of resolving to be as good as
he could be so as to be worthy, not indeed to possess
her, but to be in the world that contained her. Had Dante
been unable to sustain his sorrow over the growing coldness of his heart, had he self-distractingly or cynically
accommodated himself to it, he would have been truly
dead, and neither the grace of God, nor the graciousness
WINTER 1986
�of Mary, Lucy and Beatrice, would have availed him
anything.
v
Let us now finally enter Purgatory with the pilgrim
Dante. In the first Canto he is perfectly silent. What does
this silence contain? There must be in it great relief, and
wonder, and some bewilderment. Above all, there is the
certain knowledge that Hell must be rejected, and hence
the way of purgation must be chosen, must be submitted to. What will this submission require? Dante first of
all hears the severe Cato say that although Marcia was,
in the old mode, the surpassing love in his life, in the
new mode he is wholly unmoved by her. Whatever Cato
means by these words, they must be heart-rending for
Dante to hear.
When Dante does finally speak, in the second Canto,
it is to ask Casella, the friend of his young manhood, to
sing for him "one of the songs oflove which used to quiet
all my longings, so as to refresh my soul with them for
a while, which is so spent coming here with my body."
But Dante prefaces his request in this way: "If a new law
does not take from you the memory and use of these
songs." It seems to Dante entirely possible that a new
law does forbid lovely and, as it seemed, innocent things
which once brought him consolation and refreshmentand if it is so, the new law must nevertheless be submitted to. But what then will be left, not merely of consolation and refreshment, but of Dante himself? I thing these
worries are very much on Dante's mind, as they may be
on ours, and they are hardly alleviated by Cato' s sharp
rebuke, castigating delight in song as blamable
negligence.
Well, it requires the presentation of Paradise itself before Dante and we can even glimpse the aliveness, the
richness and fullness of personality, the being more myself than I have ever been before, enjoyed by the spirits
whose purgation has been completed. But there are two
moments within Purgatory itself that I should like to indicate briefly as bearing upon our hopes and fears in this
matter.
The first occurs in the second Canto. As the thousand
souls disembark from the angel-piloted ship, they sing,
all together with one voice, In exitu Israel de Aegypto,
"when Israel went out of Egypt", a hymn of liberation
and deliverance. And, Dante expressly tells us, they sing
"all that is written after of that psalm". Let us listen to
a few more words from this hymn (Psalm 114) which
Dante heard:
The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like young
sheep-Why, mountains, do you skip like rams, and you,
hills, like young sheep? Dance, 0 earth, at the presence of
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned
the rock into a pool of water, the granite cliff into a fountain.
There is in these words heard by Dante the promise that
in the delivering, liberating, purging action of God there
comes to pass the greatest and most joyous enlivening of
all his creatures-submission, still less renunciation and
loss, are very far from being the final moment.
VI
And yet as we read the end of the Purgatory-the second moment to which I wished to call attention-we cannot help but feel a heart-rending sense of loss: "But Virgil
had left us bereft of him, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to
whom I gave myself for my salvation"; and Dante, in
Eden, weeps.
I cannot say anything adequate about this moment. But
I would like to say something about Virgil's words, Virgil's poetry, of which Dante has not been left bereft; and
then, very·shyly, about Virgil himself.
In the thirtieth Canto, in which is told the re-union of
Dante and Beatrice and the loss of Virgil, we encounter
two lines from the Aeneid, the first spoken as it were by
Dante the poet, the second by Dante the pilgrim.
The poet in describing the pageant in honor of Beatrice
tells us that as she approaches "there rose up a hundred
ministers and messengers of eternal life, who all cried,
Benedictus qui venis ("blessed are you who come", which
must be referred to Beatrice despite the masculine grammar) and, throwing flowers up and around, Manibus o
date Iilia plenis ("with full hands give lilies")". The second of these utterances occurs originally in book six of
the Aeneid, as Anchises speaks ~orrowfully of the early
death of the beautiful young man Marcellus, his life cut
short before its full flowering, bringing a sorrow which
is now overwhelmed by the splendor of Rome's accomplishments.
At first glance it appears that by transferring to an occasion of rejoicing words originally belonging to an occasion of mourning, the Christian poet is correcting the
pagan poet who knew so well of the tears of things and
the affairs of mortals that touch the heart: mourning has
been transformed into joy. But upon reflection we find
that it is not so simple. For the words "Blessed are you
who come", that is, "Blessed are you who come in the
name of the Lord" (Matthew 21-9) are spoken to Christ
on Palm Sunday as he enters Jerusalem acclaimed by a
great crowd. That is, they are spoken at the beginning
of the week of the Passion of Christ, the agony that revealed most fully the depth of the tears of things. The
Christian poet cannot simply transform or reverse Virgil's words-mourning into rejoicing; he must first of all
deepen them or at the very least-which is not so littleremember them.
55
�Now let us turn to the words from the Aeneid which
Dante the pilgrim utters at his moment of greatest need,
of greatest awe, bewilderment, and overfullness. As he
sees Beatrice and once again, for the first time in ten
years, feels ''ancient love's gret power'', he can find no
words of his very own, no words originating with him.
But he needs words, and words are available, from Virgil: "Not a drop of blood is left in me that does not tremble; I know the marks of the ancient flame."
"I know the marks of the ancient flame" -the words
are Dido's as she comes to realize that the part of her that
died with the death of Sychaeus is coming to life again
in the presence of Aeneas. That the story which comes
out of this experience turns out painfully is immaterial
here; what matters is the experience itself, an experience
which has befallen men and women in all times and
places, and which once upon a time was tenderly and
. truly understood and put into unforgettably beautiful
words. That true and unforgettable words had once been
found for such an experience, and that, through the
loyalty and devotion of Dante they were not forgotten,
had the result that in the most overwhelming moment
of his life, Dante did not have to live wholly out of his
own resources. It is true of course that the pilgrim Dante
must make Virgil's words his own: Virgil's Latin becomes
Dante's Italian.
VII
I cannot close without trying to say something about
the loss of Virgil himself at the peak of the mount of purgation, whatever may be the consoling power of the
knowledge that we do not lose his words. Of the distress-
56
ing question of the destiny of the "virtuous pagans"
much could be said, and the least that should be said is
that their apparent exclusion from the presence of God
seems to have been as distressing for Dante as for many
of us-he returns to it again and again, finally in the
heaven of Jupiter, the sphere of justice, where his question about the possible salvation of those who know not
Christ receives a negative answer theologically but an affirmative answer empirically: the pagan Ripheus, an obscure figure in the Aeneid who is said in that poem to be
the most righteous of the Trojans, is encountered by
Dante in Paradise.
The only suggestion I have to make about this matter
is the following. I think Dante would have been very
grateful for, and would have made good use of, a certain speculation of the astronomer Johann Kepler. Traditionally, of course, Christ is thought of as the mediator
between man and God, as occupying a sort of in-between
position. Kepler suggests an image complementary to this
one in his discussion of the regions of the world. There
are three of these, he says, corresponding to the three
Persons of the Trinity by way of a "divine symbolizing."
In the center is the sun, symbolizing the Father. The
sphere of the fixed stars symbolizes the second Person,
Christ; and the region in between, which of course includes the earth and its denizens, is pervaded by the Holy
Spirit. Thus it is we human beings who occupy the inbetween position, our lives centered in the Father and
contained by Christ; or as Kepler puts it more fully,
"formed, contained and terminated" by Christ. Or, as
St. Augustine says near the beginning of the Confessions,
quoting the 139th Psalm which speaks to God: "If I
descend into hell, you are present."
WINTER 1986
�A Way to Think about Dark Times
I have been asked to talk about dark times, about the
darkness of the times in which we live. I shall try to do
that, but it seems to me that, being who I am, for better
and for worse, I can only indirectly carry out what has
been asked. A sign of that indirectness, which I hope will
not dismay you, is that I shall present what I have to say
in the form of reflections on brief passages from four
books, the most recent of which was written about seven
centuries ago. But I shall try very hard to make myself
understood and I hope that some good may come from
our being together.
From the Iliad of Homer, composed more than 2500
years ago, I wish to talk about what it means for one human being to offer another as much time as he needs;
from the Confessions of St. Augustine about what it means to be faithful to that original care for one's own wellbeing which seems to be a part of each of us; from Dante's
Purgatory about the sort of weeping that might be
redemptive and about how one can keep intact one's capacity for that sort of weeping; and finally from the
Gospel of St. John about why it might be that if all the
deeds done by Christ were to be written down, the world
itself could not contain the books that would be required.
I would like to begin with a moment in the Iliad because
that book seems to me to be very much about time. In
pondering the assignment to speak of living in dark times,
I had to ask myself what it would be like to live in bright
times. And it occurred to me that the difference between
dark times and bright times might not be the most important difference, just as Achilles, the beautiful young
"A Way to Think about Dark Times" was originally delivered
at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It was published in the Spring 1986 issue of Energeia.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
warrior who is the hero of Homer's poem, comes to his
proper wisdom when the choice which had always
seemed so important to him-a long life versus a short
life, much time versus little time-comes to be replaced
by the difference which depends not upon choice, but
rather upon a sort of grace. I shall try to explain what
I mean. Because of a certain prophecy, Achilles believes
he has a choice between a brief life of unforgettable glory
or a long, undistinguished-though not unhappy-life.
He broods much over this choice and is greatly confused.
Then his dearest friend is slain in war and he is impelled
into action of a despairing and merciless sort. He slays
scores of men and even does battle against a mighty river.
He finally slays Hector, the slayer of his friend. In his rage
he drags the body of Hector on the ground behind his
chariot, around and around the camp, every day for
twelve days. But the gods Apollo and Aphrodite protect
Hector's body, and the natural outcome does not
ensue-Hector's body is preserved rather than being mutilated beyond recognition. Finally on the twelfth day
Priam, who is very old, the father of Hector, comes to
Achilles to ask for his son's body so that a proper funeral might be celebrated, with ritual lamentation and the
feasting of a great feast. Achilles and Priam weep
together, Achilles now for his own father, now for his
dead friend, Priam for his dead son. Their tears somehow form one stream and are indistinguishable.
Achilles, moved by the beauty of Priam, grants his
request-he is willing to restore the body of Hector.
And-this is the one act of divine grace which takes place
within the Iliad-there is a body to restore, not a formless mutilated obscenity which would break Priam's heart
to see, but the body of Hector, young and handsome.
Reconciliation takes place within the Iliad because Achilles
57
�has been given enough time, as much time as he needs.
At no earlier moment would he have been capable of transcending his rage and despair. Had Priam come earlier
his petition would have been futile. But if the gods had
not, contrary to all rational expectation, preserved the
body of Hector while Achilles was enduring and laboring through his rage, if divine grace had not secured harmony between the requirements of Achilles's inner time
and the requirements of the world-time which men
share, Achilles would have had nothing to offer Priam
except regret, and the most beautiful moment within the
Iliad, from which light streams upon all of the darkness
and bitternesses of the poem, would never have occurred.
Homer writes:
But when they had put aside their desire for eating and drinking, Priam, son of Dardonos, gazed upon Achilleus, wondering at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright
vision of gods. Achilleus in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam
and wondered, as he saw his brave looks and listened to him
talking.
Achilles has been given-graciously, independently of
any claims he might have-enough time, and he knows
it. Anyone who has experienced being given enough
time-and part of that experience seems to be a powerful sense of how easily things might have gone otherwise,
how likely it is for one to be given not quite enough
time-the question of much time versus little time, of a
long life versus a short life, cannot seem very important.
Thus Achilles asks Priam how long he will need to
mourn and bury his son. Priam says twelve days and explains why. Achilles grants him twelve days-he will hold
back the war for that long. Achilles, having himself been
given time, gives Priam enough time. This is Achilles'
imitation of the gods, his truly god-like act within the
Iliad. And it seems to me that for us too, it is utterly important to give people as much time as they need, to let
them tell us just how much time that is, and to understand that clear reasons cannot always be given for needing just that amount of time. But I do not think that many
of us-I leave out of account a few great souls among
us-are capable of giving another time unless we ourselves have, in one form or another, had the experience
of being given, beyond any fair claims we can make, and
contrary to all rational expectation, enough time.
However dark our times may be, I do not think that such
experiences are altogether impossible for us. And when
they do befall us, surely gratitude requires that we make
available to another, as graciously as may be, what has
been made available to us.
Let me now turn to the Confessions of St. Augustine,
a book written about 1500 years ago. The title Confessions
means something different from what we might suppose.
For Augustine, the proper subject of confession is the
58
goodness of God. But God's goodness is shown not only
in the deep-down, always-present goodness of His creation, but also in the mercy He shows to sinful man.
Hence to acknowledge and praise God's goodness includes acknowledging and praising His mercy, and that
requires that the occasions of that mercy, the sins and
sinfulness of our lives, be set forth. That in turn requires
a travelling through memory. This is what Augustine
does in his Confessions: he presents himself in his neediness in order to present God in His graciousness and to
give Him praise for His graciousness. According to Augustine, this praise is not so much our duty as it is our
deepest delight, the delight for which we were made.
I would like to consider with you something Augustine
says about himself as a young child. He finds something
wonderful in that child, something altogether worthy of
praise. That something is no achievement of the child,
nor any potential for achievement, but rather something
wholly God-given: it is, Augustine says, "a care for my
own well-being" which shows itself, among other ways,
by the fact that "I shunned sadness and dejection."
This may seem strange to us. We are accustomed to saying and perhaps thinking that it is a matter of course for
each of us to care for himself-"to take care of number
one," as we sometimes say-the only surprising thingperhaps even a miracle-being that occasionally we also
care for other people. But for Augustine the most difficult
thing in the world is to care for our own well-being, or
more precisely, to be faithful to that original care for our
own well-being with which God endowed us in the beginning, to go on caring for our own well-being, to go on
shunning sadness and dejection. The reason is that we
grow weary, feel worn-out, are bewildered and embarrassed as we attempt to sustain the care for our own
well-being. We long for rest. Not that Augustine thinks
we ought not to long for rest. He says to God: "Our
hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." But until that
most proper rest comes to be, the human task is to be
faithful to the original restlessness and to the original care
for our own well-being from which it springs.
Augustine does not praise himself in the Confessions,
one reason being that he knows the great power of what
he calls "the passion for self-vindicationrr, that is, not
merely pride in the sense of having too high an opinion
of ourselves, but rather the awesome passion to vindicate ourselves when accused, whether by others or by
ourselves. Augustine does not suppose that this passion
within him needs any help from him. But if he were to
praise himself, to find something praiseworthy in his
life-achieved with the help of God of course but still
achieved by Augustine-it would be for being faithful
through many years to his own restlessness, for sustaining, in the face of so many temptations to come to some
false settlement, to some false peace, that restlessness
WINTER 1986
�which so wearied him.
From the point of view of the Confessions, written when
he was about forty-five, he writes of himself in his thirtyfirst year, fully the thirteenth year of his most earnest
searchings for a truth in which his heart and mind could
find genuine rest-that is, the thirteenth year of what we
so easily refer to as an u adolescent religious crisis." He
writes of how weary he was, and how embarrassedhow embarrassed, since he had been making such a fuss
about his own well-being for so long a time, instead of
getting on with the practical business of life (he was, after all, a Roman). But he held out in his weariness and
his embarrassment until, as he recounts it, he received
a true invitation from the true God. And then he said yes.
Now let me turn to a passage in the Divine Comedy.
There is a certain story told to Dante by a soul in Purgatory which I would like to tell you. But first I must say
a few words about how Dante thinks of Purgatory. The
souls in Purgatory-every one of them-will one day be
in Heaven with God and each will be filled-in the measure possible for each without his ceasing to be himselfwith light and joy. But first-and this is what Purgatory
is for, according to Dante-a kind of patience is necessary, and a coming to understand the ways in which our
lives have been perverse, and an attempt-for once, happily, an attempt which is bound to succeed-to straighten out what has been crooked in them, not because otherwise God could not stand the sight of us, but because
otherwise we would be simply ashamed and bewildered
and miserable in the presence of God. The straightening
out of what has been crooked in our lives-in us-is painful, but it is pain which the souls in Purgatory do not wish
to avoid.
Now let me recount to you the story which one of the
souls in Purgatory tells Dante. His whole life, he says,
or almost his whole life, had been full of violence and
hatred, of hating and being hated. He met his death hunted down by his enemies, who wounded him and drove
him into a swamp, where as he lay dying he saw pools
of his blood form alongside him in the stinking water.
He was alone and there was no one, even far away, who
loved him. The moment before his death he shed a tear.
The devils came to take him away to Hell. But angels
came who would not permit them. The devils were furious at the unfairness of it: "On account of one little tear
(una lacrimetta in Dante's Italian) we are deprived of what
is rightfully ours," they shriek, "What is one little tear
against a whole life-time of violence and hatred?" But
the angels are firm, and the soul goes to Purgatory, to
prepare itself for the presence of God.
I want to reflect with you upon that one little tear, so
strangely powerful. First, I think it must be not merely
a tear of self-pity, of feeling sorry for oneself-! think
some wider sorrow must be in it, some sorrow for hav-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing offended God or having offended against the beauty
of His creation or some sadness at having betrayed things
one shouldn't have betrayed. But I am not so sure that
there may be nothing of self-pity in it. It would be
strange, after all, and perhaps perversely prideful, to see
and sorrow over the deep sadness of the world-the
"tears of things", as Virgil says-and to exempt oneself,
to stand above that sorrowful world and look down upon
it. No, I do not think that self-pity-of which we so often
speak harshly-must be excluded from that tear, although
of course much more must also be included.
Second, we must be aware that to shed such a tear, to
shed the right kind of tear, is not an act of will. We cannot heroically, at that final moment, make ourselves do
it through strenuous exertion. Such a tear comes forth
or it does not. It comes forth from a heart in which there
is still some goodness. Here, I think, is where the will
comes in, where trying hard and struggling come in. Not
indeed that kind of struggle to be as good as good can
be, the straggle to be very good. Rather I am thinking
of human beings in whose lives it is much too late in the
day to make of their lives a beautiful thing which might
gladden those who behold them, but for whom the question is: after so many betrayals of the things I ought least
to have betrayed, after so many acts of violence against
what I ought most to have cherished, what difference
could one more betrayal, one more act of violence, possibly make? What difference could there possibly be between a thousand betrayals and a thousand and one?
Perhaps I could resist this present temptation to
betrayal-it would be painful, but perhaps I could do itbut what's the use? What difference could it possibly
make? And surely tomorrow I shall be guilty of some new
betrayal.
What Dante means to say, I think, is that it does make
a difference: that one moment of fidelity in the midst of
a thousand betrayals does not indeed make a life into a
beautiful thing in which men and angels may rejoice, but
it may be enough to keep somehow intact a heart capable of shedding the right kind of tear when it matters
most.
Let me conclude by saying a few words about the final
sentence of the Gospel of St. John. That sentence says:
"But there are also many other things which Jesus did;
were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the
world itself could not contain the books that would be
written.'' This makes sense, I think, only if we suppose
that John does not have in mind only the deeds of Jesus
during his thirty-three years in Palestine, where of course
he encountered only a not very great number of souls.
Rather, John must mean that every soul that has ever
been in the world or ever will be encounters Jesus in one
guise or another, knows him by one name or another,
responds, however obscurely, to his invitation. And I
59
�thlnk it is not blasphemous to speak of these deeds of
Jesus as being not only for our rescue-although surely
it is right for us to think of them in this way most of the
time-but also for his own fullness and therewith for the
fullness of the creation. For we must take seriously his
being a person. And of myself as a person I know that
there are some things in me which are brought out-and
in some mysterious way even called into being-only by
a certain friend, other things brought out only by another
friend. The loss of a friend is the loss of a part of me. As
Jesus issues his invitation in as many ways as there are
souls in the world, the creation comes fully into its own.
These words may sound to you outrageously serene
coming from one who was asked to speak about the darkness of our dark times. Surely an urgent and bewildered
sense of our need for rescue, and painful doubts about
60
the very possibility of rescue, its availability in any comprehensible way, are among the deepest parts of our experience here and now. But I wonder whether there are
not moments in the experience of each of us in which we
can somehow sense the truth of these words spoken by
Wisdom, that is, somehow, by Christ: "I am from eternity, and before the earth was made I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing at
His feet at all times; playing in the world. And my
delights were to be with the children of men."
How such moments-moments in which the world
seems a deeply innocent place-are to be put together
with the dark moments is very hard to say-it is surely
beyond my power to say-but not to give voice to them
at all seems to be a lie.
WINTER 1986
�Sadness and Courage
I have been asked to speak briefly about some traditional understandings of courage. In trying to do that,
I shall present, quite selectively and impressionistically,
thoughts from the writings of four thinkers in our tradition: the Greek Aristotle, who lived more than twenty
centuries ago; the Italian Dante, who lived about seven
centuries ago; and then from the sixteenth century, the
Spaniard Cervantes and the Englishman Shakespeare.
These thinkers belonged to very different cultures, very
different situations of time and place, but their thoughts
about courage seem to me profoundly to belong together.
I hope very much that the bookishness of my approach
will not prevent you from recognizing the experiences of
human beings in the world that I shall be attempting to
point to.
Aristotle in his Ethics speaks of courage primarily as it
shows itself on the battlefield. This does not, I think,
mean that he supposes that the courage of soldiers is the
highest or truest form of courage; rather he supposes that
in this form certain properties of courage, always and
everywhere, are visible with special distinctness. We
speak of courage in a great variety of contexts, but in doing that we often use metaphorically language that belongs primarily to the experience of warriors in battle-the
language of withstanding attack, enduring the
prospect-which is terrible, full of terror-of wounds and
ultimately of death, the language of holding one's ground
rather than running away or evading, of continuing to
press forward even though one's intactness, one's being
intact, has already been violated and greater violation is
likely or even certain.
"Sadness and Courage" was delivered at the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In any case, I should like to stress three points in Aristotle's analysis of courage. First, the brave man endures
the terrors and dares the deeds of courage for the sake
of what is noble. This means, to begin with, that the willingness to suffer violation of one's intactness-the loss
of a hand, or a power of doing something, or a consoling and sustaining view of the world, or one's very being alive-is not ultimately for the sake of something
outside of oneself-so that a cause might prevail, or so
that one might be praised by others or escape their
blame-but for one's own sake, for the sake of a deeper
intactness of the self which would be shattered by flight
from other terrors. But one cannot, according to Aristotle, finally understand courage as the exchange of terrors
for terrors, as if the flight from ultimate violation of the
self assumed the guise of willingness to suffer other violations. For the being intact, the being unbroken, of the
self is not merely defended in the courageous act-it is
affirmed unconditionally and thereby brought fully into
being. The self in its integrity, its wholeness, shines forth
in radiance and splendor. By "the noble" -to kalon in
Greek-Aristotle means something very much like "the
beautiful," and the beauty he has primarily in mind is
the beauty of the integrity of the self.
Aristotle's analysis makes clear, in the second place,
that courage does not decisively depend upon natural endowment. In particular, Aristotle knows that some human beings are more spirited than others, more
impetuous, more given to powerful surges of feeling that
incite to action. But this is not courage. Again, some human beings are endowed with optimistic imaginations,
others with pessimistic imaginations. This also must be
distinguished from courage. Courage for Aristotle is
roughly what we would call an act of the will, of which,
ultimately, those who are not impetuous and those whose
61
�imaginations are wholly pessimistic are just as capable
as those whose natural endowment is more encouraging.
It is not quite right, however, to speak of courage, in
Aristotle's understanding, as an act of will. Rather he
speaks of a habitual disposition in choosing, by which
he means to emphasize the wonderful fact that in choosing to do a brave deed now, I not only accomplish the
deed itself, but I am also making myself into a person
for whom it will be less difficult to do another brave deed
later.
But Aristotle's final remark about courage in the Ethics,
his book about happiness, makes clear that it is never easy
to be brave. This is what he writes;
The death or wounds that courage may bring will be painful
to the courageous man~ and he wil1 suffer them unwillingly;
but he will endure them because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. And the more a man possesses
virtue as a whole, and therefore the more happy he is, the
more he will be pained by the prospect of death; for to such
a man life is worth most, and he stands to lose the greatest
goods, and knows that this is so, because he chooses nobility in struggle over the sweetness of his good life.
Aristotle knows that even and especially for the best
human beings it is difficult to do brave deeds; he also
knows that it is painful for the communities to which
these human beings belong to behold their heroes as they
face their greatest tests, not because they fear that their
heroes may fail, but because they have some sense of the
awesome cost of their hero's victory.
Now let us turn from what, superficially speaking, can
be called the pagan world, to the Christian world, to
Dante's Divine Comedy. I shall try to suggest something
of Dante's understanding of the possibility of warriorsaints. In his journey through the three worlds of Hell,
Purgatory, and Paradise, Dante's encounter in Paradise
with the souls in the sphere of Mars, named after the Roman naming of the god of war, seems especially significant within the poem as a whole. (I must remark
parenthetically that Dante's paradise is hierarchicalsome ways of being are placed higher than others-and
as an image of this Dante ascends through the visible
heavens, encountering souls within each of the planetary
spheres in turn: thus the superiority of Mars to the sun
reflects the superiority of suffering wounds for the sake
of the truth, to merely knowing the truth by rational means.) There are various signs of this special significance,
but the most important is that here, in the 81st of the
Comedy's 100 cantos, for the first time Dante beholds, in
a momentary vision, Christ Himself. This is not easy to
understand. That Venus, the pagan goddess of passionate love, can be baptized, can become Christian, is
perhaps understandable. But how can Mars be baptized?
Does not the Sermon on the Mount, with its injunction
62
to turn the other cheek, decisively oppose this possibility? For after all, the warrior-saints not only endure
wounds for the sake of the truth-they also inflict
wounds, and even death.
I cannot here consider the claims of Christian pacifism,
which surely must be taken utterly seriously. But perhaps
we can learn from Dante's description of what he sees
on Mars something about the way in which a Christian
warrior might understand his own use of violence in inflicting wounds.
First, against the ruddy background of the red planet
itself, Dante sees a shining white cross. Moving against
the background of the cross, wholly within its confines,
the souls of the saints are seen as brilliant sparkling rubylike splendors. As these splendors move across and up
and down, they sing a mighty hymn. Dante reports that
he was unable to understand the hymn. He says, "I perceived indeed that it was of high praise, for there came
to me the words 'Arise' and 'Conquer,' as one hears
without understanding." Dante does not claim that he
can understand the words to a hymn appropriate to warrior saints, to human beings who, held within the pure
white light of the cross, are willing to endure wounds and
to inflict them. But he tells us that he has heard snatches
of that song and that by this hearing "I was so moved
to love that till then nothing had bound me with so sweet
a chain."
Finally, Dante reports that at a certain moment the cross
of white light and the ruby-like sparklings in motion
upon it "flamed forth Christ." The pagan hero Achilles
wants his deeds of valor to show forth his own image,
not that of someone else-no other face may conceal his
own. But for the Christian perhaps it may not be so, because deeds of valor involve the inflicting of wounds as
well as the suffering of them, and the inflicting of wounds
has become, with the Sermon on the Mount, radically
problematical.
What I think Dante means is that a Christian can draw
his sword against an enemy only because he knows that
not only his own suffering of wounds, but just as much
his enemy's suffering of wounds inflicted by him, can
be transformed into participation in the sacrificial suffering of Christ which takes away the sins of the world. His
own suffering, and that of his enemy, can be so transformed only if he and his enemy will that it should be.
But the very awareness of this possibility includes the
awareness that one's enemy-a real eneffiy, since there
are real issues in the world, and real contests-is ultimately one's brother, for whom Christ died as for oneself.
Now let me turn from viewing courage in the perspective of the suffering of wounds in the sense of trauma (the
ancient Greek word for wound), to courage seen in the
perspective of the undramatic heavy sadness that pervades so much of our lives. I have in mind Thomas Aq-
WINTER 1986
�uinas' definition of the virtue of perseverance,
understood as a part of the virtue of courage. Perseverance is "a habit of the mind whereby a man stands steadfastly, lest he be moved from what is virtuous by the
assault of sadness." Accordingly, I shall talk a little about
courage in relation to discouragement, the experience of
being disheartened. I shall do this with reference to Don
Quixote as Cervantes presents him, and Prospera and
Miranda as Shakespeare presents them in The Tempest.
Don Quixote seems to me to be the right hero for a
world in which many of the most important truths are
of such a sort that now you see them, now you don't.
Courage is what you need when you're not seeing them.
Don Quixote has great contempt for the demand all of
us are tempted to make, the demand that I should not
be required to risk myself for the sake of any truth that
is not evident to me in a constant way. Only truths-for
example, the truth of mathematical propositions-which
are of such a sort that whenever I want to I can bring them
before my eyes and have my assent compelled by their
indisputable evidence, can be the proper basis for
action-so runs the argument against which Quixote does
battle.
But what of those moments, which happen when they
happen, which cannot be summoned or conjured, in
which the world convincingly appears as a place in which
brave and courteous deeds can be dared and have a
chance-needless to say, not the certainty-of succeeding, in which the vision of a beautiful lady can inspire
the desire to become worthy of her praise? What of these
moments indeed? say the evil enchanters, whose power
in the world is very great, according to Quixote. The enchanters say: We can render these moments perfectly ambiguous. First, we will not allow you many of them-most
of the time the world will have a very different look for
you, so that your task will be to be faithful, in the midst
of the greatest ambiguity, weariness and distraction, to
the remembered moments in which the world was visible as a place in which chivalry is not ridiculous. But this
fidelity is the hardest thing in the world-not only are
you unable to make yourself see the world now as it appeared then, not only does the remembered moment lack
the power to transfigure the dullness of the present world
in any immediate way, but the remembered moment may
lack the power even to hold its own, stand its ground.
After all, maybe the vision itself was sheer delusion. Or
maybe everything has been transformed, enhanced, exaggerated in memory. Are you sure you remember exactly how the world looked when it seemed a possible
place for your dreams? To contend against such doubts,
and the weariness they bring, and the dull sadness that
grows out of that, human beings need, according to Quixote, the greatest and most resourceful courage. And I
think we can acquire, from the example of Don Quixote,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
as well as from other sources, some of the resourcefulness and versatility that is required for doing battle
against evil enchanters.
Finally, let me speak briefly of Prospera and Miranda,
father and daughter, in Shakespeare's Tempest. The action of the play takes place on an island, and it is not quite
clear how the island is related to the mainland on which
we seem most of the time to live. But the Tempest seems
true to me, and very important. I don't know whether
the external way in which I shall have to speak of what
happens in the play will be of any use at all. But I shall try.
Because of a strange conspiracy of circumstanceschiefly an apparent storm and an apparent shipwreckProspero has come to have power over men who 12 years
earlier committed great injustice against him. By various
artful and magical devices he creates an order in which
each person whom the tempest has brought to the island
has his proper place. There are several incurably wicked
characters, for whom no change of heart, no repentance
is possible-they are brought to vivid and effective awareness that they are subject to higher powers, that they cannot work their unchangeably wicked wills with impunity.
There is another character-Alonso-who is capable of
change of heart, who repents and, full of contrition,
hopes for forgiveness. And forgiveness is somehow
granted. But the ultimate context of the play is not the
world of sin and repentance, and of forgiveness as the
highest object of human hope. That world would be the
ultimate context if the Fall were the beginning. But it is
not. The deep-down indestructible goodness of the creation is the beginning-God looked upon all he had created and, behold, it was very good. And so, to be truthful,
Prospero must lead this company of sinners, impenitent
and penitent alike (Prospero himself, as well as Alonso,
being a penitent sinner) to see his daughter Miranda,
whose name means "she who is to be wondered at, admired, astonished by." Miranda is a young woman of
15, whose goodness, in boldness and in shyness, we have
seen throughout the play. Prospera leads the company
to the shelter in which she is playing chess with the young
man she is to marry. And then the unveiling of Miranda, her revelation, takes place-the company of sinners
can and must see the ultimate context in which their own
sinfulness-penitent or impenitent-has come to be. That
context is the inexhaustibly fresh, deep-down beauty of
the creation.
But something even more important takes place. Miranda herself, who has seen only two human beings before
now, looks upon this all-too-human company and says
that she beholds a brave new world. Her father says,
'''Tis new to thee.'' Prospera does not mean that Miranda is naive or inexperienced and will soon learn that
things are very different from how they appear to her.
Something wholly different is happening here. Not only
63
�is the original goodness of the creation overwhelmingly
visible, compellingly visible to all, in Miranda hersell; that
original goodness is still visible in the world as stained
by sin, is still visible in the persons of the penitent, and
even the impenitent, sinners upon whom Miranda gazes.
Prospera not only looks upon Miranda, but also follows
her gaze. He cannot see what she sees. But he knows that
what she sees is there to be seen, is true. And he knows
that he himsell could, not merely know, not merely assent to intellectually, but immediately see this truth, if he
were as good as Miranda is. But he is not. And he is not
because he has somehow chosen not to be.
This is the final sort of sadness I meant to point to~
not the kind that comes from living in a world in which
64
the most important truths are of such a sort that now you
see them, now you don't~but the kind that comes from
not being able to see at all in any sort of immediate way,
but merely to assent in one's thinking, distantly; combined with the awareness that one would have been capable of seeing, if only one had been better~but one had
not wanted that badly enough.
To live with the first kind of sadness, it does seem to
me that the human virtue of perseverance, as part of the
virtue of courage, is required. But as for the second kind
of sadness, I am not sure whether there is any virtue that
is effective against it. At the end of The Tempest, the last
play Shakespeare wrote, Prospera says, "My ending is
despair, unless I be relieved by prayer."
WINTER 1986
�The Bible and the Human Heart
''Create in me a pure heart'' we hear in Psalm 51, tradi-
tionally associated with David after the prophet Nathan
came to him because he had been with Bathsheba. I wish
to talk about what these words addressed to God might
mean, and about some of what the Bible teaches about
the human heart. My reflections are organized into four
parts: indications regarding the heart in Psalms 19, 51 and
73; circumcision of the heart as the heart of the Law; the
suffering servant and the healing of the heart in DeuteroIsaiah; and the relation between time and the purgation
of the heart in Dante's Purgatorio.
I.
Psalm 51 both asks God to create in me a pure heart
and offers to God my own broken and contrite heart in
confidence that He will find the offering an acceptable
sacrifice. Why should one so greatly wish to have a pure
heart, and why does the offering to God of one's own
pain avail in the creation of such a heart?
To the first of these questions, the Psalms give two answers which particularly impress me. In Psalm 19, which
begins "The heavens declare the glory of God" and passes without seam into praise of the sweetness of God's
Law-" sweeter than honey dripping from the comb" (as
though nothing could be further from the Psalmist's mind
than to distinguish between a natural creation and a human moral spiritual creation)-the final petition addressed
to God is that "the words of my mouth may always find
"The Bible and the Human Heart" was the last lecture Bill
O'Grady gave at St. John's College. It was given at Santa Fe
just before Christmas in 1982 and then at Annapolis on Good
Friday in 1983. It appeared in the Winter 1984 issue of EnerReia.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
favor in your presence, and the whisperings of my
heart." One reason, I think, why one would wish greatly to have a pure heart, and even be willing to undergo
suffering for the sake of having one, is that inescapably
one must hear the whisperings of one's own heart, and
no one could wish to listen all his days to vile
whisperings-whisperings of jealousy, resentment,
anger, revenge, whether or not these issue forth into
overt actions.
The beginning of Psalm 73 gives a second answer, compatible with the first. We hear: "The Lord is good to Israel; God gives good things to the pure in heart." As the
Psalm unfolds we realize that these words do not mean
what we might at first suppose. It is not that Israel is pure
in heart and that God therefore gives her good things;
nor that some portion of Israel is pure in heart and to that
portion God gives good things. In general it is not as if
God has two kinds of things to give, good things and bad
things, and gives the one to one kind of human being
and the other to another kind. Rather, God gives good
things and nothing but good things to all human beings.
But it is only the pure in heart who can experience the
good things God gives to all human beings as good
things, only the pure in heart who can experience the
world as it truly is, only they who know what is happening. To become pure in heart, to submit to the purification of one's heart, is to come into touch with God's
creation and with his always present, ever contemporary
action of creating.
To come into touch with God's creation requires, the
Psalmist seems to tell us, that we ourselves submit to being created-not merely to having been created, but to
be being created right now. Thus "create in me a pure
heart" seems to mean more than "cleanse or purge my
65
�heart." It seems to mean: continue to create my heart,
create it in purity, shape it and reshape it until it is as
you would have it be. Thus to offer the sacrifice of a
broken and contrite heart does not mean merely that, in
quid pro quo fashion, however generously from God's
side, his response to my sincere contrition is forgiveness
and loving-kindness; but rather that in offering God my
broken and contrite heart, in saying yes to the brokenness and tornness of my own heart I am saying yes to
his creating of my heart, of me, his creating of me right
now. It seems that it is not a matter of earning a pure
heart as a reward by bearing one's pain in fortitude and
gentleness; rather, to say yes to the creation in oneself
of a heart whose whisperings are not vile and which can
experience all that God gives as good-as what it truly
is-is to say yes to the brokenness and contrition of the
heart in process of creation: that is simply how hearts are
created. Why this should be so I do not understand.
Perhaps we can learn something-not in the way of dispelling mystery but in the way of learning to face it more
sensitively and discerningly-by turning first to a few passages from Deuteronomy and then to certain words from
Isaiah.
II.
For what I am trying to think about, the crucial passage in Deuteronomy is the one that speaks of circumcision of the heart. Since our current habit is to pass easily
from law to legalism, any connection between law and
our hearts seems strange to us. The matter becomes
stranger still when we read (Deuteronomy 10:15) that it is
because God himself has a heart and set his heart on our
fathers, that there is such a thing as the Law. I think these
words from Martin Buber about the meaning of the word
"Torah," not rightly translated, he thinks, as "Law," will
help us to make a beginning.
"In the Hebrew Bible, Torah does not mean law, but
direction, instruction, information. Moreh means not lawgiver but teacher. God is repeatedly called this in Old
Testament texts. 'Who is a teacher like him?' Job is asked,
and Isaiah promises the future people of Zion: 'Thine
eyes shall see thy Teacher' ... The Torah of God is understood as God's instruction in his way, and therefore
not as a separate object. It includes laws, and indeed laws
are its most vigorous objectivizations, but the Torah itself is essentially not the law. A vestige of the actual
speaking always adheres to the commanding word, the
directing voice is always present or at least its sound is
heard fading away."
Let us now hear about the circumcision of the heart:
"Circumcise your heart then and be obstinate no longer,
for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords,
the great god, triumphant and terrible, never partial,
never to be bribed. It is he who sees justice done for the
66
orphan and the widow, who loves the stranger, and gives
him food and clothing. Love the stranger then, for you
were strangers in the land of Egypt."
To begin to understand what the circumcision of the
heart might be, let us consider the three verses preceding the words I just read: "And now Israel, what does
the Lord your God ask of you? Only this, to fear the Lord
your God, to follow all his ways, to love him, to serve
the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole
soul.''
I wish to propose four things about this passage: that
the order of the verbs-fear, follow, love, serve-is seriously meant; that fear of the Lord means, to begin with,
a proper mistrust of the human heart-that is, of my
heart; that the passage from fear to love depends considerably on the right kind of use of and experience with
our own power of imagination; and that one does not
have a whole heart or whole soul with which to love anything until one has set out on this way which God has
made available to use.
As to my first claim: one must begin by fearing Godwhatever exactly this phrase may mean, at any rate it is
not supposed that one should or could begin by loving
Him. Then, out of fear or something like that, one attempts to follow His ways. And then, in the course of that
attempt, one makes certain discoveries about what is possible in the world, about what is possible for oneself in
relation to one's fellows. In reflecting on those
discoveries-and no amazing intellectual gifts are required
for this reflection to lead where it ought-one comes to
see what the world is like, and becomes eager to love the
maker of such a world; comes to see what one's own way
of discovery is like, and becomes eager to love the maker of such a way of discovery. Following His ways from
fear becomes serving Him from love, and in that passage
one discovers what it is to have a whole heart and a whole
soul.
I proposed earlier that an essential constituent of what
is meant by "fear of the Lord" is a proper mistrust of
the human heart. Let me read you another passage from
Martin Buber, in which what I mean is said wonderfully:
"The doctrine can best be described as that of granting direction to the human heart. The heart of man-this
unformulated insight is at the basis of the doctrine-is
by nature without direction, its impulses whirl it around
in all directions, and no direction which the individual
gathers from his world stands firm, each one finally is
only able to intensify the whirl of his heart; only in trust
in God is there persistence: there is no true direction except to God. But the heart cannot receive this direction
from the human spirit, but only from a life lived in the
will of God. Hence the Torah has assigned to man actions
agreeable to God, in the doing of which he learns to direct
his heart to Him. According to this purpose of the Torah
WINTER 1986
�the decisive significance and value does not lie in the bulk
of these actions in themselves but in the direction of the
heart in them and through them"
I suggested that of decisive importance for the transition from fear to love is a certain kind of experience with
imagination. To illustrate what I mean, let me cite this
passage from Deuteronomy. "]£you are making your fellow a loan on pledge, you are not to go into his house
and seize the pledge, whatever it may be. You must stay
outside and the man to whom you are making the loan
shall bring the pledge out to you. And if the man is poor,
you are not to go to bed with his pledge in your possession; you must return it to him at sunset so that he can
sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be a good action on your part in the sight of the Lord your God. You
are not to exploit the hired servant who is poor and destitute, whether he is one of your brothers or a stranger
who lives in your towns. You must pay him his wage
each day, not allowing the sun to set before you do, for
he is poor and is anxious for it; otherwise he may appeal
to the Lord against you, and it would be a sin for you."
Such laws as these seem to rest on the recognition that
our making each other's lives miserable only infrequently stems from sheer malice or greed or vindictiveness. So
often the injury we cause our fellows stems from inattention, from failure of imagination, unwillingness to
bother to see. The "Law" gives us, among other things,
practice in bothering to see, in paying attention, using
our imagination, giving thought to what cannot immediately be seen. And once we have encountered our fellows in a truly attentive way, on whatever occasions, we
cannot so easily-cannot without knowing what we are
doing, without knowing our right hand from our leftact maliciously, greedily, or vindictively toward our fellows; since now they are for us real people, like ourselves.
Let me add one thought about the importance of a
directed sequence for the attempt to obey the Law. I shall
speak for a moment of the New Law, as the Gospel of Matthew presents it, that presentation beginning with Jesus'
words: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law
and the prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but
to complete them." These words come at the beginning
of the so-called Sermon on the Mount, culminating, we
are inclined to say, in the injunction to "turn the other
cheek." Almost always we use this phrase with tongue
in cheek, speaking knowingly of its impossibility, as if
we knew that from experience.
Let us try for a moment to be more circumspect, or at
least slower. Several points seem to me remarkable in Jesus' teaching in this place. First, "turn the other cheek"
goes beyond "resist not evil." What is enjoined is not
passivity, non-doing, but an action, an offer: offer now,
at this moment, the other cheek as well. Second, a very
specific reason is given: so that you will become children
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of your father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to
shine upon the good and the bad, his rain to fall upon
the honest and the dishonest. I think this means: Everything that is in being, including every human being, God
wishes to be. (One offers the second cheek, after all, not
to evil in general but to some human being.) As I offer
my other cheek to the man or woman who struck me,
I am saying and meaning to him or her not "won't you
be ashamed of yourself and change your ways?"; not "]
am so self-possessed as to be superior to this situation,
hence unprovokable"; but rather "as my father in heaven
wants you to be, so do !-who am and want to be his
child-want you to be; and that wanting you to be goes
deeper in me than my not wanting to be struck by youas to which I make no calculation or guess about your
response.''
But what I most want to say about this passage I can
say more clearly and simply with regard to the passage
that immediately follows it: "Love your enemy and pray
for those who persecute you." The love one can have for
one's enemy after praying for him-that is, talking to God
about him, on his behalf, for him; imagining his good,
imagining him, and asking God for his good-would be,
it seems to me, vastly different, deeper, richer, more
tender, more imaginative, more real, than the dutyenjoined love which precedes and somehow originally
motivates our praying for him.
III.
In the book of Deutero-Isainh there seems to be announced a new way in God's dealing with man. In chapter 42 we hear of a servant of God "who does not cry
out or shout aloud, or make his voice heard in the streets.
He does not break the crushed reed nor quench the
wavering flame." It seems that there will be a new inconspicuousness, gentleness, patience in God's dealing
with man.
In chapters 52 and 53 it is powerfully impressed upon
us that the servant is above all a suffering servant, and
we hear the awesome words ''in his wounds we are
healed." I wish to make a suggestion about how we
might begin to understand these words. I am not concerned to identify the suffering servant with Jesus of
Nazareth, or with another individual human being who
is still to come, or with Israel as a people. Rather, I am
concerned to try to understand the suffering servant as
an illuminating symbol of an ultimate human possibility, a symbol just as comprehensively pertinent as, say,
the philosopher-king or the pagan hero. That is, I wish
to ask: what would it be like for us to understand the
deepest part of our own experience with ultimate reference to one of whom it is said "in his wounds we are
healed."
67
�I should also make clear that I have no theological theory of atonement to present. I find it disconcerting that
these are usually couched in mechanical language-a
balance must be restored-or in commercial metaphors-a
debt has been incurred and must be paid by someone especially qualified. I think that in those theories God is
thought of as being mastered by necessities over which
surely in truth he himself is master. In any case the text
of Isaiah makes clear that we must look on as the one who
is wounded suffers for us and that he must be willing
that our healing should come through his being wounded. It is some human intelligibility rather than cosmic or
theological intelligibility that we must hope to find. Above
all, it seems important to try to understand what in us
is most in need of being healed.
Let me offer what I can by making this simple beginning. About 2000 years ago the rabbi Hillel spoke these
words: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And
if not now, when? And if I am only for myself, what am
!?" The first two questions by themselves would seem
to be merely rhetorical in a hard and cynical way: no one,
as any fool knows, will be for me if I am not for myself.
But when we hear the third question-and if I am only
for myself, what am !?-we realize that the first questions,
however shyly and mistrustfully, are genuine, even
desperately hopeful questions. The questioner knows that
everything would be different-all sorts of extraordinary
possibilities would have to be considered and maybe even
tried out-if only I could know that there is someone in
the world who is for me, who cares about my being as
deeply and strongly as I care about my being.
In the 13th century Duns Scotus, the follower of Aristotle and still more of St. Francis, wrote in his discussion
of the human faculty of willing: Amo: Vola ut sis. I love
you: I want you to be. And what if, loving you, wanting
you to be as fully as you can be, I come to understand
that what prevents you from being fully and freely is that
you are so anxious for yourself, so fearful that unless you
are forever busy being for yourself, not only will you incur all sorts of particular practical disadvantages, but finally you will not be at all, since there is no one else with
such care for your being as would sustain and nourish
it and thereby hold it in being.
Then would not the response of love be: I will be for
you. I will be for you in a way that is unambiguously visible to you. I will be Jess, so that you can be more, not
of course because we are competitors, you and I, for some
limited amount of being, but precisely because the one
thing that prevents you from coming fully into your own,
from being all that you can be, is your fear that only your
own self-assertion maintains and upholds you in being.
It is that desperate preoccupation from which, above all,
you need to be healed. And when you have been healed
from that by beholding the willingness with which I ac-
68
cept my own diminution, my own being made, for your
sake, Jess-less free and easy, Jess graceful, Jess powerful, Jess joyful-then you will begin to see that you can
be for me too, that we were made for each other, that
the center is neither in you nor in me but between us,
among us all, and that deeper than the sorrow of
crucifixion-and I am thinking especially of its daily undramatic forms-there is the joy of overcoming the two
most shameful and finally deadly things for human beings, which are aloneness and unfruitfulness: "Unless
a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains
alone; but if it dies it brings forth much fruit."
IV.
I would like to say something finally about how hearts
might become pure-most especially, might become
beautiful; and in what way purgation works-especially:
what is the relationship between the soul that has been
purged and the times of its life.
In the 12th Canto of Dante's Purgatorio, the penitants
receive a blessing from the angel of the terrace of the purgation of pride, the first and greatest of the sins to be
purged. Hear Dante's description of the angel: "Towards
us came the fair creature, clothed in white, and in his face
he seemed like a trembling star at dawn."
It is, I think, for a middle-aged man such as Dante was
when he wrote this passage, the deepest of sadnesses to
be aware of how beautiful a creature of God can be-is
meant to be-and that you are not beautiful, because you
have made yourself not-beautiful. That one is nevertheless found acceptable by God is a very great thing, and
in a way it is enough. But in a way it is not enough. One
had wanted to be beautiful, to seem to someone else "in
one's face like a trembling star at dawn." And one still
wants that, if only there were a way.
Dante seems to say that there is a way, and that is because hearts are full of time and times. If that were not
so, purgation would perhaps have to be thought of as
being like sculpting, so that my heart through my actions
and willings has come to have a certain shape, a certain
look, on which the action of purgation must go to work
as with a hammer and chisel, destroying and removing
as much of what I have made myself into as necessary
to reach a presentable shape, so that the great fear of the
one purged is not so much the painfulness of the chiseling as it is that so little of me will be left that I won't any
longer know what I mean when I say "! Jove" or "I
praise.''
But on the very terrace of the purgation of pride Dante
presents an altogether different image of how a beautiful heart-now, a beautiful life-can contain everything
that I have in my life made my own. Dante speaks of an
incomparable divine art able to produce "an image which
WINTER 1986
�was not silent" or "visible speech."
Thus we read (Canto 10) of Mary: "The angel who came
to earth with the decree of the many-years-wept-for
peace that opened heaven from its long interdict appeared
before us so truly graven there in a gracious attitude that
it did not seem a silent image. One would have sworn
he heard 'Ave-hail,' for she was imaged there who
turned the key to open the supreme love, and in her bearing she had the word imprinted 'Ecce ancilla Dei' -Behold
the handmaid of the Lord."
And then the Emperor Trajan:
"Depicted there was the glorious deed of the Roman
prince whose worth moved Gregory to his great
victory-! mean the emperor Trajan; and a poor widow
was at his bridle in a posture of grief and in tears. The
place about him seemed trampled and thronged with
Knights and the eagles in gold above them moved visibly in the wind. The poor woman among all these seemed
to say 'Lord, avenge me for my son that is dead, for
whom I am stricken' and he to answer her 'Wait now till
I return' and she 'My Lord' like one whose grief is urgent 'if thou return not?' and he 'He that is in my place
will do it for thee' and she 'What shall another's goodness avail thee if thou art forgetful of thine own; he therefore 'Now take comfort, for I must fulfill Dante concludes:
"He [God] for whose sight nothing is ever new wrought
this visible speech, new to us because it is not found here."
Now, I find two things in this passage very remarkable. The first is the notion of "visible speech" itself, of
"an image that is not silent." For what God's art has accomplished is to bring together a visual image which as
such gives wholeness and permanence, and speech as
what is essentially temporal and transient. As St. Augustine tells us wonderfully: unless each syllable passes
away to make room for the next, we would never hear
the whole statement. And in Dante's imagination God
has not merely fused the permanent and the transient,
that which is whole all at once and that whose completeness requires sequence and hence passing away; but
rather He, our Creator, has made us see that the whole
and permanent image on which we can gaze without motion contains all of motion and time that was important.
Nothing has been merely chiseled away, removed, destroyed to reach the final image.
The second remarkable thing is that although there is
a very special beauty in the immediate, wholehearted and
apparently uncomplicated response of Mary to her
calling-"Hail-Behold the handmaid of the Lord"Trajan's recalcitrance, wrongheadedness and confusion
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
seem to make an indispensable contribution to the loveliness of his own action of humility in finally
dismounting-getting off his high horse-to do his simple duty. Surely, more humility was required of Trajan
in the end than would have been required of him had
he not collaborated with the widow in "creating a scene."
In any event, although Mary's unfaltering humility is
lovely indeed, it seems that Trajan in looking upon the
image of his own action-his own life-could not simply
regret his own recalcitrance and wrongheadedness. And
could he not have been in the image of himself-the image of his heart as it finally contained his life-something
a little like "a trembling star at dawn"?
Let me close with another reflection about Trajan, who
seems to be a very important figure for Dante, being encountered on the first terrace of the mount of purgation
and again in the 20th Canto of Paradise. There, deep in
the indescribable beauty and joy of Paradise, Dante is still
troubled over the destiny of the virtuous pagans. He asks
about them in the heaven of justice. He receives a dogmatic theological answer, but then is permitted to see the
presence in paradise of two pagans: the Trojan Ripheus,
an obscure figure from the Aeneid, said there to have been
the most just of the trojans; and the pagan emperor Trajan, who was (according to a legend in which surely
Dante did not believe literally) brought back to life on account of the prayers of Pope Gregory who was moved
by the story of his life. After returning to earth he was
baptized and thereby made capable of redemption. I think
the real point of the story lies elsewhere for Dante, and
that it has much to do with how Dante understands pride.
For it must be that Trajan accepted his salvation not as
granted to him as a being apart, in isolation from others,
"considered in his own right" as we say, but rather as
a link in a chain, a member in a sequence of human persons moving and being moved. For consider: there is the
widow moved by love of her lost son, then Trajan moved
by a mother's love; then an eyewitness moved by Trajan' s humility and telling the story of that; then a chronicler being moved by the story to write it down; then
Gregory being moved by what he read to pray for Trajan; and finally God being moved by Gregory's prayers.
In this sequence it is difficult to find praiseworthy initiatives; what seems praiseworthy, rather, is that each
member be unwilling to allow a motion of love which began outside of himself or herself to end in himself or herself. Not to interrupt the motion of love through the
world-this seems to Dante to be the highest action of
which the human heart is capable. And to me too.
69
�Hegel and Marx:
Studies in Man's Self-Assertion
But the great difference between the service of God and the
service of an idol is that a man who serves God is spiritually
nourished by grace, whereas the servant of an idol has no such
nourishment. An idol has no spiritual food to give and no grace
to send down; it is created by a misguided application of spiritual
energy, and in its service the soul remains shut up in itself,
self-centered, with no outlet to superhuman realities. That is
the fatal side of the worship of false gods. Religious psychology
remains, only religious ontology is lacking.
-Nicolas Berdyaev
Introduction
There is nothing more fundamental to man's existence,
situated as it is between being and nothingness, than his
thirst for absolute being. History indicates, profound art
reveals, and philosophy must try to explicate two archetypal ways in which man attempts to assuage that thirst.
He can assert himself unlimitedly in thought and deed,
as though he could generate being by the sheer extensiveness and depth of his mastery over existence, that
is, over the visible world in which he discovers himself.
Or he can open himself to divine grace (and, as well, to
the secular graces whose source is ultimately divine) by
seeking first, not mastery over existence, but the Kingdom of God; by being silent before the mystery of existence (which is no less mysterious than the mystery of
being itself; how can one speak of God needing creation?); and by seeing in the visible world signs of the
invisible world which alone is connatural to man's thirst
for being, as men somehow know even when they appear
"Hegel and Marx: Studies in Man's Self~ Assertion" was written at Notre Dame in 1966.
70
to be most obsessed with mastering the visible world.
It is the assumption of this essay that in the main
modern man is following the way of self-assertion. Naturally it would be absurd to suppose that in the pre-modern
world, in classical antiquity say, there were no men
whose law of life was self-assertion. The resemblance between the position of Callicles and that of Hobbes is regularly and rightly remarked. But there is a way in which
even Hobbes does not adequately articulate the spiritual
orientation of modern society. For modern society, on the
level of political organization (whatever Hobbesian encounters may occur in a-political spheres), has transformed the war of all against all into the war of all against
the One, to use the language of the earliest Greek
philosophers. This development seems to me to parallel
exactly the essential difference between the tyrants whom
Callicles envied and the modern totalitarian regimes,
namely that the animating impulse of the former is private avarice (whose objects may indeed be metaphysical, but whose character is nevertheless private), whereas
the latter aspires precisely to a collective self-assertion vis
vis what I can only call, at this stage of the argument,
the One.
From this point of view, it will be noticed, the difference between modern totalitarian regimes and those
modern regimes which oppose them is one of degree
rather than of quality. (It is tempting to say that the difference is a matter of less or more patience, but that would
not be entirely fair.) But it would be intolerable not to add
immediately that the difference in degree is worth spending one's life for and that no man has the right to say
that there is nothing to choose between a quarter truth
and a total lie.
However, there is a way in which the impulse toward
collective self-assertion at the heart of modern society is
a
WINTER 1986
�effectively concealed by the modern talent for thinking
and speaking in short-range terms, thereby obscuring the
presuppositions and implications of our thoughts and
deeds. That is why it seems to me particularly valuable
to undertake a study of two such thinkers as G.W.F.
Hegel and Karl Marx, for they understood and described
in perfectly explicit ontological terms the nature of the
modern spiritual enterprise. They understood its nature
because they realized vividly how radically it conflicts
with the view of things embodied in classical philosophy,
which they knew very well, though we have largely forgotten it (or, if we remember the letter, we can only with
great effort obtain access to the spirit).
Hegel and Marx complement each other in a number
of fairly obvious ways. I would suggest, and this essay
will elaborate upon, one in particular: the thought of
Hegel represents a deliberate reversal of the Socratic understanding of the way of the philosopher in the world;
and the thought of Marx represents a deliberate reversal
of the Aristotelian understanding of the hierarchy of human activities. Thus Hegel describes philosophy as the
possession, not merely the love, of truth and asserts that
its purpose is to announce to man that he is the measure
of all things; and Marx asserts that man's essentially human activity is neither contemplation nor political action,
but rather labor, and that man is completely defined by
his sociality.
The above remarks stand in need of one important
qualification, however. We must beware of imputing to
any thinker, whatever the phenomenal evidence, a deliberate closing of his soul to grace, simply because the mystery of human personality is impenetrable. Moreover, I
have taken Hegel and Marx, not as causes of the modern
spiritual orientation, but as two of its most articulate
representatives. It follows that we cannot presume to impute to modern society en masse a deliberate closing of
its soul. It sometimes appears that modern man is not
aware of any alternative to his present orientation, as
though the Western tradition of twenty-five centuries had
nothing to say to him; nothing, at any rate, that he can
understand. Surely the historic failure of Christians to be
worthy of their vocation, the betrayal of the glad tidings
by those responsible for the Crnsades and the Inquisition and similar but subtler enterprises, is cause for
tears-and for petitions of divine mercy.
In view of these last considerations, the purpose of the
final chapter of this work is to indicate that the alternative to the modern way of self-assertion is not easy. It
is not easy personally and it is not easy politically. It is
tense and exacting. The possibilities of failure are not only
great, but diabolically subtle. In view of these characteristics, my remarks could hardly hope or pretend to be conclusive. Mainly they are indications of dangers and
intimations of hopes. In some sense they constitute an
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
agenda, an obviously personal one, and I hope that as
such they do not obtrude unduly on the reader. But they
also seem to me to have fairly broad theoretical relevance,
and so I have presented them.
I should like to express my gratitude to Professor Edward Goerner, Professor Nicholas Lobkowicz, Professor
Gerhart Niemeyer and Professor Frank O'Malley, by the
effects of whose wisdom I have become, in the course
of this study, a little less foolish.
Hegel
This chapter on Hegel has two principal parts. In the
first I shall consider the significance of The Phenomenology
of Spirit. In the second I shall propose an interpretation
of the full course of Hegel's philosophic career, immediately with a view to accounting for the politically reactionary character of the thought of his final years, and
ultimately with a view to raising more general questions
to which I shall recur in the final chapter of this work.
I
The Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807, is by general consent the greatest of Hegel's works. It consists in a
systematic description of the historical progression (which
Hegel takes to be inevitable both as to content and as to
order) of stages of consciousness or philosophies leading up to and culminating in Systematic Science. Systematic Science may be characterized as perfect lucidity
or perfect self-consciousness: its content is precisely the
review of all philosophies that have preceded it, with a
realization of their imperfection as successively closer approximations (but only approximations) to Absolute
Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge is the knowledge that Absolute
Spirit is the truth of all things, in the sense of being their
end, understood in rather an Aristotelian way. Absolute
Spirit-this is the key concept-is both the subject and
the object of a self-consciousness purged of all its accidental or idiosyncratic features. It exists in an individual person only insofar as he has the same consciousness of what
he is doing as every other person can have of what he
(the other person) is doing. The primary referrent of "Absolute Spirit" is an individual person; only secondarily
and metaphorically does Hegel mean anything "pantheistic" by it.' Finally, the three supreme realizations of Absolute Spirit, in ascending order of perfection, are art,
religion and philosophy.
But the foregoing describes only abstractly what Hegel
is about. Actually, The Phenomenology of Spirit is one of
the great intellectual and passional adventures in all of
philosophic literature. Hegel speaks in his preface of the
"highway of despair" which Spirit must traverse, of "the
71
�seriousness, the suffering, the patience and the labor of
the negative" to which Spirit is subject. However, it
seems that these dark words are used rather ironically
by Hegel, who knows, after all, that all will come out well
in the end. More appropriate as categories of Hegelian
interpretation are those proposed by Jacob Loewenberg:
the histrionic and the comic.
When Hegel writes in his preface: 2 "In my view-a
view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justify-everything depends on grasping
and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but
as Subject." he implies that the philosopher who would
accomplish Systematic Science cannot merely detachedly regard all the philosophies which have preceded him:
he must actually impersonate the philosophers who created the philosophies and must transcenq each in its turn
as it is about to collapse, leaping to safety an instant before the wagon plunges into the abyss. For all his denunciations of German romanticism, Hegel was in this respect
the weirdest romantic of all.
Loewenberg further points out that the odyssey of spirit
in history is essentially comic in Hegel's view. For each
view of things, necessarily partial (before Hegel), to consider itself total, despite having witnessed its predecessor's claim to totality exposed as ridiculous, is really
comical, and rnoreso in measure as the number of cases
of exposed folly available for inspection increases. With
the exception of the quite lurid language with which he
denounces the Terror concomitant upon the French Revolution, I think it can be said that Hegel's tone throughout verges on amusement, and in some cases (for
example, in regard to the yearning of the unhappy consciousness and to Aristophanes' lament that the formerly
reverenced was now being ridiculed) is pure amusement,
pure unless tinged with scorn. That, given the inner logic
of the dialectical method, there can be no total or final
view, and that Hegel's position is therefore the most comical hitherto, is almost too obvious to remark.
Rather than trying to present a balanced and relatively
complete account of the content of The Phenomenology of
Spirit, I shall limit myself to an analysis of four" dialectical moments" in Hegel's argument: his epistemology in
relation to Kant and Aristotle; the master-slave relationship the critique of the Beautiful Soul; and the depictorialization of Christianity.
Hegel's epistemology
In the first section of Phenomenology, Hegel traces the development of self-consciousness
epistemologically, from sense-awareness through perceptual consciousness (where it is perceived not only that
a thing is there, but also that it has qualities) through
scientific understanding (against which the Kantian critique, Hegel holds, is valid: the understanding does
prescribe forms) to self-consciousness as the realization
that it is the truth of all things.
72
Kant had made the human mind the measure of
phenomena, in that it prescribed the forms under which
the sensuous manifold was organized. For Kant.
however, the thing-in-itself was not measured by the
mind, indeed was inaccessible to the mind. Hence the
mind was autonomous (self-legislating, self-normative),
but subjectively autonomous. Hegel wanted to preserve
the autonomy of the mind, while overcoming the mere
subjectivity of its knowledge.' Concerning the allegedly
inaccessible thing-in-itself, he writes in a famous passage: "It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain,
which is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be
seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in
order that we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen." (p. 212) 4
What is striking in this formulation is that it is not contended that the human mind is already and abidingly the
principle of coherence of the phenomenal world, but
rather that the phenomenal world lacks such a principle
and that the human mind ought therefore to supply it.
Hegel is not making a statement of what he believes to
be ontological fact; he is issuing a directive, recommending an attitude. Seeing no sign of any other telos in things,
he will impose one of his own. In a word, there is a
stronger element of will in Hegel's "idealism" than is ordinarily recognized. 5
My immediate interest is to point out how radically
such an attitude differs from that of Aristotle, to whom
Hegel is so often facilely assimilated (for example, by
Findlay and Marcuse). For Aristotle there was as a matter of course something behind the phenomena, namely,
the first cause on which all existents were radically dependent. and which was itself entirely independent of
human minds. For man to impose his own telos on things
Aristotle would have thought simply unnaturaleverything had its own telos, inunanent in one sense, but
ultimately defined in relation to the transcendent first
cause. Also it should be mentioned that although Hegel
indeed makes much of Aristotle's notion of divine
thought as thinking about thinking, Hegel construed that
notion in a sense that would have been incomprehensible
to Aristotle. For Aristotle the contemplation of God by
man-though that is man's most godlike possibility-is
by no means identical with God's self-contemplation, the
sign of which is that man must strain every nerve to engage in contemplation, which he can bear only for a short
time, since men become Weary, and finally die.
That we are not behind the curtain of phenomena until we insert ourselves there, that we are the end of things
not by discovery but by imposition, accounts for the
necessity of the annihilative action of man on man (the
master-slave relationship) and of man on nature (labor
as mastery). It accounts, more generally, for the highly
active character of Hegelian contemplation. Most of all,
WINTER 1986
�it explains why "it is clear at the same time that we cannot without more ado go straightaway behind there"
(i.e., behind the curtain of phenomena)-the question finally is not one of discovering our divinity, but of actually divinizing ourselves, of becoming worthy of our
Lordship over our own creation. 6
The Master-Slave Relationship
Hegel's primary interest is in the social rather than the epistemological
dimension of the development of self-consciousness. Still
the leitmotiv is the desire of self-consciousness to impose
itself as the truth of the other, in the peculiar form of eliciting from the other an acknowledgement of one's existence: ''Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself,
in that, and by the fact that it exists for another selfconsciousness: that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized." (p.229) But to recognize a
self-consciousness in Hegel's sense is to recognize that
it is the truth of all things, including oneself. So according to Hegel's account, I demand that another self conform to my self, recognize my self-consciousness as the
truth of all things. But for him to do so, it seems to him,
is self-annihilation. (However, he is mistaken-my selfconsciousness ultimately coincides with his, all that is accidental or idiosyncratic having been purged or prescinded from, so that for my self-consciousness to be the truth
of all things is also for his self-consciousness to be the
truth of all things.) Hence, he resists me; death hovers
over both of us in the ensuing struggle; if one of us submits to the other to forestall death, a master-slave relationship is established. The relationship is mediated by
nature in the dual sense that fear of nature's death is the
slave's strongest impulse and that the slave technologically transforms nature for the delectation of the master.
But the master's conquest is futile: he is recognized as
an autonomous consciousness by a consciousness whose
autonomy he does not recognize. At first glance it appears
that Hegel has revived the ancient and valuable insight
that a despot is no more free than his subjects. But for
Hegel the barrier to the freedom of the master is the
necessarily servile form of the consciousness by whom his
own consciousness is acknowledged; recognition of some
sort (eventually and ideally of all by all) is indispensable
for the true existence of self-consciousness. For the ancients, contrastingly, the argument had several levels, the
most obvious of which was that a despot is unfree, but
the deepest of which was that to need to be acknowledged at all is a sign of unfreedom-one most fully
is, and is therefore most fully free, in relation to the center
of one's own inner being.' That is why Socrates (in the
Republic), after conceding hypothetically that by virtue of
one's possession of the ring of Gyges, one's deeds and
thoughts might be unknown (or known incorrectly) by
all save oneself, argues that still one's true quality Gustness or unjustness) would be what it was.'
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
At any rate, as Camus points out, the only historical
function of Hegel's master consciousness is to arouse ser-
vile consciousness. Hegel writes of the slave's dialectically necessary liberation: "But as lordship showed its
essential nature to be the reverse of what it wants to be,
so too, bondage will, when completed, pass into the opposite of what it immediately is: being a consciousness
repressed within itself, it will enter into itself, and change
round into a real and true independence." (p.237) Hegel
goes on to say that it is precisely by the activity of labor
(in the sense of giving form to things) that the slave attains to self-consciousness. The thing is an object of his
consciousness; the thing is in some sense he, since he
has given form to it; so in being conscious of it he is selfconscious. But his attainment of self-consciousness
would still be impossible without the master. The relationship between the two conditions (the master and the
activity of laboring) for the attainment of selfconsciousness, hence freedom, by the slave is summarized by Hegel: "Without the discipline of service and
obedience, fear remains formal and does not spread over
the whole known reality of existence. Without the formative activity making the thing, fear remains inward and
mute, and consciousness does not become objective for
itself." (p.239) How strange a child must freedom be,
bastard born of the forced copulation of abject fear in the
face of the master with unbounded self-assertiveness in
the face of nature!
Although it is true that for Hegel labor is one of the
ways out of slavery, it can definitely be said, contrary to
Herbert Marcuse,' that for Hegel slavery is antecedent
to relations of production and property. The primordial
struggle in Hegel's world is for spiritual prestige; that the
slave transforms nature at the behest of the master is only
a sign and consequence of a relationship of prestige which
is radically spiritual.
Critique of the Beautiful Soul
Despite its initially innocent appearance, the critique of the beautiful soul is
one of the most politically portentous moments in Hegel's
system, and a moment which we shall now scrutinize.
The beautiful soul is so loath to stain itself that it refuses to act, but not at all loath, Hegel claims, to judge
those who do act. It is a form of consciousness for which
Hegel has the utmost contempt: "It may well preserve
itself in its purity, for it does not act; it is hypocrisy, which
wants to see the act of judging taken for the actual deed,
and instead of proving its uprightness and honesty by
acts does so by expressing fine sentiments." (p.671) It
must be remembered in this connection that Hegel is
reacting against the Romantics (especially Novalis, it has
been suggested) by whom he found himself surrounded,
among whom a cultivation of anguished scrupulosity
seems to have been all too common. But Hegel goes far
beyond mere deprecation of the excesses of Romanticism,
73
�as we can see by attending to his remarks on the beautiful soul's criticism of the man of action. 10
Hegel writes: "This process of judging, then, takes the
act out of the sphere of its objective existence, and turns
it back into the inner subjective sphere, into the form of
private or individual particularity. If the act carries glory
with it, then the inner sphere is judged as love of fame
... and so on." (p.672) However, Hegel goes on to argue, the inner subjective here is just one aspect of an individual's action, which also has a universal aspect.
Viewed in its individual aspect, Hegel assumes, any action is indeed pure sin; but one need not view it in that
aspect. To view it in that aspect is somehow paltry,
characteristic of a "moral valet":
No hero is a hero to his valet, not however, because the hero
is not a hero, but because the valet is-the valet, with whom
the hero has to do, not as a hero, but as a man who eats,
drinks and dresses, who in short, appears as a private individual with certain personal wants and ideas of his own.
In the same way, there is no act in which the process of judgment cannot oppose the personal aspect of the individuality
to the universal aspect of the act, and play the part of the
moral valet towards the agent. (p.673)
How different from the Christian view in which some
acts are regarded as objectively intolerable, but as possibly subjectively innocent (so that full knowledge and intent are necessary for sinfulness)! We have really not
escaped from the world in which innocence is a possible
attribute only of a stone: a child, insofar as he dresses
himself idiosyncratically, or in any way has personal
wants or ideas of his own, is subjectively sinful. And as
to the objective and universal aspect of an act, Hegel in
this section makes no differentiations respecting moral
quality: presumably, at this stage of the dialectic at least
(and I can think of no important qualifications to follow)
any action is objectively innocent. Ivan Karamazov's
''everything is permitted'' receives a double impetus from
Hegel: how can one make moral discriminations when,
subjectively speaking, all are guilty; and objectively
speaking, all are innocent?
But for the beautiful soul which would deny that all actions are innocent and all motives are guilty (the "cunning of reason" is here anticipated by Hegel), Hegel has
nothing but categorical rejection: "It thereby proves itself to be a form of consciousness which is forsaken by
and denies the very nature of spirit; for it does not understand that spirit, in the absolute certainty of itself, is
master and lord over every deed, and over all reality, and
can reject and cast them off and make them as if they had
never been." (p.675)
Hegel was not Stalin. Stalin seems not to have been
particularly anxious about metaphysical justifications. But
it is nonetheless true that Stalin, master and lord over
74
every deed and over all reality, can cause statues to be
removed from museums, and history books to be rewritten, thereby annihilating those beautiful souls who would
deny his (and their own) divinity, rejecting them and casting them off and making them as if they had never been.
The Depictorialization of Christianity
It is important to
recognize the unpolitical, inward-looking content of the
final stage of Hegel's dialectical journey: art, religion and
philosophy seem remote from the harsh and deadly realities of the Terror 11
We shall not attend to Hegel's survey of the naturereligions of the early East or the artistic religion of Greece,
but shall notice in some detail his interpretation of Absolute or Revealed Religion, i.e., Christianity. In general
Hegel says of religious consciousness that it has achieved
the vision of itself as the truth of all things. Thereby the
religious consciousness has the same content as Hegel's
own philosophy; only, in religious consciousness, the vision has not yet been purged of pictorial representations
and hence is not fully universal."
The purport of Hegel's treatment of Christianity is clearly revealed in his discussion of the Incarnation, which
emphasizes not that fact, but the consciousness' belief
in it: "The Absolute Spirit has taken on the shape of selfconsciousness inherently, and therefore also consciously to itself-this appears now as the belief of the world,
the belief that spirit exists in fact as a definite selfconsciousness, i.e., as an actual human being; that spirit
is an object of immediate experience; that the believing
mind sees, feels and hears this divinity. Taken thus it is
not imagination, not a fancy; it is actual in the believer."
(my emphasis, p.757)
Although for Hegel the Christian symbols possess a
species of truth, they must be transcended, or interpreted notionally .13 He is careful to instruct us on how to
make the transition to philosophy, especially on what not
to do: "What this self-revealing spirit is in and for itself,
is therefore not brought out by the rich content of its life
being, so to say, untwined and reduced to its primitive
and original strands, to the ideas for instance presented
before the minds of the first imperfect religious communion, or even to what the actual human being incarnating
the divine spirit has spoken." (p.764)
Hegel thus proceeds to interpret Christianity
philosophically. There are grounds for speaking of a
Quaternity or Quinity, but he can make philosophic sense
out of the Trinity: "There are thus three moments to be
distinguished: Essential Being; explicit self-existence,
which is the express otherness of Essential Being, and
for which that Being is object; and self-existence or selfknowledge in that other." (p.767) The Fall is a figure of
Spirit's loss of innocence, its becoming conscious of good
and evil. It is difficult to say exactly what Hegel means
by u good" and u evil". n Good" seems to mean that Di-
WINTER 1986
�vine Essence and nature are one, which is the case. "Evil"
seems to mean that Divine Essence and nature are other
to each other, which is also the case. If we find this situation puzzling, it is due to our addiction to the principle
of non-contradiction and "to the soulless copula 'is'."
One more outstanding symbol needs to be translatedthe death of God, which, properly interpreted, is cause
for rejoicing. First, self-consciousness itself has not died,
only a person: "This self-consciousness does not therefore really die, as the particular person is pictorially imagined really to have died; its particularity expires in its
universality, i.e., in its knowledge, which is Essential Being reconciling itself with itself." (p.781) Moreover, the
death of the historic God-man \s necessary and entails,
astoundingly, the death of God Himself, God the Father:
"The death of the mediator is death not merely of his
natural aspect, of his particular self-existence: what dies
is ... also the abstraction of the Divine Being. For the
mediator, as long as high death has not yet accomplished
the reconciliation, is something one-sided which takes
as Essential Being the simple abstract element of thought,
not concrete reality." (p.781)
Concerning the anguish which some souls experience
because God Himself is dead, Hegel writes: "This feeling thus means, in point of fact, the loss of the Substance
and of its objective existence over against consciousness.''
(p.782) That is, God does not exist apart from human
self-consciousness; or, man is divinized. With the depictorialization of the Christian Creed, Systematic Science
is accomplished.
It has been objected against the description of Hegel's
system as an embodiment of colossal pride, first that
Hegel never claimed to have brought history to a close
and accomplished the divinization of man by virtue of
his own prodigious intelligence, but rather he freely acknowledged the contributions of his predecessors; second, that Hegel did not divinize himself only, but rather
all of mankind; and third, that he divinized only the
highest thing in man, namely his reason, to which man
was obliged to conform himself.14
In regard to the first objection, we must first notice the
strange fact that nowhere in his writings (as far as I know)
does Hegel reflect on the peculiar grace by which doctrines were revealed to him which righteous men of old
times earnestly desired to be told, and were not.
Moreover, and decisively, that Hegel should regard himself as the fulfillment of the action and passion of Christ
(whom, after all, he implicitly considered the greatest of
his predecessors) can hardly be designated otherwise
than as colossal pride. As to the second objection, clearly Hegel did not underestimate the difference between
implicit and explicit, inchoately and perfectly selfconscious divinity, i.e., between the vulgar and the
philosophers. Thirdly, as I have tried to show, man's be-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing obliged to live in accordance with reason poses no
limits for him with respect to action, due to the wilful element in Hegel's notion of reason, which for Hegel does
not so much exist in things as it can be successfully imposed on things.
The judgment must stand: Hegel's Phenomenology is the
most extreme expression of the hubris which dominates
almost all of modern philosophy.
II
I propose now to look at Hegel's philosophic career as
a whole and to interpret it as the product of a journey
on a highway of despair which, unlike the one traversed
in Phenomenology, was by no means methodical, but was
utterly real, a journey at whose end came the abandonment and betrayal of that freedom of individual reason
(including conscience), and especially of philosophic reason, to which he had always, so he thought, given the
highest place.
When I speak of abandonment and betrayal at the end
of Hegel's philosophic journey, I suppose an interpretation of Philosophy of Right (1820) and of Hegel's subsequent lectures until his death in 1831, as, in the last
analysis, a surrender of freedom of individual conscience
and reason and, worse (though of only derivative
relevance in this context), the establishment of success
as the criterion of right in international relations. A number of attempts have been made to extenuate Hegel's
seemingly servile acceptance of all that is (in accordance
with his famous formula asserting the rationality of the
real). Marcuse makes these points: we must keep in mind
the place of Philosophy of Right in Hegel's overall
system-the state is the highest .being within the realm
of objective mind which is, however, subordinate to absolute mind; also, the racism, chauvinism and antirationalism of the pseudo-democratic ideologists among those
liberals whom Hegel opposed were closer to Naxism than
Hegel was; and finally, Hegel's doctrine displayed some
definitely liberal features-publicity of legal proceedings,
clarity of legal language, tolerance of such religious
minorities as the Quakers and Jews insofar as consistent
with public order.
These arguments have some force; but not enough to
neutralize such a statement, of which there are many in
Philosophy of Right, as this: "The state, which is the realized substantive will, having its reality in the particular
self-consciousness raised to the plane of the universal,
is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own
motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its
highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member
of the state.'' 15
The position enunciated here by Hegel is directly anti-
75
�thetical to the argument he urged with considerable ardor
at the beginning of his career in a pair of theological essays written in 1795 and 1798. The two differ considerably
as regards the way in which Hegel analyzes the relationship between Kantian and Christian ethics." But they
have one thing in common-their insistence that for man
to submit to any authority other than his reason is grossly
demeaning: "No man can relinquish his right to give unto
himself the law and to be solely responsible for its execution. If this right is renounced, man ceases to be man.''
Likewise, at the end of Phenomenology, despite recognition of the historically recurrent instances of conflict between individual and community, the perfect autonomy
of the philosopher is nevertheless affirmed. However,
there has been a significant change in Hegel's position
in Phenomenology as compared with the earlier writings:
in the distinction between the Christian religion with its
pictorially represented, hence imperfect, truth, and
Hegel's own notionally represented truth, is implied a
distinction between the many who are not capable of
comprehending a depictorialized Christian doctrine, and
the few who are, between the vulgar and the
philosophers. In view of this distinction, Hegel's advocacy in Philosophy of Right of uncritical submergence in the
concrete mores and laws of the state might be supposed
to refer only to the vulgar, to those incapable of
philosophic reflection; the autonomy of the philosopher
might be supposed to remain unimpaired.
However, that is not the case. As Marcuse rightly emphasizes, it is the essence of Hegel's dialectical
philosophy to be critical ("the power of negative thinking"), pointing out the partiality and one-sidedness of
what is before its gaze (this is not just a matter of criticizing past imperfections; the imperfections are in fact archetypal; there are 20th century Kantians), holding forth
an ideal of fullness and perfection. But Hegel writes in
his preface to Philosophy of Right:
To apprehend what is, is the task of philosophy, because
what is, is reason. As for the individual, every one is a son
of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in
thought. It is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can
transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap
out of his time or jump over Rhodes. If a theory transgresses
its time, and builds up a world as it ought to be, it has an
existence merely in the unstable element of opinion, which
gives room to every wandering fancy.
And these words, from the final paragraph of the
preface, justify me, I think, in speaking of personal
despair in connection with the philosopher who spoke
of knowledge as reconciliation with reality: "Only one
more word concerning the desire to teach the world what
it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least al-
76
ways comes too late ... when philosophy paints its grey
in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means
of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The
owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of
night are gathering."
The lectures of Hegel's final years are full of dithyrambic nonsense about the glorious odyssey of the world
spirit toward greater and more perfect freedom (from
Oriental despotisms where only one is free to Germanic
Christendom where all are free); but obviously these
panegyrics imply a compromised notion of freedom
which would never have satisfied the young Hegel or
what is best in the Hegel of Phenomenology.
The question, which we cannot fully answer because
we cannot see into the soul of any man, but which we
must ask because we too, perhaps, would philosophize
(and which we can partially answer because Hegel's writings give us clues as to the perceptions that affected his
attitude) is: how did Hegel come to despair, first of all,
that men whose ultimate recourse was their personal conscience, might live together in concord; and second, that
a philosopher might invoke possibilities of perfection as
a criterion against which to measure the actual?
It is a commonplace that Hegel shrank back with revulsion from the Terror of the French Revolution. 17 But the
question is, what did the Terror signify for Hegel? what
fear did it confirm? why did he forebode its recurrence?
Marcuse emphasizes the economic side of Hegel's
thought, and argues that Hegel's deification of the state
was motivated by his perception that the economic antagonisms generated by capitalism preclude the possibility of a stable order unless such an order be imposed by
government. He quotes from an early (1804) Hegelian
manuscript: "This system [i.e., capitalist production]
moves hither and yon in a blind and elementary way, and
like a wild animal calls for strong, permanent control and
curbing." It is certainly true that economic conceptions
play an important part in Hegel's thinking: he anticipated Marx (in texts not known to Marx) by explaining alienation in a specifically economic sense as the result of abstract labor, and by denouncing the dehumanizing
aspects of mechanization; anticipated Lenin by explaining imperialism as springing from the capitalist mode of
production; and in an early manuscript he even says that
perfect love is impossible under the condition of private
property, which emphasizes particularity by binding one
lover up with a "dead thing" which is outside the union
of the lovers. Most significantly, Hegel's notion (in
Phenomenology) that labor is the beginning of the way out
of bondage was very influential on Marx, as we shall see.
But it seems to me that Marcuse' s economic emphasis
is exaggerated, that it was the perception of another reality, more fundamental than economics, which was
primarily responsible for Hegel's trepidation. The nature
WINTER 1986
�of this perception can best be indicated by focusing attention upon Hegel's attitude toward Sophocles'
Antigone, to whom he refers in his early theological writings, in Phenomenology, and in Philosophy of Right, which
I am talcing as marking the three salient stages in Hegel's
philosophic development. Hegel shows comparable interest in no other author and in no other literary figure;
I think it is no exaggeration to say that throughout his
career he felt that it was Antigone and her problem with
which he had to come to terms.
His first interpretation, in The Positivity of Christianity,
was unambiguously individualistic, exalting individual
freedom without qualification. When Antigone, defying
the law of her state (the will of Creon), invokes the law
of God which is "an everlasting law, unwritten and unchanging, and no man knows when it was first put
forth," Hegel takes her to be referring to nothing but her
conscience, since the everlasting law, he says, has no external manifestations.
In Phenomenology, in his discussion of umeflective ethical life, revolving around the foci of community (expressing human law inunediately, divine law derivatively) and
family (the inunediate expression of divine law), Hegel
at first seems to see Antigone merely as the expression
of one branch of the ethical order in conflict with the other
branch, represented by Creon. He holds that both are acting as they must and yet both are guilty; on the level of
unreflective ethical life, no resolution is possible. But then
Hegel goes a step further: he notes, as between human
law and divine law, a peculiar difference in their modes
of command: "For the commands of government have
a universal sense and meaning open to the light of day;
the will of the other [i.e., divine]law, however, is the
inner concealed meaning of the realm of darkness, a
meaning which appears expressed as the will of a particular being, and in contradicting the first is malicious
offense." (p.486) (It is true that formally speaking Hegel
acknowledges that the divine law is mediated through
the family; but it is Sophocles' Antigone which he has
read, and he knows that Antigone and her sister Ismene
are utterly unable to understand each other.)
"The inner concealed meaning of the realm of
darkness" -that is, one runs a terrible risk in opposing
the posited laws on which shines the light of day, risks
being tempted by a demon rather than by God. Kierkegaard thought the risk incumbent upon man, the very
source of his dignity; Hegel, in view of the French Revolution, thought the risk could and should be avoided. But
there is another dimension to the problem, as we shall
see.
In Philosophy of Right Hegel twice mentions Antigone,
the first time in support of his assertion that no one knows
the origin of customs; the second time, in connection with
his identification of objective consciousness with man-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
hood and subjective consciousness with womanhood, he
speaks with unmistakable nostalgia of Antigone, whose
piety "Sophocles most superbly presented," Antigone,
whose appeal was to "the law of woman, the law of an
inner life, the law of the ancient gods and of the underworld, the eternal law, whose origin no one knows, in
opposition to the public law of the state. This opposition
is in the highest sense ethical and hence also tragic; it is
individualized in the opposing natures of man and woman." (p.l72) But man has his essential place in the state,
and woman in the bosom of her family; hence the subjective pole of the opposition is excluded from political
life. Thus has Hegel finally dealt with Antigone.
Hegel must exclude Antigone from the political realm
because she is one of "those who, as they say, seek the
Lord, and in their untutored opinion assure themselves
of possessing all things directly" (p.261)-"directly," that
is, without the mediation of class or community, standing in absolute relation to the absolute, beyond good and
evil as embodied in humanly posited laws. "From such
persons can proceed nothing except abomination and folly, and the demolition of all ethical relations." (p. 261)
This was the lesson Hegel thought he had learned from
the French Revolution and the Terror: that society could
not tolerate those who lived beyond its posited good and
evil, could no more tolerate those who pursued absolute
good than those who pursued absolute evil.
The problem, from a political point of view, of transcending established ethical relations, has a dimension
which Kierkegaard, in his extreme introversion, did not
recognize: the problem is not simply that an individual
who does away with mediation and stands related absolutely to the absolute is subject to temptations which may
be either demonic or divine and whose origin he may
therefore mistake. From a political point of view,'' which
dominated Hegel after the Terror, actions which flow
from unmediated divine temptations may be as intolerable as those flowing from unmediated demonic temptations. This perception has, as far as I know19 , its
incomparable realization in Melville's Billy Budd, in the
preface to which Melville announces explicitly that it is
written under the shadow of the Terror which reversed
the shining hopes of the beginning of the French Revolution (the metaphor for which, in the story, is the Great
Mutiny).
The central expression of the irresolvable antinomy in
Melville's story is Captain Vere' s exclamation upon the
murder of Claggart by Billy Budd: "Struck by an angel
of God! Yet the angel must hang!" Billy Budd, who transcends the sphere of ethical existence, who enters into
the kind of unmediated relation to the absolute which the
terroristic champions of the absolute rights of man entered into; who not only was a foundling, without family,
but who when malignantly accused by Claggart is struck
77
�utterly dumb, unable to express himself in language, the
mode of the ethical and universal; who alone is able to
deal with Claggart, since Claggart' s evil, "partaking nothing of the sensual or the sordid," is beyond the ordinary
experience of men, hence beyond their legal arrangements; whom Captain Vere knows and says will be acquitted by the judgment of God-Billy Budd is guilty
under the law of the Mutiny act and must hang, lest there
be anarchy on ship, because the absolute morality he incarnates is, in the words of Captain Vere, "incapable of
being embodied in lasting institutions."
The same perception of the implications of the French
Revolution, more than any anxiety over contradictions
inherent in the capitalist mode of production, impelled
Hegel to his final political position. (The perception was
his even more bitterly since, unlike Captain Vere, he had
no belief in a divine last judgment that might rectify faulty
but necessary human judgments.) The same perception
led him to hope that Antigone would stay within the
bosom of her family and, her father and brothers dead,
would remain with her sister Ismene outside of the public realm; or, to put it more generally, that individual conscience would not oppose the laws that be; that to this
end philosophy would abjure its task of criticism, for, as
Hegel wrote in Philosophy of Right: "Uneducated men
delight in surface reasonings and fault-findings. Faultfinding is an easy matter, but it is hard to know the good
and its inner necessity. Education always begins with
fault-finding, but when full and complete, sees in everything the positive." (p.256) This we may designate as
Hegel's final betrayal of philosophy. But it was not his
first. For in his preface to Phenomenology he had written
that it was his purpose to enable philosophy to "lay aside
the name of love of knowledge and be actual
knowledge" -which Plato had said was the possession
of God alone.
We must consider carefully the import of this last statement. Some of those who are not inclined to dismiss the
application of Plato's saying to Hegel as sentimental
rhetoric might think it sufficient to deprecate Hegel's immodesty in some such terms as these of Karl Popper, a
thoroughly modern writer: "He even accomplished the
deduction of the actual position of the planets, thereby
proving that no planet could be situated between Mars
and Jupiter (unfortunately it had escaped his notice that
such a planet had been discovered a few months earlier)." That is, one can never tell what science may discover next week (or may have discovered last week
without one's noticing it); hence, one ought not to claim
to have full possession of all knowledge. The trouble with
this kind of argument is that there is no theoretical reason why science may not some day have, in fact, discovered all the planets. Then, presumably, modesty would
be out of place.
78
But Plato had something very different in mind. For
him knowledge was not a matter of empirically verifiable
theses but of salvation, not a collection of truths and techniques, but a loving orientation of the soul to truth itself.
And it was an orientation not easily sustained. The lover
of truth was beset by rhetorical lures and sophistical traps.
Wrestlers turned debaters might throw him time and
again. There were easy truths, popular truths and impressive truths-but there was only one Truth. There were
truths of the assembly, of the generals, and of the court
which could condemn one to death-but Truth was one,
and not to be bargained with.
In the Phaedrus, the very dialogue whence comes Plato's
saying that the love, certainly not the possession, of
knowledge is man's highest vocation, Socrates is shown
to experience and succumb to the temptation known to
every thinker in every age-"by sinning in the sight of
God to win high renown from man." Socrates realizes
his sin, asks forgiveness and recants, which is all that one
can do, although one knows that the temptation will
recur, and that one may again succumb. That is why
Socrates cannot conceive of man as a possessor of sophia,
but only as a lover. But his love, though it falter, is
nonetheless the radical meaning of his existence.
Marx
The primary objective of this chapter is to discover the
image of man limned in the writings of Karl Marx (as
manifest particularly in his early writings20) and to suggest, in a far from exhaustive way, that a critique of that
image, in measure as the critique is valid, also tells against
contemporary Western civilization. To this end, my remarks are organized under four headings: Marx's relationship to Hegel; the problem of the origin of alienation
in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; the relationship of Marxian man to nature-the problem of contemplation; and the abolition of alienation in the new
society.
I
Hegel's influence on Marx was profound and essentially twofold. From the Phenomenology Marx learned that
man accomplishes his humanity through history by overcoming all that resists him, by struggling to impose himself on things as their end and by finally asserting himself
as lord over all he surveys. He learned secondly (what
had been a corollary for Hegel but was to be primary for
Marx) that the activity of labor, in the sense of acting
transformatively on nature, of impressing one's form on
it in masterly fashion, is crucial to man's progress toward
unlimited self-assertion. Hegel's notion of labor as the
reduction and annihilation of natural objects not merely
to assuage man's material neediness but essentially as a
WINTER 1986
�mode of man's self-assertion, has already been noticed.
Marx adopts it with virtually no change (despite his
Feuerbachian language). He differs significantly from
Hegel, however, in that he accepts labor, understood
thus, as the definitive mode of man's coming to freedom,
that is, to collective lordship. For Hegel, labor was the
beginning of the way out of slavery, the beginning of the
road to freedom but, though indispensable, it was not
sufficient: man's divinity was finally accomplished by
philosophic speculation (transformed Christianity),
whose realization that self-consciousness is the end of
all things did not even purport to be so much a matter
of discovery as of successful imposition. For Hegel, history revealed that man had succeeded in acting toward
nature and society21 as if they had no proper end of their
own independently of his impulse toward self-assertion.
But there was something unsatisfactory about the "as
if'' -men were known to have qualms of conscience, intimations from they knew not where, 22 that perhaps man
is not the measure of all things. Philosophy, for Hegel,
had to banish any such doubt (compare Hegel's scorn for
the yearning for otherworldly fullness of the Unhappy
Consciousness) and assert that of course God is the measure of all things, but that, as the philosophic vanguard
of Germanic Christendom has been the first to recognize,
man is God. That is, whatever resistances, interior or ex-
terior, still remained to man's self-assertion had to be
abolished speculatively, by a kind of willful contemplation. Marx did not have the same faith in the ability of
willful contemplation to abolish resistances. He was more
profoundly concerned than Hegel with man's ontological completeness: not self-consciousness but flesh-andblood man must be the end of all things. Hence practice
rather than contemplation had to consummate man's
lordship. Whereas for Hegel contemplation fulfilled practice (labor and politics), for Marx practice was consummated by more practice. Or, to be more exact, one kind
of practice consummated another, that is, revolutionary
action consummated labor, in such a way, however, that
its whole virtue was to secure the liberation of labor.
Labor was clearly a higher good than revolutionary action: as we shall see, Marx makes quite clear that it is labor
which he considers to be man's essentially human activity.
Marx's reaction against the Young Hegelians in the
1840's has two principal aspects, one of them predictable
from what has been said above, the other as surprising
as it is revealing. The first is that the young Hegelians,
particularly the Bauers 23 but ultimately even Feurbach,
had what was to Marx a quite incomprehensible unconcern for what I have called man's ontological completeness. Marx writes:
According to the reports of our ideologists, Germany has, during the last decade, undergone a revolution of unexampled
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
proportions ... a revolution in comparison with which the
French Revolution was mere child's play. With unbelievable
rapidity one empire was supplanted by another, one mighty
hero was struck down by a hero still bolder and more powerful in the universal chaos. During these years, from 1842 to
1845, Germany went through a cataclysm more violent in
character than anything which had happened in any previous century. All this, it is true, took place only in the region
of pure thought. For we are dealing with a remarkable
phenomenon-the decomposition of Absolute Spirit. (Gennan
Ideology, p.6)
But men are natural, flesh-and-blood suffering beings,
not pure spirits, Marx cries out: his evaluation of the
heavenly perturbations of left-wing Hegelianism is unequivocal: "Ideas never lead beyond an old world system but only beyond the ideas of an old world system.
Ideas cannot carry anything out at all. In order to carry
out ideas men are needed who dispose of a certain practical force." (Holy Family, p.160)
The second aspect of Marx's revolt against the YoungHegelians is his anxiety, which seems to have been shared
by none ·among them, as to how it is possible to
philosophize at all after Hegel, after the completion of
the system. Is one fated to be a mere epigon, racing
against one's colleagues to apply mortar to the system's
few chinks? Marx says explicitly in his doctoral thesis on
Democritus and Lucretius that he undertook investigation of the post-Aristotelians partly with a view to answering this question for himself. The answer he thought
he found was that according to a "historical law," after
certain "key points" (e.g. Aristotle and Hegel) philosophy becomes practical, appearing as "a practical
person hatching intrigues with the world." Marx's answer to the existential question which posed itself to him
at the beginning of his career was that, in his time and
place, one could justify one's vocation to philosophy only
if one's philosophizing issued in action. Not only did the
world of flesh-and-blood men require practical, and not
merely theoretical, salvation, but the philosopher himself could achieve his own justification only by engaging
in action. The perception of both of these exigencies (there
is no definite evidence for asserting the primacy of either
one or the other in Marx's mind) stands behind the famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, which sums up the
first ten: "Philosophers previously have only interpreted
the world differently; the point, however, is to change
it." And Marx was serious enough to realize that the action of a philosopher would be sheer dilettantism, would
leave the world unchanged, unless he enlisted
assistance-which, fortunately, was near at hand in the
mission of the proletariat. 24
II
The concept of alienation as developed in the
79
�Manuscripts of 1844 may be analyzed into five components, which I shall merely state here, postponing explication and commentary until the next section. For the
alienated man: (1) The product of his labor becomes an
object over against him and oppressing him. (2) The
objects of nature on which he labors seem to him alien
and oppressive. (3) He feels alienated as regards his laboring activity: activity appears as suffering, strength as
weakness, begetting as emasculating, etc. (4) He is estranged from his species: man's life-activity is production, but production, under the condition of alienation,
appears to man as the means to his individual life rather
than the very substance of his species life, which in fact
it is. (5) Man's estrangement from his species-being
immediately entails that one man is estranged from
another, as both are estranged from their common essential nature: "If the product of labor does not belong to
the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, this can
only be because it belongs to some other man than the
worker. If the worker's activity is a torment to him, to
another it must be delight and his life's joy. Not the gods,
not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power
over man." (p.79)
So it is man who oppresses man (that is, one manoppresses another). However, Marx goes on to insist that
this social relationship is not aboriginal, but is consequent
upon what can only be called an individual and interior
fall from grace. It is true (for Marx) that "In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become manifest
through the real practical relationship to other men."
(p.79) But self-estrangement itself comes first, and this
primordial act/condition "engenders"" the social aspects
of estrangement: "The relationship of the worker to labor
engenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever
one chooses to call the master of labor. Private property
is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence
of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker
to nature and to himself." (p.80) Even more explicitly:
"Though private property appears to be the source, the
cause of alienated labor, it is really its consequence,"
though "later this relationship becomes reciprocal."
(p.81)
Marx is aware that he has left a large question in suspension: "We have accepted the estrangement of labor,
its alienation, as a fact, and we have analyzed this fact.
How, we now ask, does man come to alienate, to estrange
his labor? How is this estrangement rooted in the nature
of human development?" (p.82) Marx thinks that "we
have already gone a long way to the solution of this
problem" by inquiring not into the origin of private
property but rather into the nature of alienated labor: for
when one speaks of private property, one thinks he is
concerned with something external to man, whereas
"when one speaks oflabor, one is directly concerned with
80
man himself." (p.82) But Marx concedes that the problem
bears closer examination. At this point, the editor of the
Marxist-Leninist Institute informs us, the first manuscript
breaks off unfinished.
Marx's failure to show "how this estrangement is
rooted in the nature of human development" is absolutely crucial to his thought in both its analytic and its
hortatory aspects. He does not settle this question unambiguously in any of his later writings, throughout
which he seems to be looking for some kind of "original
sin," since in general he does not hold particular
capitalists of his day responsible for the crimes of capitalism, but rather he holds the system itself responsible.
Relevant in this connection is Marx's discussion of
11
So-called primitive ac<;:umulation" in the second book
of Capital (chapter 26). He rejects the explanation of bourgeois political economists that private property came
about because in the beginning there were two sorts of
people: "one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance,
and more, in riotous living. Thus it came to pass that the
former sort accumulated wealth and the latter sort had
at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from
this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority."
No, Marx insists, there was no such idyll as that: "In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement,
robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part." But
although his explanation differs from that of the bourgeois political economists in that he attributes to the ancestors of modern capitalists not greater (puritan) virtue
but rather greater brutality, he agrees with them, it seems,
in supposing that the original sin was social, not individual. The Marx of 1844, as has been noted, insisted that
the original sin was radically individual, though it immediately (somehow) engendered social consequences
and a reciprocity of cause and effect soon set in.
As I said above, Marx's perception of the nature of
original sin has extreme importance for the hortatory
aspects of his thought. If man's present misery is social
in origin (brutally rather than idyllically social, the Marx
of Capital would say), then the communist revolution
should automatically secure man's happiness (insofar as
"the theory of the Communists may be summed up in
the single sentence: Abolition of private property"Communist Manifesto). But if private property is not the
source but rather the consequence of man's alienation as
Marx insisted in 1844, then the abolition of private
property, while bringing the above-mentioned reciprocity
to a halt, does not automatically secure man's happiness.
Rather, it appears, the abolition of private property, hence
of the slavery-sustaining reciprocity, merely gives man
the free choice he had in the beginning (but not after the
reciprocity set in) as to how he shall relate himself to himself and to nature, how he shall regard his productive ca-
WINTER 1986
�pacity, whether as his own or as alien; whether he shall
accept his ability to produce-including his ability to
produce beautiful objects-as his distinctively and essentially human quality, or whether he will succumb to the
temptation to regard his productive capacity as merely
a means to the preservation of his own life, as if there
might be more to human life than production, for the sake
of which production might be carried on. But to grasp
the full significance of these alternatives (whose statement
here anticipates the analysis contained in the following
section), we must shift our attention from the problem
of the origin of alienation to that of the content of alienation as understood by Marx.
III
An attempt to elucidate the content of Marx's notion
of alienation requires an investigation of his understanding of man's proper relationship to nature. 26 Such an investigation leads us ultimately to ask why, for Marx,
contemplation, which the ancients considered to be man's
most perfect way of relating himself to nature, was
precluded.
We know that for Marx Communism, that is, the overcoming of alienation, signified "the genuine resolution
of the conflict between man and nature" and "the consummated oneness in substance of man and nature." At
the same time, however, the very meaning of man's existence consists in his differentiation of himself from nature, a differentiation which is accomplished by labor.
Marx, although he does not go so far as to say-as Engels
does in his essay "Labor in the Transition from Ape to
Man" -that "labor created man himself" in an explicitly
evolutionary sense, makes clear what he thinks to be
man's specific difference: "We can distinguish men from
animals by consciousness, religion or whatever we like.
They themselves begin to distinguish themselves as soon
as they begin to produce the means of life, a step which
is conditioned by their bodily organization. In producing their means of life, men indirectly produce their
material life itself." (Gennan Ideology, p.7)
For Aristotle, production of the means of life was the
only "human" activity which did not distinguish men
from animals, since unlike the capacity for political life
and for contemplation, it patently pertained to animals
as much as to men. In Manuscripts of 1844 (though not,
as far as I can see, in Gennan Ideology), Marx tries to take
this challenge into account:
Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves
nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an
animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or
for its young. It produces onesidedly, whilst man produces
universally. It produces only under the dominance of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is
free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
therefrom . ... An animal forms things in accordance with
the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs,
whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the
standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also
forms things in accordance with the laws of beauty. (p.75)
It appears, then, that for Marx man's production differs
from that of an animal in principally two respects: man
also and most authentically produces without material
constraint; and man not only produces more variously
than animals, but also deliberately produces beautiful
things." To the consequences of these criteria we shall
advert later.
But the foregoing account of the difference between
man and animals in terms of their respective modes of
laboring is only an external and phenomenological treatment of the human activity of labor. The question is, how
does human labor appear, not to an outside observer, but
to homo laborans himself; what are actually his motives
for laboring? If one views Marx against the background
of such of his predecessors among political economists
as Hobbes, Smith and Ricardo, his answer to the question is astonishing indeed. But, as we have seen, Hegel
gave the same answer. Marx writes (Manuscripts, p.76):
"The object of labor, therefore, is the objectification of
man's species life: for he duplicates himself not only,
as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actually, in
reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world
which he has created." 28
We are now in a position to see what for Marx is the
root (and, in a sense, pre-social) meaning of alienation:
that an individual man, instead of defining himself in
terms of his participation in the masterly transformation
of nature by the species mankind, should regard his labor
as merely a means to his individual life, as though there
might be a higher good than labor, for the sake of which
labor might be conducted: "Life itself [from context,
'productive labor'] appears only as a means to life. " 29
(p.75, Manuscripts)
To appreciate the enormous disparity between Marx's
conception of man's relationship to nature and that of
the ancients, we must broach the question of contemplation, which was for the ancients the primary mode of
man's relating to nature, to which all other modes were
hierarchically ordered. It is a question of which Marx is
patently not unaware. His attitude toward it, which is
absolutely central to his thought, may be seen under tluee
interrelated aspects.
First there is his remarkable position (Manuscripts,
p.112) with respect to the idea of creation, which is, he
holds, "very difficult to dislodge from the popular mind"
because to contradict it "contradicts everything palpable
in practical experience. " 30 Still, "a being only considers
himself independent when he stands on his own feet;
81
�and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his
existence to himself", so that Marx quite willfully chooses
to adhere to "spontaneous generation (as) the only practical refutation of the theory of creation"; or, better yet,
he would prefer not even to raise the question of creation, which is an "abstraction" and "perverse".
Second, we may consider Marx's attitude toward Feuerbach, against whom his principal charge is that Feuerbach's materialism is contemplative, by which Marx
means more than that Feuerbach did not advocate political revolution, though that is no doubt a leading element
of his indictment. But Marx challenges Feuerbach's contemplative attitude in a far more radical way: "He does
not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a
thing given direct from all eternity, ever the same, but
a product of industry and the state of society .... The
cherry tree, like almost all fruit trees, was, as is well
known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by a definite action of a definite society in a definite age provided for
the evidence of Feuerbach's senses." (German Ideology,
p.35)
Marx's assertion has implications, as I suspect he was
aware, far beyond the narrow context of his particular
dispute with Feuerbach. It raises the question whether
the wonder before existence which the ancients knew,
the feeling at once of surprise and reverence before all
that is, is compatible with prodigious technological feats
and capacities (compare Marx's observation that Greek
art presupposed a naivete which is inaccessible to us
modems except in the mode of nostalgia). If one were
to think that wonder is still possible, he would have to
affirm, in the teeth of a widespread modem opinion, that
to know how to handle a thing is not equivalent to knowing it; that, in St. Thomas' terms, the inexhaustible lux
which is the quality of a being as such, is not amenable
to being concentrated into a laser beam.
The third point which we must notice in regard to
Marx's attitude to the question of contemplation is the
most remarkable of all, because it is unmistakably as
though he is addressing his argument directly to Aristotle, whose thought he evidently knew very well.
Against an implicit background of Aristotle's notion of
theoria as man's highest, most godlike possibility (which
implied, among other things, that man is not completely
defined by his sociality), he writes: "But again when I
am active scientifically, etc.-when I am engaged in an
activity which I can seldom perform in direct community
with others-then I am social, because I am active as a
man. Not only is the material of my activity given to me
as a social product (as is even the language in which the
thinker is active): my own activity is social activity, and
therefore, that which I make of myself, I make of myself
for society and with the consciousness of myself as a
social being." (Manuscripts, p.104)
82
The question which we may fairly put, since Marx's argument is implicitly addressed to Aristotle, is, what
would Aristotle make of such an account? He would, I
think, first point out that by "active scientifically" Marx
means two things which he fails to distinguish: one of
which is ordinarily performed "in direct community with
others", the other of which never is, cannot possibly be,
so that Marx's use of "seldom" is an indication of the
hybrid character of his notion of "scientific activity". As
regards the first meaning-that is, the first stage-of
"scientific activity", Aristotle would agree to its social
character: the material, whether written or spoken, on
which one reflects is a social product in the sense of being the product of many men; and one reflects in the
medium of language, which is man's distinctive socialpolitical characteristic. But then there is a second stage, 31
Aristotle would say, when one cannot possibly be "in
direct community with others" (although they or their
written words may be physically present) and when
speech is at once no longer necessary and no longer possible. It seems that Marx would reply that, even if the
distinction of stages be conceded, even during the second
stage I am active "for society and with consciousness of
myself as a social being." As to the first point, Aristotle
would agree that one's contemplative activity may well
have consequences "for society" (Plato would insist that
it must and cajole the philosopher accordingly), but
would have to affirm in addition that, preeminently
among all activities, it is done for its own sake. As to the
second point, Aristotle would agree that one always experiences within himself an impulse toward communion
with other men ("for no man would want to live without
friends"), but would have to affirm in addition that, at
least for a few, there is an impulse toward the contemplation of divine things, so that the philosopher must
"strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best
thing in him", which entails, in conflict with his naturally political being, his radical isolation from men. 32
Marx, like Aristotle, thought that it was natural for man
to be among other men. His naturalism was so consistent that he felt constrained to insist that even when he
was active scientifically, he was not violating his social
nature. Aristotle's naturalism however, profound though
it was (surely more profound than that of Marx, who
never clearly articulated the difference between mere life
and the good life in the context of man's being-together),
was not consistent: "But such a life would be too high
for man; for it is not insofar as he is a man that he will
live so, but insofar as something divine is present within
him. But we must not follow those who advise us, being
men, to think of human things and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with
the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much
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�more does it in power and worth surpass everything."
(Nicomacbean Ethics X, 7).
IV
Our investigation of the content of Marx's notion of
alienation can proceed further only by attention to what
Marx understood as the overcoming of man's alienation,
the accomplishment of his authentic existence; that is, we
must try to indicate the shape of Communist society as
Marx envisaged it, thereby viewing man's present deficiency against the background of his plenitude.
In her essay "Tradition and the Modern Age", Hannah Arendt devotes several interesting pages to pointing out what she considers to be central contradictions
in the work of Marx, not with a view to refutation and
rejection of his thought, as though only those mediocrities whose systems display perfect internal consistency
were worthy of respectful attention, but rather (she says)
for the sake of indicating his true greatness-the unprecedented perplexities which he perceived and with
which he tried to come to terms, and their illumination
by his failure. She poses this fundamental challenge to
him: "If labor is the most human and productive of man's
activities, what will happen when, after' the revolution,
'labor is abolished' in the 'realm of freedom'? What
productive and what essentially human activity will be
left?" This problem indeed seems to warrant consideration.
We have seen the quite definite sense in which Marx
deems labor to be man's essentially human activity. We
may recall that for Marx man's production differs from
that of an animal in principally two respects: man also
and most authentically produces without material constraint; and man not only produces more variously than
animals, but in addition he deliberately produces beautiful things. The first of these criteria forms the basis for
Marx's prediction of the content of the "realm of freedom", namely the "abolition of labor" (German Ideology)
in such a way that in this respect he is technically not
guilty of the contradiction with which Hannah Arendt
taxes him, though he is certainly guilty of considerable
ambiguity.
Herbert Marcuse' s explanation (in Reason and Revolution) of the import of the "abolition of labor" seems acceptable:
These amazing formulations in Marx's earliest writings all contain the Hegelian term Aufhebung, so that the abolition also
carries the meaning that a content is restored to its true form.
Marx, however, envisioned the future mode of labor to be
so different from the prevailing one that he hesitated to use
the same term 'labor' to designate alike the material process
of capitalist and of communist society. He uses the term
'labor' to mean what capitalism actually understands by it
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in the last analysis, that activity which creates surplus value
in commodity production or which 'produces capital'. Other
kinds of activity are not 'productive labor' and hence are not
labor in the proper sense. Labor thus means that free and
universal development is denied the individual who labors,
and it is clear that in this state of affairs the liberation of the
individual is at once the negation of labor.
"A content is restored to its true form ... the future
mode of labor to be so different from the prevailing
one ... "-we must try to specify just how the true,
future mode of labor differs from the present, capitalist
mode. We have already noticed one formulation of this
antithesis: in Manuscripts Marx contrasts labor as the objectification of man's species life with a view to human
self-contemplation, with labor as a mere means to individual self-preservation. But Marx's later writings on
this opposition between modes of laboring are less
Hegelian, considerably more human. In German Ideology
[p .53 of the abridged edition of 1970 of the publisher
cited (ed.)], he writes:
That is to say that according as labor comes to be divided,
everyone has a definite, circumscribed sphere of activity
which is put upon him and from which he cannot escape.
He is a hunter or fisherman or shepherd or 'critical critic' and
must remain so if he does not want to lose the means of
subsistence-whereas in the Communist society, where each
one does not have a circumscribed sphere of activity but can
train himself in any branch he chooses, society by regulating
the common production makes it possible for me to do this
today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in
the afternoon, to carry on cattle-breeding in the evening, also
to criticize the food-just as I please-without becoming either
hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
Here Marx is protesting against the brutal narrowing
of man's activity (and of course, as he makes amply clear
in Capital, a hunter's range of activity and variety of faculties employed are enormous compared with those of a
factory worker under conditions of mechanization33); and
against the identification of a man with his job, as though
the significance of a human being could be exhausted by
the way in which he sustains his material life. Marx is
perfectly well aware that departure from the most brutally narrowing division of labor is inefficient from the
point of view of material production. Such inefficiency
will be tolerable only on the twin preconditions of modern
technology (which Marx asserts could only have been developed under capitalism, which enforces, by virtue of
its relentless laws of competition, a species asceticism
whereby man is able to overcome his originally complete
dependence on nature) and the revolution ushering in
first the lower, disciplinary phase of Communism and
then the higher phase-only when "with the development of the individual in every sense, the productive
forces also increase and all the springs of collective life
83
�flow with abundance" (Critique of the Gotha Program); with
such abundance, in fact, that the inefficiency of unspecialized activity can be ignored.
Or, more exactly, such inefficiency can almost be ignored: it seems to me that Marx was more faithful than
is generally supposed to his early (Manuscripts) insight
that "as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being,
[man] is a suffering, conditioned, limited creature, like
animals and plants." A distinct echo of this statement
is to be heard in a well-known passage in the third book
of Capital (chapter 48, section 3):
The realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which
is determined by necessity and. external Suitableness ends;
thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere
of material production in the proper sense. Just as the savage
must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain
and to reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must
do so in all social formations and under all possible modes
of production. With his development his realm of physical
necessity expands, as do his wants; but at the same time the
forces which satisfy these wants also increase. In this field
freedom can only consist in that socialized man, the associated
producers, rationally regulate their metabolic interchange with
nature, bringing it under their control instead of being ruled
by it as by blind forces, and achieve this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to
and worthy of their human nature. But it will always remain
a realm of necessity. [my emphasis] Beyond it begins the development of human energy which is carried on as an end
in itself, the true empire of freedom, which, however, can
blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis.
Consistently with this view, Marx (in the first volume of
Capital) hails the British Ten-hour Bill, entailing as it does
increased leisure for workers, as the Magna Carta of labor.
But we must ask Aristotle's question of Marx: how is
one to occupy his leisure? Can Marx really believe that
the only thing worth doing for its own sake is work performed in the mode of a hobby (i.e., without material constraint)? What does Marx's postrevolutionary man do
when he tires of fishing, hunting, breeding cattle and
criticizing the food, as tire he must?
Marx was profoundly right to assert that man is not
merely accidentally human when he is laboring, and that
labor is not merely a necessary evil, but can be a positive
good, a way for the partial34 realizing of man's perfection; that in any case (this, I think, is what Marx wanted
to affirm most of all), what an ensouled man does can
never, never be merely accidentally human. 35 But the terrible tragedy of Marx's thought is that, having saved
man's labor from sub-humanity, he comes dangerously
close (particularly in Manuscripts and German Ideology) to
asserting that man is merely accidentally human when
he is not laboring. 36 The Marx of Capital realized, 37 at least
at moments, that labor, although it contains possibilities
of positive value and ought not to be despised, is ulti-
84
mately for the sake of leisure. Regrettably he did not, in
the light of this realization, explicitly reconsider the
problem of what activities and what faculties are the
truest expression of man's humanity; so that if Hannah
Arendt is not right to speak of a flagrant contradiction
at the heart of Marx's theory, still one may speak of a
remarkable silence there, a silence which could hardly
have been unnoticed by Marx himself, whose attention
to Aristotle has already been recorded.
We can see this matter in sharper focus if we follow
Hannah Arendt in likening the technologically enabled,
post-revolutionary freedom from the necessity of labor
to the slavery-based freedom of a Greek citizen. For the
Greeks such freedom made possible political life and the
life of contemplation (both of which, action no less than
contemplation, aspire toward the beautiful; compare particularly Diotima's discourse in the Symposium); whereas
for Marx both of these modes of being appear to be ruled
out-political life in the sense of the government of men
being replaced by "the administration of things" (public cult-whether in the way of Aeschylean drama, imaging forth in unforgettable beauty the majesty of a
people's quest for justice, or in the Christian way of liturgical prayer-having of course been excluded a priori); and
contemplation impossible for reasons already noticed.
But it must be realized that the perplexities which Marx
encounters (in the aspects of his thought with which we
have been concerned) are by no means peculiar to any
"utopian" framework, but are fundamentally characteristic of bourgeois society. 38 The aspiration to transform
nature with a view to human self-contemplation is, after all, and despite the modern distaste for metaphysical
language, a perfectly bourgeois ideal (compare Bacon:
"knowledge is power" and Descartes' Discourse on
Method: "replace theoretical with practical philosophy"
so as to make ourselves umasters and owners of nature").
Moreover, it is an ideal which has been largely realized.
The problem is that contemplation of the image of man
which we have succeeded in impressing upon nature
does not delight us, though the ancients were quite sure
that delight belonged to contemplation. The image of ourselves which we behold in a technologically transformed
nature can be described at best as weirdly composite and
confusing; and there are not a few who think it hideous.
The following is an excerpt from a concluding section on
Politics and the Love of Being.
That the sort of statesman that the many were likely
to heed would not lead them to virtue was Plato's conclusion in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, his dialogues on
persuasion. But in the Theatetus we find a qualification
WINTER 1986
�which, though its political relevance is not immediate
(which is not to say that it has no political relevance at
all), is of central importance for the lives of those
philosophers whose love of truth entails ineluctably a love
of all men (and if it does not, it is not an authentic love
of truth). After Plato has made Socrates say that the
many, in their mass-character, will always deride
philosophers; that, archetypally, the Thracian maid will
always laugh at Thales; and that in particular the
philosopher's ineptitude in the assembly and the law
courts will incur the scorn of the many, he has Socrates
continue: "But there is one thing about them; when you
get them alone and make them explain their objections
to philosophy, then, if they are men enough to face a long
examination without running away, it is odd how they
end by finding their own arguments unsatisfying. Somehow their flow of eloquence runs dry, and they become
as speechless as an infant.''
There are two things which we must notice about this
passage. The first is that, even after singling him out from
the herd, Socrates does not claim to be able to effect his
interlocutor's conversion to the philosophical way of life.
All Socrates claims to be able to do is to cause his interlocutor's flow of eloquence to run dry, and that only if his
interlocutor has a certain minimal honesty. Socrates
knows well that conversions are not wrought by mere
human arguments; but silence may, under favorable circumstances (that is, with some kind of grace already operative) be wrought by mere human arguments; and only
in silence, and not during a flow of eloquence, can one
hear the voice within oneself that tells him that he is not
the measure of all things, but that he must seek that measure with all his strength of heart and mind.
The second remarkable aspect of this passage (which
seems to me more Socratic than Platonic) is the indication that in some sense the experience of the eternal is
accessible to the many and not only to the few, though
surely only the few can discover a prime mover or a selfthinking thought.
If the experience of the eternal is accessible to all men,
and not only to the few capable of effective conceptual
dialectic (and I do not see how a Christian can believe
otherwise), and if that experience cannot be touched by
political action in the sense of mass evocation (to such
an extent, indeed, that to communicate at all with the
masses the philosopher must tell lies, as Plato thought),
so that the best one can hope from politics is that an external harmony can be secured (which, abstractly speaking, will not be inimical to the formation of individual
souls in virtue-though in concreto one cannot be sure);
then it would seem to be the responsibility of a man
whose love of truth overflowed into a love of all men not
to engage in politics at all, but rather to be a teacher who
cares for the individual souls under his tutelage.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But if one were to follow such a course, one could not
help feeling that one's sphere was hopelessly restricted,
that all the men for whom one cared but who were not
one's students were beyond the pale of whatever grace
was being dispensed through the medium of oneself.
Then one might begin to wonder whether there might
not be a way of touching the experience of the eternal
in each member of the assembled many. And that one
could discover, if at all, only by trying.
Notes
1. This is a somewhat bold statement, though j. N. Findlay,
among others, would agree. It is undeniable that what I have
called Hegel's secondary or metaphorical usage occurs very frequently. Nevertheless, it is fairly clear that Hegel would not
speak of Absolute Spirit in a world without individual conscious beings; and it seems least disconcerting to interpret Hegel
as little pantheistically as possible.
2.Phenomenology of Mind, Baillie edition, 1964, p.SO.
3. Findlay cautions against setting up an antithesis whereby
Kant is a ''dualistic idealist'' and Hegel an ''objective idealist,''
lest Hegel be conceived as an idealist of the Berkelian sort.
Clearly Hegel is not that: he thinks there were things in the
world before there were conscious spiritual beings. Hegel's
idealism is rather teleological than strictly ontological. Findlay
himself says, "Hegel's thoroughgoing teleology means, further,
that nothing whatever in the world or our thought can have
any meaning or function but to serve as a condition for the activity of self-conscious Spirit." My argument certainly means
to assert no more than this.
4. All quotations from Phenomenology of Mind are from Baillie
edition. Hereafter, page numbers will be given in text.
5. A more common interpretation is this one by Marcuse: "The
transition from the Logic to the Philosophy of Nature, and from
the latter to the Philosophy of Mind are made on the assumption
that the laws of nature spring from the rational structure of being and lead in a continuum to the laws of the mind." That
is, there is a Greek-like faith in a pre-established harmony between the mind and the structure of the universe; man does
not impose, but rather discovers, himself (his rationality) as the
truth of all that is.
I think, however, that with respect to Hegel one can speak
of faith in such a harmony only in the weak sense that Hegel
believes there is nothing in the universe th;;1t can effectually resist
the imperialism of the human mind, i.e., if the mind did not
place itself behind the curtain, there would be nothing (or nothing effectual) behind the curtain at all. Two quotations make
quite vivid the element of wilfulness in Hegel's epistemology-
ontology:
"And self-consciousness is thus only assured of itself through
sublating this other, which is presented tO self-consciousness
as an independent life; self-consciousness is desire. Convinced
of the nothingness of this other, it definitely affirms this nothingness to be for itself the truth of this other, negates the independent object, and thereby acquires the certainty of its own
self, a true certainty, a certainty which it has become aware of
in objective form" (Phenomenology).
Second, in Philosophy of Right, paragraph 44, addition (Marcuse' s translation, p.191, Reason and Revolution) concerning the
will (which Hegel regards as a mode of reason, not really distinct from it) he writes: ''Only the will is the unlimited and absolute, while all other things in contrast with the will are merely
85
�relative. To appropriate is only at bottom to manifest the majesty
of my will toward things, by demonstrating that they are not
self-complete and have no purpose of their own. This is brought
about by my instiUing into the object another end than that
which it primarily had. When the living thing becomes my
property it gets another soul than it had. I give it my will. Free
will is thus the idealism which refuses to hold that things as
they are can be self-complete."
Notice in the second quotation the contradiction between ''no
purpose of their own" and "another end than that which it
primarily had." What Hegel seems to be implying is that things
do have some kind of an inherent nature, but not an effectual
one, i.e., man can get away with violating it.
I hope my point about Hegel's wilfulness is now established.
I should add that in one sense Hegel is justified in speaking
of man's discovery of himself as the truth of things. After his
self-imposition, accomplished in history, man can indeed discover himself. Since Hegel's standpoint in Phenomenology is the
end of history and yet Hegel impersonates characters within history, the resultant ambiguity is reflected in the interchangeability of ''discover'' and ''impose.''
6. To create is to give form to chaos. For Hegel, reality as it
immediately presents itself is in chaos, since it has no effectual
form, that is, no form that can resist man's will to lordship.
7. Among modern writers, no one has had deeper insight into
these matters than Berdyaev: "Freedom is freedom not only
from the master but from the slave also. The master is determined from without; the master is not a personality, just as the
slave is not a personality. Only the free man is a personality,
and he is that even if the whole world should wish to enslave
him ... a man gets into the position of master over some other
man because in accordance with the structure of his consciousness he has become a slave to the will to mastership. The same
power by which he enslaves another, enslaves himself also. A
free man does not desire to lord it over anyone." (Slavery and
Freedom, p.61).
8. Actually, the matter is more complicated than that. Socrates
wanted, for the sake of a disinterested investigation of justice,
to disregard considerations of reward and punishment on earth
and in the afterlife. Hence he negated political life and the ordinary Greek gods, both of which he re-introduced quite optimistically after the conclusion of the argument, asserting that
the gods always and men usually recognize and reward
justness.
But his hypothetical negation of the gods of reward and
punishment need not mean that he had become (if only for the
sake of argument) godless; nor do I mean merely that he might
still have had a god in the casual sense in which, for example,
conscience is said to be divine.
9. Marcuse writes: "Marx makes reference to Hegel's definitive insight, which disclosed to him that lordship and bondage
result of necessity from certain relationships of labor, which are,
in turn, relationships in the 'reified' world. The relation of lord
to servant is thus neither an eternal nor a natural one, but is
rooted in a definite mode of labor and in man's relation to the
products of his labor" (Reason and Revolution, p.115).
Neither did Hegel say that slavery was consequent upon particular relations of production and property, nor did Marx interpret him to say that. The Marx of 1844 insisted that private
property was a result, not the cause of self-estrangement. Not
only was Marx' explanation of (wage) slavery no more "materialistic'' than Hegel's; in a sense it was more radically spiritual,
in that for Marx the origin of slavery was antecedent even to
man's spiritual relations with other men: although man's selfestrangement was worked out among other men, the original
86
sin was radically individualisitic-man' s rebellion against his
species life, as if labor could be a mere means to a higher end,
instead of the essentially human activity expressive of man's
dominion over nature. This point will be further developed in
the chapter on Marx.
10. It should be recalled that earlier in Phenomenology (p. 488),
at the transcended-yet-preserved level of immediate ethical life,
to act was indeed to sin: "Hence innocence is an attribute merely
of the want of action, a state like the mere being of a stone, and
one which is not even true of a child." Hegel reminds any
among us who considers himself innocent that Oedipus too considered himself innocent until the awful revelation came.
11. Marcuse makes a valuable suggestion in this regard, which
I basically accept, with qualifications which will become clear
later. He writes: "Luther established Christian liberty as an internal value to be realized independently of any and all external conditions ... German culture is inseparable from its origin
in Protestantism. There arose a realm of beauty, freedom and
morality, which was not to be shaken by external realities and
struggles; it was detached from the miserable social world and
anchored in the soul of the individual. This development is the
source of a tendency widely visible in German idealism, a willingness to become reconciled to the social reality. This reconciliatory tendency of the idealists constantly conflicts with their
critical rationalism. illtimately, the ideal that the critical aspects
set forth, a rational political and social reorganization of the
world, becomes frustrated and is transformed into a spiritual
value" (Reason and Revolution, p.15).
12. "What we [the philosophers] are conscious of in our
conception-that objective being is ultimate essence-is the same
as what the religious consciousness is aware of." However,
''Pictorial presentation constitutes the characteristic form in
which spirit is conscious of itself in this its religious com
munion. This form is not yet the self-consciousness of spirit
which has reached its notion as notion; the mediating process
is still incomplete" (p.761; p.673).
13. On the transcending of Christian symbols in general, even
in less extreme forms than by Hegel, my own attitude is close
to that expressed by John Updike in these "Seven Stanzas at
Easter'':
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
WlNTER 1986
�grinding time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
14. Findlay, for example, consistently with his understanding
of Aristotle wholly as an immanentist, writes, "Hegel's religion,
like that of Aristotle, consists in 'str.aining every nerve to live
in accordance with the best thing in us' " (p.143)
15. Philosophy of Right, Dyde Edition, 1919, p.240. Subsequently page numbers will be given in text.
16. In "The Positivity of the Christian Religion" (1795) and
"The Spirit of Christianity" (1798), Hegel had analyzed in two
quite different ways the relationship between Kantian and Christian ethics. In the earlier essay he argued that Christ was Himself a Kantian, who was compelled by the ineptness of the Jews
to whom he preached to call attention to his own unique personality, although his message was really that one ought to behave in such a way that one's action would permit of
self-consistent universalization. Hegel approves of Christ's Kantian message and regrets the obtuseness of the Jews. By thesecond essay (there is conjecture that the dramatic change was
wrought largely by the influence of Hoelderlin on Hegel), Hegel
is arguing that Kantian ethics are really not satisfactory, that
one is not free when one's reason (the universal) is overmastering and enslaving one's particular passions and interests.
Both moments are overcome, Hegel thinks, in Christian love,
which he understands here in a quite mystical way. In general,
Hegel's criticism of Kantian ethics is one of the most sensible
elements of Hegel's thought.
17. It is also well-known that in his early days as a student
at Tubingen Hegel hailed the French Revolution with enthusiasm. But that was before the Terror, which he describes
in Phenomenlogy in memorably lurid language: "The sole and
only work and deed accomplished by universal freedom is therefore death-a death that achieves nothing, embraces nothing
within its grasp . . . it is thus the most cold-blooded and
meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water."
18. Whether this is the only possible political point of view,
or whether at least the outlines might be discovered of a different sort of reconciliation between service of the absolute and
the relativity inevitably characteristic of political life will be considered in the final chapter of this work.
19. This discussion owes much to the suggestion of Hannah
Arendt in On Revolution that Billy Budd ought to be read in the
light of the French Revolution.
20. References are to Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of
1844 (Moscow, Foreign Language Publishing House, 1951); The
Holy Family (Moscow, Foreign Language Publishing House,
1956); The German Ideology (New York, International Publishers, 1939). Page numbers will appear in text. References to Capital are by book and chapter number.
21. That man's absolute autonomy with respect to nature
would necessarily have implied his absolute autonomy with
respect to society, i.e., his proceeding on the assumption that
human being-together has no inherent telos (e.g. the promo-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tion of nobility, the perfection of man's natural being), would
have been self-evident for Aristotle, whose thinking was controlled by a profound analogical awareness. Hegel's logic here
is Aristotelian, and thereby he is at once more consistent and
more realistic than Vico.
22. Christendom had once known where; and so did Socrates,
whose whole mission he seems to have conceived as the inducing of men to heed the intimations springing from their own
souls that they were not the measure of things.
23. Sidney Hook reports that Bruno Bauer was wont to make
such statements as: "Theory which has enlightened us about
our own nature and which has given us the courage to be ourselves ... has reduced the Christian state to an unessential appearance." (From Hegel to Marx, Ann Arbor Paperback, p.99)
24. Of course, there were serious limitations, of which Marx
became increasingly aware, to the collaboration between the
philosopher and the proletariat: the "working men of all countries" could not respond to the philosopher's call to "unite"
until their consciousness had evolved sufficiently; and even then
their response would be quite untheoretical.
25. How this "engendering" takes place, what it looks like,
is surely mysterious, but I am more interested, as will appear
presently, in the nature of the interior fall itself, apart from the
problem of-how an individual psychic state could engender consequences in the objective world. Marx's construction here appears to be archetypal rather than historical, but it is hard to
say (as in the case of Hegel's master-slave relationship) how
the archetype is related to objective happenings-which does
not invalidate it, however, as an attempt to say something about
the human soul.
26. By ''nature'' I understand more than the mere aggregate
of brooks, trees and squirrel~ though they are of course comprised. By it I mean, as the ancients did, being in its sheer givenness. That is, our experience of the universal precedes our
enumeration of individuals; compare Heidegger' s observation
that we find ourselves in a "field of being".
27. A certain ambiguity in the text quoted above permits the
suspicion that by "laws of beauty" Marx means nothing more
than what is now commonly referred to as "the principle of
elegance''. But it seems to me that Marx, who loved Aeschylus
and Shakespeare, was not such a barbarian as that.
28. Of course, Marx is by no means unaware of man's material
neediness. Compare this statement from Holy Family: "The
egotistic individual in civil society may in his non-sensuous imagination and lifeless abstraction inflate himself to the size of
an atom, i.e. to an unrelated, self-sufficient, wantless, absolutely full blessed being ... (but) his profane stomach reminds
him every day that the world outside him is not empty, but is
what really fills." But Marx's faith is precisely that this situation, i.e. man's dependence on nature, can be overcome. In~
dispensable to such an overcoming is the exploitation of labor
by capital and the competition-enforced asceticism of capitalists,
the combined effect of which is to enforce a species asceticism
whereby man's initial dependence on nature can be overcome
to such an extent that man can lord it over nature without limit.
29. The following propositions have the same sense, but somewhat ambiguously: (Manuscripts) "The worker therefore only
feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside
himself. He is at horne when he is not working, and when he
is working he is not at home." The question is, what is the negation of this state of affairs, i.e. when alienation is abolished
will the worker feel outside himself when he is outside his work,
or will he feel fully human during both labor and leisure? There
are hints that Marx intends the latter but, as we shall see, on
the whole he does not theoretically go beyond the former.
87
�30. It is striking that even St. Thomas does not go so far as
to say that the idea of creation is commonsensically obvious (as
Marx does here). Rather, though he agrees with Aristotle that
man's being radically dependent on a cause outside himself is
commonsensically obvious, he holds that the fact of creation,
i.e. of a time when the world is not, can be known only by revelation (S. T. i-i, q.46, arts. 1, 2, 3).
On man's immediate experience (which Marx says must be
suppressed) of radical dependence on an external cause, comM
pare Chesterton's image of how the world appears to someone
standing on his head, i.e. radically dependent because obviously
pendent, suspended from the heavens. Even on a right-sideup view of the world, it is commonsensically obvious that
whatever holds the world together, it is not man, although it
is quite possible that man may yet cause its disintegration.
31. As regards the second stage, which Thomas and such a
neo-Thomist as Josef Pieper would insist is a grace, beyond huM
man compulsion, man's effort being a condition for it but not
a sufficient cause, I am not sure that Aristotle, although he says
that contemplation is somehow superhuman, would say that
man is unable by his own power exclusively to seize the experience, however briefly. (Plato's image of the philosopher
leaving the cave, contrastingly, is suffused with the suggestion
of grace.) Of course, for Aristotle, there are some men who do
not have the capacity for contemplation at all, so one may
perhaps speak of a kind of grace in that respect. But the problem
with speaking of grace for Aristotle, whose God is "too far
away", is always: from whom would the grace come?
32. We must notice a very perplexing ambiguity in Aristotle's
reflections on the tension between the contemplative and political ways of life. In arguing for the superiority of the contemM
plative way, he attributes to it "self-sufficiency, leisureliness
and unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man)." But in
the very next paragraph he speaks of "straining every nerve"
which does not seem consonant with unweariedness. In the
light of St. Thomas' discussion of contemplation (S. T. ii-ii,
q.180-182), I would suggest two principles of resolution, both
of which, I think, Aristotle has somewhat confusedly in mind.
On Gregory's statement "we can remain fixed in the active
life, whereas we are nowise able to maintain an attentive mind
in the contemplative life", Thomas comments: "That the duraM
bility of the active life in the present state surpasses the durability of the contemplative life arises not from any property of
either life considered in itself, but from our own deficiency, since
we are withheld from the heights of contemplation by the
weight of the body", where "weight of the body" must not
be understood puritanically, i.e. it includes, though not as poignantly for Aristotle, the impulse toward human communion on
earth.
The second and more decisive distinction invoked by Thomas
is in response to the statement by Gregory that ''The mind does
not remain long at rest in the sweetness of inward contemplation, for it is recalled to itself and beaten back by the very immensity of the light." Thomas comments: "No action can last
long at its highest pitch. Now the highest point of contemplation is to reach the uniformity of Divine contemplation....
Hence although contemplation cannot last long in this respect,
it can be of long duration as regards the other contemplative
acts", which include, most importantly, "contemplation of the
divine effects'', since we are not angels and must therefore come
to know discursively from premises. But although the contemplation of divine effects is continuously delightful, it is not just
any truth which is the perfection of the intellect, but rather ''The
ultimate perfection of the human intellect is the divine truth:
and other truths perfect the intellect in relation to the divine
truth.''
88
But aside from formal distinctions (to return to Aristotle), I
am not so addicted to dear and distinct ideas as to reject the
possibility that there might be a kind of peace at the heart of
a strenuous effort to live superhumanly, especially if, unlike
Aristotle, one believes in a God who is not too far away.
33. Marx insists (in Capital) on an "essential difference" between the division of labor which organized laborers into various handicrafts and the division within a mechanized workshop.
Clearly no one who regarded the matter from a purely technological point of view would perceive an ''essential difference'';
but Marx knew that it is somehow more compatible with human dignity (quite apart from the Hegelian aspiration to contemplate oneself in things) for a man to fabricate a thing in
accordance with his idea of how it ought to come out than it
is for him to tighten six screws on an object which is known
to him neither at the beginning nor at the end of its process
of fabrication.
It may be that men need to handle things in order to find out
about them, and to find out about themselves too. (Not, to be
sure, to find out all there is to know about themselves, but to
find out thlngs about themselves which they could not discover
in any other way.) But if men do not at the same time have a
deep respect for the givenness of the things they handle, they
may be altogether dazzled by the transformation their handling
is able to achieve-and then they will be deluded not only about
things, but about themselves as well.
34. At this stage of the argument there enters a theoretical
temptation to which intellectuals of a decent sort are peculiarly
susceptible. By ''a decent sort'' I mean in this context those who
want very much to affirm without condescension that they share
an exactly common humanity with those to whom the life of
the mind is not available. They know that their "job" is one
they undertake freely and for its own sake (though naturally
philosophers too must sustain their biological life) and they think
it unjust that others be compelled to work at jobs which the
others would not freely choose for their own sake. But it is simply false to say that things can be-or even worse, are-arranged
so that everyone is paid for doing what he would like to do even
without pay. That is, one must not maintain romantic illusions
about the employment of the many: their jobs might not be altogether joyless (if they entail creation or genuinely human
cooperation), and the many might be bored without them, but
they are simply not undertaken in the same spirit of freedom
as is the life of the mind.
35. Here Marx was right as against Aristotle and as against
the self-misunderstanding of Christians. As to the first,
although some extenuation is possible, it must finally be said
that Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery means that there are
activities which cannot be humanly performed; that labor is slavish and a man who performs it is only accidentally human. As
to the second, compare H. Arendt, p.332 The Human Condition,
where she writes: "Nor did the curse by which man was expelled from paradise punish him with labor and birth; it only
made labor harsh and birth full of sorrow. According to Genesis (2: 5, 15) man (adam) had been created to take care and watch
over the soil (adamah), as even his name, the masculine form
of 'soil' indicates .... The current popular misunderstanding
of the curse is due to an unconscious interpretation of the Old
Testament in the light of Greek thinking. The misunderstanding is usually avoided by Catholic writers."
36. Marx writes in German Ideology (p.7): "This mode of
production must not be considered simply as being the
reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather
it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite
form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part.
As individuals express their lives, so they are. What they are
WINTER 1986
�therefore coincides with their productionr both with what they
produce and how they produce. The nature of individuals thus
depends on the material conditions determining their production.rr Notice the shift from ''a definite form of expressing their
lifeu to "what they are, therefore, coincides with their production". This kind of outrageous illogic, of which there are other
notorious instances in Marx, is extremely perplexing, for surely
he was not deficient in mental power.
37. The distinction I am proposing between an early and late
Marx is not to be confused with another distinction between
the Young Marx as existentialist and the Old Marx as historical
materialist. Moreover, my distinction is only roughly adequate
to my own purposes. The following passage from Manuscripts
contains the indication of a higher good than labor which I have
said characterizes some passages in his later writings: uThe formation of the five senses is the work of the entire history of
the world up to now. Senses limited by crudely practical needs
have only a narrow meaning. To the starving man the human
form of food does not exist, only its abstract essence as food.
It could be available in the crudest form and one cannot say
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
wherein the starving man's eating would differ from that of
animals feeding. The worried, poverty-stricken man has no
mind for the finest play; the dealer in metals sees only the market value, not the beauty and originality of the metal. He has
no rnlnerological sense." One of Marx's major failings, I have
been arguing, is his inability to systematically integrate such
insights, wherever they occur in his writing, as this one.
38. In the same spirit as my remarks are these by R.H. Tawney
(The Acquisitive Society) concerning what he terms 'industrialism': "It assures men that there are no ends other than their
own ends, no law other than their own desires, no limit other
than that which they think advisable. Thus it makes the individual the center of his own universe, and dissolves moral
principles into a choice of expediences ... under the impulse
of such ideas men do not become religious or wise or artistic,
for religion and wisdom and art imply the acceptance of limitations. But they become powerful and rich. They inherit the earth
and change the face of nature, if they do not possess their own
souls.''
89
�Kant's Moral Philosophy
Introduction
This study is concerned primarily with Kant's moral
philosophy as that is found in the Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason.
We are told by Kant at the outset that knowledg~ of what
man ought to do is accessible to human reason. The classical philosophers of ancient Greece held the same, as
did the medieval thinkers who followed them. Kant,
however, differs from such older thinkers by holding that
although reason can come to know what man ought to
do, reason can and must do so without resort to nature:
man can learn nothing from nature regarding what he
ought to do. For the older ''rationalists'', reason was emphatically in tutelage to nature in moral matters as in
other matters; for Kant reason is strictly divorced from
nature in moral matters. Therefore in order to understand
Kant's metaphysics of morals we must also have some
understanding of Kant's metaphysics of nature.
The book which contains Kant's metaphysics of nature
in principle is, at least at first glance, the Critique of Pure
Reason. This is true even at second glance if by
umetaphysics of nature" we mean necessarily nscien
tific metaphysics of nature." But is there not such a thing
as what we may call a "pre-scientific metaphysics of nature"? Aristotle's casual yet characteristic remark that
"existence is good to the virtuous man" (Ethics, 1166al9)
is not strictly dependent upon the teaching regarding final
causes in the Metaphysics, but surely the two are not
Kant's Moral Philosophy. M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago,
1968.
90
wholly unrelated. We suggest that it is at least possible
that a kind of pre-scientific metaphysics of nature
emerges from Kant's moral philosophy, especially if account is taken of the Critique of Judgment and in particular of the analytic of the sublime contained therein.
However, at first glance it is the Critique of Pure Reason
which contains Kant's metaphysics of nature in principle. To this work we must briefly turn before studying
Kant's moral philosophy proper. Disregarding, in deference to obvious exigencies, the technical complexities of
the first Critique, we shall try to state in its most general
terms the problem posed by Kant's scientific metaphysics
of nature. Against the background of this problem, we
shall consider Kant's moral philosophy as a whole under the following headings:
II. Moral philosophy and the common man
ill. The categorical imperative as an irruption
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
from without
The meanings of freedom
Happiness and sublimity
Nature and morality re-considered
Conclusion.
I. The Critique of Pure Reason
According to Kant's first Critique the human intellect
cannot know nature as it truly is, as it is in itself. The human knowing activity transforms what is to be known;
the intellect prescribes its laws to nature; in attempting
to know nature the human intellect ultimately encounters only itself. What Kant means by these assertions is
WINTER 1986
�explicable primarily in terms of his doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and time (elaborated in the
"Transcendental Aesthetic") and his doctrine of the transcendental synthesis, preceding and enabling empirical
synthesis, of the appearances in the manifold (elaborated
in the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories of
the Understanding"). Both doctrines, as stated by Kant,
are exposed to serious objections. However, since we are
interested only in the most general sense of the problem
posed by Kant's scientific metaphysics of nature, we may
disregard the question of how far these two Kantian doctrines are sound. We shall consider instead the problem
implied in a famous passage from the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Referring to
the experiments of Galileo and· others, Kant writes 1 :
within a particular horizon or under a particular aspect: once
the horizon or aspect has been projected, man's knowing is objectively constrained-he need not fear subjective deformations of Being within that horizon or under that
aspect. This is true not only of scientific projections but
also, though far more ambiguously, of poetic projections
as Nietzsche, despite his emphasis on creating values, also
understood very well. Among many similar passages, we
consider Beyond Good and Evil, paragraph 2133 :
They learned that reason has insight only into that which it
brings forth according to its own projection, and that it must
not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature's leadingstrings, but must itself show the way with principles of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason's own determining. Accidental
observations, made in obedience to no previously thought
out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which
alone reason is concerned to discover. Reason, holding in one
hand its principles, according to which alone concordant appearances can be admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the
other hand the experiment which it has devised in conformity
with these principles, must approach nature in order to be
taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of
a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to
say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to
answer questions which he has himself formulated.
Now, according to Heidegger (H, p.187) "all sight is
grounded primarily in understanding" (~projection):
there is no sight that does not presuppose some kind of
projection; the question is only, which of various possible projections will one attempt. By showing that all sight
is grounded in projection, "we have deprived pure intuition (Anschauen) of its priority, which corresponds
noetically to the priority of the present-at-hand [i.e. the
eternal] in traditional ontology." Pure looking, too,
presupposes a projection: contemplation is characterized
as a "deficiency" (H, p .88) in our having to do with entities, achieved by deliberate abstention from authentic
poetic activity. Such deliberate abstention must be regarded as a projection, albeit an inauthentic one. (As
Heidegger puts it in Gelassenheit, written much later, to
will not to will is already to have willed.) Contemplation
as deficiency is later discussed under the heading of
"curiosity". In that later discussion, however, Heidegger makes a remarkable admission (H, p.216): "Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and
marvelling at them-thaumazein. To be amazed to the
point of not understanding is something in which it has
no interest."
But-we must say-if the sight that belongs to thaumazein (as the ancients experienced it) is possible, then
surely not all sight is grounded in projection. For surely
the astonishment which somehow "seized" the ancient
philosophers could not have been compelled by any sort
of projection, whether scientific or poetic. Indeed any
such projection would presumably hinder if not preclude
astonishment, unless perhaps it were to shatter against
astonishment. And yet perhaps one must undertake some
sort of projection. One cannot attempt to look in all directions at once without becoming dizzy-at least that much
must be granted to Heidegger. But what kind of projection occasioned or at least did not preclude, the sight articulated by Aristotle in the Metaphysics (984 b 11-15): "For
it is not likely that either fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest good-
The key word in this passage is "projects" [Entwe!fen].
In the typically modern view knowing has the character
of projection. The most coherent and profound articulation of this view is to be found in the thought of Heidegger. We shall limit ourselves to a consideration of several
relevant passages from Being and Time. Decisive for
mathematical physics, according to Heidegger, is'
the way in which Nature herself is mathenu~tically projected. In this
projection something constantly present-at-hand (matter) is
uncovered beforehand, and the horizon is opened so that one
may be guided by looking at those constitutive items in it
which are quantitatively determinable (motion, force, location, time). Only 'in the light' of a Nature which has been
projected in this fashion can anything like a 'fact' be found
and set up for an experiment regulated and delimited in terms
of this projection . ... In the mathematical projection of nature, moreover, what is decisive is not primarily the mathematical as such; what is decisive is that this projection discloses
something that is a priori. Thus the paradigmatic character of
mathematical natural science ... consists in the fact that the
entities which it takes as its theme are discovered in it in the
only way in which entities can be discovered-by the prior
projection of their state of Being.
That is to say, man can know entities as they truly are
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Artists seem to have more sensitive noses in these matters,
knowing all too well that precisely when they no longer do
anything 'voluntarily' but do everything of necessity, their
feeling of freedom, subtlety, full power of creative placing,
disposing and forming reaches its peak-in short that necessity and 'freedom of the will' then become one in them.
91
�ness and beauty both in their being and in their coming
to be, or that these thinkers should have supposed that
it was; nor again could it be right to entrust so great a
matter to spontaneity and chance''? What would it mean
to speak of a "natural" projection?
In view of the above considerations we propose to
formulate the problem posed by Kant's scientific metaphysics of nature provisionally as follows: Mathematical
natural science knows nature as it truly is in itself, but
nature is not the whole (~nature in the sense of Aristotle). That is not to say that there are in the whole other
"things", above and beyond "natural things" (supersensible things, perhaps). It is rather to say that nature (as
understood by mathematical natural science) is the whole
viewed under a particular aspect. Hence although mathematical natural science knows nature as it truly is in itself (i.e. without intrinsic distortion), it does not fully
know nature. Its knowledge of nature suffers from a kind
of extrinsic (to nature) distortion: to know nature fully
or without any kind of distortion one would have to know
nature in the perspective of the whole. But how can one
gain access to the whole? Must one not always view it
under a particular aspect (if not under the aspect of
mathematically determinable nature, then under some
other particular aspect)? And must not the projection of
the aspect under which the whole is to be viewed always
be the result of a decision among possible aspects? But
if every projection of an aspect rests upon a mere decision, surely the variety of aspects cannot be ranked
against one another. But if the variety of aspects under
which it is possible to view the whole cannot be ranked
against one another, but merely stand side by side, how
can we possibly have knowledge of the whole? How can
we even view the whole as a whole without some kind
of hierarchical integration of the variety of its aspects?
But what if there were a projection of an aspect that
did not rest on human decision merely, but into which
men were forced, as it were, by an irruption from
without? Would not such a projected aspect be able to
claim a certain priority (not, to be sure, as though it could
by itself sufficiently disclose the whole, but as though it
must be the principle by which the variety of other
projected aspects must be hierarchically arranged so that,
as a whole, they could sufficiently disclose the whole)?
But what might such a projected aspect, compelled as
it were by an irruption from without, be like? In what
manner of experience might such n compulsion"
originate? In something like thaumazein? Not for Kant. In
something like the categorical imperative?
II. Moral Philosophy and the Common Man
Kant's political philosophy is not, strictly speaking,
democratic but rather republican in the sense, specified
92
by Kant, of representative government conducted in a certain spirit. (See Perpetual Peace, "First Definitive Article".)
His moral philosophy, however, is radically democratic.
We begin with a famous passage':
By inclination I am an inquirer. I feel a consuming thirst for
knowledge, the unrest which goes with a desire to progress
in it, and satisfaction in every advance in it. There was a time
when I believed this constituted the honor of humanity, and
I despised the common man, who knows nothing. Rousseau
corrected me in this. This blinding prejudice disappeared and
I learned to honor man. I would find myself more useless than
the common laborer if I did not believe that this attitude of
mine [as an inquirer] can give worth to all others in establishing the rights of mankind.
Kant elsewhere credits David Hume with having
awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber''. But to be
awakened from dogmatic slumber is surely less wonderful than to be cured of blindness. Kant confesses that he
owes more to the wisdom of Rousseau than to the wisdom of any other man.
How can Kant's thirst for knowledge as partly
quenched by his progress in knowledge support or assist the common man who, at any rate "by inclination",
has no interest in philosophy and who, moreover, "is
well able to distinguish, in all cases that present themselves, what is good or evil, right or wrong" so that
"there is no need of science or philosophy for knowing
what man has to do in order to be honest and good, and
indeed to be wise and virtuous' '?5 Kant's knowledge can
be of assistance or, more generally stated, philosophy is
necessary, because sophistry exists and the common man
is exposed to it: "Innocence is a splendid thing, only it
has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily
misled. On this account even wisdom-which in itself
consists more in doing and not doing than in knowingdoes require science as well, not in order to learn from
it, but in order to win acceptance and durability for its
own prescriptions." (F, p.73) Sophistry as Kant understands it is of two kinds. One kind of sophistry is the occasion for Kant's remark in the preface to the second
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make
room for faith." That is, the metaphysical (noncritical) position which Kant characterizes as empiricism and which
asserts that the theses of the antinomies of pure reason
are false would, if valid, reveal morality as chimerical.
To prevent this result, Kant must show that the assertion of the falsity of the theses is unjustified. True (i.e.
critical) theoretical philosophy must prevent false theoretical philosophy from corrupting the common man: its
mission is essentially defensive. However, Kant does not
seem to think that false theoretical philosophy will ever
become popular or politically relevant: "Thus empiricism
WINTER 1986
�is entirely devoid of the popularity of transcendentally
idealizing reason; and however prejudicial such empiricism may be to the highest practical principles, there is
no need to fear that it will ever pass the limits of the
Schools, and acquire any considerable influence in general life or any real favor among the multitude." (P, p.429;
A474~B502)
The more important kind of sophistry to which the
common man in hls innocence is exposed, then, does not
come from a source external to the common man. The
common man is not simply innocent: the principle of his
corruption is within him rather than without. Although
he knows of duty, he is also tempted by happiness, by
the total satisfaction of his needs and inclinations. From
this situation there arises a "natural dialectic-that is, a disposition to quibble with the strict laws of duty, to throw
doubt on their validity or at least on their purity and strictness, and to make them, where possible, more adapted
to our wishes and inclinations." (F, p.73) But although
the common man is not unqualifiedly innocent, he is fundamentally good. When brought to see that to adapt the
strict laws of duty in any degree to the desire for happiness has as its result "to pervert their very foundation
and destroy their whole dignity", he rejects any such
adaptation, whose result would be one "which in the end
even ordinary human reason is unable to approve."
The weakness or shame of the common man is his
shortsightedness. The common man, we may say provisionally, is corruptible because he is shortsighted in
regard to the realm of freedom, because by himself he
does not clearly see the ultimate result of the momentary
ascendancy of desire for happiness over dutifulness,
namely that the dignity of the law, hence his own dignity or worthiness of respect-his most precious
possession-is ruined by such an ascendfancy. But the
strength or glory of the common man is also identical with
his shortsightedness. For the common man, Kant supposes, is likely to be shortsighted in regard to the realm
of nature; he is likely to lack worldly prudence or shrewdness (to say nothing of theoretical science in the strict
sense). But he need not have worldly prudence or
shrewdness in order to be good; indeed he is more likely to be good if he has neither; lacking worldly prudence
he is, as it were, driven toward goodness (i.e. strict dutifulness as unqualified obedience to the categorical imperative) as toward a last resort. From this point of view
(although qualification is required, as we shall see, in view
of the function of "typics"}, Kant must regard with suspicion those men without theoretical (i.e. critical) science
who nevertheless do possess worldly prudence (such as
Aristotle's gentlemen, perhaps): for them unqualified
obedience to the categorical imperative is not, or at least
not obviously, their last best hope for living well. All of
these points seem to be suggested by the following
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
passage':
What is required in accordance with the principle of autonomy of choice is easily and without hesitation seen by the
commonest intelligence; what is to be done under the presup-
position of its heteronomy is hard to see and requires
knowledge of the world. That is to say, what duty is, is plain
of itself to everyone, but what is to bring true, lasting advantage to our whole existence is veiled in impenetrable obscurity, and much prudence is required to adapt the practical
rule based upon it even tolerably to the ends of life by making suitable exceptions to it. But the moral law commands
the most unhesitating obedience from everyone; consequently
the decision as to what is to be done in accordance with it
must not be so difficult that even the commonest and most
unpracticed understanding without any worldly prudence
should go wrong in making it.
In view of the fact that both the glory and the shame of
the common man is his shortsightedness, the philosopher
bears a peculiar responsibility in regard to him. The
philosopher must try to correct the common man's shortsightedness respecting the realm of freedom without correcting or in any way disturbing his shortsightedness
respecting the realm of nature. Not only must the
philosopher carefully refrain from giving the common
man prudential precepts respecting the realm of nature,
but he must also carefully avoid the appearance that such
clarity as he does provide respecting the realm of freedom is merely ancillary to the desire for happiness as it
is found in the realm of nature. This is a considerable rhetorical task, as we shall have occasion to see.
But the full purport of Kant's democratism in moral
matters has not yet been brought out. That purport becomes clear only when it is realized that according to
Kant's view, democratic morality entails what we may
call, perhaps a bit too shockingly, democratic ontology.
Not only is the common man as good as anyone in moral
matters, but moral matters (rather than physical matters,
broadly understood, as Aristotle thought) are the way of
access to the most important truths about the whole, and
to theological truth in particular. After controverting what
he takes to be the only possible theoretical proofs for the
existence of God (ontological, cosmological and physicoteleological) and arguing that on the basis of moral experience the existence of God may be an object of rational
faith, Kant anticipates an obvious objection (P, pp.651-2;
A831~ B859): "But I may at once reply: Do you really require that a mode of knowledge which concerns all men
should transcend the common understanding, and
should only be revealed to you by philosophers? Precisely
what you find fault with is the best confirmation of the
correctness of the above assertions." Not only is it true,
as Kant believes to have shown amply, that moral phenomena, fully available not only to non-theoretical men
but also, and in a way especially, to non-prudent non-
93
�theoretical men, provide exclusive access to the most important truths; it is also fitting that it should be so: anything different would be unfair.
In this context we must make one final observation. As
is especially conspicuous in the Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals, Kant begins with pre-philosophic
moral experience and claims that, in the decisive respect,
he does not intend or wish to go beyond that experience;
surely he intends to say nothing that contradicts that experience; any judgment which so much as seems paradoxical from the point of view of that experience must
be rejected (Pr, p.8): "A critic who wished to say something against that work [Foundations] really did better than
he intended when he said that there was no new principle of morality in it but only a new formula. Who would
want to introduce a new principle of morality and, as it
were, be its inventor, as if the world had hitherto been
ignorant of what duty is or had been thoroughly wrong
about it?"
This assertion will not seem very remarkable to us if
we think of Aristotle; but it will seem remarkable indeed
if we think of two of Kant's most famous successors.
Hegel and Heidegger both agree with Kant in holding
that moral phenomena and not natural phenomena are
the way of access to such truth about the whole as is possible for man. Moreover, both begin from moral
phenomena as they present themselves in ordinary experience. Both, however, interpret moral phenomena in
a way that is, to say the least, paradoxical from the point
of view of ordinary experience, as one could easily show,
although to do so here would lead us too far afield. But
Hegel and Heidegger are permitted, at least by their own
principles, radically to contradict ordinary moral experience: for both of them, although some qualification
is necessary in the case of Hegel, ordinary moral experience is fundamentally devoid of truth. For Kant, as
we have said, ordinary moral experience is fundamentally truthful. In view of this fact, we must try to determine whether Kant's explication of ordinary moral
experience is truly faithful to that experience. In particular, we must apply this criterion to Kant's founding of
the categorical imperative-which is experienced (according to Kant) as somehow irrupting into man's life from
without-upon autonomy, which originates wholly within man.
III. The Categorical Imperative as an Irruption
From Without
At the conclusion of each of the first two chapters of
this thesis it has been asserted that according to Kant's
conception the categorical imperative is an experienced
reality and, moreover, a particularly impressive one. Its
impressive character, we have said, is related to Kant's
94
quest for a kind of knowledge that would not presuppose
a projection by the knower, hence a transformation of the
known: it was suggested that only a kind of irruption
from without the knower could make such knowledge
available. These assertions regarding Kant's conception
of man's experience of the categorical imperative must
now be justified. The treatment of the categorical imperative in its allegedly irruptive character as presented in
this chapter will be incomplete, however, for at least two
reasons: the relation of the categorical imperative to the
problem of transcendental freedom cannot be fully
brought out before the thematic discussion of freedom
(chapter N); and its relation to the autonomy of the willing subject cannot be fully brought out before the thematic discussion of happiness and sublimity (chapter V).
The categorical imperative is a major theme of both the
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique
of Practical Reason. The latter contains Kant's more fully
considered position and is of primary importance for our
purposes. But to understand the position of Practical Reason, it is helpful to be aware of the difficulties in the position of Foundations which led Kant to the later position.
We therefore begin with a discussion of the account of
the categorical imperative found in Foundations.
In Foundations Kant, following popular moral
philosophy, as he believes, begins with the concept of
the good will, which alone is capable of unqualified goodness. To elucidate this concept, he considers "the concept of duty, which includes that of a good will, exposed,
however, to certain subjective limitations and obstacles"
(F, p.65). By mere analysis of the concept of duty he believes to show that unless duty rests on a categorical
imperative-an imperative at once unconditional (i.e. not
in the form "if ... then") and permitting no exception
in favor of oneself-it is baseless. 1bis having been
shown, a crucial task yet remains: "We are still not so
far advanced as to prove a priori that there actually is an
imperative of this kind-that there is a practical law which
by itself commands absolutely and without any further
motives, and that the following of this law is duty" (F,
p.92). Kant has proceeded regressively from "good will"
to "duty" to "categorical imperative"; he now regresses
one step further, still analytically as he claims, to "principle of autonomy" (F, pp.98-100). But beyond this
principle it is no longer possible to proceed by mere
analysis: we have arrived at an irreducible synthetic
a priori judgment which as such is in need of justification
(F, p.112).
A brief digression: The relationship between the categorical imperative and the principle of autonomy will occupy us later. For now two points are sufficient. First,
as regards the synthetic priori judgment which Kant is
about to attempt to justify (F, pp. 115 ££.), the problem
is essentially the same whether one supposes the cate-
a
WINTER 1986
�gorical imperative to rest upon the principle of autonomy
or upon some other principle or upon no principle at all:
one ought to obey the moral law wherever it ultimately
comes from, and that "ought," over against "is" is the
core of the problem. Second, whereas Kant had assumed
that the categorical imperative would be immediately
recognized by all (even if they themselves had never
bothered to formulate it so clearly), he implies that the
principle of autonomy, which he derives from the categorical imperative by mere analysis, had been recognized
by practically no one before him (F, p. 100): "We need
not now wonder, when we look back upon all the previous efforts that have been made to discover the principle
of morality, why they have one and all been bound to
fail. Their authors saw man as tied to laws by his duty,
but it never occurred to them that he is subject only to
laws which are made by himself and yet are universal ... "
To return to our main argument, what exactly is the
synthetic a priori judgment which Kant is so anxious to
prove lest the experience of duty be revealed as "chimerical" (F, p.112)? That is not easy to say. His seemingly
authoritative formulation of it is as follows (F, p.115): "An
absolutely good will is one whose maxim can always have
as its content itself considered as a universal law.'' Some-
what later, however (F, p.122), he suggests that the judgment in need of justification receives its synthetic
character from the fact that it contains "ought" plus the
moral law. The "ought" is the result of the transposition
into the realm of nature of a being who, in the realm of
freedom "would" obey the moral law. The third, mediating term (which is always necessary for the justification of a synthetic a priori judgment) "in which both of
them are found" (F, p. 98)-i.e. on this interpretation,
both the "would" and the "ought"-is then the concept
of man as residing both in the realm of freedom and in
the realm of nature. This second formulation of the judgment in need of justification seems to bring out Kant's
argument more clearly than the first.
At any rate, the justification of the crucial proposition
requires proof not only of the possibility but also of the
necessity (F, p.124) of conceiving of man as resident in
two worlds, in one of which he is free while in the other
he is subject to sensuous determination. To say nothing
of the inadequate arguments of Foundations itself regarding the noumenal/phenomenal duality within man,
even the argument pertaining to the third antinomy in
the Critique of Pure Reason establishes at most the possibility of so conceiving of man. How show the necessity of
so conceiving of him? Although alluding (F, p.124) to the
result of Pure Reason (A553 ~ B561) that reason even
in its theoretical employment requires the idea of freedom for regulative purposes, Kant actually limits himself (as he had in Pure Reason, A802~ B830) to an appeal
to ordinary experience for the establishment of "practi-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
cal" (as distinct from "transcendental") freedom. In ordinary experience, the reality of freedom is "grounded
on a consciousness-and an accepted presuppositionthat reason is independent ... of sensibility" (F, p. 125).
Needless to say, consciousness of oneself as free is of no
consequence theoretically after the demolition of rational
psychology in the "Transcendental Dialectic" whereby
it was established that as regards my actual (noumenal)
self I can know only that I am, not how or what I am.
Therefore the attempted justification or deduction of
the categorical imperative as a synthetic a priori judgment
in Foundations is unsuccessful. It is unsuccessful because
if the categorical imperative can be deduced or derived
at all, it can only be deduced or derived from the freedom of the will; and as Kant saw quite clearly by the time
he wrote the Critique of Practical Reason, the categorical
imperative is itself far more certain, or at any rate more
immediately certain, than the freedom of the will.
We turn now to consider the status of the categorical
imperative in the Critique of Practical Reason. Here we are
concerned to establish that Kant finally regards the categorical imperative as underivable from anything else and
also that he regards man's experience of the categorical
imperative as the experience of an irruption from without.
In the preface to Practical Reason Kant has a clear statement regarding the relation between freedom and the
moral law (Pr, p.4): "though freedom is certainly the ratio essendi of the moral law, the latter is the ratio cognoscendi
of freedom. For had not the moral law been distinctly
thought in our reason, we would never have been justified in assuming anything like freedom, even though it
is not self-contradictory. But if there were no freedom,
the moral law would never have been encountered in
us."
Given the moral law, however, we are not only justified in assuming freedom, but we are required to assume
freedom. That is, Kant says in effect that ''thou canst because thou oughts!" (Pr, p.30): "He judges, therefore,
that he can do something because he knows that he
ought, and he recognizes that he is free-a fact which,
without the moral law, would have remained unknown
to him."
But the question in which we are particularly interested
is, how, in what manner, are we given the moral law? Kant
writes (Pr, p.31, emphasis added): "The consciousness
of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason,
since one cannot ferret it out from antecedent data of reason, such as the consciousness of freedom (for this is not
antecedently given) and since it forces itself upon us as
a synthetic proposition a priori based on no pure or empirical intuition.''
No deduction of the categorical imperative is possible;
however, none is necessary. Its validity does receive support from certain theoretical considerations (Pr, p.49):
95
�"This kind of credential for the moral law, namely that
it is itself demonstrated to be the principle of the deduction of freedom as a causality of pure reason, is a sufficient substitute for any a priori justification, since
theoretical reason had to assume at least the possibility
of freedom in order to fill one of its own needs." But the
circumstance that acceptance of the moral law as valid
entails consequences which are perfectly consistent with
a strange but unavoidable result of Pure Reason, is not
the strongest reason why the moral law may be accepted
as valid without a priori justification. The moral law is simply a ''fact'', or as Kant frequently says ''a fact as it were''
and therefore "firmly established of itself" (Pr, p.48). The
possibility, indicated in Foundations that it could be
"chimerical" was a mere logical possibility, not a real
possibility.
The reason why Kant is tempted to call the moral law
''a fact as it were'' rather than simply a ''fact'' is, it seems,
that "it forces itself upon us." A "fact as it were" is more,
not less, impressive than a "fact". Ordinary facts are
reducible to "objects" "here or there" which we may
"intendrr and which, if we do not nintend" them, are
nothing to us. The categorical imperative is not an "object" "here or there" waiting for us to "intend" it. We
discover it in action without ulooking" for it. We "see"
it without "looking" for it; we are forced to "see" it. But
in view of the strict limitation of ''seeing'' to senseknowledge in the first Critique, Kant is not able to speak
of our consciousness of the categorical imperative in quite
this way. He does, however, in one place speak of it as
a "revelation". Regarding those thinkers who, while admitting "practical freedom" yet deny "transcendental
freedom" (for example, Spinoza), Kant writes (Pr, p.97):
"Thus they deprive us of the great revelation which we
experience through pure practical reason by means of the
moral law-the revelation of an intelligible world through
realization of the otherwise transcendent concept of
freedom.''
A discovery can be forced: we can put nature under our
conditions and force her to answer our questions. A revelation cannot be forced by us: its supremely authoritative
character rests on its having irrupted into our lives unsolicited from without. This is the essence of Kant's understanding of the categorical imperative as encountered
by man in moral action: the "fact as it were" is more impressive by far than any mere "fact". Whether that understanding is ultimately compatible with Kant's
putatively analytic regression to the principle of autonomy as the necessary condition of the categorical imperative is another matter.
For now it is sufficient to notice one other point about
the passage just quoted. Although man cannot force a
revelation, he can ''deprive'' himself of a revelation once
given. In this case he can do so by denying transcendental
96
freedom while admitting practical freedom (as Spinoza
does). "Therefore it will be necessary to add something
here as a protection against this delusion and to expose
empiricism in its naked superficiality" (Pr, p. 97).
Despite our initial impression, one cannot leave it at
"Thou canst because thou oughtst." A more comprehensive discussion of the possibility of transcendental freedom is necessary. We proceed to the next chapter.
IV. The Meanings of Freedom
Kant's fullest treatment of the problem of the freedom
of the willing subject is contained in the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant requires two conditions for the establishment of human freedom in a sufficiently strong sense:
negatively, the human actor must be ''transcendentally''
free, not merely "practically" or "psychologically" free;
and positively, true freedom consists in autonomy, i.e.
submission to such self-legislation as can be consistently
universalized. In affirming the first condition, Kant rejects the teaching of Spinoza; in affirming the second condition he accepts the teaching of Rousseau. The problem
of transcendental freedom is emphasized without being
solved (cf. A803~ B831) in the Critique of Pure Reason. The
problem of autonomy (regarding which the first Critique
had been wholly silent) is emphasized in Foundations,
where the problem of transcendental freedom receives
less attention. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant attempts to treat the two problems together in a fully comprehensive way.
We turn first to Kant's treatment of the problem of transcendental freedom and his rejection as untenable of such
merely practical or psychological freedom as is not supported by transcendental freedom. We confront, as Kant
did, the teaching of Spinoza (chapter 4, Theologico-Political
Treatise7 ). Spinoza begins by saying that all law depends
either on natural necessity or on human decree.
For example, the law that all bodies, impinging on lesser bodies, lose as much of their own motion as they communicate
to the latter is a universal law of all bodies, and depends on
natural necessity . ... But the law that men must yield, or
be compelled to yield, somewhat of their natural right, and
that they bind themselves to live in a certain way, depends
on human decrees. Now, though I freely admit that all things
are predetermined by universal natural laws to exist and operate in a given, fixed and definite manner, I still assert that
the laws I have just mentioned depend on human decree
... I have stated that these laws depend on human decree
because it is well to define and explain things by their proximate causes. The general consideration of fate and the concatenation of causes would aid us very little in forming and
arranging our ideas concerning particular questions. Let us
add that as to the actual co-ordination and concatenation of
things, that is how things are ordained and linked together,
we are obviously ignorant; therefore it is more profitable for
WINTER 1986
�right living, nay it is necessary for us to consider things as
contingent.
In his discussion of the third antinomy in the Critique of
Pure Reason, Kant agrees with Spinoza that we do in fact
judge human actions as if they were free. According to
Kant, in so judging we presuppose a phenomenallnoumenal distinction, i.e. we presuppose the essential timelessness of the acting subject. Consider "a malicious lie
by which a certain confusion has been caused in society."
We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascertaining
for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes.
But although we believe that the action is thus determined,
we none the less blame the agent, not indeed on account of
his unhappy disposition, nor on account of the circumstances
that have influenced him, nor even on account of his previous way of life; for we presuppose that we can leave out of
consideration what this way of life may have been, that we
can regard the past series of conditions as not having occurred
and the act as being completely unconditioned by any preceding state, just as if the agent in and by himself began in this
action an entirely new series of consequences ... in the moment when he utters the lie, the guilt is entirely his.
Granted that we do in fact judge in such a way, the question is whether, apart from considerations of social utility, we judge justly thereby. Kant thinks that we do. So
far is he, at least in this respect, from being a "fictionalist" in the sense of Vaihinger, that he simply denies
that we have a right to employ the concept of practical
freedom without also maintaining transcendental freedom: "The denial of transcendental freedom must, therefore, involve the elimination of all practical freedom." (P,
p.465; A534~ B562). Again in Practical Reason he writes
emphatically (Pr, p.100): "Without transcendental freedom, which is its [freedom's] proper meaning, and which
is alone a priori practical, no moral law and no accountability to it are possible." Once more: "And if the freedom of our will were nothing else than the latter, i.e.
psychological and comparative and not at the same time
also transcendental or absolute, it would in essence be
no better than the freedom of a turnspit, which when
once wound up also carries out its motions of itself."
However, our freedom is not that of a turnspit; ''the
judicial sentences of that marvellous faculty in us called
conscience" testify otherwise: "as a pain, repentance is
entirely legitimate" (Pr, pp. 101-2). Generally stated: the
viewpoint of the actor is more authoritative than the viewpoint of the spectator. But on what other basis than "thou
canst because thou oughts!" does Kant affirm transcendental freedom? Spinoza too, after all, admitted that there
was such an experience as repentance, though he denied
its (non-political) legitimacy. According to Kant we are
finally justified in affirming transcendental freedom by
the convergence of the testimony of conscience with a
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
requirement of theoretical reason, namely the requirement that reason think an uncaused or spontaneous
cause. The theoretical requirement is stated at Pure Reason A533~B561:
Hence the causality of the cause, which itself happens or comes
to be, must itself in turn have a cause; and thus the entire
field of experience, however far it may extend, is transformed
into a sum-total of the merely natural. But since in this way
no absolute totality of conditions determining causal relations
can be obtained, reason creates for itself the idea of a spontaneity which can begin to act of itself, without requiring to
be determined to action by an antecedent cause in accordance
with the law of causality.
Transcendental freedom is established by the convergence of the need of theoretical reason to think spontaneity with the experience of conscience which tells men
that repentance is legitimate. The convergence is particularly impressive according to Kant because "This agreement was by no means sought after." On the basis of
this convergence we must assert that man is free, even
if we could so well know the natural (=temporal) conditions of his action that "his future conduct could be
predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of
a solar orlunar eclipse." (Pr, p.103) Contrary to Spinoza,
the assertion of man's practical freedom and responsibility is not a mere convenient fiction; it is just.
We turn now to consider Kant's teaching regarding the
positive meaning of freedom. Freedom in the full sense
is more than the spontaneity or essential timelessness of
the willing subject; freedom is not license to do as one
likes; freedom is obedience to law. But an absolutely decisive qualification is necessary: freedom in the full sense
consists in obedience to a law which we give to ourselves.
In this respect Kant follows Rousseau (Social Contract,
book 1, chapter 8): "For just as motivation by sheer appetite is slavery, so obedience to self-imposed law is freedom." Kant's term for self-legislation is "autonomy".
The alternative to autonomy is heteronomy, i.e. obedience to a law originating without rather than within the
willing self. The heteronomous principle par excellence is
happiness. The affirmation of the principle of autonomy
as the supreme principle of morality presupposes the critique of happiness as a principle of morality. This is not
obvious; to see that it is so, we turn to Kant's introduction of the principle of autonomy in the second section
of Foundations.
There are two main kinds of imperatives: categorical
and hypothetical. The former has the form: "do this."
The latter has the form: "if you desire that, do this".
From experience we know that the moral law presents
itself in the former mode, i.e., as Kant puts it, we experience the moral law as unconditioned. But is not the
force of a conditioned requirement identical with that of
97
�an unconditioned requirement if the condition of the conditioned requirement is necessarily given? It would seem
so. (It will not, or at least not obviously, suffice to object
that "do this" differs from "do this if you desire that,
which in fact you necessarily desire" in that the latter involves two terms whereas the former involves only one:
as we shall see, the former too necessarily involves a second term, namely respect or, correlatively, sublimity.)
As it happens, Kant does think that there is one condition that is necessarily given, namely the desire for happiness, corresponding to which there is what Kant calls
an assertoric imperative, which he treats as a special case
of hypothetical imperatives. Now, necessity appears to
be the requirement to be met by a principle of morality:
"Laws must completely determine the will as will ...
They must thus be categorical, otherwise they would not
be Jaws, for they would lack the necessity which, in order
to be practical, must be completely independent of pathological conditions, i.e. conditions related only contingently to the will." Since happiness is not related only
contingently to the will, but is necessarily related to every
human will, why cannot happiness serve as the principle of morality? (We abstract here from Kant's dubious
assertion that only what is a priori can be truly necessary,
so that happiness is desired universally by a mere
"natural necessity". This abstraction will be justified
in chapter 5.) The reason why happiness cannot so serve
is that "the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a
concept." (F, p. 85) To begin with, different men believe
that different things will make them happy, as Aristotle,
in his book about happiness, had also recognized. But
might there not be among the variety of understandings
of happiness, one sovereign understanding of happiness
that somehow contains the "truth" of the variety of understandings? Following Aristotle, we consider the desire
for "knowledge and insight." Then we must realize that
"this might perhaps merely give him an eye so sharp that
it would make evils at present hidden from him and yet
unavoidable seem all the more frightful or would add a
load of still further needs to the· desires which already
give him trouble enough." By "knowledge and insight"
Kant surely does not mean contemplative metaphysics,
which he believes to be impossible for reasons stated in
the first Critique. Whether contemplative metaphysics, if
it were possible, would make men happy is a question
which Kant does not raise.
We shall return to this subject again. For now it is sufficient to notice that the denial that man's duty can be discovered in the empirical or natural, i.e. the denial that
in order to discover what operations they ought to perform men can take their bearings by happiness, rests
upon two premises, neither of which is self-evident. One
is that what is not required of all men because not possible for all men (e.g. quest for knowledge) is not necessarily
98
required of any man or that duty in order to be duty must
require the same of all men: otherwise the heterogeneity
of the natural, i.e. the fact that different men believe that
different things will make them happy, could not disqualify happiness as the principle of morality and compel resort to the a priori, i.e. to autonomy as the principle
of morality. The second is that the claim of knowledge
in particular to make men happy presents itself equivocally to those few men to whom it does somehow present
itself, i.e. even those few men who experience a vocation to knowledge have reason to suspect that knowledge
may not make them happy.
But even if one were to hold that knowledge does make
some few men truly happy, and therewith that
philosophy constitutes their end, i.e. constitutes the operation which they ought to perform and in that sense their
duty, the difficulty indicated by Kant's first premise still
remains. Leo Strauss' writes: "According to Aristotle
man is by nature meant for the life of human excellence;
the end is universal in the sense that no man's life can
be understood, or seen as what it is, except in the light
of that end." But according to Aristotle human excellence
as the end of man is ultimately identical with the life of
contemplation, which is possible only for a few. In the
light of this end, how must the life of the noncontemplative men, i.e. the life of almost all men, appear?
In the last analysis, from Aristotle's point of view, as instrumental to the contemplative life of the few. The "good
life" as superior to "mere life" has unqualifiedly valuable content only for the few contemplative men,
although it is for the sake of a good life that all men somehow choose to live in cities. This is not to deny that the
non-contemplative men are better off in the city than they
would be without the city. It is only to say that the highest
good simply, possible only for a few, is radically incomparable with the highest good that is available within
non-contemplative experience which, according to
Aristotle, is necessarily the only experience of the many.
Kant must regard such a situation as intolerable for reasons, we must say, far closer to the teaching of Christianity than to modern democratic ideology which also,
of course, must regard such a situation as intolerable. And
yet one is forced to wonder whether Christian thought,
which must no doubt insist that salvation (as the highest
good simply) is possible for all men, can unqualifiedly
deny the superiority of contemplation to action without
at the same time collapsing the first commandment of love
wholly into the second commandment of Jove. Concerning this problem we can say nothing more here: a comparison of Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas in regard to
the meaning of contemplation and happiness might be
the beginning of an adequate formulation of the problem.
At any rate, only after the elimination of the possibility of an empirical (=experiential= natural) source of
WINTER 1986
�the principle of morality is Kant able to conclude to an
a priori source, i.e. pure reason itself as self-legislating.
Even so, in the Foundations Kant comes to this conclusion
somewhat tentatively (F, p. 99): "Thus the principle that
every human will is a will which by all its maxims enacts
universal law-provided only that it were right in other
ways-would be well-suited to a categorical imperative
in this respect: that precisely because of the Idea of making universal law it is based on no interest and consequently can alone among all possible imperatives be
unconditioned.''
There are three points to be noted in this passage. First,
the categorical imperative is the primary datum: it is to
it that the principle of autonomy must be well or ill suited.
Second, although well-suited in one respect, there are
other ways in which the principle of autonomy might be
right or wrong: there are other relevant criteria. Third,
contrary to what Kant implies here, we may say provisionally that according to Kant's usage, an imperative
may be unconditioned (since "conditioned by a necessarily given condition''=''unconditioned'') even when
based on an interest: that is, respect is a different kind of
interest than happiness, but it is still an interest, the important point being that it is a necessary interest. The actual requirement, then, for the unconditioned character
of an imperative is not that it be based on no interest but
rather that the interest on which it is based be necessary
rather than contingent.
The third point as just developed, however, is open to
an important objection: is it fair to impute to Kant the
view that man's obedience to duty is based on an interest,
i.e. on respect for the law, which is equivalent to selfrespect? Kant obviously wishes to distinguish sharply
between taking an interest in an action and acting from
interest (F, p.81) and this appears to be a reasonable distinction. Yet Kant appears to make this distinction within his own position while denying its use to what we may
call the Aristotelian position. Otherwise stated, Kant
tacitly identifies Aristotle with Epicurus (compare Practical Reason, pp.21-23; also p.115, where he says that with
respect to the relation of virtue and happiness, "of the
ancient Greek schools, there were only two opposing
each other on this issue-Epicureanism and Stoicism").
This identification has two stages. To begin with, Kant
implicitly reduces "happiness" in Aristotle's sense to
"pleasure". How far is he justified in doing so? Without
attempting to explain fully what Aristotle understands
by happiness, we may at least emphasize that he does
not understand happiness as an end of human activity
in the sense that particular human activities might be
more or less effective means of bringing it about (as a raindance brings about a shower, but the use of certain chemicals brings it about-perhaps-better). Aristotle does not
contradict himself when he says both that contemplation
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is for its own sake and that contemplation is for the sake
of happiness: happiness is (morally or intellectually) virtuous activity. However, as a provisional statement, the
reduction of happiness in Aristotle's sense to pleasure
is not wholly illicit. Surely Aristotle supposes, without
embarrassment, that (morally or intellectually) virtuous
activity is also on the whole pleasant activity, and in particular that the most virtuous activity-contemplationis the most pleasant. Aristotle insists, however, that pleasures must be understood in terms of activities rather than
activities in terms of pleasures: pleasures must be ranked,
and this must be done in accordance with the rank of the
activities to which they specifically pertain. These activities must in turn be ranked in accordance with the character of the human soul. (It is at this point, of course, that
the tenability of Aristotle's strict separation between ''theoretical reason" and "practical reason" becomes questionable: within active or political life, prudence may be
enough; but is prudence sufficient for the choice between
the life of_ action and the life of contemplation?)
In view of these and other considerations, Aristotle's
conclusion in regard to the moral problem of pleasure is
that pleasure is essentially good, even though base men
find pleasure in base activities. For Aristotle, no psychological problem (as we would say) arises in regard to pleasure. For Kant, however, the moral problem in regard to
pleasure is inseparable from, if not identical with, the psychological problem in regard to pleasure. Kant's thesis
is therefore as follows: Since the virtuous man according to Aristotle knows and cannot but know when he
chooses the good that he is also thereby choosing the
pleasant, he must be choosing the good for the sake of
the pleasure which it must yield: hence he behaves immorally though legally.
Similarly, however, since Kant must admit that in
choosing to do his duty the virtuous man according to
Kant knows and cannot but know that such a choice will
enhance his self-respect, why could not one say that he
does his duty for the sake of enhancing his self-respect?
It would seem therefore to be fair to state Aristotle's thesis and Kant's thesis at least provisionally in the same
way: either to say that in both cases moral imperatives
are "based on" an interest (whether in happiness or
respect) or, more adequately-especially in view of Kant's
assertion (F, p.75) that it is impossible for men to discover
their actual motives in such matters-to say that in both
cases moral imperatives are ''invariably accompanied by''
an interest (whether in happiness or in respect). In either
case, we recall, Kant would require that the interest be
necessarily rather than merely contingently related to the
human will: if happiness may not be excluded-anymore
than respect-as a principle of morality on the ground
that it is a mercenary, hence immoral principle, it may
yet be disqualified on the ground that, even abstracting
99
�from the indeterminateness of its concept, it is not necessarily related to the will in the way in which respect is.
This question will be taken up again when we have said
more about the phenomenon of respect.
V. Happiness and Sublimity
The critique of happiness as a principle of morality does
not entail the rejection of happiness as an authentic good.
The summum bonum toward which all men strive, according to Kant, comprises not only virtue (=worthiness of
happiness) but also happiness itself, however one may
understand happiness: the fact that "the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept", although it decisively disqualifies happiness as a principle of morality,
does not disqualify happiness as a constituent of the summum bonum. It is true that within the summum bonum happiness is subordinate to virtue. Kant's most striking
statement to this effect occurs at the beginning of Foundations. After arguing that had happiness been nature's
purpose in regard to man, it would have been better
served by instinct than by reason, he asserts that nature's
unconditional purpose in regard to man is the development of a good will (=virtue), for which purpose reason
is indispensable. If that unconditional purpose is accomplished, the cultivation of reason ''may even reduce happiness to less than zero without nature proceeding
contrary to her purpose" (F, p. 64).
Yet although happiness is properly subordinate to virtue, it is an indispensable constituent of the summum
bonum. Not to regard it as such is, according to Kant, in
a way contrary to ~'nature''. We consider his discussion
of Stoicism in Practical Reason (Pr, pp.131-2). The Stoics
were right, as against the Epicureans, in choosing virtue
as their supreme practical principle. But they made several grave mistakes. First, they thought that man could
be strictly virtuous in this life, partly because they "exaggerated the moral capacity of man ... beyond all the
limits of his nature, making it into something which is
contradicted by all our knowledge of men", and partly
because they underestimated the requirements of virtue.
("But all this they could not have done had they conceived this law in the same purity and rigor as does the
precept of the Gospel.") Second, "they also refused to
accept the second component of the highest good, i.e.
happiness, as a special object of human desire." They
made their sage "like a god in the consciousness of the
excellence of his person, wholly independent of nature
(as regards his own contentment), exposing him to the
evils of life, but not subjecting him to them." But, Kant
continues remarkably, "the voice of their own nature
could have sufficiently refuted this."
Happiness is therefore an indispensable element of the
summum bonum. Not only virtue but also happiness
100
proportioned to virtue may reasonably be required by
man. Yet Kant is sure that in this world we do not encounter happiness proportioned to virtue. Happiness
must therefore belong to "a world invisible to us now
but hoped for" (P, B841). It is true that not all moral
philosophers have considered another world necessary
for the equalization of happiness and virtue, but Kant can
scarcely fathom those who have not: "When we see ourselves obliged to seek at such distance-namely in the
context of an intelligible world-the possibility of the
highest good which reason presents to all rational beings
as the goal of all their moral wishes, it must appear
strange that philosophers of both ancient and modern
times have been able to find happiness in very just
proportion to virtue in this life (in the world of sense) or
at least have been able to convince themselves of it." If
happiness is to be proportionate to virtue at all, we must
postulate the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul.
Kant therefore dissents from the "optimism" of Aristotle in particular. At first glance Kant's requirement of
another world for the equalization of virtue and happiness appears to be Christian in inspiration (if we disregard
Kant's insistence that God be strictly just rather than merciful). However, whereas Augustine (City of God Book 1,
chapter 8) both requires and believes to find that even in
the vicissitudes of man's temporal existence God's just
intervention is sometimes operative although-lest we become mercenary-not systematically operative; Kant,
although he might believe to find signs of particular providence, apparently would not require any such signs as a
condition of his rational faith. In this respect Christian
tradition, insofar as that is authentically represented by
Augustine, is far bolder than Kant in demanding happiness for man on earth.
We resume Kant's argument. Happiness proportioned
to virtue (in this life) is not the hallmark of human excellence. If it were, human excellence would be nonexistent. But there is a quality which overcomes "the
curse of creaturely worthlessnessn, as Max Weber once
called it. That quality is sublimity. Sublimity is strictly correlative to respect. This is brought out clearly in Practical
Reason (pp.74-92: "the incentives of pure practical reason") but is also implied in Foundations (especially p.107).
We respect the moral law because it mortifies our inclinations and humiliates our self-conceit: "thus respect for
the law cannot be attributed to a supreme being or even
to one free from all sensibility, since to such a being there
could be no obstacle to practical reason" (Pr, p.79). In
respecting the moral law we respect ourselves as givers
of the moral law, i.e. as givers of the moral law in the
face of natural obstacles and as thereby exalted above all
natural obstacles (F, p.107).
Moreover, the feeling of respect "is the only one which
WINTER 1986
�we can know completely a priori and the necessity of
which we can discern." Herein lies its superiority to happiness as an interest "invariably accompanying" (c£.
chapter 4) moral imperatives: happiness, though related
to the will of every man, is not so related a priori.
However, although respect alone is related to the will a
priori, we must notice that it never comes into effect except
in opposition to inclinations which must be given in experience. It becomes more difficult to understand how
respect carries with it a stricter necessity than happiness.
We are inclined to wonder whether the principle of autonomy is not heteronomous, i.e. whether, as Hegel suggested, its existential significance, as distinct from its
logical significance, does not absolutely require the existence of a hostile world. We must therefore consider seriously the possibility that happiness and respect or
sublimity are, despite Kant's protestations to the contrary,
of equal rank as regards their formal characteristics, i.e.
as regards their universality and necessity as possibilities of human life. We must consider seriously the possibility that Kant's moral teaching invites us to decide
between happiness and sublimity as authoritative principles of human life according to essentially substantive
rather than formal criteria.
In order to establish more precisely the significance of
the concept of sublimity in Kant's moral philosophy-a
concept employed by Kant with striking frequency whose
parallel use would be impossible to imagine in Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas-we turn to his thematic
discussion of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment.
Whereas the judgment of the beautiful involves the
free play of the imagination with the concepts of the
understanding (though not with any determinate concept), the judgment of the sublime involves the free play
of the imagination with the ideas of reason. The mathematically sublime is distinguished from the dynamically
sublime: they are exemplified respectively by the immensity and the might of nature.
But nature can be called sublime only in improper
speech, for it is only our own rational self which is truly
sublime. Regarding the immensity of nature, "in our rational faculty we find a different, non-sensuous standard,
which has that infinity itself under it as a unity, in comparison with which everything in nature is small, and
thus in our own mind we find a superiority to nature even
in its immensity.' ' 10 It is the same with the might of nature, or the dynamically sublime: "And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us realize our own
physical impotence, considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of and a
superiority over nature. Thus humanity in our person remains unhumiliated, though the individual might have
to submit to this dominion" (J, p.101).
And in conclusion: "Sublimity, therefore, does notre-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
side in anything of nature, but only in our mind, in so
far as we can become conscious that we are superior to
nature within, and therefore also to nature without us
(so far as it influences us)" (J, p.104).
Rational man, so far from being a pupil of nature, must
forcibly subdue and belittle nature by means of a yoke
wholly of his own devising (the idea of infinity thought
as unity) even in order to measure nature: this is the
meaning of pure theoretical reason. Rational man, so far
from being inclined by a friendly nature toward his own
proper end, must resist with all his strength (wherever
that may have come from) the meretricious allure of nature's principle, the principle of happiness, which principle merely disguises the fact that man is radically
threatened by nature: this is the meaning of pure practical reason. Man is radically threatened by nature in such
a way however, that his greatness, his dignity, his excellence consists in his sovereign contempt for all that nature
(in the guise either of storms at sea or of those of his
fellow sensuous-rational creatures who are sensuously
determined) can do to him. There is a limit to the goodness that is possible for him: he can do no more than obey
the moral law in every case: as regards morality in the
narrow sense, he can be no better than God. But there
is no limit to the sublimity that is possible for him, for
that depends upon the degree of nature's hostility toward
him, to which no limit can be assigned in advance. This,
we venture to say, is the core of Kant's pre-scientific
metaphysics of nature.
But what of hope, what of happiness, both of which
Kant affirms in a way? Would not a more moderate interpretation accommodate both sublimity and happiness
as hallmarks of human excellence according to Kant? But
is this not absurd? If ever it was necessary to choose between alternative hallmarks of human excellence, it is
necessary to choose between sublimity and happiness.
In view of a good many tendencies, epitomized by the
most famous passage of the Critique of Practical Reason
(which passage must be understood in its context) one
is inclined to think that Kant chose sublimity: "Two
things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect
on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law
within me.''
VI. Nature and Morality Reconsidered
We have said that happiness and sublimity radically
contend in Kant's moral philosophy: one or the other,
but ultimately not both, must redeem "the curse of creaturely worthlessness." We have said that in the end Kant
inclines toward sublimity as the hallmark of human excellence. This inclination is not unrelated to Kant's subordination of religious consciousness to moral
101
�consciousness, 11 but it is actually broader than that subordination: even within strictly moral consciousness, Kant
rejects the attempt of "the ancient Greek schools" to contrive "an identity between such extremely heterogeneous concepts as those of happiness and virtue" (Pr,
pp .115-16). The extreme heterogeneity of happiness and
virtue reflects the extreme heterogeneity of nature and
morality. Perhaps Kant's most radical statement of this
heterogeneity is the following (Pr, p .86; emphasis added):
"For since he is a creature, and consequently is always
dependent with respect to what he needs for complete
satisfaction with his condition, he can never be wholly
free from desires and inclinations which, because they
rest on physical causes, do not themselves agree with
the moral law, which has an entirely different source."
However, there remain two Kantian doctrines for us to
consider which suggest that the sources of the realm of
freedom and the realm of nature are not "entirely different". One is Kant's doctrine of teleological judgment; the
other is his doctrine of the "typic". We must review these
doctrines briefly if our presentation of Kant's view of
the relation of morality to nature is to avoid drastic oversimplification.
In the introduction to the Critique of Judgment Kant
declares that the third Critique is intended as a means of
combining the concepts of the realm of nature and the
realm of freedom (J, p.12):
Now even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible
realm of the concept of freedom, so that no transition is possible from the first to the second, yet the second is meant to
have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is
meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed
by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that
the conformity to law of its form at least harmonizes with the
possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to
the laws of freedom. There must, therefore, be a ground of
the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically
contains.
The faculty of judgment, in its reflective (as distinct
from determinate) employment, spans the gulf by dictating that we shall hypothetically project the form of purpose onto nature, with reference especially to organized
beings (since "it is absurd . . . to hope that another
Newton will arise in the future who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered"
(J, p.248)) but ultimately with reference to the whole of
nature, since the inability of mechanical laws to explain
any part of nature constitutes a failure in principle to explain the whole of nature.
Although at times Kant speaks of this projection of
purpose as a mere (optional) heuristic principle, on the
102
whole he maintains that the mechanically inexplicable
character of a blade of grass (for example) absolutely requires such a principle. The principle of natural purpose
is then the basis for a physical teleology which, while
only a preparation for theology, and in need of being
completed by moral teleology (which contributes considerably more to the possibility of theology) is yet not
altogether negligible (J, p.307):
For the theoretical reflective judgment, physical teleology
sufficiently proves from the purposes of nature an intelligent
world cause; for the practical judgment, moral teleology establishes it by the concept of a final purpose, which it is forced
to ascribe to creation in a practical point of view. The objective reality of the idea of God as moral author of the world
cannot, it is true, be established by physical purposes alone.
But nevertheless, if the cognition of these purposes is combined with that of the moral purpose, they are, by virtue of
the maxim of pure reason which bids us seek unity of-principles so far as is possible, of great importance for the practical
reality of that idea, by bringing in the reality which it has for
the judgment in a theoretical point of view.
However, although according to its introduction one of
the chief purposes of the Critique of Judgment is to reveal
such a (partial) harmonization of the realm of nature and
the realm of freedom as has just been sketched, in the
concluding passages of the book (J, p.331) Kant declares
that such a harmonization is fundamentally superfluous:
The moral proof ... would preserve all its force if we found
in the world no material, or only that which is doubtful, for
physical teleology. It is possible to conceive of rational beings surrounded by a nature which displayed no clear trace
of organization, but only the effects of a mere mechanism of
crude matter ... and yet reason, which here gets no guidance
from natural concepts, would find in the concept of freedom
and in the moral idea founded thereon a practically sufficient
ground for postulating the concept of the original Being in
conformity with these.
Kant's final word on the relation of the realm of freedom
to the realm of nature is therefore that the realm of freedom need find no support at all in the realm of nature,
although in fact it does find a little support. The ascent
to ontology, and in particular to theology, begins essentially from moral, not natural, phenomena.
We turn to Kant's doctrine of the "typic", limiting ourselves to the barest indication of the issues involved. In
Practical Reason (pp.70-74) Kant says of the typic that its
relation to practical reason is analogous to the relation
of the schema to theoretical reason: both perform a mediating function between the a priori and the empirical.
There is one primary typic of the moral law, of which
other typics may presumably be regarded as specifications: "Ask yourself whether, if the action which you propose should take place by a law of nature of which you
yourself were a part, you would regard it as possible
WINTER 1986
�through your will." Although the term "typic" does not
appear in Foundations, several interesting examples of the
employment of typics in moral judgment do occur there.
We attend to one in particular.
After Kant has stated the categorical imperative for the
first time in Foundations (F, p.88), he gives an alternative
version of it: "Act as if the maxim of your action were
to become through your will a universal law of nature."
This version, according to Practical Reason, is a type of the
categorical imperative, and Kant makes use of it in applying the moral law in four illustrations that immediately follow. The third illustration (F, p.90) concerns
whether a man is duty-bound to develop his "natural"
talents so far as possible, even though "a system of nature could indeed subsist" even if he did not. Kant concludes that a man is so bound, for a reason which is stated
clearly somewhat later, after still another version (apparently, another type) of the categorical imperative has been
formulated, enjoining that humanity in oneself as in
others be treated not only as a means but also as an end:
"Now there are in humanity capacities for greater perfection which form part of nature's purpose for humanity
in our person. To neglect these can admittedly be compatible with the maintenance of humanity as an end in itself, but not with the promotion of this end" (F, p.97).
Kant indicates that here he speaks of imperfect or
meritorious rather than perfect or strict duty. Still, it is
clear that in the long run Kant is not satisfied with purely
formal ethics; and that when he wishes to give some
minimal substantive content to duty, he expresses himself in terms of natural teleology. One can only say that
on the basis of the first Critique, as not decisively modified by the third Critique, such expressions appear to be
essentially without foundation, however commonsensically plausible they may be. Moreover, aside from the
difficulties posed by the conclusions of Kant's theoretical metaphysics, Kant's manifest pre-scientific orientation in this matter induces one to wonder whether "nature's purpose for humanity" is not both figured out and
achieved by man in despite of nature's hostility rather than
given to man by a friendly nature who inclines man
toward what is good for him and on the whole supports
rather than thwarts those inclinations which she has
given him. The pre-scientific orientation to which we
refer emerges clearly from the following characteristic passage in "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent' ' 12 :
In this, Nature seems to have moved with the strictest parsimony, and to have measured her animal gifts precisely to
the most stringent needs of a beginning existence, just as if
she had willed that, if man ever did advance from the lowest
barbarity to the highest skill and mental perfection and thereby worked himself up to happiness (so far as it is possible
on earth), he alone should have the credit and should have
only himself to thank-exactly as if she aimed more at his ra-
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tiona! self-esteem than at his well-being.
VII. Conclusion
We now briefly review the results of our investigation
of Kant's moral philosophy.
Moral phenomena, not natural phenomena, are the
basis for the ascent to ontology, and in particular to theology: moral phenomena, while not simply sufficient for
the disclosure of the whole of Being, are yet our best, and
ultimately our only way of access to the whole of Being.
The categorical imperative is the moral phenomenon par
excellence. The fact as it were" is far more impressive
than any mere "fact" because it irrupts into our lives unsolicited from without. We need not look for it in order
to see it; we are forced to see it. What we need to look
for or desire to establish we thereby distort. The categorical imperative is more authoritative than the findings of
natural science because it forces itself upon us unconditionally, whereas they are conditioned by our questions.
The categorical imperative, hence ultimate truth so far
as that is knowable by man, is accessible to all men. The
common man, the man without theoretical science, is in
a way more susceptible to its revelation than the man with
theoretical science, although the conclusions of true (i.e.
critical) theoretical science, while they cannot independently establish, nevertheless cannot contradict, what is
revealed by the categorical imperative. The common man
is in a way especially susceptible to the revelation if he
lacks prudential knowledge of the world, of the realm of
nature: he is in that case not tempted to risk disobedience
to the infinitely simple categorical imperative.
The categorical imperative is experienced by all men as
a constraint from without, an unconditioned constraint
(whose form is never "if ... then" where "if" is optional)
and one that permits no exception in favor of oneself. But
mere analysis reveals that its true origin is within man:
autonomy is the ground of the categorical imperative.
Whereas all men recognize, however vaguely, the categorical imperative, Kant is the discoverer of the principle of autonomy. At first glance it appears that no one
before Kant discovered the principle of autonomy as the
ultimate ground of man's experience of duty because no
one before Kant had undertaken a critique of pure reason. But the immediately relevant assertion of the first
Critique, namely that necessity can never arise from the
merely empirical, i.e. from nature (even if we ignore the
prima facie difference between the necessity proper to
moral imperatives and that proper to physical regularities) is rather assumed than proven by the first Critique.
Moreover, Kant's argument for autonomy as the
supreme principle of morality rests only partly on the
above-mentioned assertion. The more important part of
his argument concerns specifically moral phenomena
without reference to physical science. That is, Kant con11
103
�eludes to the principle of autonomy as the ground of the
categorical imperative only after having eliminated the
natural or empirical candidate, i.e. happiness. His most
important arguments against happiness as a principle of
morality are ultimately independent of the first Critique.
They are chiefly three. The most obvious is that happiness is a mercenary principle, hence not truly moral. But
this assertion, as we have pointed out, is questionable:
The fact that pleasure is known by Aristotle's virtuous
man to accompany his virtuous action no more convicts
him of being mercenary than does the fact that Kant's
virtuous man knows that self-respect will accompany his
virtuous action convict him of being mercenary.
The other two foundations of Kant's critique of happiness as the principle of morality are less obvious: indeed,
he hardly mentions them, so much does he take them
for granted. However, they are neither unimportant nor
unquestionable. The first is that different men believe that
different things will make them happy and therefore
would be required to do different things if they took their
bearings by happiness; but what is not required of all men
is not required of any man necessarily, and the moral law
is meaningless without necessity. The second is that contemplative metaphysics, which according to Aristotle
makes man happiest, cannot make men happy, since
even if we could know the whole, which we cannot (this
assertion does depend on the first Critique), we have no
reason to be confident that the whole is good (this assertion is based on a kind of pre-scientific orientation which
is especially visible in Kant's writings on the sublime);
and if the whole is not good, why should man be made
happy by knowledge of it?
We approach the same point from a somewhat different angle. Happiness is not, as at first sight appears, rejected as a principle of morality on purely formal grounds,
i.e. because, not being a priori, it can yield only contingent, even if universal, imperatives. Respect no less than
happiness turns out to require experience. Respect is
strictly correlative to sublimity. Happiness requires experience of a nature that is friendly to man; sublimity,
hence respect, requires experience of a nature that is
hostile to man. Despite the assertion of the first Critique
that we do not truly encounter nature at all, Kant believes
to have encountered nature sufficiently far in a prescientific way to decide that the hallmark of human excellence is sublimity rather than happiness.
The assertion that Kant regards sublimity rather than
happiness as the hallmark of human excellence, or that
he regards the whole as unfriendly rather than friendly
to man, stands in need of some qualification. Three
qualifications are especially necessary: happiness as an
indispensable element of the summum bonum is provided
104
for by rational faith which is grounded in morality,
though happiness is not immediately provided for by
morality itself; the faculty of teleological judgment partly
harmonizes the realms of freedom and nature; and the
natural teleology assumed in Kant's use of typics also suggests that reason and nature are not infinitely remote from
each other. But these qualifications, taken together, seem
less impressive than Kant's pervasive orientation by sublimity rather than happiness.
Kant's moral philosophy, which requires its own submission to the judgment of common-sense moral experience, therefore contains two intimately connected
positions which from the point of view of common-sense
moral experience are questionable: an experience whose
most impressive characteristic is that it seems to irrupt
upon us from without actually has its ground in our own
self-legislation; and sublimity, not happiness, is the
hallmark of human excellence.
Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), p. 20.
Hereafter cited in the text as P. I have altered the translation
slightly, following the Prussian Academy edition of Kant's
Werke.
2. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Macquarrie
and Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 413-14.
Hereafter cited in the text as H.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter
Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), pp. 139-40.
4. Cited in Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe (New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), p. 1.
5. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by H. J. Paton under the title of Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 71-2.
Hereafter cited in the text as F.
6. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis
White Beck (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1956), p. 38. Hereafter cited in the text as Pr. (Compare F, p. 71, for a similar
passage.)
7. Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, translated
by R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1955), pp. 57-8.
8. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964),
p. 44.
9. Hegel's polemic against Kantian moral consciousness, not
only on the ground of its alleged empty formalism but also on
the ground that Kantian autonomy is actually heteronomous,
runs through the Phenomenology of Spirit. See especially pp.
619-20 and 634-5 in Baillie's translation (New York: Humanities Press, 1966).
10. Immanuel Kant, Critzque of!udgment, translated by J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1966), p. 101. Hereafter cited in the
text as J.
11. Cf. Richard Kroner, Kant's Weltanshauung (Chicago: U. of
Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 42-50.
12. Immanuel Kant, On History, compiled and translated by
Lewis White Beck (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1963), p. 14.
WINTER 1986
�Theory and Practice in
Hegel's Phenomenology
Introduction
This study of Hegel's conception of the relation between theory and practice is oriented in two directions.
On the one hand it seeks some clarity regarding the foundations of contemporary revolutionary thought in the
West. That thought is unthinkable without the conception of radical human conversion through labor and political struggle, of the overcoming of "alienation" by such
"negation" as is at the same time "creative." The
broadest and deepest foundation for this conception,
which Marx largely took for granted, was laid by Hegel.
According to the interpretation of Alexandre Kojeve
(which, no doubt, one cannot accept in every respect),
Hegel succeeded in holding together themes which later,
in Marx and Heidegger, became separated to the detriment of a true view of human existence: Marx knows of
political struggle and of labor as technological transformation of nature but he loses sight of human freedom
as consciousness of death; Heidegger knows of human
freedom as consciousness of death but neglects political
struggle and labor, hence cannot give an account of concrete human existence.
But while looking ahead from Hegel to contemporary
thought, the present study also attempts to look back
from Hegel toward the Platonic-Aristotelian view of the
city and man, which Hegel rejects on the ground that according to that view the lives of the non-philosopherswhich is to say the lives of most men-are lived irredeemably outside of the truth. Thus unlike such men as
Theory and Practice in Hegel's Phenomenology. Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Chicago, 1970.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Hobbes, whose decisive objection against classical political philosophy is that it aimed too high, exaggerating the
power of reason against the passions, Hegel's decisive
objection against classical political philosophy is that it
aimed too low, reserving the highest human possibilities
for only a few men. The former objection is made in the
interest of sound, i.e., peaceable, political practice; the
latter ultimately in the interest of true theory, and in particular of true theology. For Hegel's objection against classical political philosophy is, broadly stated, that it
misconceives the relation between the religious experience of the many and the truth available to philosophic activity; and that thereby it misconceives the nature
of the divine as such. Whether or not one sympathizes
with Hegel's essentially theological critique of classical
political philosophy-or has primarily any interest in such
questions at all-one cannot understand Hegel's
philosophy in general, nor those elements within it which
prepare the way for Marx and Heidegger in particular,
without seriously taking it into account. That this is the
case will, I hope, be established by the present study.
That the themes indicated have in this study been
brought into focus upon the question of the relation of
theory and practice was not necessary, but neither is it
farfetched. Such a focus is suggested, for example, by
Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach," of which that relation
is the primary topic and which is an excellent clue to
Marx's specifically revolutionary thought. Moreover, such
a focus permits a pointed comparison with Aristotle in
the respect indicated above, since Aristotle distinguishes theoria and praxis not only as specifically different human performances-theoria concerned with the
immutable, praxis like poiesis with the mutable-but
primarily as alternative ways of life: the life of contem-
105
�plation which finally takes place beyond the city, and the
life of politics lived wholly within the city.
The present study is concerned almost exclusively with
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. For all sorts of practical
reasons I had to choose, and I think with Marx that the
Phenomenology is Hegel's greatest book. The study is cast,
except for an initial chapter of orientation and a final chapter of conclusions, in the form of a selective commentary
on the Phenomenology, which mainly, although not always, follows the order of Hegel's own presentation.
Thus my first chapter outlines very broadly certain contrasts between Aristotle and Hegel; more precisely, starting from Aristotle it tries to state in the most elementary
terms what sort of considerations induced Hegel to make
"history" the central category of his metaphysics.
The second chapter is a commentary on Hegel's own
introduction to his philosophy as a whole, his own
presentation of its intention and originality, contained in
the "preface" to the Phenomenology, his first book. The
commentary deals with such matters as Hegel's understanding of "subjectivity" and "negativity," the relation
of the Phenomenology to Hegel's later system, and the
character of Hegel's language. An appendix considers the
Aristotelian view of the relation between energeia and
dunamis which, so far as I can see, Hegel accepts, with
decisive consequences for his philosophy as a whole. The
third chapter continues to lay the foundation for the central concerns of the study by way of a presentation of
Hegel's theses concerning the ''experience of consciousness," contained in his lntroduction" to the Phenomenology. This presentation is determinedly uncritical, since
the theses advanced seem to be of such vastness that
judgment must await exposition of the concrete content
of the Phenomenology. The fourth chapter treats Hegel's
"epistemology" and "philosophy of science," examining material in Chapters I, II, III and V of the Phenomenology, with a view to the relation between the "problem
of knowledge" and historical praxis.
11
Chapters V, VI and VII form the core of the study.
Chapter V has two subjects: Hegel's presentation of the
dialectic of master and slave as the key to praxis (found
in the first half of Chapter IV of the Phenomenology); and
Hegel's contrast of the Greek and Christian views of man
(in the second half of Chapter IV, especially the chapters
on "Stoicism" and "Unhappy Consciousness"). The
sixth chapter is a selective commentary on Chapter VI of
the Phenomenowgy, examining Hegel's view of history as
tragedy, from Creon and Antigone to the French Revolution and Napoleon, culminating in the critique of the
beautiful soul and "God appearing in the midst of men."
Chapter VTI treats Hegel's critique of the Enlightenment
view of revealed religion (in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology), Hegel's own view of Christian revelation (primar-
106
ily Chapter VTI of the Phenomenology) and, as the
culmination of the Phenomenowgy, Hegel's presentation
in Chapter VIII of the convergence of the critique of the
beautiful soul (as the highest expression of postRevolutionary consciousness) with the re-enactment of
the passion of Christ (the central event, according to
Hegel, for Western man), with which convergence praxis
terminates in pure theoria in the mode of Schaedelstaette
and Erinnerung.
The eighth and final chapter of the study has two parts:
one reviews the Marxist and existentialist sides of Hegel'-s
thought with a view to assessing the adequacy of Kojeve' s
interpretation in particular; the other investigates in a
very tentative way certain relations between Hegel,
Aristotle and Plato with a view to the question of the relation between philosophy and the city and the theological implications thereof.
Chapter I
Hegel and Aristotle
I.
The most famous modern statement regarding the relation between theory and practice is the last of Marx's
"Theses on Feuerbach": "The philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various ways; the point,
however, is to change it." But the actual import of this
statement can be understood only if one realizes that prior
to Hegel no philosopher had ever "interpreted the
world" in Marx's sense. (For various reasons, we shall
here leave Socrates out of account.) That is, no
philosopher had expected to learn anything of great importance from looking at the "world," namely at the
world of human affairs or, in Platonic-Aristotelian terms,
at the city. What Aristotle called first philosophy (what
we know as the Metaphysics)-which he regarded as by
far the worthiest knowledge, whose possession made a
man supremely happy, so that if the gods were capable
of envy they would envy such a one-has fundamentally two themes: being qua being and God as the highest
being. About these subjects one can expect to learn nothing from events within the cities of men, as Aristotle says
explicitly in Book VI of the Ethics, because it is "absurd"
to think that man is the highest being in the cosmos.
But when Aristotle says that man is far from being the
worthiest object of knowledge-that he is by no means
a good clue to the related questions of being qua being
and the divine being-he has in mind (and properly insofar as the Ethics forms a part of his political writings)
man insofar as he lives in the city, insofar as he engages
in praxis and poiesis. Man insofar as he transcends the city
by engaging in theona is a most worthy theme of investigation. Indeed book lambda of the Metaphysics, which
presents Aristotle's theology, does so by presenting the
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�convergence of the analysis of motion contained in the
Physics and the analysis of knowing-which is first of all
the analysis of human knowing-in book three of De Anima: the first cause of motion is revealed as noesis noeseos.
Thus knowledge of the human (theoretical) soul is of great
importance for the understanding of the highest matters.
"The [theoretical] soul is somehow all things"; it is the
part which is perfectly open to the whole, which reflects
the whole and therefore is in a way itself a whole.
But what of the "practical soul" and the "poetic soul,"
i.e., what of those human faculties concerned with acting and making? Are their variegated actualizations in any
important way revelatory of being qua being and God as
the highest being? Hegel's affifmative answer to this
question is decisive for his whole philosophy. Aristotle's
answer in general is surely negative and yet, just once,
he seems to hesitate. By attending to his singular "hesitation'' we may perhaps be able to suggest the considerations which prompted Hegel to break with
Aristotle-despite so many and such profound
agreements-on the decisive question of the locus of the
highest truth.
II.
The passage which we must consider is Aristotle's discussion of the pambasileus or" all-king" in the second half
of book three of the Politics. The general context is Aristotle's argument that rule of law, completed by equitable
men, is preferable to personal rule. But there may, Aristotle suggests, be exceptions to this generally sound policy. Indeed the pambasileus, if such a one exist, is the
exception, in this as well as other respects. Aristotle approaches the possibility of such an exception with considerable circumspection, taking it up, dropping it, then
taking it up once more. At 1284b25, after declaring that
ostracism is relatively justified when practiced upon individual men who stand to other men "as lions to hares"
(i.e., as utterly superior to other men in respect of power owing to wealth or number of partisans or similar factors), Aristotle raises the more difficult question posed
by a man utterly superior to other men in respect of human excellence:
Nobody, we may assume, would say that such a man ought
to be banished and sent into exile. But neither would any man
say that he ought to be subject to others. That would be much
as if human beings should claim to rule over Zeus, on some
system of rotation of office between themselves and him. The
only alternative left-and this would also appear to be according to nature-is for all others to pay a willing obedience to
the man of surpassing excellence. Such men will accordingly be kings in their cities for all time.
At 1287a Aristotle resumes discussion of absolute kingship. In general he again commends rule of law rather
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
than rule by one man, however excellent, since all men
are sometimes subject to self-regarding passions: "He
who commands that law should rule may thus be regarded as commanding that God and reason alone should
rule; he who commands that a man should rule adds the
character of the beast." Again (1288a), "It is neither expedient nor just that one man should be sovereign over
all others." This is true not only among equals; it is "even
true when the one man is superior in excellence-unless
his superiority be of a certain kind." Of that certain kind
Aristotle goes on to speak as follows: "When it happens
that the whole of a family, or even a single person, is of
excellence so outstanding as to surpass that of all the rest,
it is only just that this family should be vested with kingship and absolute sovereignty, or that this single person
should become absolute king." But it is not only a question of justice among human beings. There is also the consideration of "what is fitting" simply. For, "a whole is
never intended by nature to be inferior to a part; and a
man so greatly superior to others stands to them in the
relation o( a whole to its parts."
This last is surely a very striking image. Aristotle's earlier comparison of the utterly superior man to Zeus is obvious enough. But what does it mean to say of a man-of
a man, moreover, who unlike the philosopher emphatically has his being within the city-that he stands to other
men as a whole to its parts? If a man is as a whole, must
not his soul somehow reflect, and hence be revelatory
of, the whole?
What the image of whole and part might mean with
respect to human action may perhaps be suggested by
viewing Greek tragedy from a certain angle (by no means
the only possible one) according to which the chorus
represents the desire-not indeed of the philosopher but
rather of the polis as such-to know. Let us then regard
the chorus as the polis facing its king. The chorus, though
its welfare is radically bound up with that of the king,
does not act with respect to the king; rather it breathlessly
beholds the king in action. It beholds the king in action
and the fate of that action in order to discover the limits
of man, or the relation between the human and the transhuman. The king is peculiarly well-suited to be the "experimenter" because he is somehow more than other
men. But he is surely not identical with man as such; consequently the limits which his action and the fate of that
action disclose are not the limits of man as such. The king,
though a more extreme or perhaps exaggerated "part"
of man as such, is nevertheless only a "part"; the disclosure of man's limits which he achieves is only a partial disclosure, a disclosure of man's limits in a particular
direction. The chorus, in beholding his disclosure, is led
to reflect on other partial disclosures achieved by other
men; the fate of one king reminds of the fates of other
kings; and from a variety of partial disclosures of the
107
�limits of man the chorus attempts to compose an image
of the limits of man as a whole, of the relation between
the human as such and the transhuman. But what if there
were a king who stood to other men not only as a more
extreme or exaggerated part to other parts, but as a whole
to parts? Then might the disclosure of the limits of man,
of the relation between the human and the transhuman,
be accomplished once for all.
The premise of this interpretation is that the polis, and
not only the philosopher, desires to know-and this not
only in the obvious sense that knowledge is necessary
to guide action, to ensure that men choose true goods,
but also in the sense that one of the motives of action itself is the desire to know, not as if man can know only
what he makes (as Vico may have thought) but rather in
the way of initiating a kind of dialogue with that which
is not human. It is surely true, as Aristotle says, that men
do not become tyrants to avoid exposure to the cold. But
it may also be that they do not become tyrants only because they crave a superabundance of material goods or
even because they desire prestige or mastery simply for
its own sake. It seems at least possible that men become
tyrants in order to discover something: to discover how
far they can go, to discover whether and how the divine
will respond to their action.
Such a train of thought as has been sketched in the
preceding paragraphs seems to have determined the core
of Hegel's metaphysics which, like Aristotle's, has as its
fundamental themes the question of being qua being and
the question of God as the highest being; but which, unlike Aristotle's, finds the primary locus of truth not in the
realm of phusis but rather in the cities of men, which constitute the place of "history" only because they first constitute the place of stories. Nothing could be more
emblematic in this respect than that while both Aristotle
and Hegel rank tragedy higher than epic, Aristotle offers
the reason that qua made thing tragedy has more parts
than epic without loss of integrity, whereas Hegel gives
the reason that the theology of the tragedies is superior
to that of the epics, its representation of the divine more
profound.
III.
But there is another aspect of the matter which we must
at least suggest. The difference between Aristotle and
Hegel concerns not only the meaning of praxis (as the
theme of the tragedies, for example) but also the meaning of poiesis (and of techne as its peculiar way of knowing), of poetry in the broadest sense as man's capacity
to make, to make poems and statues but also to build cities, to fabricate a world in general. The decisive question is: are the eide perfect (finished) from the outset, as
they exist in the realm of phusis prior to human intervention? If one answers affirmatively, then one must hold
108
with Aristotle that art is to be understood fundamentally as mimesis, as imitation of nature (which should not
of course be understood in too crude a sense), so that
"meaning" precedes and underlies art. If one were to
hold, however, that the eide are far from perfect at the
outset, that they can be brought to perfection (given
"meaning") only by human intervention, then one must
understand art as creative in the modern sense or, in
Aristotelian terms, as violence (bia). (What is meant here,
of course, is violence with respect to the eide themselves;
a kind of violence with respect to the material in which
the eide are to be embodied is characteristic of all fabrication.) We may compare Heidegger's interpretation of the
famous first chorus from Sophocles' Antigone in which
interpretation techne is equated with violence-Gewaltand the poet is he who "violently carries Being into that
which is. " 1
Hegel indeed holds that the eide are not perfect from
the outset (as they exist in nature) and that human intervention, which he understands as labor (Arbeit), is necessary to bring them to their perfection. That such
intervention has a violent character is sufficiently indicated by the fact that according to Hegel's account labor
originates in fear of violent death and essentially consists
in 11 desire repressed." But what Hegel's presentation of
the story of master and slave particularly emphasizes is
that not only are the eide of those objects on which man
expressly labors imperfect at the outset, but the eidos of
man is also imperfect at the outset, and in violently bringing the eide of the non-human world to their perfection,
he at the same time, and violently, brings to perfection
the eidos of man. Thus Marx can write: "The outstanding thing in Hegel's Phenomenology and its final outcome
... is that Hegel conceives the self-production [Selbsterzeugung] of man as a process, " 2 whereby the biological
connotations of Erzeugung, which means especially
"procreation," very well express the profound ambiguity in Hegel's thought as to whether man in violently
transforming nature into a human world finally stands
within or without nature; for if, contrary to Aristotle, violence itself belongs essentially to nature, then Hegel's emphatic distinction between nature and Spirit (Geist)
becomes thoroughly questionable.
IV.
We have indicated that Aristotle and Hegel differ decisively with respect to the status accorded to human praxis
and poiesis in relation to the highest themes of metaphysics, namely being qua being and God as the highest being. But it is just as important to appreciate that this
difference presupposes their fundamental agreement as
to this, that the end of man is to know and the end of
the whole is to be known: the whole is not fully actual
without being known, and to participate in the act of
WINTER 1986
�knowing the whole is to participate to the greatest possible extent in the life of the divine. Thus Hegel's originality consists in his view that knowledge of the highest
presupposes praxis and poiesis-presupposes the citynot only as precondition (which Aristotle certainly admitted) but also and above all as object. History is the central
category of Hegelian metaphysics, as one often says, only
because for Hegel the city has become the object of
metaphysics. The realm of praxis (in the wide sense, including poiesis) has become the object of theoria. For
Aristotle the proper object of theoria is what cannot be
otherwise than it is, what is necessary and hence eternal
(Ethics, book six). For Hegel theoria retains the Aristotelian
meaning, though turned toward a non-Aristotelian object. Thus for Hegel events within the city cannot be
otherwise than they are; they are necessary and hence
eternal. The eternal is indeed not accessible from the beginning, according to Hegel; it becomes accessible only
in (better: as) history. Nor is there a history of revelation
only, as if being were "in itself" complete from the outset, only human knowing being incomplete. The history
of revelation is the history of being-the "in itself" is actual only when it is known by human beings. Thus deeds
are meaningful not merely as revelatory of what already
is, but also as (in a certain sense) creative. And yet events
within the city are eternal because they are necessary; and
they are necessary because they are elicited by the telos
which is present from the beginning, not indeed as a mere
norm, but as effectively moving. (Compare the appendix to Chapter II.)
History according to Hegel has achieved its telos with
the French Revolution and its culmination in Napoleon
on the one hand and with the writing of the Phenomenology of the Spirit on the other. History is over; no meaningful (i.e., revelatory-creative, whether in the mode of praxis
or poiesis) deeds remain to be performed in the cities; all
that remains is pure understanding. To grasp Hegel's notion of the "end of history," which is at first sight so
shocking, we may ask ourselves what Aristotle would
have replied to the Hegelian claim that no meaningful
deeds remain to be performed within the cities. Aristotle's answer would surely be-none ever remained to be
performed.
Chapter II
Foundations of Hegel's Philosophy
I.
Hegel's own understanding of the originality of his
philosophy is expressed decisively in this assertion: "According to my view, which must justify itself by the
presentation of the system, everything depends on this,
that we comprehend and express the true not as substance but just as much as subject. " 3
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The proximate meaning of this claim is clear enough:
Hegel presents himself to his contemporaries as synthesizing Spinoza' s philosophy of substance and Kant's
philosophy of subjectivity. Spinoza's philosophy is defective because in it ''self-consciousness is merely submerged, not upheld." (p.l9) This according to Hegel is
true of classical ontology altogether, above all of Plato and
Aristotle, by whom what Spinoza called "substance" was
called "nature" or "being." Only with Descartes does
self-consciousness or subjectivity receive its due; in his
lectures on the history of philosophy Hegel says, after
speaking of Bacon and Jacob Bohme: "We come now really for the first time to the philosophy of the modern
world, and this begins with Descartes. With him we really
encounter an autonomous philosophy, which knows that
it comes autonomously out of reason and that selfconsciousness is an essential moment of the true. Here,
we can say, we are at home, and can, like the sailor after
a long journey on the stormy sea, cry 'Land' ... In this
modern period the principle is thinking, thinking which
goes out from itself. " 4
The modern philosophy originated by Descartes culminates in Kant, for whom consciousness of objects, i.e.,
of objects systematically interrelated which thereby constitute a knowable world, presupposes selfconsciousness. But even Kant's philosophy, inasmuch as
it "clings to thinking as thinking," is insufficient; it is
"generality as such, the same simplicity or undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality." (p.19) That is, although
Kant understood that the constitution of a knowable
world presupposes self-consciousness, he understood
the self or subject according to the categories appropriate to substance or nature as those categories were
propounded by the ontological tradition originated by
Plato and Aristotle, above all according to the category
of identity ("unmoved substantiality"): the"!" of the "I
think" is always one and the same, just as the world
which it constitutes is always one and the same. This
Hegel radically denies: the category according to which
the self or subject must be understood is negativity. And
since substance includes subject, by which alone it can
be revealed in discursive speech (truth~substance as revealed in speech by subject), substance itself includes negativity: it cannot be interpreted solely according to the
category of identity. Substance properly understood, i.e.,
substance in which negativity reigns as much as identity, is called by Hegel "the living substance" which is not
only substance or nature in the traditional sense but also
"subject" or "the pure simple negativity." (p.20)
The relation of knowing, therefore, is not an "original"
or "immediate" unity of knower and known, of subject
and substance, but rather a unity which emerges only at
the end, a u sameness which reconstitutes itself" after
"the bifurcation of the simple or the duplication which
109
�creates opposition." (p.20) Once man has been brought
forth by nature, once negativity has broken in upon the
self-identity and self-harmony of nature-which is otherwise ''eternal recurrence of the same,'' with spiders spin-
ning webs for aeons without novelty-i.e., once history
has begun, dissonance reigns till the very end, till the end
of history when subject is reconciled to substance, the
knower to the known, by pure knowledge, i.e.,
knowledge without desire to change what is known,
knowledge as contemplative rather than projective. (To
speak of man being brought forth by a self-identical,
self-harmonious nature is not to speak of a "natural"
process. Nor does Kojeve's interpretation of the masterslave struggle as not only revelatory in an archetypal way
but as literally anthropogenic seem convincing. What
Hegel seems to have in mind is rather the difference between Adam before and after the first sin: only after the
original sin is Adam a man in the full sense, i.e., negativity incarnate or "creative discontent.")
The true, therefore, comprehended and expressed not
only as substance but also as subject, or as living substance, emerges only at the end of history, as the reconstitution of the original unity shattered by negativity of
which man is the bearer. The true as it finally emerges
is "its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end
as its purpose and thus has it for its beginning and is actual only through its execution and end." (p.20) The final reconciliation or reconstitution of unity is present from
the beginning as purpose; moreover, it is apparently effectively present: the purpose is not only "given" as a
mere norm but its actualization is virtually guaranteed.
"Mediation is the self-identity that moves itself" (p.21)that is, the acorn is already identical with the oak but
movement is required for that identity to become actual.
Thus the life of God and the divine knowledge might be
spoken of as "love's playing with itself," but such an expression is mere edification unless justice is done to "the
seriousness, the pain, the patience and the labor of the
negative." (p.20) And yet one must wonder how justice
can be done to them if there is no risk of ultimate failure.
We must return to this question in relation to Kojeve's
"existentialist" interpretation of Hegel.
Among the implications of what has been said-namely
that the true is subject as well as substance and that subject is pure negativity-a particularly important one is that
"it is only as science or system that knowledge is actual
and can be expounded," (p.23) whereby "system" includes the coming-to-be of the result as well as the result
itself, thereby preserving the negative in the final affirmation.
But the highest expression of the originality of Hegelian
philosophy, summing up the expressions which we have
reviewed, is "the conception which speaks of the absolute as Spirit. This is the most sublime concept, and it
110
belongs to the modern world and its religion [i.e., Christianity]." (p.24) Spirit is "being-in-itself" (nature or
givenness or thesis), "being-for-itself (human selfconsciousness or negativity or antithesis) and "beingin-and-for-itself" (synthesis, or nature as transformed
and revealed by man, including man's self-revelation,
i.e., his revelation of himself to himself not as part of nature but rather as nature-transforming and -revealing,
hence as nature-transcending).
Kojeve's interpretation of this passage is that Hegel's
anthropology, as the core of his ontology, is radically
Christian rather than Greek: the subject which is the core
of his ("living") substance is Christian man as capable
of radical conversion (Saul becomes Paul), as having no
"natural place," as estranged from nature and himself
through ''original sin,'' hence oriented toward the future
and compelled to struggle for Versohnung, for the reconstitution of unity on a higher plane.
The question concerning the relation between Greek
and Christian anthropology is a vast one, which we cannot take up here. One aspect of it will emerge when we
discuss the master-slave dialectic and the slave's capacity for "conversion"; another aspect will emerge when
we consider Hegel's critique of stoicism and skepticism,
which he takes to be the "existential" outcome of the
Socratic school, and in relation to which he regards Christian self-consciouSness as an advance.
According to Kojeve, Hegel accepts Christian anthropology but rejects Christian theology (the human meaning of which is belief in the immortality of the soul)
because of its various contradictions of an allegedly logical kind (e.g., free historical individuality-Saul becomes
Paul-is contradicted by the operation of divine grace) but
above all because it affronts man's "infinite pride/' 5
which is the driving force of human self-creation in
history.
Hegel accomplishes the "secularization" of Christian
belief, according to Kojeve, by introduction of the idea
of death as the end in the Heideggerian sense, and implicitly announces his atheistic intent in this passage:
"The Spirit, that, so developed, knows itself as Spirit,
is science. Science is the actuality of Spirit and the realm
that Spirit builds for itself in its own element." (p.24)
Kojeve reads this passage as if it said that Hegelian
science, i.e., exclusively human science, is the sole actu-
ality of Spirit, and that of course is the whole question,
since Thomas Aquinas himself says that in some sense
man's knowledge is a "participation" in God's
knowledge (which is essentially self-knowledge) and that
God's knowledge is his being or actuality. The question
is therefore whether Hegelian science-i.e., the science
possessed by Hegel and those who have understood
him-exhausts the divine science. For most purposes one
would probably have to say that it does, except for the
WINTER 1986
�difficulty that the telos is somehow present, as effectively moving, from the beginning.
II.
We have seen that according to Hegel truth as revealed
being must be understood as subject as well as substance
and that subjectivity must be understood according to the
category of negativity. We must now try to determine as
exactly as possible the Hegelian understanding of negativity. Negation is possible according to Hegel both on
the plane of thought and on the plane of action, in the
form of labor and political struggle. Negation on the plane
of action will concern us later; her~ we must be concerned
with its precondition, which is negation on the plane of
thought.
Hegel's claim is that human thought prior to the end
of history is essentially projective rather than contemplative, is essentially "thinking the thing that is not" and
desiring that it come to be. (The "and" in the last sentence is misleading. Thought and desire, or more precisely thought and will, are not according to Hegel two
faculties: "The will is rather a special mode of thinking,
thinking translating itself into existence, thinking as the
urge to give itself existence" -addition to paragraph four,
Philosophy of Right. Thus at the end of history, when
thinking has fully succeeded in translating itself into
existence-when the world has been brought into complete conformity with thinking-all willing ceases.) But
the essentially projective character of human thought has
certain preconditions which must be understood;
moreover, that essentially projective character is qualified by its end (first realized at the end of history) which
is contemplation and which must also be understood;
therefore a comprehensive analysis of human thought in
general is sketched in a few very important pages of the
''Preface.''
The primary precondition of projective thought is the
power of abstraction as such, the ''cancellation of exis-
tence" (p.28) which transforms empirical things into
thought things. This activity, the discovery of the eidos
or the working out of the first abstractions, whereby the
eide from being embodied in matter are translated to an
intellectual existence as the meaning of words, was according to Hegel performed long ago, and its results are
available to us. Moreover, it seems to have been performed "naturally" rather than historically/' as is indicated by the following passage (p.30):
11
The mode of study in antiquity had this difference from the
modern mode, that the former was the thorough education
and perfection of the natural consciousness. Testing itself
against every separate part of its existence and philosophizing about everything which came forth [remember that For
Aristotle phusis is precisely that which comes forth without
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
human intervention], it made itself into a universality that
was active through and through. In modern times, on the
contrary, the individual finds the abstract form ready made.
But this activity of performing the primary abstractions-to say nothing of the fact that it was merely contemplative, not yet projective-was deficient even in its
own terms: it was not performed perfectly lucidly; it was
"the movement of the particular spirit which does not
comprehend itself." That is, not only Napoleon (as is the
implicit assumption of the end of Chapter VI of the
Phenomenology) but also, for example, Euclid and Plato
did not really know what they were doing. They generated and possessed knowledge, but did not adequately
know themselves as knowers. Lacking adequate selfconsciousness, they lacked noeseos noesis which according to Hegel can emerge only at the end of history, since
it is the possession of the universal self or spirit, which
coincides with a particular self or spirit, namely Hegel,
for the first time at the end of history. That means that
noeseos noesis-which Hegel, with explicit reference to
Aristotle, identifies with divinity at the end of the
Encyclopedia-must have a very different meaning (qualified by "history") for Hegel than for Aristotle: it is above
all, as Hegel says on the final page of the Phenomenology,
Erinnerung or a kind of interiorizing re-collection.
For Aristotle, "knowing of knowing" as the divine
activity-indeed as the divine being-seems derivative
from "self-knowing" which is self-knowing only in a deceptive way, namely because nous as the capacity for
knowing is somehow nothing until it becomes its objects
(becomes identical with them) so that in knowing them
it knows itself, i.e., the only self which it can be said to
have. Thus the divine nous, in which there is nothing of
"capacity" or "becoming" but rather eternal energeia has
for its proper object the sum total of all eide; the phrase
''knowing of knowing'' as pointing to ''self-knowing''
is a paradoxical way of expressing precisely that the divine nous does not have a self, i.e., that his doing is indistinguishable from his being rather than possessed by
and at the disposal of his being. That on the highest level doing is indistinguishable from being or, better expressed, being as doing is indistinguishable from being
as possessing, is also reflected in the convergence of energeia which emphasizes doing a deed and entelechia which
emphasizes possessing one's end in oneself.
Another interpretation of "knowing of knowing" according to Aristotle seems possible, however, and would
perhaps be closer to Hegel's meaning. That is, if a human knower is to know the whole perfectly he must first
know the "whole" (i.e., the whole in abstraction from
one's knowing of it and thereby from knowing in general in which one's knowing participates) and then one
must take into account one's very knowing: one must
111
�know the whole as including knowing; the whole is not
only known but (by virtue of one of its specific parts) also
knowing. The known if it is not to be incomplete must
include the knowing: knowledge of the whole (as distinct
from the "whole") is knowing of knowing. Here too a
kind of recollection would seem to be involved, but it
would not seem to be "historical"; surely it would not
involve recollection of happenings in the cities of men.
If this second interpretation of Aristotle-which may
have been Hegel's interpretation-is correct, the question
arises whether there is for Aristotle a God beyond knowing man. One would probably have to say that there is,
at least in the sense that the telos is somehow present from
the beginning. Now everything-above all, the question
whether God can come to be in time-depends on the
mode of the presence of the telos in the beginning. (See
Appendix A.)
So far, we have followed Hegel's discussion of the
working out of the primary abstractions, of the discovery of the eidos or the translation of empirical things into
thought things. We have not yet considered human
thought in its projective character, namely in that character which Hegel takes to be decisive. To this we must now
turn. We begin with a difficult passage: "But what is thus
separated, the unactual itself, is an essential moment; for
only because the concrete separates itself and makes itself what is unactual, is it the self-moving. The activity
of separating is the strength and labor of the understanding, which is the most astonishing and the greatest, or
rather the absolute power." (p.29)
In order to understand this passage it is necessary to
keep in mind that according to Hegel only the whole is
concrete and thus actual. But human understanding is
discursive or analytic: it cannot comprehend the whole
all at once but must break it aown into parts, must '' abstract" each part, one after the other, from the (concrete)
whole which alone is actual. The part thus abstracted is
"unactual." But only because the concrete whole
"separates itself," i.e., only because the concrete whole
has a part, namely man or human understanding, which
is capable of breaking the whole into "unactual parts,"
does the whole "move itself," i.e., only therefore does
negativity transform self-identical being into "history~'
or progress." This is true, however, only on the basis
of a tacit but crucial premise, namely that (discursive) human understanding is not contemplative but essentially
projective. That is, the power of separating parts from
the whole "intellectually" makes possible the construction of radically new arrangements of the parts which can
be opposed to the given "real" arrangement and on the
basis of which the given "real" arrangement can be transformed, the motor of the transformation being human
desire. Only so can the concrete "move itself" through
the absolute power of human understanding; only so is
11
112
self-identical being transformed into history and progress
through negativity, i.e., through human activity-labor
and political struggle-which transforms the given "real"
whole on the basis of an "intellectually" rearranged
whole.
Hegel says the same somewhat more explicitly in the
next few sentences (pp.29-30):
The circle that rests closed in itself and, being substance, holds
its moments, is the immediate and therefore not perplexing
relationship. But that the accidental as such, separated from
its circumference, that the bounded which is actual only in
its connection with others, should gain an existence of its own
and separate freedom, that is the tremendous power of the
negative, the energy of thought, the pure ego ... It is the
same which above was called the subject which, by giving
determinateness existence in its element, cancels abstract
immediacy~ i.e., immediacy which barely is~and thus is the
true substance: that being or that immediacy which does not
leave mediation outside itself but which is mediation itself.
Thus the subject is true substance or thought is identical with being; but not originally or immediately identical with being; but not originally or irrunediately identical
with being-that is the "not perplexing relationship"as the ontological tradition from Parmenides on had held.
Rather, only and precisely because it is indeed possible
to "think the thing that is not" and then to act on the
basis of such an" error" -i.e., only because the "energy
of thought" includes "the tremendous power of the negative'' or because human thought is essentially projective
rather than contemplative-only so do thought and being come to be identical in the end (of history).
Moreover, Hegel insists that this identity mediated by
history has significance not only from the point of view
of thought, but above all from the point of view of being
itself: "When the negative thus appears at first as the
non-identity of the ego and its object, it is just as much
the non-identity of the substance with itself. What seems
to happen outside it, as an activity directed against it, is
its own doing; and thus it shows itself to be essentially
subject." (p.32) That is, it is not that man, somehow
standing outside of being, reflects upon it from without.
Rather, being reveals itself through man, comes to speech
and consciousness in man (a little later Hegel speaks of
"the self-consciousness of substance"); man is an "organ of Being" as Heidegger has it. The Absolute "wills"
to be with us, as Hegel says in the introduction, and that
is the ultimate reason why there is man. Substance shows
that it is essentially subject: that means, man's presence
in the universe is not accidental or casual; he does not
just happen to know some objects; what he knows, what
can be known, is essentially knowable, and he is there in
order to know, for the sake of knowing, i.e., for the sake
of the self-knowing, the self-illuminating, of substance,
without which it would not be fully actual.
WINTER 1986
�III.
We must now say something about the language in
which Hegelian thought is cast. That thought is inseparable from that language, as Hegel expressly declares in his
polemic against a style of thinking which he calls Rasonnieren, which we may translate as "argumentative thinking." Hegel's most serious objection against
argumentative thinking is that it does not understand the
nature of propositions as such: it does not distinguish the
speculative or truly philosophical proposition from ordinary propositions, construing, rather, all propositions on
the model of the latter. The true distinction according to
Hegel is as follows. In ordinary propositions the predicate indicates a (universal) quality or attribute inhering
in a self-subsistent entity (~grammatical subject). Contrastingly, speculative propositions posit an identity between one self-subsistent entity (~grammatical subject)
and another self-subsistent entity (~"predicate" which
is not a universal in the sense that it could be "predicated" of anything else-" the content is not something
general that, free from the subject, could be assigned to
several others" (p.50)-so that it is better not to speak
of the "predicate" but rather of the "substance, essence
and concept" of the subject). The identity which is posited by the speculative proposition, however, is a mediate
one; that is, the "subject" becomes the "predicaterr or the
"predicate" discursively reveals itself as the truth of the
"subject": "the identity of subject and predicate is not
meant to destroy the difference between both that is expressed by the form of the proposition; rather their unity is meant to emerge as a harmony." (p.51) The new
language-significantly, Hegel several times notes that
what he calls "speculative" has affinities with what used
to be called "mystical"-reflects the nature of being,
which it alone is able to reveal. As Hannah Arendt has
suggested, the discovery of the new and uniquely adequate language would by itself seem to entail that history has reached its end in the decisive respect, whatever
might be made of the ambiguous passages in various of
Hegel's writings which particularly concern that issue.
The core of the new language as the adequate reflection of the nature of being is the translation of being into
becoming: the new language knows of "no content that
functions as an underlying subject and receives its meaning as a predicate''; it wholly does away with ''the fixed
repose of the underlying subject"; in a word, "In this
movement [of the speculative proposition] the resting
subject itself perishes." (p.50) The movement of the
speculative proposition imitates the movement of being
which it reveals.
There is, however, a most important aspect of the new
understanding of being-namely that any part, qua part,
is abstract and unactual, only the whole being concrete
and actual-which tortures Hegel's language in an amaz-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing way. One example must suffice. A crucially important term for Hegel in the Phenomenology is Begriff which
means being-as-revealed-in-and-by-human-speech, the
integral actuality from which a "subjective side"-e.g.,
Wissen, Denken, nur Begriff-and an "objective side"Gegenstand, Sein etc.-can be abstracted and, as abstracted, spoken of-but they are only abstractions.
Thus Hegel points out the linguistic problem of expressing the radical unity of opposites: "Talk of the unity of
subject and object, of the finite and the infinite, of being
and thinking etc., signifies that which they are outside
of their unity, and in their unity they have a different significance than their expression says." (p.34) This is one
of Hegel's cardinal thoughts: the "unification" of subject and object (etc.) always comes too late, as if they were
first of all entities constituted in themselves which only
subsequently enter into their famous relationship. Rather,
they are essentially relata, and as such are abstractions outside of their relationship. To indicate in a graphic way
what would be involved in avoiding abstraction, one
would always have to write not "the unity of subject and
object" but rather "the unity of subject-knowing-objects
and object-known-by-subjects."
Hegel's analysis anticipates that of Husser! ("consciousness is always consciousness of something") and Heidegger ("Dasein finds himself always already-in-the-world").
Although not inunediately apparent, the decisive (though
not unquestionable) presupposition of this analysis is the
elimination of any notion of "an idealized absolute subject" (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit) as a "relic of Christian
theology" -a relic, one may note, which still plays a crucial (limiting) role in Kant, for whom adequate knowledge
of the Ding an sich would be possible only for a "subject"
whose thinking originated its objects, namely for the divine intellect, who would no longer be a subject in the
proper sense, namely one to whom objects are given. To
put it otherwise, the Hegelian-Husserlian-Heideggerian
"overcoming" of the subject-object relationship (as" always coming too late") presupposes that being is exhausted by its appearance to man.
IV.
We must now say something about the systematic relation between the Phenomenology of Spirit on the one hand
and Hegel's logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy
of right (in a broad sense-c.£. Hegel's addition to paragraph 33 of Philosophy of Right-including the philosophy
of history) on the other. We begin near the beginning of
the "Preface" to the Phenomenology, Hegel's first book:
"The true form in which truth exists can only be the sdentific system of it." (p.12) Hegel's aim is to contribute to
the end that philosophy be able to relinquish its name
of "love of wisdom" and be "actual wisdom." The claim
113
�to have accomplished this aim can only be justified by
showing "that the time has come for the elevation of
philosophy to science''; one can claim to possess, in contradistinction to all earlier thinkers, absolute knowledge,
only if one can give an account of oneself as possessing
that knowledge, i.e., of the becoming of that knowledge
within oneself. But that means that one must be able to
give an account of history altogether as the becoming of
knowledge generally: one attains perfect selfunderstanding in and through understanding all of history and one attains perfect understanding of all of history in and through understanding oneself. But to show
that the time has come for the transformation of
philosophy into wisdom is precisely to accomplish or realize wisdom: "For this [demonstration that the time has
come ... ] would show the necessity of that aim [to transform philosophy into wisdom] even while accomplishing it." (p.12)
A crude image may help explain: it is not as if one
ascends a mountain and, reaching the top, beholds what
lies on the far side; rather one beholds the path itself by
which one has ascended: the content of absolute
knowledge is the way which leads to absolute knowledge.
And yet in a sense one may and must speak of a vista
"on the far side of the mountain" to be beheld, namely
(to use the convenient and suggestive terminology of
Whitehead) the world of "objective immortalities" (i.e.,
the content of the Philosophy of Right in a broad sense as
well as the Philosophy of Nature, both being supported,
as it were, by the Logic) which is constituted by "actual
events" along the path. That is to say that the Logic (the
most interesting case) and the Phenomenology have the
same content, only what the former has in the mode of
"outwardness" ("God as He is in His eternal essence before the Creation"), the latter has in the mode of "inwardness" ("the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit"). If the content
of the ''ascending path'' is identical (except in mode) with
that of the "vista on the far side," then neither has ontological priority. But it appears that one must also say
that neither has epistemological priority, neither is simply "first for us." In other words, the question is, how
does Hegel know that he has reached the absolute peak
of the "mountain" (which has, of course, temporal rather
than spatial being) so that what claims to be wisdom is
not merely one more philosophy? The answer is, by understanding the path as complete and also the vista as
complete. But he can understand the path as complete
only by understanding the vista as complete and he can
understand the vista as complete only by understanding
the path as complete. One might, however, suspect an
"experimental" or "anticipatory" priority of the vista as
inducement for looking back upon the path, which tentatively confirms the finality of the vista which in turn
confirms the finality of the path. Still, the experience of
114
the "event" of Napoleon and the "world" constituted
by him must have been existentially-if not analyticallyindivisible, so that it seems safer to assign no priority.
To clarify this interpretation somewhat, we may look
at Hegel's explicit remarks in the preface concerning the
relation of the Phenomenology as "the first part of science"
to the other part of science, namely, above all, the Logic.
He says that the first part of science is distinguished from
the other part by the fact that it contains "the element
of immediate existence." He says also that the first part
as distinguished from the other part contains the negative and the false. These two propositions come to the
same and can be expressed by saying that the difference
between what we have called the "path of ascent" and
the "vista beheld" is that time counts in the first but not
in the second; that is, in the second there is no sequence,
no past or future, only sheer presence. The connection
between immediacy and negation is that to abstract from
immediacy-as the Logic, but not the Phenomenology
does-is to not have to negate it; and negating it takes
time. The Phenomenology essentially takes time to read; the
Logic takes time to read only accidentally.
This leads us to consider, though not for the last time,
Hegel's conception of the relation between time and eternity, which for Hegel as for Plato is equivalent to therelation between becoming and being. We quote two
famous passages from the preface concerning this relation: "The appearance is the coming to be and passing
away that itself does not come to be or pass away; it is
in itself and constitutes the actuality and the movement
of the life of the truth." And more flamboyantly: "The
true is thus the bacchanalian whirl in which no member
is not drunken; and because each, as soon as it detaches
itself, dissolves immediately-the whirl is just as much
transparent and simple repose." (p.39) This possibility
of viewing the "whirl" (in which time counts) under the
aspect of "repose" (i.e., eternity, in which time does not
count) seems to have been in a way anticipated by Spinoza, for whom knowledge of God in the highest sense,
i.e., "intuitive knowledge" or "knowledge of the third
kind" is knowledge of Him not qua one eternal substance,
which (abstract) knowledge is supplied in the first book
of the Ethics, but rather in his infinitely many modes
which are ever-changing (though, it is true, not
"progressing," still less culminating in an "end of history")-the ever-changing modes seen, however, under
the aspect of eternity. We may remind ourselves of
Kojeve' s remark that Spinoza decisively anticipates Hegel
except that, unlike Hegel, he cannot give an account of
how he has come to absolute knowledge, i.e., to divinity.
Chapter III
The Appearing of That Which Appears
Hegel begins the "Introduction" to the Phenomenology
WINTER 1986
�with implicit reference to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
The proper subject of philosophy is the absolute, but the
request for a preliminary clarification of the human faculty
of knowledge (Erkennen) seems reasonable. Perhaps
knowledge is an instrument of which we dispose or a
medium through which we see. But to use an instrument
on something alters it; to see it through a medium distorts it. If either is the case, knowing so will not help us
to know the absolute, as if by subtracting the alteration
or distortion from the gross result we could obtain a net
result equivalent to the absolute as such. The absolute
would "scorn cunning ofthat sort." If knowledge of the
absolute is possible at all, it is only because the absolute
intrinsically "already is and wishes to be with us." (p.64)
That is not to say that if genuine knowledge is possible
it must be immediate, easy and intuitive, or that particular deceptions and errors are impossible. What is involved
is rather a general attitude of reliance upon and trust in
the truth-revealing capacity of the human mind (which
presupposes the truth-revealing capacity of the human
senses) or the connaturality of mind and being. In this
respect Hegel aligns himself with Plato and Aristotle
(compare the importance of pistis in the divided-line image in the Republic) and against the modern "school of
suspicion" (Nietzsche) founded by Descartes; generally
speaking, i.e., independently of specific grounds for distrust, one may regard appearances as trustworthy. Under modern conditions, however, this trust is not
immediate or naive; it has rather the form of "placing distrust in this very distrust'' and construing as ''fear of the
truth" what presents itself as "fear of error." (p.65) That
Hegelian trust as a fundamental attitude is thus polemically conditioned, however, renders questionable its congruence with the Platonic-Aristotelian confidence in the
natural harmony of mind the being.
Indeed the Hegelian confidence in the human faculty
of knowledge should not be understood primarily with
reference to Plato and Aristotle, but rather with reference
to Hegel's understanding of Kant. The Kantian limitation
of knowledge, according to Hegel, concludes that the absolute is inaccessible to human knowledge by starting
from the conception of knowledge as an instrument or
medium, i.e., by presupposing "a distinction of ourselves
from this knowledge." (p.65) That is, the Kantian critique
limits knowledge but fails to give an account of its own
activity of limiting: there is knowledge which is limited
and there is knowledge which delimits and which itself
must be unlimited, lest there be an infinite regress-the
latter is Hegel's concern. One arrives at the same result
by considering what Hegel means when he says that the
proper object of philosophy is the absolute. The absolute
is what is known in absolute knowledge. Absolute
knowledge is, as Heidegger suggests, knowledge which
has absolved itself from dependence upon things for its
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
truth. Truth meant traditionally-e.g., in Thomas
Aquinas-the adequation of thought to thing. But therelation (adequation or non-adequation) of thought to thing
can itself be encompassed by thought-hence there is
nothing outside of thought; hence thought is absolved
of dependence on something outside of itself in order to
have truth; hence thought is absolute. This is a central
idea of the "Introduction," as we shall see.
Hegel's philosophy must be a philosophy of consciousness because there is nothing outside of consciousness
to which consciousness could be related-and if there
were, consciousness could encompass that relation as
well.
What then according to Hegel is the essence of consciousness? His most fundamental statement is this (p.69):
What is limited to a natural life, is not able through itself to
transcend its immediate existence; but it is by another driven
beyond that, and this being wrenched out of its setting is its
death. Consciousness, however, is for itself its own concept.
Thereby it immediately transcends the limited, and since this
limited belongs to it, consciousness transcends itself. With
the particular there is posited at the same time the 'beyond,'
were thls only, as in spatial intuition, next to the limited. Cons~
ciousness thus suffers this violence from itself; it destroys its
own limited satisfaction.
Thus consciousness is radically distinguished from nature by virtue of its continual self-transcending, its restless negation of the present in favor of what does not yet
exist. But Hegel's decisive proposition-"Consciousness,
however, is for itself its own concept"-says much more
than this. It says that not only does consciousness repeatedly transcend itself, assuming one "shape" (~self
world relation) after another in its quest for "satisfaction," but also that the goal of this process-where for
the first time knowledge "is no longer compelled to transcend itself" (p.69)-is fixed, not indeed as a mere norm
but as effectively moving, as telos presiding over the
movement of consciousness, which movement is soon
characterized emphatically as "dialectical." (p.73) This
must be understood quite literally: the nature of consciousness according to Hegel consists in a kind of discussion between what he provisionally calls "natural
consciousness" and "real knowledge." (p.67) That in
each "shape" of consciousness there is a discussion taking place between two partners is reflected in the fact that
the collapse of every limited shape of consciousness is
experienced as happening along a "highway of despair
(Verzweiflung)," (p.67) whereby the connotation of" doubleness" borne by Verzweiflung is by no means accidental.
That ''consciousness is for itself its own concept'' is explicated in two further propositions: "Consciousness
gives itself its own criterion" (p.71) and "Consciousness
examines itself." (p.72) Both refer to the redundancy (as
well as impossibility) of an "external" or "transcenden-
115
�tal" or even npreliminaryrr critique of consciousness or
knowledge (Hegel henceforth identifies the two), of
bringing some outside criterion to consciousness or
knowledge. That consciousness is in principle aware of
the possible difference between the "in itself" of its object and the "being for it" of its object makes possible
the revision of putative knowledge in the light of new
evidence; but it is senseless to speak of an "in itself"
which would not finally be also "for us." Not only are
all possible criteria necessarily present in consciousness,
so that they need not be introduced by the "critic," but
the inherent movement of consciousness, characterized
as self-transcendence guided effectively by a fixed goal,
is precisely the examination, the immanent comparison
of knowledge with its object (which stand or fall together,
since all knowledge is knowledge-of-an-object and every object is an object-as-known), which the "critic" was
eager to perform. The would-be critic has indeed nothing to do: he becomes a pure observer, whose single
responsibility is to "omit" (Weglassen) all preconceptions;
all that remains is "the pure looking on." (p.72)
In the "Introduction" the Phenomenology itself is characterized as "the exposition of the knowledge which appears" (p.66) or "the story of the education of
consciousness toward science." (p.67) The method of the
Phenomenology is dictated by the nature of consciousness:
precisely because consciousness examines itself, that
method can be purely descriptive or phenomenological
in the Husserlian sense; precisely because the selfexamination has been ''dialectical,'' has consisted in each
of its shapes in a discussion between unatural consciousness" and "real knowledge," a duality whose original
unity is the movement of consciousness, the method of
the Phenomenology can be, for the first time in history,
non-dialectical; precisely because the movement of consciousness has been the "self-accomplishing skepticism,"
(p.67) any methodical skepticism, i.e., skepticism in the
mode of resolve, is unnecessary.
But although no "addition" on the part of the
phenomenological observer is necessary, he does see
something additional, i.e., something has emerged "behind the back" (p.74) of all earlier shapes of consciousness. What does this mean?
What we have said so far is summarized by Hegel in
the sentence: "This dialectical movement which consciousness executes on itself-on its knowledge as well as on
its object-insofar as out of it the new true object arises,
is precisely what is termed experience." (p.73) But "experience'' for Hegel has an unusual meaning, as he emphasizes. Not only is it much broader than the special
Kantian meaning, namely that theoretical knowledge of
the world which is possible for beings capable only of
finite intuition, but it is also strange from the point of view
of the ordinary notion of experience according to which
116
we learn from experience the untruth of our first
knowledge-of-the-object through acquiring some later
knowledge-of-the-object which has become available
"casually and externally." (p.73) Contrastingly, according to Hegel's understanding of experience, it is not that
the old knowledge-of-the-object is replaced by the new
knowledge-of-the-object, but rather the old knowledgeof-the-object itself becomes the object of the new
knowledge, which is therefore not knowledge of an object on a par with the old knowledge of an object, but
rather knowledge of knowledge of the object, or
knowledge of the relation between knowledge and its object, or as Heidegger says knowledge of the objectivity
of the object, i.e., of that by which the object is an object
which, however, is precisely its relationship to knowledge
as consciousness, so that the "objectivity" of the object
in the sense indicated is precisely, at least since Descartes,
subjectivity. '' 6
In any case what we, the spectators at the end of history, are able to see is not only the content of the new object which arises in the transition from one shape of
consciousness to another-which content is also visible
to those still within the story-but also its "form or pure
origination." (p.74) The "form or pure origination" of
every such transition is knowledge of knowledge or selfconsciousness; it has primarily nothing to do with new
discoveries regarding objects in the world. Thus a man
regards objects in the world differently from how a boy
regards them; but a boy becomes a man not by first learning something new about objects, but rather in and
through becoming conscious that he himself is a manthe new attitude toward objects follows from his new
self-consciousness. Hegel recognizes of course that the
relationship between consciousness of self and consciousness of objects is in important respects reciprocal. But his
analysis assigns a definite priority to self-consciousness
for the reason, it seems, that only so can change or
progress be accounted for: the relation of self to itself is
ultimately groundless-the self (as distinct from the soul)
does not objectively precede its interpretation of itselfhence self-grounding or free, in a way in which the relation of self to object is not; and freedom in this sense is
the condition of change or progress.
In any case, recognition of this uconversion of consciousness," whereby the form of origination of the new
object consists in the first knowledge-of-the-object becoming itself an object of knowledge, which latter is therefore knowledge of the knowledge of the object or
self-consciousness, so that every self-world relationship
is ultimately reducible to self-reflection-this is "our addition," (p.74) namely this is the insight possible for the
first time at the end of history and in the mode of
recollection.
Compared with the insight into the inner form of all acII
WINTER 1986
�tual transitions from one shape of consciousness to
another, the other insight possible for the first time at the
end of history, namely the insight into the principle of
"determinate negations," (p.69) whereby the external order of the shapes of consciousness is constituted into an
intelligible progression, is of secondary importance and,
indeed, is derivative from the first insight. That is, on the
basis of the insight into the form of transition as such,
the relation of any shape to any other shape can be made
intelligible. Thus the final "shape" is not a shape at all
but rather the shape of shapes or the idea of ideas, i.e.,
the final object of knowledge is not an object, not even
the knowledge of an object, but pure knowledge of
knowledge as such. That is, what has been effective as
moving throughout finally becomes perfectly conscious
of itself. If the final "shape" is no shape at all but rather
the shape of shapes, hence beyond discourse of the kind
which is appropriate to shapes as such, then indeed one
may follow Heidegger in asserting that the "way of the
soul" re-created by the Phenomenology does not lead
through false appearances into the true appearance
(~Being), but rather that from the standpoint of absolute knowledge one beholds "the appearing of that which
appears" which appearing is not itself an appearance or:
Being is not itself an entity.
But we must emphasize one thing which Heidegger ignores, namely that if the ultimate "shape" is a shape of
shapes, hence no true shape, then the penultimate shape
becomes of very great interest indeed. It is the shape
highest in rank and must to a unique degree imitate the
"shape" which is, as the shape of shapes, beyond shape.
That penultimate shape is presented by Hegel as arising
from the convergence of the critique of the beautiful soul
as the necessary consequence of the French Revolution
with re-enactment of the passion of Christ. We shall later
have occasion to try to understand this.
Here we may remark in conclusion that Hegel's notion
of 11 determinate negation" has in itself always possessed
considerable evidence, as for example in the case of
Nietzsche's 11 paganism," which as essentially antiChristian is necessarily post-Christian, hence fundamentally different from all naive or immediate "paganism."
But that "determinate negations" can be seen from the
standpoint of the end of history to have been necessarynamely, not only did the earlier, because negated by the
later, make a difference to the later, but also, given the
earlier the later could not have been otherwise-is of
course a very different matter.
Chapter IV
Hegel and "The Problem of Knowledge"
I.
The first three chapters of the Phenomenology
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
proper-on ''sense-certainty,'' ''perception'' and
"understanding" -concern what is usually referred to as
"the problem of knowledge": they review and criticize
three significant epistemological positions. The criticism
purports to be internal, to be inseparable from the review;
it also of course purports to have some cogency. But it
does not purport to be conclusive taken by itself. What
is most characteristic about Hegel's own "theory of
knowledge" is precisely that in the last resort it appeals
to extra-theoretical considerations, to human praxis in the
world. This means on the one hand that praxis in the
sense of labor and political struggle is a test of putative
theoretical truth (including the truth of "theory of
knowledge"). This aspect of Hegel's thought has of
course been developed by Marx and (in somewhat different terms) by American pragmatism. But it also means
that theory itself is a mode of human praxis, and that that
theory must take this fact about itself into account. For
example, the content of natural science must somehow
take into account the fact of natural science, namely the
practice of certain men who are natural scientists and who
have a certain experience of, e.g., wonder, freedom and
purposiveness.
With these considerations in mind we shall briefly examine, first, Hegel's immanent critique of the epistemologies designated by "sense-certainty," "perception" and
"understanding" and his climactic appeal to a wider
"practical" experience; and, second, some of his reflections on modern (Newtonian) natural science in itself and
in its distinction from human science.
II.
Sense-certainty (sinnliche Gewissheit) is to begin with
the bare apprehending of a "this-here-now." Nothing
could be more certain; but, as develops in Hegel's analysis, nothing could be Jess true. For not mere pointing,
but only language can be the medium of truth; and language introduces the universal-"now," applying indifferently to all particular moments, is itself
non-particular or universal-which is therefore the truth
of sense-certainty. One could perhaps hold that mere
pointing rather than language is the medium of truth; but
one could not say so without self-contradiction. This according to Hegel is the flaw of all positivistic epistemologies: in declaring that only the individual and not the
universal truly is, they overlook the fact that "the individual" is the most universal concept of all. Even
animals are wiser than empiricists: they are so "idealistic" as to trust things of sense as utterly insubstantialthey "eat them up." (p.87) Hegel's joke points to his contention that, although to a certain extent immanent criticism is possible, epistemological questions are answered
decisively on trans-epistemological grounds.
117
�The key point about "perception" (Wahmehmung: "perceptual understan<ling" might be a better translation) is
that it is identical with "sound common sense" (Menschenverstand). Ordinary common sense is superior to
sense-certainty in that it admits that one must deal with
universals and not with mere thises. n However, it does
not go far enough; it stops short of admitting the necessity of the most "abstract" universals (which it calls mere
"thought-things") which, however, secretly structure
discourse. Philosophy thematizes precisely these and
thus, unlike sound common sense, is not mastered by
them. More specifically, common sense is obscurely
aware of certain contradictions-a thing is one and many
(a unity with many properties, whereby it is not clear
whether the unity is contributed by the subject or the object), is self-subsistent yet involved in a network of relations with other things-but tries to minimize these
contradictions by such locutions as "in so far as" and "in
one aspect." Philosophy, contrastingly, apprehends such
contradictions as being at the heart of reality and pursues
them relentlessly.
The third chapter of the Phenomenology is entitled
"Force and Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensible World." The first pair of terms refers roughly
to a certain interpretation of Newtonian natural science,
the second pair to Kant's transcendental idealism. Hegel's
criticism of Newtonian natural science is summarized in
the sentence: "It is an explanation that not only explains
nothing, but is so plain that, while it makes as if it would
say something different from what is already said, it really
says nothing at all, but merely repeats the same thing over
again." (p. 119) That is, the Newtonian concept of force
(Kraft), while it purports to offer insight into the nature
of bodies, is actually reducible to the regularity or lawfulness observed in the motion of bodies. Hegel writes:
"A law is expressed; from this its inherently universal
element or ground is distinguished as force; but regarding this distinction it is asserted that it is no distinction,
rather that the ground has entirely the same constitution
as the law ... In other words, force has exactly the same
constitution as law; both are thus declared to be in no
way distinct." (p.119) This discussion anticipates the famous distinction between causality and lawfulness made
by Emile Meyerson in Identity and Reality: lawfulness or
regular succession is no doubt sufficient for purposes of
prediction and action but science seeks understanding,
namely an insight into the natures of its objects on the
basis of which one can see that the effect is equal to its
cause, so that "Things are thus because they were already
previously thus," i.e., "the principle of causality is none
other than the principle of identity applied to the existence of objects in time. " 7
Hegel's chief objection against Kantian transcendental
idealism is that if there is a noumenal world, there is prac0
118
tically nothing which can be said about it-but this at least
calls into serious question the very existence of the noumenal world: "The result is of course the same if you
place a blind man amid the wealth of the supersensible
world ... and if you place one with sight in absolute darkness or, if you like, in pure light, supposing the supersensible world to be this. The seeing man sees in that pure
light as little as in absolute darkness, and just as much
as the blind man in the ample wealth which lay before
him." (p.112) But to say that the unknowability of the
noumenal realm can as well be explained by its nonexistence as by the limited faculties of the knowing subject is not to have refuted the latter position. Indeed Hegel
does not think that a strictly theoretical refutation is possible here, as becomes clear from the final paragraph of
Chapter III. His declaration of what is usually called the
transition from critical to absolute idealism is well-known:
"It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain, which
is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in order that
we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen." (p.128) But the immediately following sentences, appealing to trans-theoretical
experience to solve an "epistemological" problem, are
equally important: "But it is clear at the same time that
we cannot without more ado go directly behind there.
For this knowledge of what is the truth of the notion of
the realm of appearances and its inner being, is itself only
a result arrived at after a long and devious process, in
the course of which the shapes of consciousness 'meaning,' 'perception' and 'understanding' disappear."
(p.129) That is, to know that the truth of consciousness
of objects is self-consciousness-i.e., that the world of
objects in which men find themselves poses no absolute
limits to either their knowledge or their action-requires
trans-theoretical experience. And, as Hegel concludes,
to know fully what the self encounters in its radical selfencountering "requires a still wider compass" (noch
weiterer Umstande bedarf). (p.129) The next chapter of the
Phenomenology, entitled "Self-Consciousness," begins
with the story of master and slave, originating human
praxis in the form of labor (~technological transformation of nature) on the one hand and the political struggle
on the other.
III.
To complete our sketch of Hegel's "theory of
knowledge" we shall consider several aspects of his treatment of the physical science of his day in the first half
of Chapter V of the Phenomenology, entitled "Reason as
Observation" (Beobachtende Vemunft). We recall first by
way of preliminary that the Phenomenology, which is to
culminate in absolute knowledge, is according to the "Introduction'' the ''science of the experience of conscious-
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�ness," and consciousness is radically distinct from nature.
Thus Hegel's primary interest is not in nature as such but
rather in the observation of nature, namely in the experience of natural scientists. The fact that there is natural
science is according to Hegel more revealing than the content of natural science at a particular time.
Hegel begins his discussion of modern natural science
by emphasizing that its characteristic orientation presupposes a break with common-sense experience: "Formerly, consciousness merely happened to perceive and
experience much about the thing. But here it itself institutes [anstellt] the observations and the experience."
(p.183) This of course echoes the famous passage in the
Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant maintains: ''Accidental observations,
made in obedience to no projected plan, can never be
made to yield a necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to discover." Rather, the mind must look beyond
such objects as merely happen to be given, and, in the
light of a conception somehow "in advance of" what
merely happens to be given (Newton's "body left to itself'' would, after all, never have been encountered ''empirically"), draw up a plan whereby nature is put under
conditions "experimentally" and forced to answer questions devised by the mind, which can have "insight only
into that which it brings forth according to a project of
its own.''
Employing the language of Kant in the Prolegomena, one
may say that whereas for ancient science Erfahrungsurteil arises "naturally" or "non-violently" out of Wahrnehmungsurteil, for modern science a kind of
thinking-projecting which is inseparable from experimentation is necessary to effect this transformation. That on
the modern view scientific knowledge can arise out of
prescientific knowledge only through the intervention of
thinking as horizon-projecting on the one hand and experimentation on the other, seems to be grounded in a
denial of thaumazein, the wonder or astonishment which
according to the ancients is the origin of science. This at
least seems to have been the understanding of Descartes
(Passions of the Soul, Part II, articles 75-77) for whom,
although wonder is somehow necessary in the beginning,
it must be replaced by the discipline of method:
But it much more frequently occurs that we wonder too much,
and that we are astonished in perceiving things which deserve
little or no consideration, than that we wonder too little. And
this may entirely prevent or pervert the use of reason. That
is why, although it is good to be born with some inclination
towards this passion, because that disposes us for the acquisition of the sciences, we must at the same time afterwards
try to free ourselves from it as much as possible. For it is easy
to supplement its defects by special reflection and attention
which our will can always oblige our understanding to give
on those occasions where we judge that the matter which
presents itself is worth the trouble.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
However that may be, reason (in the sense of modern
science), by virtue of its anticipatory project into the
world, is confident of discovering itself there in what appears to be alien. By means of its project, "it plants the
symbol of its sovereignty on the heights and in the depths
of reality." But-and this is of decisive significance-" this
superficial 'mine' is not its final and supreme interest"
because "Reason has a presentiment of being a deeper
reality than pure [Kantian] ego is." (p.184) Otherwise
stated: reason desires to find itself in the diversity of concrete reality, not only in the "reduced" objects of mathematical natural science; the whole human being, not
merely the "transcendental ego," desires to be at home
in the world; reason is more than ''abstract reason,'' as
Hegel puts it. To satisfy its broadest and deepest longing, reason cannot limit itself to mathematical natural
science, i.e., to a world of "reduced" objects; rather it
must "descend into the depths of its own being, and seek
reason there rather than in things." (p.184) Having found
itself in man's spiritual (~historical) experience, reason
can then turn back to the world of ("reduced") natural
objects, whose truest significance, in the light of which
its other possible determinations must be seen, is to be
the setting in which human development toward perfect
self-consciousness occurs.
As regards Hegel's discussion of particular questions
within the natural sciences, we shall limit ourselves to
three topics: the problem of causation within mechanics;
the difference in principle between inorganic and organic being and the prefiguration by the latter of the life of
Geist; and the difference in principle between natural and
human science on the ground that "man's being is his
act."
1. Mechanics seeks the laws of motion of bodies. The
question arises whether such laws can be necessary or
must be merely contingent or empirical. Kant rightly saw
that laws could be necessary-and Hegel agrees with Kant
that "unnecessary laws" are no laws at all-only if nature is apprehended as "experience/' that is, in concepts
(Begriffen). Here he was right against Hume. He was
wrong however in thinking that such Begriffen are merely subjective: "the concept sets itself forth in the form
of thinghood and sensuous existence." (p.189) Necessary
connection according to Hegel is not our contribution; it
is given in nature. He offers the following analysis:
The law that all dropped stones fall does not require
that every existing stone has been dropped and has fallen;
nor does it mean that many stones have been dropped
and have fallen, so that by analogy we can affirm a "high
probability" that the next one will likewise fall. There is
a difference of essence between "so far every time" and
"must necessarily." Not mere induction, but "insight
into the pure concept" in addition to induction is required
before one can speak of truth rather than mere probabil-
119
�ity. For example, "that a stone falls is true for consciousness, because to it the stone is heavy, i.e., because in
weight, taken in itself as such, the stone has that essential relation to the earth expressed in the fact of falling."
(p.191) How can a stone be heavy "to consciousness"?
precisely because for Hegel, contrary to Descartes and
Hume, consciousness is not disembodied, is not mere
"detached" beholding. That consciousness according to
Hegel is essentially incamate is strikingly clear from his
account of the origin of self-consciousness in the struggle between master and slave-the constitutive character of fear of death would be impossible with respect to
Descartes' thinking substance. More prosaically, it is clear
from his anti-Cartesian theory of organism, of which we
shall speak briefly below. Thus Hegel holds that we do
not, contrary especially to Hume, merely behold drop/fall
sequences, but rather exist bodily in a world: much of
our experience is non-theoretical in a literal sense~that
is, it consists in something other than ("detached'') looking. Therefore such concepts as "weight" (more generally: "force" and "resistance") are available to us-in the
mode of actum rather than datum as Hans Jonas has put
it-and form the basis of our projection of the world as
nature. Given that projection, Hegel goes on to say, we
interrogate particular happenings in certain pre-specified
ways; we take them as instances of types rather than as
mere individuals. Crucial to this abstraction from their
individuality is experimentation. Experiment seems to
plunge reason further into the empirical and contingent,
but the opposite is actually the case: the experiment is
regulated according to a transempirical project (e.g., "a
body left to itself") and the varying of conditions aims
at the greatest possible generality.
2. Hegel insists upon the difference in principle between inorganic and organic being. His orientation on fhe
whole is decidedly Aristotelian, especially against the
background of the Cartesianism which pervades modem
biology generally. In particular, Hegel restores the
Aristotelian concept of soul as "the organic substance qua
inner" (p.199) over against fhe Cartesian concept according to which soul is identical with consciousness (which
is understood primarily as pure thinking) and is possessed only by man, so that "animals" are merely
automata-explicable wholly in mechanical terms-which
exhibit a certain class of behavior. Not only does Hegel
permit soul as inwardness-in-general to extend downward through animals to plants (though, contrary to
Spinoza and Leibniz, not to all being as such) but also,
again like Aristotle, he understands soul primarily as activity, namely the activity of maintaining organic individuality as constant form through change of matter: "The
activity as such is nothing but the pure insubstantial form
of its being for itself ... and the purpose of the activity
does not fall outside the activity." (p.198) Indeed, only
120
with respect to organic being can we even speak of individuality in the strict sense: "the 'individuum' consists
in preserving itself [sich erhalten] in relation to another"
and inorganic being fails this test: "What, however,
stands on a still lower level [than plants] cannot any
longer distinguish itself from another; it gets lost when
it comes into opposition" (p.188) as, for example, in
chemical reactions.
The activity by which organic being preserves itself
through active commerce with its world must be understood in terms of intrinsic purpose: ''the organic is in fact
the real purpose itself" which is to say that "the last or
the result is just as much the first which starts the movement, and is to itself the purpose which it realizes. The
organic brings nothing forth, but rather merely preserves
itself, or what is brought forth is as much already present
as brought forth." (p.l95) A remarkable assertion follows:
uThis is exactly, however, the way self-consciousness is
constituted." (p.l96) Organic life is an analogue and, so
to speak, prefiguration of the life of Geist. The sole difference between them, Hegel says here, is that organic life
attains only to self-feeling (Selbstgefuhl) whereas human
life, as the vessel of Geist, attains to self-consciousness. But
both must be understood with reference to the effective
presence of telos in the beginning, whereby "what is
brought forth is as much already present as brought
forth." This creates great difficulties for Kojeve's interpretation, according to which human freedom is essentially
creativity, i.e., the faculty of bringing into existence something which has never been before.
3. In the final sections of "Reason as Observation"
Hegel makes an emphatic distinction between natural
science and human science: the methods appropriate to
the former produce only confustion when applied to the
latter. He takes this matter up under the heading of "psychology" on the one hand and "physiognomy and phrenology" on the other. Psychology according to Hegel (he
has in mind of course its pre-Freudian varieties) attempts
to explain individual behavior in terms of environment:
"the given circumstances, place, habits, customs, religion
and so forth." (p.225) But psychology overlooks the fact
that the individual creates a "world" out of a mere environment through his choices; or if he does not choose,
it is because he has chosen not to choose. Thus "a world
for the individual" can have either of two meanings: "It
is fhe world of the individual only insofar as this individual was merely fused and blended with it, had let that
world, just as it is, pass into his own nature, and had
taken up towards it merely the attitude of a formal consciousness; or on the other hand it is the owrld of the individual in the sense in which the given has been
transformed by him." If a man becomes a thing, it is because he has so chosen, and thereby he is not a thing:
"the individual either lets the stream of reality flowing
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�in upon him have its way, or breaks off and diverts the
current of its influence." (p.226)
Psychology according to Hegel must admit that individuals with like environments have different
"worlds"; it now tries to account for this fact in terms
of differences in individual bodies, transforming itself into
physiognomy and phrenology. There is a certain valid
ground for this attempt, Hegel holds, in the peculiar psychophysical unity of man: body is not only a condition
but also an expression of spirit-here one may think of
Hegel's discussion of Greek gymnastic as "living work
of art." Man is essentially incarnate and worldly; therefore, for example, the audible word is not a mere sign but
an expression of thought; in a way the outer not merely
indicates but actually gives the inner.
Thus Hegel's objection against physiognomy and phrenology (and in general any anthropology which treats
man as a thing) is not that it attempts to read the inner
in the outer-Hegel agrees that what remains purely inner cannot strictly speaking be known; for reasons which
we must discuss when taking up the "critique of the
beautiful soul," Hegel is very doubtful about the value
of introspection-but rather that it attempts to read the
inner in the outer as (static) being rather than as act. He
writes, against any such "naturalistic" anthropology:
"The true being of a man is, on the contrary, his act; in
it his individuality is actual." And again: "Individuality
exposes itself (stellt sich dar) in action as the negative essence which only is insofar as it cancels (aufhebt) being."
(p.236) We may amplify this last remark by observing that
what is meant is the cancellation of being (i.e., of what
is merely given) both within and without the actor himself, who changes himself in and through changing the
world. One may restate Hegel's argument by saying that
the "naturalistic" anthropologies against which he contends are ''deterministic'' and hence miss human freedom, but this is adequate to Hegel's intention only if one
understands by "freedom" not "freedom of choice" but
rather the capacity to bring something new into the world
through action, which ncreation/' however, presupposes
negation or destruction, at least as regards ''form,'' of
what has been before.
Chapter V
Self-Consciousness and Historical Praxis
I.
With self-consciousness "we have now passed into the
realm where truth is at home." (p.134) Life is the soil of
which self-consciousness grows (although its "growth"
can hardly be characterized as ''natural'' -at least not in
Aristotle's sense-since the decisive moment in that
"growth" consists in its radically opposing itself to its
origin, namely to life) and the core of life is desire. Desire
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mediates between consciousness of objects as other and
consciousness that otherness is mere appearance. This
latter consciousness is equivalent to self-consciousness:
the self is conscious that the end or truth of objects is itself, so that consciousness of objects collapses into selfconsciousness, i.e., the otherness of objects is revealed
to be mere appearance. This is not to say that "intellect"
precedes 0 Will": desire is so to speak experimental or dialectical and, moreover, on the level of mere animalistic
existence, is a failure-otherness turns out to be more
than mere appearance. Desire and satisfaction with
respect to particular natural objects constitute a neverending cycle; animals depend on things, experiencing
only occasionally interrupted need; otherness as such is
not overcome. Without the overcoming of otherness,
whereby the self achieves its independence from nature
as such (as distinct from the annihilation of particular
natural objects) self-consciousness is not possible;
animals therefore lack self-consciousness.
Independence of the self from nature as such, hence
self-consciousness, can result only from the self's radical denial of its natural neediness, its need for natural objects; that is, from the self's voluntary exposure to death
(non-being): the self must show that "it is fettered to no
determinate existence." (p.144) The fundamental motive
for that denial and that exposure according to Hegel is
not, for example, the love of a friend for whom one would
lay down one's life, but rather the desire for "recognition'' or prestige, which is an irreducible human datum.
Recognition, however, can be conferred by no mere
natural object, but only by another (incipient) selfconsciousness. One must speak of an "incipient" selfconsciousness for the reason that ''self-consciousness exists in and for itself ... only as something recognized"
(p.141); that is, one's mere certainty of oneself (whatever
the content of that certainty at a particular time: in the beginning each self is certain of himself as the sole center
of existence; in the end it is only one's human dignity
as such which is affirmed) is raised to the level of objective truth only by the mediation of social recognition. With
this qualification one may say that "self-consciousness
attains its satisfaction only in another selfconsciousness." (p .139)
Hence ensues a life and death struggle for pure prestige between two self-consciousnesses, each bent on enforcing recognition-by which his subjective certainty will
be transformed into objective truth-that he alone is the
center of existence. If one submits to the other in order
to forestall death (failing which "contingency," according to Hegel, there would have been no history), a
master-slave relation is established. The relationship is
mediated by nature in the dual sense that fear of nature's
death is the slave's strongest motive-the motive which
originated and sustains his servile condition-and that the
121
�slave technologically transforms nature for the delectation of the master. But the master's conquest is futile: he
is recognized as an autonomous consciousness by a cons-
ciousness whose autonomy he himself does not recognize. Master consciousness, oscillating between bloody
struggle for prestige and effortless consumption, is a dead
end: its sole historical function is to arouse servile consciousness: "But as lordship showed its essential nature
to be the reverse of what it wants to be, so too bondage
will, when completed, pass into the opposite of what it
immediately is: being a consciousness repressed within
itself, it will enter into itself, and change round into an
authentic independence." (pp.147-8)
It is above all by labor (Arbeit, which in some contexts
is better translated as "work") that servile consciousness
changes itself. Labor is "desire restrained," (pp .148-9)
satisfaction postponed (one may think, for example, of
the making of tools, whereby immediate consumption is
foregone in favor of increased or refined consumption at
a later time); in this sense one may say that labor requires
and develops the power of abstraction, of liberation from
absorption in immediate wants. Not only is material nature technologically transformed thereby, but "culture"
in general-language, poetry and philosophy-is also
generated by servile consciousness, whose principles are
fear of violent death and the renunciation of prestige or
glory (although the desire for recognition in the widest
sense-recognition of one's dignity though not of one's
superiority-is not renounced). Through its achievements
servile consciousness gains self-confidence, i.e., achieves
genuine self-consciousness. For this process both fear
and labor are absolutely indispensable. Without labor
"fear remains inward and mute" (p.149); that is, it
produces neither a transformed world nor a transformed
self. Without fear of death (deepened and made allpervasive-in contradistinction to mere haphazard animal
fear-by the abiding presence of the master, which
presence now of course is "intellectual" rather than u sen-
suous" as at the time of the actual battle) labor might
transform the world, but the transformation would lack
range and depth (would be the work, as Kojeve puts it,
of a "reformer" rather than a "revolutionary"); might
transform the self, but the self-confidence produced
would be frivolous, lacking in ultimate seriousness. It is
important to realize that here for once-in contrast to all
that Hegel so often says concerning how great deeds are
brought about by "unwitting" agents-the advantage
which the slave has over the master is ultimately a matter of knowledge: in being shaken to the core of his existence by fear of "death, the absolute master," (p.148) the
slave has a deeper knowledge of the true human situation than does the master. In any case, given both labor
and fear of violent death, we are on the road to freedom,
which for Hegel as for Plato is equivalent to wisdom and
122
which is further equivalent, for Hegel but not for Plato,
to the plenitude of self-consciousness.
The passage which we have been considering is of great
importance for an understanding of Hegel's thought as
a whole, and in particular for an understanding of his conception of the relation between theory and practice as well
as for an understanding of the relation between Hegel
and Marx. Therefore we shall pause to offer the following questions and reflections:
1. Who is the more "political" thinker, Hegel or Marx?
In one respect one may certainly say that Marx's thought
is more political, namely in the sense that he issues a call
for revolution, whereas Hegel's philosophy of the state
(The Philosophy of Right) is purely contemplative, i.e., concerned to exhibit the essential rationality of what is already present, whereby Hegel emphasizes that no
meaningful deeds remain to be performed. In another
respect, however, Hegel's thought is more political than
that of Marx: for Marx-surely for the late Marx-the
movement of history is propelled by changes in modes
of production and property relations, of which political
struggle is a mere "reflection"; for Hegel, political struggle in the sense of struggle for recognition or prestige is
antecedent to all production and property: that the slave
transforms nature at the behest of the master is only the
sign and consequence of a struggle waged for purely
"ideal" values. Moreover, there is a way in which Marx's
thought differs from that of Hegel not only by being
economic-deterministic where Hegel's is political, but
even by being individualistic where Hegel's is social. That
is, in the Manuscripts of 1844 Marx insists that private
property is the result, not the cause, of human selfalienation, and that although man's self-alienation is
worked out among other men, the ''original sin'' was radically individualistic, consisting in man's rebellion against
his species life, as if labor could be a mere means to a
higher (private) end, instead of being the essentially human activity expressive of man's (species) dominion over
nature. It is true that Marx later-even by 1845-seems
to have dropped this conception. And we must add that
it is also questionable how far Hegel's conception of the
•fundamental structures of human existence is actually social, i.e., how far it necessarily postulates the existence
of a plurality of men. At first glance it appears that Hegel
places an enormous emphasis on the radically social
character of human existence: he insists that selfconsciousness exists only by being recognized by another
self-consciousness; the social is partly constitutive of the
individual. But by "the social" Hegel does not ultimately mean "men in their plurality" as can already be seen
from several passages characterizing the "society" constituted by the life and death struggle which issues in the
master-slave relationship. Hegel says of this "society"
that it is essentially a unitary self-consciousness which
WINTER 1986
�"breaks itself up into two extremes" (p.142) which "qua
extremes, are opposed to one another, and of which one
is merely recognized, while the other only recognizes."
(p.143) But the true reality is the unitary (though of course
not static) self-consciousness of the "society"; the duality of the two self-consciousnesses who engage in the life
and death struggle is somehow a kind of foreground illusion. The sort of interpretation in which Hegel indulges
here is of course possible only in retrospect; for Marx,
insofar as he not only looks forward to but also calls for
a meaningful revolution, the evidently opposing forces
within society can hardly be seen as a mere foreground
refraction of a societal self-consciousness (whether as
such or as a "reflection" of material factors) which is essentially one-though containing oppositions-and unfolds according to its own law.
2. Does the slave really want to become something
different from a master? We have seen that according to
Hegel master-consciousness is a blind-alley: the master
is not satisfied because he is recognized only by a selfconsciousness which he himself does not recognize in the
same way. Therefore only servile consciousness can be
"progressive." No doubt the slave has powerful incentives for transcending his condition; the question is,
toward what will he transcend it. Hegel tacitly assumes,
and Kojeve explicitly states, that the slave does not desire
to become a master; therefore, discontent with being a
slave and not desiring to become a master, he must in
transforming himself create a ''new man.'' History is the
story of the creation by servile consciousness of the new
man. But is it true that the slave does not wish to become
a master, to lord it over those who have lorded it over
him or failing that, to lord it over someone? Are not
resentment and revenge likely to come into play in revolutionary situations, as the analyses of Nietzsche and others
have suggested? To this one might reply, as Marx would
presumably have replied, that the empirical motives of
those engaging in the revolution are irrelevant; what
alone is decisive is the set of objective conditions-on the
one hand the advanced stage of technological development and on the other the extreme concentration of private wealth into the hands of very few-because of which
for the first time in history a class can emancipate itself
without enslaving another class. But even if Marx is justified in making this claim (which one may doubt), Hegel
would not be justified in making a similar claim. For Marx
there is no prestige-battle as constitutive of human consciousness; the master-slave relationship which assumes
various guises throughout history is economically motivated as it is economically "justified": in the beginning
man is radically needy and impotent vis a vis nature; only
by a kind of species asceticism, submitted to by bourgeois
(who must for reasons of competition re-invest rather
than consume) as well as proletarian (who cannot afford
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to consume), has man's original weakness vis a vis nature been transformed into tremendous power. In the
measure that one must speak of motives at all, the driving motive of history according to Marx is greed, and
greed is meaningless when a practically unlimited supply of material goods becomes available. For Hegel,
however, not the desire for material goods but rather the
desire for recognition is decisive, and recognition, unless
its meaning somehow be transformed in the course of history, is always only limitedly available. That is, according to the original meaning of recognition, to be
recognized is to have one's certainty of being the center
of existence, for whose sake all objects (including wouldbe subjects) exist, socially confirmed. lf the extension of
recognition from one master to a class of masters and ultimately to all men is the goal of history, surely one may
ask whether the finally achieved recognition of each by
all will have the same power to satisfy which the originally sought recognition had. Strangely enough, it may
be more pqssible to make so-called "material values" superabundantly available than it is to make certain at least
of the so-called "ideal values" superabundantly available, and this makes the notion of an "end of history"
even more problematical in a Hegelian than in a Marxian
context-all this on the assumption, that is, that the
master-slave dialectic is so exclusively constitutive for
Hegel's conception of historical movement as Kojeve
takes it to be. This one may doubt, as is indicated by the
following brief consideration of the role of deathconsciousness in Hegel's philosophy.
3. The slave is enslaved according to Hegel by his fear
of death which moves him to submit to the master; therefore his ultimate liberation require& that he overcome his
fear of death. The slave's fear of death is his inability to
transcend or ''abstract from'' his natural being and thereby from nature in general. In labor, however, the slave
technologically transforms nature, cancels its original
form and imposes on it a form originated by himself. This
no doubt constitutes a kind a transcendence of nature:
"In cancelling the actual form confronting it," servile
consciousness is "destroying precisely the alien reality
before which it trembled." (p.l49) But Hegel does not
suppose that even with the conquest of nature to the
greatest extent (the only limit being, apparently, man's
natural mortality), its transformation into a world of
which man alone is the measure, fear of death automatically disappears. (We ourselves perhaps have some reason to think that under such conditions fear of death is
more easily covered up and kept from view, however.)
Rather, the slave's fear of death must somehow be overcome by a specific conscious act. The precise character
of this act in Hegel's conception is difficultto determine.
Kojeve offers this account": The slave is enslaved because
he is unwilling to risk his life in a struggle to the death.
123
�Therefore, before servility can be finally overcome and
the new man fully created, the slave must overcome his
fear of death by risking his life in political struggle. Various ideologies-e.g., Stoicism, Christianity-are mere
evasions and postponements of what is finally inevitable, namely that the slave risk his life in bloody revolution. According to Hegel the French Revolution is the
crucial revolution, and the Terror, imposed by slaves on
slaves (there being in the strict sense no masters since
the demise of paganism, i.e., the victory of Christianity)
is the experience in which modern man achieved adequate death-consciousness as essential to adequate selfconsciousness in general. Adequate death-consciousness
means not only acceptance of the finality of death, of the
radical mortality of man, all hopes of an afterlife being
abandoned, but rather, in addition, sati~faction (which
is not to say happiness) in human mortality, on the
ground that if man were not mortal, i.e., if there were
a God, there would be a being of infinite worth which
owed nothing to human cr ation, and this would affront
man's infinite pride, whic, can be "satisfied" only on
condition that human exit ~nee be as nearly causa sui as
possible, so that if an irrec cible "givenness" remainsthe fact of Being as such-, can be discounted as virtually worthless. (We may a< that for Kojeve communist
revolution fits the Hegeliar. i.teria better than the French
revolution, though he faults J\: 'll"X for not insisting on the
necessarily violent character of the revolution, i.e., on the
way in which revolutionary violence as such is constitutive of the consciousness of the "new man.")
There is, however, a great difficulty with Kojeve' s interpretation. That is, in his discussion of the French revolution, Hegel indeed speaks of the centrality of the
experience of death to the Terror, but he characterizes
that experience as follows: "It is thus the most coldblooded and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing
a draught of water." (p.418) Such an experience of death
hardly qualifies as constitutive of the perfectly adequate
self-consciousness the achievement of which is to bring
history to an end.
Yet there is no doubt that a new attitude toward death
arising in the wake of the French revolution, namely in
Hegel's interpretation of the French revolution, is a crucial element in the transformation of philosophy into wisdom which is accomplished by the end of the
Phenomenology. But that attitude toward death, as we shall
see in the seventh chapter of this essay, is essentially the
product of Hegel's "recollection" of the experience of
Christ on the cross, and while that attitude may not be
identical with resignation, neither is it identical with the
satisfaction of man's pride in his self-creation. "Reconciliation," which is from the outset the goal of Hegel's
philosophic effort, is a highly ambiguous matter. For the
124
present we may conclude that although the master-slave
dialectic is of great importance for Hegel, it is not so farreaching as Kojeve' s interpretation would have it: in particular, Hegel's death-concept derives primarily from
sources other than the revolutionary experiences generated by the dialectic of master and slave.
II.
After the section setting forth the story of master and
slave, Hegel takes up, under the heading of "Freedom
of Self-Consciousness," the phenomena of Stoicism,
skepticism and Unhappy consciousness" (i.e., primarily but not exclusively the self-consciousness of medieval
Christendom). These are the products of servile consciousness on its way toward freedom.
With regard to Stoicism in particular it is important to
realize that although Hegel alludes to Marcus Aurelius
and Epictetus (saying that Stoicism exists "on the throne
as well as in fetters" (p.153)), he actually has in mind the
attitude of classical philosophy altogether (especially Plato
and Aristotle), of which the Stoical school of late antiquity was so to speak the popular outcome. This is clear
from the breadth of his characterization of Stoicism: ''Its
principle is that consciousness is a thinking being, and
that anything is really essential for consciousness, or is
true and good, only when consciousness in dealing with
it adopts the attitude of a thinking being." (p.152) What
Hegel intends can perhaps be understood by reflection
upon the following passage from Aristotle's De Anima
(408;sub26-30), if one remembers that the primary question concerns not the immortality of the soul but rather
the unity of the soul as such, which is to say the unity
of the human person as such: "Discursive thinking, loving and hating are affections not of the mind (nous), but
rather of the individual which possesses the mind, insofar as it does so. Memory and love fail when this perishes; for they were never part of the mind, but of the whole
entity which has perished. Presumably the mind is something more divine, and is unaffected." One may say that
according to Hegel's implicit interpretation, the
philosophers of classical antiquity were somehow able
forcibly to focus the full flame of their human hopes into
the "part" of themselves which could make purely contemplative contact with reality. That part satisfied, they
were happy. To speak of "human !,opes" as the origin
of philosophy and of a "forcible" solution to the problems
they pose is perfectly in keeping with an important tenet of Hegel according to which the function of
philosophy from the beginning is to provide "reconciliation with reality," which presupposes an original disharmony between man and reality, as Hegel makes
explicit in his first published writing, "The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems," in which he
states: "Estrangement [Entzweiung] is the source of the
11
WINTER 1986
�need of philosophy [Beduerfnis der Philosophie] ... When
the power of unilication has disappeared from the lives
of men, and the opposites have lost their live relationship and interaction and reach independence, the need
of philosophy emerges." 9
This conception of the origin of philosophy, of course,
stands in the greatest possible contrast to the Platonic conception according to which the origin of philosophy is
thaumazein, the admiring wonder at all that is; which
wonder, moreover, is for Plato a pathos, or a condition
into which man is thrown, so that there is no question
of the philosopher's achieving a "reconciliation" by any
kind of deliberate action on himself.
In any case Hegel says of the Stoical attitude, or of the
attitude of classical philosophy in general: "Freedom of
thought takes only pure thought as its truth, and this
lacks the concrete filling of life. It is, therefore, merely
the concept of freedom, not living freedom itself.'' (p.153)
His most exact charge against Stoicism is this: "the content is indeed held to be only thought, but is thereby also
taken to be determinate thought, and thereby determinateness as such." (p.154) This seems to be a strange
objection. Surely in Hegel's view the concept of a thing
. must be determinate, i.e., the concept of the thing must
receive its detenninations from the thing. However, what
Hegel means is that prior to political struggle and labor,
detenninations are imposed on thought from without by
what is simply given. After the world has been "rationalized" through political struggle and labor-i.e., rendered conformable to universal human desires-although
determinations still seem to be imposed from without,
they are imposed by what has already been transformed
by man. That is, things impose their determinations on
conceptual thought only after their determinations have
been imposed on them by man; so thought is ultimately
subject to no foreign determinations but, by the end of
history, encounters only itself wherever it goes, and this
in a far more radical way than Kant had ever imagined.
Thus Stoical consciousness is inadequate; it asks for too
little; it attempts to think itself out of that world which
is the authentic correlate of human hope in all its breadth
and depth. Stoicism perishes, finding its nemesis in skepticism, "this polemical attitude toward the manilold independence of things," (p.155) which defines itself in
theory as solipsism (only oneself is real) and in practice
as nihilism (one regards no norms as binding). Hegel's
essential objection to skepticism so understood is simple:
it fails to meet the criterion, for Hegel a most important
criterion, of unity of theory and practice-"Its deeds and
its words continually contradict each other." For example, "It announces the nullity of seeing, hearing and so
on, yet itself sees and hears. It proclaims the nothingness
of essential ethical principles, and makes those very truths
the sinews of its own conduct." (p.157)
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Ill.
Unhappy consciousness unites consciousness of master
and slave into one, and its whole being is constituted by
awareness of self-contradiction: specifically, the changeable experiences itself as null in relation to the unchangeable, toward which it is drawn only to be repulsed.
Unhappy consciousness is primarily Jewish
consciousness-in early manuscripts which he never published Hegel characterizes Abraham as the prototypal
stranger on earth-and in this sense we are all Jews, always. Absolute pain and longing, consciousness of sin
and hope for redemption, give to existence a depth and
seriousness unknown, for example, to the selfaffirmation and -celebration of the human in Greek
religion. The historic mission of the Jewish people is to
spread its longing across the face of the earth.
Jewish existence, though never simply left behind, is
superseded by the event of Christ, which is in turn superseded, without being left behind, by existence under
the reign of the Holy Ghost (by which Hegel understands
the community of Christians coming to adequate selfconsciousness). World history since the death of Christ
is the story of this coming to self-consciousness, and
thereby of the full reconciliation of the human and the
divine. We shall at this stage of the Phenomenology view
this developing reconciliation from the human side, but
it is necessary, and will later be possible according to
Hegel, to view it as well from the side of the divine, from
which, for example, the birth of the child in the manger
would appear not as a mere contingency but in its necessity. Since, however, at this stage the reconciliation is
seen as initiated by the divine from without human consciousness and therefore, according to Hegel, as contingent, the remoteness of the divine from the human (of
the "beyond" from the "here") is not overcome but
merely transformed into a remoteness in historical time
(''then'' and ''now''). The experience of such remoteness
constitutes the existence of the medieval church, as the
''movement of an infinite yearning.'' Of understanding
it has little: "Its thinking as such is no more than the discordant clang of ringing bells or a cloud of warm incense,
a kind of musical thinking, that does not reach the level
of concepts, which would be the sole immanent objective mode of thought." (p .163) And yet, even as such,
it is superior to either Stoicism or skepticism (as the outcome of classical Greek philosophy) precisely because it
demands much more: it attempts radically to stay with
the world. To suffer from the remoteness of truth is to
yearn that truth be fully present. Unhappy consciousness
holds together, and therefore suffers from the contradiction between, what Greek philosophy had sundered:
"pure thinking and particular existence (Einzelnheit)."
(p.162) Again, Hegel would seem to have in mind all that
is symbolized by the "impersonality" of the so-called
125
�agent intellect (in Aristotle's De Anima), in which there
is nothing of love, hate or memory, but as which man
exists when he performs the highest activity of which he
is capable, so that when Thomas Aquinas calls Aristotle
"the Philosopher," the meaning is not so much that
Aristotle is the greatest philosopher as that all
philosophers, insofar as they philosophize truly, are indistinguishable, hence nameless. With this one may contrast the enormous importance of personal names and
changes of names in both the Old Testament (e.g., Abram
becomes Abraham) and the New Testament (Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul). Such considerations as
these seem to be present to Hegel's mind when he contends that the biblical orientation does justice to human
individuality (Einzelnheit) in a way in which the classical
understanding of man does not.
In Hegel's view it remains for a still higher form of selfconsciousness than that of medieval Christendom to "rise
to that level of thinking where the particularity of consciousness is harmoniously reconciled with pure thinking
itself." (p.163) But unlike Greek philosophy, which settled for too little, the unhappy consciousness of medieval
Christendom at least presents the fully human demand
intransigently. The symbol of the defectiveness of this existence (of the non-coincidence within of certainty and
truth) is that after all the "trouble, toil and struggle"
(p.164) of the Crusades, only the grave of Jesus is discovered.
There now arises, conditioned by the first stage, the
second stage between the event of Christ and the fullness of time, namely Reformation this-worldliness.
(Hegel makes the incidental suggestion that the Reformation and the Renaissance were not so different: the
difference lay perhaps in how frankly one enjoyed this
world.) The Reformation turn toward this-worldliness,
if not inspired by otherworldly motives (in the sense of
Weber's famous interpretation), is at least understood
with reference to another world in which men still believe. From this understanding there results a certain ambivalence, guilty conscience, hypocrisy and secret pride.
Protestant consciousness is characterized by the rejection
of idolatry (the unchangeable cannot be confined by a
"mere shape") and by a "thanks-giving" or confession
of its own nullity (the doctrine of predestination or at least
of man as depraved). Every man a priest, the world is
interesting again: production leads to enjoyment. Yet
although the turn to this-worldliness is necessary, there
is something spurious about Protestantism at this level:
its humility is suspect. It does after all enjoy the world
and accomplish much, and its declaration of its nothingness before God is after all its act, which has a kind of
greatness.
A third, post-Reformation stage is therefore necessary,
namely (though not unambiguously) the Catholic
126
counter-Reformation. This third attitude, which "follows
from the second" (i.e., from the turn toward thisworldliness) is asceticism, broadly understood. It differs
from pre-Reformation otherworldliness (and is thereby
conditioned by the Reformation) in that it renounces a
mastery of the world and a "freedom of consciousness"
which are seen as actual possibilities-the face of the earth
has actually begun to be changed. Medieval Christendom
somehow knew no other way than its own; postReformation Catholicism does.
Under this third dispensation, it is in the "functions
of animal life" that the enemy (the devil) is seen "in his
proper and peculiar shape." This enemy "creates itself
in its very defeat" (p .168)-that is, the way not to be
dominated by the flesh is not to contend against it but
rather to pay it no special heed. Moreover, this form of
self-consciousness surrenders its freedom of thought and
action (decision) to a priesthood; it even submits to using a language (Latin) which it does not understand.
Yet for all the respects in which it is regressive, it somehow has a greater depth than immediate Protestantism.
This is a very important fact, which must be borne in
mind when one is considering the "Lutheranism" of
Hegel's later, more popular presentations as, for example, the Philosophy of History. Thus the self-renunciation
which characterizes this third attitude is more sincere than
is Protestant "thanksgiving," which too willingly accepts
dominion over the earth, and whose declaration of its
own nothingness is somehow prideful, as a sign of which
it would not submit to using a language it did not understand.
The third stage is in a way closer to the truth: to negate
one's particular will is implicitly to affirm universal will,
even though falsely mediated by priests. There is a kind
of secular self-confidence without depth, to which simple Protestantism is somehow inclined; one can be at
home in the world in a shallow way. There must be a
kind of counter-weight: the counter-Reformation broadly
understood is a form of eternally necessary Jewish consciousness which forever forbids human beings to be satisfied with the merely human. In any case, only now, and
not after the Reformation as such, can one say that "there
has risen the idea of Reason," (p.171) i.e., German Idealism as culminating in Hegel has become possible.
There is, however, something very curious about
Hegel's discussion of what we have taken to be primarily the Catholic counter-Reformation. This becomes clear
from the first page of Chapter V of the Phenomenology,
immediately following the discussion of unhappy consciousness, which it summarizes as follows. Reason is the
certainty that individual consciousness is inherently absolute reality. That certainty is accomplished once for all
(in principle) with the life and death of Christ, but it remains to be fully elaborated. Essential to that elaboration
WINTER 1986
�is not mere Protestant consciousness as such, which is
too individualistic, but Protestant consciousness mediated
by an experience in which "the individual (Einzelne) has
renounced itself" while at the same time becoming, vis
a vis "unchangeable consciousness" nreconciled to it."
(p.175) It appears at first from Hegel's discussion that this
experience is identical with counter-Reformation priestly asceticism: the mediator between individual consciousness and unchangeable consciousness who brings about
renunciation from the side of the former and reconciliation from the side of the latter, and who is "directly aware
of both" and "the consciousness of their unity which it
proclaims to consciousness and thereby to itself" (p.l75)
and is thereby "the certainty of b.eing all truth" would
appear to be the (Catholic) priesthood.
And yet in view of the enterprise of the Phenomenology
as a whole and of the crucial function within that enterprise of the "critique of the beautiful soul" (compare
Chapter VI of this essay), it appears that one must finally identify the mediator in question with Hegel himself,
who requires from the "critic" of the "hero" that he
renounce his claim qua individual, while showing the
"critic" that qua universal he is reconciled to the divine,
so thatthe true "counter-Reformation"-consisting in the
self-renunciation of the "individual"-is Hegel's understanding of the French Revolution, and the true priestmediator is Hegel himself. These remarks cannot be fully intelligible until a later section of this essay: suffice it
for now to say that Hegel's discussion of what must
roughly be designated as the "counter-Reformation" as
a stage in the advance of Spirit superior to Protestant
consciousness as such, in a certain way prefigures that
peculiar modification of Christian consciousness in which
Hegelian wisdom itself consists and which Hegel regards
as bringing history to its end.
Chapter VI
History as Tragedy
I.
Chapter VI of the Phenomenology, entitled "Spirit"
(Geist), differs from the preceding five chapters in that
they treated, as Hegel now puts it, of abstractions, while
it is concerned with the concrete: they treated of individual psychic orientations while it considers temporally successive social worlds. Briefly: while they were analytic
or archetypal, it is historical ,regarding in turn Greek ethical life, Roman abstract legal order, and the tension between civilization and faith in the Middle Ages; then the
Enlightenment, which resolves the tension but misinterprets what it has done; then the French Revolution; and
finally the several varieties of post-Revolutionary moral
consciousness culminating in the ''critique of the beautiful soul." We shall defer consideration of Hegel's presen-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tation of the Enlightenment critique of religious faith until
the next chapter, and shall in the present chapter sketch
the main lines of Hegel's interpretaiton of Greek ethical
life, the French Revolution, and the critique of the beautiful soul.
II.
Hegel begins the chapter on Spirit by discussing Greek
Sittlichkeit, which we may translate by "ethical life" or
"ethical existence," keeping in mind that Sitte means
primarily "custom" or "usage." Sittlichkeit is for Hegel
the antithesis of Moralitat, by which Hegel understands
above all Kant's purely formal morality (the principle of
non-contradiction given imperative form), to remedy the
(literal) insubstantiality of which is one of the original impulses of Hegel's philosophy in general. Hegel gives the
following account of Greek ethical existence:
"The simple (einfache) substance of Spirit, as consciousness, divides itself into parts (teilt sich)." (p.318) Greek
Sittlichkeit essentially constitutes itself in a two-fold way:
as human law, the law of the polis (Hegel's word is Volk)
and as divine law; the former being reflective (akin
perhaps to "regimen in Aristotle's sense, i.e., the conscious purpose of the authoritative part of the community), the latter unreflective or inunediate. The two stand
in contrast: on the one hand "the Penates of the family," on the other "universal Spirit" as that which
"shapes and preserves itself by work (Arbeit) for the
universal." (p.320)
There is essentially one and only one ethical act which
is not political (i.e., which belongs to divine rather than
human law), namely the cult of the dead. As Fustel do
Coulanges was to show in detail, cult of the dead is the
core of the family as ethical. The decisive bond of the family is not natural-not only is not desire, but is not even
love, which is natural rather than ethical insofar as it
regards the individual's unique being (Einzelnheit) rather
than his universal (~interchangeable, commensurable)
deeds-but rather ethical, and that means: cult of the dead
as devotion to the "entire family." In general what elevates the individual to "virtue," what "subjugates his
naturalness and unique being (Einzelnheit)" and draws
him toward "living in and for the universal" (p.320) is
political life (only in the Gemeinwesen can one achieve das
Allgemein); in general only through political life does the
individual transcend his merely natural existence (unique
being) in the direction of ethical existence (universality).
But there is one absolutely important exception, namely
the cult of the dead in which, at the level of the family
(i.e., pre-politically), the natural is raised to the ethical,
in the following way: Death is the immediate issue of the
individual's "natural having-become," but the sacred
duty of a family member is not to permit it to be merely
127
�that, but rather "to assert the right of consciousness"
(p.321) so that what is suffered is also done (p.323):
This last duty thus accomplishes the complete divine law, or
constitutes the positive ethical act toward the given individual.
Every other relation toward him which does not remain at
the level of love, but is ethical, belongs to human law, and
has the negative significance of lifting the individual above
the confinement within the natural community to which he
belongs as actual.
It must be emphasized that the lack of actuality which
characterizes everything which is merely "inward,"
which is not externalized" or u objectified" in action,
is true not only for the outside observer, but just as much
for the subject himself: "Hence the individual cannot
know what he is before he has brought himself to actuality through the deed." (pp. 277-8)
This conception that actual being must be sheer doing,
upon which Hegel insists so strongly, has two altogether
disparate dimensions. On the one hand it might be said
to be an Aristotelian conception: the highest being-noesis
noeseos as divinity-must be sheer doing lest something
"within it" lie waste, some possibility or capacity be unrealized, which would as such constitute imperfection of
being. This is also true for Aristotle, albeit in a less radical way, on the level of practical virtue: the aretai are
energeia-that is, they truly exist only in the performing
of virtuous deeds. But Hegel's conception also has a
dimension wholly alien to Aristotle, namely the flight
from the "bad infinitude" of what remains merely inward; of intentions which, endlessly determinable, are
endlessly determined; of self-suspicion, self-deception,
hypocrisy, "bad faith" and every kind of equivocality-a
flight from all of these into unequivocal appearance in
the world, where one's actions have an objective meaning, e.g., by serving or disserving a particular cause. What
Hegel proposes is indeed a renunciation by the self of that
in itself which cannot appear unequivocally in the world,
which cannot be judged objectively whereby "objectively" means both "intersubjectively" and "historically".
What cannot so appear and be judged still somehow is,
but Hegel never tires of denouncing it as "unactual" and
depreciating it in every way possible. No such denunciation could be even suggested by Aristotle, who after all
is talking about an altogether different matter: his highest
model of the identity of actual being and sheer doing is
the divine nous, which is in the strictest sense nothing
but its knowing activity, of which, therefore, it cannot
dispose, and thus it cannot in any but a paradoxical sense
be said to have a self, since a self seems to be above all
that which disposes of possibilities.
But this is to say that Hegel, famous as the philosopher
of self-consciousness, is in a very important sense the
philosopher who radically turns against the self and
11
128
toward the objectivity of deeds in the world. Of course
one must add that thereby it is precisely the self which
turns against the self: that is, the self, whose primary nature it is to be constituted by "what it would have done"
(had it not been prevented by external circumstances or
even by some inner weakness) as well as by "what it has
done," has among its possibilities the possibility of
renouncing possibility in favor of actuality, of defining
and confining itself into what it has done, into what has
appeared unequivocally in the world and can be judged
with certitude. It is this possibility which Hegel calls upon
the self to realize, and his motive seems to be the motive
which, in one form or another, has dominated modem
religious experience since the Reformation and modem
philosophy since Descartes-namely the quest for unshakable certitude, leading to the radical depreciation of
such modes of being as can never be made to yield certain knowledge.
We return to the critique of the beautiful soul, having
established that the ''guilt'' and ''forgiveness'' at issue
have nothing to do with "evil motives." Now the crucial point is that Hegel, although he condemns the judging consciousness qua beautiful soul for blaming the
allegedly evil motives of the actor, nevertheless insists
that the actor is actually guilty. Moreover, the actor knows
that he is guilty-not indeed because of his "evil motives"
but because he is only a part-and therefore (according
to Hegel's account, which now turns into a story) confesses to the judging consciousness, expecting that the
latter will reciprocate, since he too is only a part, and
hence guilty as such, only the whole being innocent. The
actor recognizes himself in the judging consciousness,
recognizes their common guilt flowing from their common particularity. But the judging consciousness qua
beautiful soul refuses to confess, refuses to recognize himself in the actor. Thus according to Hegel the beautiful
soul "shows itself to be a consciousness which is Spiritforsaken and Spirit-denying; for it does not know that
Spirit, in its absolute self-certainty, is master over every
deed and over all actuality and can cast them off and
make them as if they never happened (ungeschehen
mach en)." (p .469)
(For the understanding of Hegel's analysis it is important to be aware that "judging consciousness" translates
Hegel's term beurteilende Bewusstsein. Urteil is "judgment," Teil is "part," teilen is "to divide into parts, to
separate." The passages we have been considering are
full of plays on these verbal affinities. Thus Hegel blames
the beurteilende consciousness weil es die Handlung teilt, i.e.,
because it arbitrarily separates the universal side of the
action from the inner side which is particular. Again, on
another level the beurteilende consciousness is at fault because, even taking the action itself as undivided, it
regards only the part-der Teil-and not the (ethical)
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�whole, hence only the guilt of the individual and not his
justification. Finally, the beurteilende consciousness
separates-teilt-itself from the acting consciousness: to
refuse "to see oneself in the other" is to refuse to see
both oneself and the other under the aspect of the whole,
i.e., to refuse to understand the relation of the parts to
the whole whereby each part, although guilty in itself,
finally shares in the innocence of the whole and is thereby justified. This aspect of Hegel's thought obviously has
profound affinities with the thought of Spinoza in which,
however-according to Hegel-"sel£-consciousness is
merely submerged, not upheld.")
Hegel now gives the story a different ending: this time
the judging consciousness, having come to understanding, "renounces the thought that divides and separates
(dem teilenden Gedanken) and the harshness of the beingfor-itself that clings to such thought, for the reason that
in fact it sees itself in the first [i.e., in the actor]." The
former beautiful soul now extends "forgiveness" (Verziehung) to the actor, and there ensues "reciprocal recognition which is Absolute Spirit." (p.470) Or again,: "The
reconciling yes, with which both egos desist from their
existence in opposition ... is the God who appears in
the midst of those who know themselves as pure
knowledge." (p.472)
But the polis (Volk), which "has its actual vitality in
govenunent," d()es not merely tolerate the singular ethical claim of the family (representing divine law) within
the context of its own general ethical pedagogy; rather
its own pedagogy radically depends on the ethical existence of the family. This is true for the reason that, in
the measure that it is the product of conscious purpose,
the city is constantly in danger of dissolution qua ethical,
of degeneration into a mere network of relations
produced by the private and particularistic strivings of
men who, no longer aware of universal purposes (i.e.,
of purposes recognized as superior to their individual existence, for the sake of which their individual existence
must if necessary be negated), have sunk from ethical existence back into merely natural existence. As we know
from the master-slave paradign, to rise above merely
natural existence one must risk one's life, i.e., hold it less
important than something else. "Something else" in this
case is the community as promoted or defended by war:
"In order not to let them get rooted and settled in this
isolation and thus break up the whole into fragments and
let the spirit evaporate, goverrunent has from time to time
to shake them to the very center by war." (p.324) Only
when they "are made, by the labor thus imposed by
government, to feel the power of their master, death"
are individuals prevented "from sinking into merely
natural existence." Thus in a radical sense the principle
of the city is the voluntary collective exposure to the power of death. But death always befalls one who belongs,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in precisely this respect, to a family. "The community
therefore finds the true principle and corroboration of its
power in the essence of divine law and in the kingdom
of the underworld." (p.324)
Thus there is, as constitutive of Greek Sittlichkeit,
primarily a harmony between the city and the family, between human law and divine law (p.328):
Neither of the two is alone self-complete. Human law as an
active and living principle proceeds from the divine, the law
holding on earth from that of the underworld, the conscious
from the unconscious, mediation from immediacy; and
returns whence it carne. The power of the underworld, on
the other hand, finds its realization on earth; it comes through
consciousness to have existence and activity.
But what is primarily harmonious contains nevertheless the seeds of its destruction. The stable world of Greek
Sittlichkeit is deficient in that ''self-consciousness has not
yet come to its rights as a unique individuality (einzelne
Individualitat)." (p. 330) The individual is recognized as
an ethical being by the city insofar as he risks his life in
war, i.e., performs a universal action of which, however,
any exemplar is interchangeable with any other-one individual qua citizen is indistinguishable from any other
individual qua citizen. He is recognized within the family as an ethical (trans-natural) being insofar as he shares
in the familial cult of the dead, i.e., in the devotion to
the ''entire family''-his uniqueness remains unexpressed. To vindicate his uniqueness, which so far exists only as an uunactual shadow," he must, in a
pregnant sense, act: "The deed is the actual self." (p.331)
But, as emerges, there are certain situations-which situations, according to Hegel, most profoundly reveal the
human condition as such-in which to act is to incur guilt;
and as guilt is avenged by destiny, the world of Greek
Sittlichkeit perishes.
Now Hegel presents an interpretation of Sophocles' Antigone, which he regards as the most perfect expression
of Greek ethical existence and its contradictions. Antigone
of course represents the divine law, the concern of the
family with cult of the dead; Creon represents human
law, the requirements of the polis, of governmental concern with the universal. Hegel takes great pains to emphasize the purely ethical character of their tragic conflict,
in which there is nothing "psychological" in the modern
(romantic) sense: "there is no arbitrary will, no struggle,
no indecision." (p.331) (With this Hegel contrasts the drama of Hamlet, who "delays in avenging his father's
murder which has been revealed to him and institutes
additional proofs-because the spirit revealing this might
be the devil" (p .513)-this is found in Hegel's discussion
of Greek tragedy in Chapter VII.) Ancient tragedy is a
drama of ethos or character as necessary, pre-given
character (pp.331-2):
129
�The ethical consciousness, however, knows what it has to do,
and is decided, whether it is to belong to divine or human
law. The immediateness of its decision is something inherent (ansichsein) and hence has at the same time the significance
of natural being, as we saw. Nature, not the accident of circumstances or choice, assigns one sex to one law, the other
to the other law; or conversely both the ethical powers themselves establish their individual existence and actualization
in the two sexes [i.e.;. woman belongs to the side of the family and divine law, man to the side of the city and human law].
To one pre-given character the other pre-given character is necessarily unintelligible: "Since it sees right only
on its own side, and wrong on the other, so of these two
that which belongs to divine law detects, on the other
side, human arbitrary violence, while what belongs to human law finds in the other the obstinacy and disobedience
of subjective self-sufficiency." (p.332) The decisive point
is that although both Antigone and Creon do what they
(ethically) must, both are guilty; by upholding one side
of the ethical order, each has violated the other side and
"neither of the powers has any advantage over the other
that it should be a more essential moment of the substance common to both." (p.337) (Therefore it would be
absurd, from Hegel's point of view, to blame the Greeks
for insufficient attention to "rights of conscience" or religious liberty.") To say that both Creon and Antigone
are guilty is to speak not of moral-psychological guilt but
rather of what might be called ontological guilt, the guilt
which necessarily attends the self-affirmation of a part
as such- recall that Greek ethical existence is constituted by the fact that "the simple substance of Spirit divides
itself into parts (teilt sich)" -whereby the part ineluctably takes itself to be the whole. In any case Hegel emphasizes that "motivation" is irrelevant to guilt as
understood in ancient tragedy (p.334):
11
Guilt is not an indifferent entity (gleichgultige Wesen) with the
double meaning that the deed (die Tat) as actually exposed
to the light of day, may be the doing (Tun) of a guilty self,
or may not be so, as if with the doing there could be connected something external and accidental that did not belong
to the doing, from which side, therefore, the doing would
be innocent (unschuldig).
In the end there is only one side, and action-which al-
ways "sets in motion what was unmoved" (p.336)-is
guilty as such: "Only not-doing is innocent, like the being of a stone, not even of a child [whose being is already
doing]." (p.334) Both, then, are guilty and both suffer
ruin, Creon as well as Antigone; destiny (Schicksal) can
permit no one-sided triumph. But in perishing, both
come to knowledge: Hegel quotes (freely) from Antigone:
"Because we suffer, we recognize that we have erred."
(p.336) Such recognition by no means implies that one
would act differently if one had it to do over again; the
guilt of being a part is inescapable.
130
III.
The French Revolution according to Hegel is the outcome of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The principle brought forth by that philosophy is that of "utility"
(Nutzlichkeit) in a special sense, namely "the revocation
of the form of objectivity." (p.413) Objectivity ("object"
is Gegen/stand-that which stands against men) must here
be understood broadly as signifying the existence of an
order independent of human will to which men ought
to conform. When such an order is no longer thought to
exist-when, as Hegel puts it, self-consciousness /Jsees
through" the object-human will becomes of paramount
importance, as is clear from Hegel's discussion. His cardinal statement is this: "This revocation of the form of objectivity by the useful has however already happened in
itself, and out of this inner revolution there emerges the
actual revolution of actuality, the new shape of
consciousness-absolute freedom." (p.413)
But, Hegel continues, the "form of objectivity" in the
sense of an obligatory order independent of human will,
represented concretely by the church and the aristocracy, could be "revoked" by rationalist or utilitarian criticism only because what that criticism confronted was
"nothing but an empty semblance of objectivity." (p .414)
That is, the church and aristocracy, the visible representatives of "objectivity" (and for Hegel what is not somehow visible represented cannot be said actually to be),
had lost their vitality, could no longer be seen- even by
themselves-as representing a transhuman order. Criticism became truly possible, i.e., possible-as-effective
rather than possible as a mere dream, only when the reality criticized had already begun to change. (To avoid misunderstanding: the core of that reality as Hegel
understands it is self-consciousness; there is no question
of "ideal" factors reflecting a change in "material" factors in the Marxian sense.) The opposition to the church
and aristocracy had already taken root within the selfconsciousness of the church and aristocracy; otherwise
that opposition would not have been possible in any other
("external") self-consciousness. This is what Hegel means, ultimately, by Volkgeist.
As for the French Revolution itself, Hegel's attitude is
ambivalent, as it was from the beginning of his public
career until the end (so that one cannot on the basis of
Hegel's published writings distinguish an early "liberal" phase from a late "conservative" or even ~~reaction
ary" one). On the one hand, it is the French Revolution
in which, as was requisite, "Both worlds are reconciled
and heaven is transplanted to the earth below." (p.413)
But although its ultimate principle-the "revocation of
the form of objectivity" in favor of human autonomy-is
true, the Revolution goes radically astray: "Universal
freedom can thus produce neither a work nor a deed;
there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the
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�fury of destruction." The Revolution is based upon Rousseauist principles, but these are defective. Contrary to
Rousseau, that universality is spurious "which does not
let itself attam the reality of organic articulation" (p. 417);
moreover, direct democracy is not feasible in a great
nation-state; nor is legislative supremacy: executive unity
of command is required for action, so that who has the
power of general legislation is of little moment in a time
of crisis.
Finally, an abstract understanding of universality,
which takes it to be incompatible with any definite action at all, leads to charges and counter-charges of factionalism, and finally to the Terror, culminating in the
law of suspects whereby alleged partiality of intentions
replaces alleged partiality of action as the definition of
crime. What results is death, the "most coldblooded and
meaningless death of all, with no more significance than
cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of
water." (p.418)
In the wake of the disasters brought about by such an
extremity of Moralitat, one might have expected a return
to Sittlichkeit, and this in a way happens: "These individuals, who felt the fear of death, their absolute
master, submit to negation and distinction once more
arrange themselves into various spheres, and return to
a restricted and appointed task, but thereby to their substantial actuality." (p.420) The Restoration follows the
Revolution by right. But although individuals return to
their stations as far as political life is concerned, Spirit
itself passes on to the land of thought. That is, Spirit realizes that it has had enough of political action: "universal
will" knows itself to be "essential reality" not as "revolutionary government or anarchy struggling to establish an
anarchical constitution, nor itself as a center of this faction or the opposite" but rather as "pure knowing and
willing'' which is somehow the same as ''pure knowing
of essential reality as pure knowing." (pp.421-2) This
seeming progression (which Hegel treats as an equivalence) from "universal will" to "pure knowing and willing" to "pure knowing" entails that "absolute freedom
leaves its self- destructive actuality, and passes over into
another land of self- conscious Spirit," (p.422) i.e., from
France into Germany but more importantly from the
realm of practice into the realm of theory, from politics
into philosophy.
1
IV.
Hegel discusses post-Revolutionary moral orientations
under three headings: "the moral world-view," "dissemblence" (Verstellen, which means also "shifting" or
''displacing''), and ''conscience'' (Gewissen, which is
Spirit certam-gewiss-of itself and which is a kind of
knowing-Wissen). Of these the third is the eminent locus of truth according to Hegel; it forms the summit of
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the first six chapters of the Phenomenology and at its climax Hegel announces that "God has appeared in the
midst of men." Chapter VII is devoted to an explication
of religious experience, especially Christian religious experience, and Chapter VIII, entitled "Absolute
Knowledge" presents the composition-indeed the
convergence-of the results of Chapter VI and Chapter
VII and, above all, the translation of that convergence into
Hegel's speculative language. The core of the phenomenon of "conscience" as Hegel presents it is the critique
of the beautiful soul. We must try to understand this as
exactly as possible.
Hegel's critique of the beautiful soul (schone Seele) begins with the characterization that it is a form of consciousness which "lacks the strength to externalize itself,
the strength to make itself a thing and endure existence
(Sein). It lives in dread of staining the radiance of its inner
being by action and existence. To preserve the purity of
its heart, it flees from contact with actuality and ... [refuses] to translate its thought into being." (p.462) It is
not at all loath, however, to judge those who do act.
Hegel's contempt for it is unqualified: "It may well
preserve itself in its purity, for it does not act; it is hypocrisy, which wants to see the fact of judging taken for the
actual deed, and instead of proving its righteousness by
acts does so by expressing fine sentiments." (pp.465-6)
But Hegel goes far beyond deprecating the excesses of
a certain kind of romanticism, as we can see by considering his presentation of the specific character of the beautiful soul's criticism of the man of action. Hegel writes
(p.466):
Concrete action ... involves the universal side, which is that
which is taken as duty, just as much as the particular (Besondere), which constitutes the share and interest of the individual. Now the judging consciousness does not stop at the side
of duty ... It holds on to the other side, diverts the act into
what is inner (das Innere) and explains the act from selfish motives and from an intention different from the act itself . . .
This judging, then, takes the act out of its existence (Dasein)
and turns it back into what is inner, into the form of private
(eigen) particularity. If the act carries glory with it, then the
inner is judged as love of fame ... and so on.
There follows a restatement in terms of the "hero" and
the "moral valet" (p.467):
No hero is a hero to his valet, not, however, because the hero
is not a hero, but because the valet is-the valet, with whom
the hero has to do, not as a hero, but as a man who eats,
drinks and dresses, who, in short, appears in the uniqueness
(Einzelnheit) of his wants and ideas. Similarly there is no act
in which the judging cannot oppose the side of the uniqueness of the individuality to the universal side of the act and
play the part of the moral valet toward the actor.
Thus Hegel clearly holds that every act-even those
131
�which contribute to reason and justice and happiness in
the world-can be condemned with respect to "the side
of what is inner" which in the restatement is interpreted
as the uniqueness (Einzelnheit) of the actor as such. But
Hegel is not saying-what would be preposterous- -that
all men act always from evil motives. Rather he holds that
motives or intentions are strictly spealcing unknowableto the actor as well as to the observer-so that a man must
be judged solely according to the objective or worldly
meaning of his actions, e.g., whether they serve the cause
of reason and justice in the world. Judged in that respect,
all action turns out to be both justified and guilty: justified insofar as it is necessary for "progress" (which means, for Hegel, the self-unfolding of the whole), but guilty
insofar as it is itself merely partial and, being a selfaffirming part, necessarily violates other parts which have
a legitimate claim not to be violated-all of this quite independently of any question of motives and intentions.
When, as Hegel's account continues, the "hero" confess-
es his guilt to the "moral valet" and asks for forgiveness,
what is involved is the guilt of being a part, not of having "evil motives." Before examining this matter of "confession" and "forgiveness," however, we must make
sure of Hegel's strenuous depreciation of all concern with
the "inner" in the sense of motives and intentions.
We earlier quoted Hegel's dictum that "the true being
of a man is rather his deed" in discussing Hegel's critique of naturalistic anthropologies. Now we must examine the negations of a different kind which are also
intended by that dictum. Bluntly stated, action in Hegel's
understanding appears to be a kind of escape from the
equivocalities of the inner life, as appears from the following passage: "The act cancels (aufhebt) the inexpressibility of what self- conscious individuality actually
intends, with regard to such intending, individuality is
endlessly determined and determinable. This bad infinitude is annihilated in the completed act." And more fully (pp.236-7):
same time disparity on its outer side, in the sphere of
existence-the lack of correspondence of its particular individuality (besondere Einzelnheit) with reference to another
individual." (p.463)
But secondly, and obviously, the actor or hero par excellence in the story is Napoleon, and it is Hegel-more
precisely, one possibility or temptation known to Hegelwho is the beautiful soul confronting and accusing him
and tinally, the temptation overcome, forgiving him. That
this struggle also takes place somehow within a single
consciousness means first that after all, the historical
Napoleon actually confesses nothing, since he understands little; it is Hegel impersonating Napoleon who confesses, and Hegel impersonating, so to speak, a part of
himself, who confers forgiveness. But the event which
has thereby taken place within Hegel's consciousness has
ipso facto taken place within the consciousness of the society of which Hegel is a part and that consciousness, conceived as an individual, is for Hegel the most authentic
locus of truth.
Chapter VII
The Golgotha of Absolute Spirit
I.
In order to understand the conclusion of the Phenomenology we must understand Hegel's attitude toward
Christian revelation. Our discussion will have tluee parts:
Hegel's critique of the Enlightenment view of Christianity
(found in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology); Hegel's understanding of Christian revelation as it is in itself (Chapter VII); and Hegel's presentation of the convergence of
the critique of the beautiful soul with what he takes to
be the deepest meaning of Christian experience, and the
translation of that convergence into speculative language,
which accomplishes absolute knowing as Erinnerung and
Schadelstatte (Chapter Vlll).
II.
When his work and his inner possibility, capacity or intention are opposed, the former alone is to be regarded as his
true actuality, even if he deceives himself about it and, turning back from his action into himself, intends in his inwardness (das Innere) to be something different than he is in his
deed ... The character of the deed is constituted by whether
it is an actual being, which holds up, or whether it is merely
an intended work which, in itself nothing, passes away.
What is the concrete meaning of the story of the struggle between the actor and the beautiful soul? First, the
event narrated is both psychological and sociological; that
is, the struggle goes on within a single soul and also between individual souls, as is always the case for Hegel.
He says so directly in this instance: "While in this way
the opposition, into which conscience passes when it acts,
finds expression in its inner life, the opposition is at the
132
Hegel speaks of the movement of modern rationalism
originated by Descartes and culminating in Kant under
the title of "pure insight." Pure insight has as its goal
"to cancel every kind of independence which is other
than self-consciousness, whether [independence] of the
actual or the implicit, and to make it into the Concept,"
whereby the Concept is precisely "that which finds no
opposition in an object." (p.382) But modern rationalism
as pure insight cannot be understood solely as an original attitude toward the world; it is just as fundamentally
determined by its polemic against another attitude toward
the world, namely religious faith. Thus "pure insight only
appears in its authentic activity insofar as it enters into
conflict with faith." (p.384)
Hegel now presents the struggle between ''Enlighten-
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�ment" and "superstition." The general tenor of his
presentation is that although in a variety of ways the Enlightenment understanding of religious experience is
amazingly superficial, in the end the Enlightenment has
the higher right over against faith. This fact is compatible, however, with the fact that Hegelian wisdom as the
highest has more in common with the lower (Christianity) than with the higher, for all that the higher was a
necessary moment. We shall follow the main points of
Hegel's presentation.
The first and most fundamental charge of insight as Enlightenment against faith is that faith produces its putative object out of its own consciousness. But this charge
is invalid for two reasons. First, insight itself produces
its own object; that is, it produces its unity with its object, or it produces its object as object-for-it. In the same
way, precisely, is faith productive of its unity with its object through action and obedience in community. According to the intention of faith, the Absolute Being is of course
not produced by human action; "But the Absolute Being for faith is essentially not the abstract being that lies
beyond the believing consciousness; it is the spirit of the
[religious] community, it is the unity of that abstract being and self-consciousness. The action of the community is an essential moment in bringing about that it is this
spirit of the community." (p.391) But even as productive,
faith does no more than insight does; if insight is to accuse faith on this account, it must accuse itself as well.
But the charge of insight is invalid for a much deeper
reason. Not only is insight itself just as "productive" of
its object as faith is of its object, but faith enjoys a decisive superiority: it knows, as insight does not, that what
it is producing has in a definitive way already been
produced: "That spirit [of the community] is what it is
by the productive activity of consciousness, or rather it
does not exist without being produced by consciousness.
For essential as this production is, it is just as essentially
not the only basis of Absolute Being; it is merely a moment. The Absolute Being is at the same time (zugleich)
in and for itself." (p.391) That is, human productivity,
though necessary, is insufficient; and what is sufficient,
already is. Otherwise stated: pure insight, as theoretical
and practical idealism, is never-ending productive striving (what Hegel sometimes calls "the everlasting oughtto-be" -perennirindes Sollen); but that toward which it
strives has already been accomplished, from all eternity.
That is what faith, in its way, knows, and thereby in the
most important respect it is superior to Enlightenment
and indeed final, unsurpassable.
The more derivative elements of the Enlightenment critique of religion are likewise misguided, although in the
end they have a certain right. To begin with, it is absurd
for pure insight to suppose that religion experienced in
the depth of the souls of whole peoples could be a pri-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
estly deception (p.392):
When the general question has been raised, whether it is permissible to delude a people, the answer in fact was bound
to be that the question is pointless, because it is impossible
to delude a people in this matter. Brass in place of gold, counterfeit instead of genuine coin may doubtless have swindled
individuals many a time; lots of people have stuck to it that
a battle lost was a battle won; and lies of all sorts about things
of sense and particular events have been plausible for a time;
but in the knowledge of that inmost actuality where consciousness finds the immediate certainty of its own self, the
idea of delusion is entirely baseless.
Furthermore, insight attacks the object and basis of
faith, and its mode of worship; it attacks these, however,
in a fundamentally uncomprehending way. As to the
first, the believer of course knows that, for "example, the
communion wafer is also mere bread. Nor does faith rest
simply on ''some particular historical evidences'' which,
considered as such and in connection with problems of
transmission WOuld assuredly not even warrant that
degree of certainty about the matter which we get regarding any event mentioned in the newspapers" (p.394);
rather, faith rests above all on the inner testimony of
spirit, and if it is too serious (which is not to say it should
be wholly indifferent) about finding confirmation in
historical evidences, then Enlightenment has already
taken root within it. Finally, as regards worship or cult,
and its alleged "unspirituality," there is a kind of seriousness about the attempt to bring the outward into accord with the inward (e.g., in monasticism or even in
occasional fasting), notwithstanding the greater importance of the inward and the danger of falling into merely
external ritualism; of this seriousness, however, Enlightenment in its concern with ''religion within the limits of
reason alone," is oblivious.
But for aU that Enlightenment misinterprets and does
injustice to faith, its right is finally the higher right
(pp .400-1):
11
But since the right of Enlightenment is the right of selfconsciousness, it will not merely retain its own right too, in
such a way that two equally valid rights of Spirit would be
left standing in opposition to each other, without either satisfying the claims of the other; rather it will maintain the absolute right, because self-consciousness is the negativity of the
Concept, which [negativity] is not only for itself but also gets
control over [ubergrieft] its opposite. And because faith itself
is consciousness, it will not be able to deny Enlightenment
that right.
Enlightenment is finally able to subdue faith because it
has already taken root within faith: by the end of the
struggle, Enlightenment no longer confronts faith in its
purity but rather a faith which has already been permeated by Enlightenment.
133
�Enlightenment is, however, unable to rise above the
struggle between itself and faith; it cannot bring to light
their hidden unity. A kind of understanding is necessary
which will transcend and reconcile the seeming opposites. Such an understanding is provided by Hegel, who
in every case "synthesizes" the two one-sided extremes.
For example, faith is one-sided in forgetting that without
human activity God would not be God for man; Enlightenment one-sidedly imagines that nothing but action or
production by man is involved. Again, with regard to the
question of sacramentalism, Enlightenment holds that
sense-things are only sense-things; faith holds that on
Sunday sense-things are divine; true comprehension
would show that every day is Sunday, i.e., that to be at
home in the world of sense is to experience the divine,
not-and this is crucial for Hegel-because there is less
to experiencing the divine than had previously been
thought, but because there is more to being at home in
the world of sense.
However, prior to the Hegelian transfiguration of the
struggle between Enlightenment and Christianity, that
struggle appears to have been won by Enlightenment.
But Hegel adds, in what seems to be a kind of selfreference: "It will yet be seen whether Enlightenment can
remain in its satisfaction: that longing of the turbulent
[truben] spirit, mourning over the loss of its spiritual
world, stands in the background." (p.406)
III.
Chapter VII of the Phenomenology, entitled "Religion,"
treats of Oriental "natural religion," Greek "art-religion"
and, climactically, Christianity as "revealed religion."
There can be no doubt that for Hegel the event of Christ
is of incomparable significance for world-history. Perhaps
his most remarkable statement to this effect is his description of the Nativity (pp.524-5)
These forms [i.e., the forms of Greek religious experience,
through whose procession ''substance'' becomes increasingly
"subjective": statuary and epic poetry, lyric poetry, Dionysian cult and tragedy, and finally Aristophanean comedy as
the triumph of "absolute subjectivity"] and, on the other side,
the [Roman] world of personality and legal right, the devastating wildness of content with its constituent elements set free
and detached, as also the thought-constituted personality of
Stoicism, and the unresting disquiet of Skepticism-these
compose the periphery of the circle of shapes which attend,
an expectant and pressing throng, around the birthplace of
Spirit as it becomes self-conscious. Their center is the pain
and longing of the unhappy self-consciousness, which permeates all of them and is the common birthpang at its being
brought forth-the simplicity of the pure Concept, which contains those shapes as its moments.
Christianity is for Hegel "Absolute Religion." Religion
134
in general is "self-consciousness of Absolute Being as it
is in and for itself." (p.350) The specific difference of
Christianity is the Incarnation. (The German word is
Menschwerdung, which not only stresses the human rather
than merely fleshly "vessel" of the divine, but also stresses the process-character of Incarnation, since -werdung
is from werden, "to become.") "This Incarnation of the
Divine Being, its having essentially and immediately the
shape of self-consciousness, is the simple content of Absolute Religion. In it the Being [Hegel no longer says "Divine Being"] is known as Spirit; it is the Being's
consciousness of itself that it is Spirit." (p.527)
The Incarnation as God entering into time is in no way
a dinimution or adulteration of divinity: "T)le Absolute
Being which exists as an actual self-consciousness seems
to have declined from its eternal simplicity; but in fact
it has thereby attained for the first time its highest Being." (p.529) But it is necessary to understand the Incarnation radically, as religious thought in its characteristic
mode of Vorstellung does not. (We shall translate Vorstellung somewhat unsatisfactorily as "religious imagination.") Religious imagination is deficient in general
because it is modelled upon "relationships derived from
nature," i.e., it does not understand the essential difference between nature and Spirit. More particularly, it is
deficient in that "it takes the moments of the movement,
which Spirit is, as isolated immutable substances or subjects instead of transient moments." (p.535) That is, the
relation of Father and Son within the Trinity must be understood in such a way that when the Son has come, the
Father no longer is: "It is the Word, which, when spoken,
externalizes [entaussert] the Speaker and leaves Him behind emptied [ausgeleert], but is as inunediately perceived,
and only this self-perceiving is the existence of the
Word." (p.534) The meaning of the Incarnation radically understood is therefore that Christ's consciousness of
himself as divine (~his consciousness "that the divine
nature is the same as the human") (p.529) is (exhaustively) the Divine. All that remains for the life of Absolute
Spirit to be complete, according to Hegel, is that Christ's
self-consciousness become universalized, that all men
share in it. But in order to see why 1800 years were necessary for this universalization, and in particular why the
critique of the beautiful soul as the culmination of the
secular movement of modernity was necessary, we must
consider more carefully what Hegel states and implies
about Christ's self-consciousness.
The crucial question is: at what moment according to
Hegel does Christ attain perfectly adequate selfconsciousness? There is only one possible answer: when
he realizes that his cry from the cross at having been forsaken will not be answered (pp.545-6):
The death of the mediator is death not merely of his natural
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�side, of his being-for-himself ... but also of the abstraction
of the Divine Being. For he, as long as his death has not yet
accomplished the reconciliation, is something one-sided,
which knows [falsely] as essential Being the simplicity of
thinking in opposition against actuality. This extreme of the
self does not yet have equal worth with essential Being; the
self first gets this as Spirit ... [The death of the "abstract"
representation of the Divine Being] is the painful feeling of
the unhappy consciousness [here, Christ himself] that God
Himself has died. This harsh expression is the expression of
inmost simple self-knowing; it is the return of consciousness
into the depth of night where I~ I, which distinguishes and
knows nothing more outside it. This feeling thus means in
fact the loss of substance and its existence over against consciousness. But at the same time it is the pure subjectivity of
substance, the pure certainty of its~lf, which it lacked when
it was object or immediacy or pure essential Being.
Thus the Resurrection properly understood is nothing
but "the movement by which God's individual selfconsciousness becomes the universal, becomes the [religious] community." (p.544) Or, to put it in traditional
language, the descent of the Holy Spirit, as the third Person of the Trinity, is itself the Resurrection.
Shortly after the long passage quoted above regarding
the death of God-i.e., of God the Father-and Christ's
becoming conscious of it, Hegel anticipates the essential
result of the final chapter of the Phenomenology by referring back to the critique of the beautiful soul (p.546):
We saw how the Concept of Spirit arose as we entered
Religion [i.e., at the conclusion of Chapter VI]: namely as the
movement of Spirit certain of itself, which forgives evil and
thereby at the same time leaves aside its own simplicity and
rigid unchangeableness, or the movement in which the absolutely opposed knows itself as the same, and this
knowledge breaks forth as the "Yes" between these extremes.
The religious consciousness, to which Absolute Being is revealed, beholds this Concept and cancels [aufhebt] the distinction of itself from what it beholds; and as it is subject, so it
is also substance; and is thus itself Spirit just because and
insofar as it is this movement.
In other words, Hegel here suggests, by way of anticipation, a strict parallel between Christ seeing himself and
only himself in the Father (as he does on the cross) and
the judging consciousness seeing itself and only itself ion
the man of action (i.e., recognizing that both are guilty
insofar as they are mere parts, but innocent insofar as the
whole unfolds itself .in and through them). How Hegel
understands this "parallel" we must now try to see.
IV.
Hegel begins Chapter VIII, entitled "Absolute Knowing," with the assertion that the content of revealed
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
religion is perfectly true; only its mode of expression,
namely Vorstellung, which imports "the form of objectivity," is imperfect. "All that remains to be done now
is to cancel and elevate [aufhebt] this bare form or rather
... its truth must already have announced itself in the
shapes of consciousness." (p.549) There follows a brief
review of the stages of consciousness traversed throughout the Phenomenology, culminating in "moral selfconsciousness" in the specific form of "Spirit certain of
itself'' with its moments of ''action,'' ''recognition'' and
"forgiveness." Then Hegel declares: "This reconciliation
of consciousness with self-consciousness thus shows itself to be brought about in a double-sided way: in one
case, in the religious Spirit; in the other case, in consciousness itself as such. They are distinguished inter se
by the fact that the one is this reconciliation implicitly,
the other explicitly and consciously. As we have considered them, they at the beginning fall apart ... The unification of both sides has not yet been exhibited . . . "
(p.553) The. remainder of Chapter VIII consists in the exhibition of this unification.
Now Hegel expressly mentions the "beautiful soul,"
characterizing its form of consciousness as the selfintuition of the Divine." (p.554) He again points out its
one-sidedness, then speaks of its fulfillment in action
whereby "its self-consciousness attains the form of
universality, and what remains is its true Concept, the
Concept that has attained its realization-the Concept in
its truth, i.e., in unity with its externalization." Hegel
continues (p .554):
11
This [i.e., the true] Concept gave itself fulfillment partly in
the acting Spirit that is certain of itself, partly in religion. In
the latter it won the absolute content qua content or in the
form of religious imagination or of otherness for consciousness. On the other hand, in the first the form is just the self,
for that shape contains the acting Spirit certain of itself; the
self accomplishes the life of Absolute Spirit. This shape [which
culminates in the ''conversion'' of the beautiful soul], as we
see, is that simple Concept, which however gives up its eternal essential Being [like the eternal God who enters unreservedly into time], exists, or acts.
That is to say, nineteenth century consciousness must
and does appropriate for itself the consciousness of Christ
which, as regards its content, namely that "the divine
nature is the same as the human," is true. This appropriation occurs through the action of "Spirit certain of itself," i.e., Spirit including both the moment of confession
(~Napoleon as impersonated by Hegel) and the moment
of forgiveness (~Hegel). This action of "Spirit certain of
itself" is in the decisive respect nothing new: it was all
performed long ago; but it must be imitated-imitatio
Christi (p.555):
The same thing that is already established in itself, thus
135
�repeats itself [wiederholt sich] not as knowledge thereof on the
part of consciousness and as conscious doing. Each lays aside
for the other the independence of determinateness with which
each appears confronting the other. This laying aside is the
same renunciation of the one-sidedness of the Concept as
in itself constituted the beginning; but it is now its own act
of renunciation, just as the Concept renounced is its own
Concept.
That is, Christ's coming to the realization on the cross
that he has been forsaken (that there is no divine fatherhood, only divine brotherhood) is re-enacted by the judging consciousness as beautiful soul who realizes that,
qua mere part, he has been forsaken (for his is "a form
of consciousness which is Spirit-forsaken and Spiritdenying") and yet that qua sharing in the life of the whole
he is divine ("God appeacing in the midst of those ... ").
Hegel concludes: "Thus, then, what was in Religion content, or a form of imagining [Vorstellen] another, is here
the doing proper of the self." (p.555) That is, the action
of Spirit in the nineteenth century (~decisively Hegel's
forgiveness of Napoleon in recognition of the true relation of part to whole) has the same content as Christian
religious consciousness: it is the interiorizing appropriation of that content. "This last shape of Spirit ... is Absolute Knowing." (p.556) Absolute knowing, following
upon and requiring the beautiful soul's experience of his
forsakenness qua mere part but of his divinity qua sharing in the unfolding life of the whole, corresponds strictly
with "But Jesus, again crying out in a loud voice, yielded
up his spirit" (Matthew 27:50). Seen in this light, Hegel's
final "reconciliation with reality" appears more ambiguous than is usually thought. (See Appendix B.)
In any case, we may now understand why the theoria
in which the Phenomenology terminates exists in the mode
of Erinnerung (sometimes written Er-innerung by Hegel
to emphasize that the recollection involved is at the same
time an "interiorizing" or "making inward") and Schadelstatte. (p.564) Schadelstatte, rendering "Golgotha," means,
as does the original Hebrew, "place of skulls," Thus on
the one hand Schadelstatte means the same as Erinnerung:
that is, the activity of "recollecting" which constitutes
the Phenomenology brings to new life the "skulls" that
once were living Spirit. In the "Preface" Hegel writes that
"to hold on to what is dead" (p.29) requires the greatest
effort and the greatest strength. This is the "exertion of
the Concept" -die Anstrenung des Begriffs. It accomplishes a kind of resurrection of everything that once was Spirit
and this constitutes the Geisterreich, the realm of spirits.
But Schadelstatte also means Golgotha as the place of the
crucifixion of Christ, thereby indicating that among the
shapes of Spirit, all of which were indispensable, there
is one above all the rest, the re-collection of whose experience unto death brings history to its end in the
Phenomenology of Spirit.
136
Chapter VIII
Summary and Reflections
I.
We indicated in the Introduction that our consideration
of Hegel's conception of the relation between theory and
practice looked in two directions. On the one hand it
looked ahead to contemporary revolutionary thought,
characterized by a kind of synthesis of Marxism and existentialism which, guided by the interpretation of
Kojeve, we suggested could be understood only on the
basis of Hegel. On the other hand it looked back to the
Platonic-Aristotelian view of the relation between
philosophy and the city, which Hegel rejects with decisive consequences for his thought as a whole. Now we
must summarize our findings with a view to these two
themes, which we shall consider in reverse order.
II.
The most explicit classical discussion of theoria and
praxis is found in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. There
Aristotle poses the relation between theory and practice
in terms of the difference between their respective objects. Theoria is concerned with what cannot be otherwise
than it is, what is necessary and hence eternal. Praxis is
concerned with what can be changed by man (within the
category of praxis in the wider sense, praxis in the narrower sense differs from poiesis-which also concerns
what can be changed by man-in that its product is
embedded in its very process rather than remaining in
the world after the process leading to it has been completed) and is guided by its own kind of sight, namely
the phronesis of the statesman, which is for almost all purposes independent of theoretical sophia as episteme completed by nous.
With a view to Hegel's thought, there are two things
to be said about Aristotle's treatment of theory and practice. First, Hegel accepts, with far-reaching consequences,
the Aristotelian characterization of the proper objects of
theoria, namely what cannot be otherwise than it is, what
is necessary and hence eternal. But second, Aristotle's
discussion of the relation between theory and practice is
distinctly derivative-in this as in other respects he seems
remote from the experience of Socrates-and as such blurs
the essential conflict between the men of action and the
philosophers which is decisive for classical political
philosophy as a whole. From the point of view of Platonic political philosophy-and in moral/political matters
Hegel's thought is as emphatically oriented toward Plato as his metaphysics (especially the importance of energeia and noeseos noesis) is decisively influenced by
Aristotle-the relation between theory and practice
presents itself most concretely as the relation between the
philosopher and the city. Thus the center of Plato's po-
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�litical philosophy is the cave parable in Book VII of the
Republic, in which the life of the philosopher who leaves
the cave and the life of those who remain within the cave
are not only emphatically distinguished abut also held
together, albeit in tension. The ground of the possibility
of their being held together, as also the ground of the
necessity of their tension, is that according to Plato's
presentation those who remain in the cave are also concerned with seeing or understanding, just as are those
who leave the cave. Moreover, both are concerned with
understanding the same matters: the "originals" with
which the philosopher, at the summit of his ascent, comes
face to face, are originals precisely of those images which
all in the cave are trying to understand. Thus Plato
presents us with an intransigent alternative: if the life of
the philosopher is lived according to the truth and within the truth, then the lives of those who do not leave
the cave-namely those who engage in the merely "practical" and "poetic" activities of the city-are lived outside of the truth; either the ideas or the gods of the
city-hence the trial of Socrates for impiety. The fundamental determinant of Hegel's conception of the relation between theory and practice is his attempt to
integrate what Plato had deemed incapable of integration,
namely political life and religion on the one hand and
philosophy on the other, so that the lives of the many
might not be outside of the truth. 10
Thus the terms in which Hegel takes up the problem
of the relation between theory and practice are fundamentally those of Plato rather than Aristotle (not that there
is a simple opposition between the two, but rather that
Aristotle's discussion is more derivative in character). We
may therefore ask whether, starting from Plato, one is
forced to accept the Aristotelian understanding of theoria (which, as we have said, Hegel does accept) according
to which its proper objects are those objects only which
cannot be otherwise than they are, which are necessary
and hence unchangeable and eternal. At first glance it
seems that Plato surely holds that the proper object of
true knowledge must be unchangeable rather than
changeable, so that the noetic world is distinguished from
the world of the senses precisely by its unchangeableness.
This is the interpretation of Aristotle-and indeed the ordinary interpretation-according to which the doctrine of
ideas was for Plato the solution to the problem posed by
the Heraclitean world of flux in which nothing stays put
long enough to be known, with which world Plato had
been made familiar when young by Cratylus (Metaphysics, 987 30 ff.) But one may wonder whether the "transcendence" of the ideas can be understood simply in
terms of the superiority of the unchangeable to the
changeable. Plato's language surely suggests, at least
some of the time, a transcendence in splendor and radiance. Let us consider an attempt to state the meaning of
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the transcendence of the ideas in terms other than those
of changeableness and unchageableness11 :
It seems that two kinds of phenomena lend support to Socrates' assertion [of the doctrine of ideas in the Republic]. In
the first place, the mathematical things as such can never be
found among sensible things; no line drawn on sand or paper
is a line as meant by the mathematician. Secondly and above
all, what we mean by justice and kindred things is not as such
in its purity or perfection necessarily found in human beings
or societies; it rather seems that what is meant by justice transcends everything which men ever achieve; precisely the
justest men were and are the ones most aware of the shortcomings of their justice.
The first thing to be noticed about this interpretation
is that according to it what we may roughly call "moral
phenomena'' have an incomparably higher noetic status
in Plato than in Aristotle: the doctrine of the transcendence of the ideas is the core of Platonic metaphysics and
that doctrine finds its most important support in moral
experience. It is because of what he hopes to learn regarding the unity of the whole from "moral phenomena" that
Plato so relentlessly attempts to drive beyond the evident
multiplicity of virtue-the virtue of a citizen, the virtue
of a woman, the virtue of a child, the virtue of a slavetoward their unity; whereas Aristotle considers it foolish to seek such a unity of virtue since, after all, nothing
about the affairs of the city need reflect the unity of the
whole.
The second thing to be noticed about Strauss' interpretation is that, although the idea of justice in the sense of
the question concerning justice is eternal (coeval with man
on earth), those experiences from which one can learn
about justice do not at all seem to be incapable of being
otherwise. According to Strauss' interpretation, those experiences which teach the most about such things as
justice-hence, for Plato, contrary to Aristotle, which are
most revelatory of the whole of being-are those experiences in which the most just men learn the limits of
their justice. And it seems that-precisely because of the
transcendence of the ideas-one can assume in advance
neither that the full range of those experiences has been
exhausted at a given time-hence there would seem to
be in Plato, contrary to Aristotle, an opening toward the
possibility of revelation-nor that there is any necessity
about the way in which such experiences unfold. (After
all, Aristotle's concept of "necessity" is inseparable from
his concepts of energeia and dunamis, which he introduces
in express polemic against the Platonic chorismos thesis,
for the sake of explaining change in the sensible world.)
The eternity-not necessity-of the idea of justice would
thus mean the constant demand that the lover of wisdom
try to understand in a unified way the variety of experiences in which the most just men learn the limits of
their justice. Thus the transcendence of the ideas would
137
�be understood not primarily in terms of unchangeableness-what cannot be otherwise, is necessary and hence
eternal-but rather in terms of a divined wholeness or
(since the wholeness sought could not be a merely additive matter) a divined unity.
The point of these remarks, highly tentative and incomplete as they are, is that Hegel's metaphysics, as a
"metaphysics of morals," commits one to a philosophy
of history dominated by the category of necessity only
on condition that one accepts-as Hegel does-the
Aristotelian account of the character of the proper objects
of theoria, which account is, however, oriented upon a
"metaphysics of nature." That there could be a
"metaphysics of morals" leading to a non-necessitarian
philosophy of history, namely a philosophy of stories
which would seek, without help from the category of
necessity, the unity of those stories which somehow most
compel attention, is at least indicated by the interpretation of Plato which, following a hint in Strauss, we have
suggested. But this is not the way which Hegel takes.
III.
We must now summarize our findings with respect to
Hegel's relation to the view of man characteristic of contemporary revolutionary thought which, following
Kojeve, we may understand provisionally as a synthesis
of Marxist and Heideggerian thought. (We mean of
course the early Heidegger, above all the author of Sein
und Zeit.) According to Kojeve, the superiority of the
modern (Marxist-existentialist) view of man to the classical view lies in its greater concreteness. Thus Descartes,
Kojeve suggests, merely summarizes the anthropology
of the whole previous tradition of philosophy when, starting from the cogito ergo sum, he proceeds immediately to
an explication of the "I think" without first explicating
the "I am." In opposition to this procedure, Marx holds
that before reflecting on one's thinking activity one must
first reflect on the concrete conditions of one's being as
such. Marx understands these conditions primarily in
terms of the historical world created fundamentally by
labor as technological transformation of nature and
derivatively by revolutionary political struggle. Heidegger also holds that before reflecting on the purely theoretical subject one must reflect on the concrete conditions
of his being. (It is true but not immediately relevant that
Heidegger claims in Being and Time to be concerned with
the being of man only for the sake of gaining clarity about
being as such.) Heidegger, however, does not primarily
understand those concrete conditions in terms of history (still less in terms of economic history or any "rational" history at all), but rather in terms of the temporality
of the individual human subject who is, concretely understood, no mere theoretical (beholding) subject, concerned only with being intelligently present to Being in
138
its sheer presence (ousia=parousia for Heidegger's interpretation of classical ontology), but rather is always
constituted by his particular memories of the past and
care for the future, and above all by his consciousness,
whether lucidly sustained or furtively evaded, that he
must die.
We said in the Introduction that according to Kojeve's
interpretation, "Hegel succeeded in holding together
themes which later, in Marx and Heidegger, become
separated to the detriment of a true view of human existence: Marx knows of political struggle and of labor as
technological transformation of nature but he loses sight
of human freedom as consciousness of death; Heidegger knows of human freedom as consciousness of death
but neglects political struggle and labor, hence cannot
give an account of concrete human existence." We shall
now briefly review those passages in the Phenomenology
which strongly support Kojeve' s interpretation, and then
marshall several considerations which would have to be
opposed to that interpretation.
1. In the Preface to the Phenomenology Hegel stresses
not only the importance of the right understanding of
subjectivity for the right understanding of being as a
whole, but also and especially that subjectivity must be
understood as negativity: the "I" of the "I think" is not
always one and the same; it becomes, creates itself in and
through re-making the world in which it finds itself; but
creation of the new presupposes destruction of the given
at least as regards ''form''; the motive for creation of the
new is dissatisfaction with the given; man's primary relation to the whole is one of disharmony, dissonance;
only at the end of history, when the self-made man confronts a world which he has himself made (formally if not
materially) does harmony reign.
2. In Chapter IV of the Phenomenology Hegel sets forth
the dialectics of master and slave, set in motion by the
fundamental passions of desire for recognition or prestige on the one hand and fear of violent death on the
other, in terms of which both labor as technological transformation of nature and political struggle are to be understood, whether these are seen to culminate in the
French Revolution as Hegel thought or the Communist
Revolution as Kojeve thinks.
3. Also in Chapter IV, Hegel affirms the superiority of
Christian existence which, refusing to separate ''pure
thinlcing" from "particular existence," demands "the
resurrection of the body,'' over against Stoicism, which
Hegel interprets as the existential outcome of the Socratic school and which settles for the fulfillment or perfection of the "agent intellect."
4. In Chapter V, in his discussion of phrenology and
physiognomy, Hegel enunciates the doctrine that "the
being of a man is his deed": one must act in order to become an individual, and one is no more than one does,
WINTER 1986
�whereby what one does has a purely "objective" (i.e.,
intersubjective and historical) meaning. This passage, incidentally, provides ample support for Kojeve's interpretation of Hegel as an atheist, at least in one important
sense: the radical depreciation of what is inner-the realm
of intentions-as strictly unknowable, presupposes that
there is no God who can see into the hearts of men and
render judgment accordingly. There is no more atheistic
assertion in Hegel's philosophy than: "World history is
the world court of justice." Whether atheism-namely,
in this context, the impossibility of certain knowledge
regarding what remains inner-commits one to the radical depreciation of the inner as "unactual" is perhaps
difficult to say; certainly, however, the converse is true:
one who believes that a man is no more than he has done,
must be an atheist.
Against Kojeve's interpretation, however, one would
have to say:
1. Hegel's Aristotelianism, or perhaps one should say
his "biologism"-in any case the doctrine of the presence
of the telos in the beginning not as a mere norm but as
effectively moving-is finally incompatible with an understanding of human existence as "founded" on a future which is sheer possibility. Nor can this difficulty be
removed merely by saying as Kojeve does that Hegel's
dialectical natural science, which as such is "magical,"
must be rejected while his dialectical human science is
retained. What is at issue is not whether nature is or is
not dialectical in the sense of "dialectical" preferred by
Kojeve-namely, "determined" out of a future which is
sheer possibility-but rather what Hegel means by "dialectical"; and that seems to Hegel to be as adequately
expressed in terms of bud, blossom and fruit as of ancien
regime, revolution and counter-revolution. Moreover, as
we have seen, Hegel unambiguously maintains (in the
Preface and in Chapter V) that the end is presupposed
in the beginning when he is expressly speaking of Geist,
namely of man's historical relation to being as a whole.
2. Standing against the existentialist interpretation of
Hegel is also what one may call Hegel's Spinozism, namely his conception that only the whole is in the strict sense
actual. This conception leads to a transmoral notion of
guilt-every part as such being guilty (only the whole being innocent) insofar as in affirming itself it necessarily
violates the equally valid rights of other parts-which determines Hegel's analysis of Greek tragedy, his critique
of the beautiful soul, and his understanding of the passion of Christ as the experience of the death of God.
Kojeve, who apparently agrees with Hegel's official
judgement on Spinoza's philosophy-that in it "the subject is merely submerged, not upheld" -does not appear
to wonder whether Hegel is perhaps in the end not so
far from Spinoza as Kojeve' s existentialist interpretation
requires. But one must wonder about this.
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
3. One must also be much more serious than Kojeve
is with regard to the theological character of Hegel's
thought. Who after all can doubt the theological origin
of Hegel's assertion in the Introduction to the Phenomenology that "the Absolute already is and wills to be with
us"? Indeed Kojeve' s rather vulgar prejudice against
religion in general (whose deepest root he takes to be that
fear of death which all" adults" have overcome) vitiates
his presentation of Hegel's thought in various ways. Thus
according to his interpretation, Hegel presents Greek
tragedy as resting upon the relegation of labor-wherein
alone according to Kojeve individuality and activity (as
distinct from mere being) are reconciled-to the periphery of the polis, which was essentially an orgattization of
masters, i.e., of warriors. This is an ingenious interpretation, but there is scant basis for it in Hegel's text. Hegel
indeed sees the essential tragedy of Greek Sittlichkeit in
the conflict between the city and the family, but he understands that conclict not at all as a conflict between a
laborless city and individuality, but rather as a conflict
between human law and divine law.
One aspect of the neglect by Kojeve of the theological
character of Hegel's thought is roughly identical with his
neglect of the Aristotelian character of that thought, particularly of the priority of energeia over dunamis whereby
the future is not sheer possibility but rather is profoundly guaranteed. But even more misleading is Kojeve' s imputation to Hegel of the view-that religion arises out of
cowardice and wishful thinking, and that adequate human self-consciousness requires atheism as the acceptance, dictated by intellectual honesty, of man's utter lack
of support in the universe and above all as required by
man's "infinite pride" which is the driving force of his
self-creation in history. No one should wish to enlist
Hegel under the banner of orthodox Christianity; but
neither was he guilty of the contemporary puerilities
which Kojeve ascribes to him with regard to religious
matters.
Appendix A
Aristotle on Actuality and Potentiality
On the basis of the agreement between Hegel and
Aristotle as to the divinity of noeseos noesis, the decisive
question whether God can come to be in time is seen to
depend on the mode of the presence of the telos in the
beginning. We must determine Aristotle's thought in this
respect as carefully as we can. We turn first to Aristotle's
discussion of the priority of energeia over against dunamis
in Book IX, Chapter VIII of the Metaphysics.
Aristotle states that energeia is prior to dunamis in logos
(later used interchangeably with gnosis), in ousia, andin one sense though not in another-in time. The case
of logos or speech and gnosis or knowledge is relatively
139
�clear. We know and are able to speak of some thing or
kind of thing as capable of seeing, for example, because
we know it to have actually seen. Although qualifications
would eventually be necessary, it is generally true that
we are able to speak of capabilities or potentialities only
because we have at some time seen them actualized.
The priority in one sense but not in another of energeia
over dunamis in time is also clear as far as it goes, but it
points beyond itself. Aristotle says that dunamis is temporally prior in the sense that before this man there was
this embryo, but prior to this embryo there was another
(specifically but not numerically identical) man: "For it
is always by a thing in energeia that another thing becomes
energeia from what it was potentially; for example, a man
by a man and the musical by the musical, as there is always a first mover, and this mover already exists in
energeia.''
But a discussion of whether and in what sense energeia
is temporally prior to dunamis is necessarily inconclusive,
for the reason that Aristotle teaches the eternity of the
visible world, so that priority in the decisive respect must
be not a matter of before and after in time, but rather a
question of rank of being, a question concerning ousia or
beingness. Aristotle indeed maintains the priority of energeia with respect to beingness. His argument is articulated into three crucial assertions. First, the higher is
efficacious, or nature tends toward the higher. Second,
form is higher in rank, higher with respect to beingness,
than matter, hence the formed is higher than the unformed. Third, form at work, form which is fully energeia, is higher in rank than form which is merely present
or not at work. For example, a man is higher in rank than
a boy, but a man performing manly deeds is still higher
in rank, in beingness. Thus there is motion from the unformed toward form; but when that motion is complete
there is, not "rest" at the level of form, but rather the
sheer blazing forth in actualization/manifestation of selfpossessed form. The decisive point is that both motionsif motion be taken in a broad sense to include the blazing forth of a completed form-are "intended" by nature,
and especially the second: "And so just as teachers think
that they have achieved their end when they have exhibited their pupils at work, it is likewise with nature." And
this "intention" is efficacious-all that is tends toward
actualization-not by virtue of the past or heredity or
"recollection in the widest sense" (which Kojeve suggests
is the foundation of biological existence in general, upon
which he takes Aristotle's thought to be exclusively
oriented, as distinct from human existence which is
"founded" on a future which is sheer possibility), which
might seem to be implied by Aristotle's comments about
the temporal priority of man to embryo, but rather by virtue of the lure of a possible future, whose possibility as
a real possibility is secured by the energeia of the eternal
140
prime mover, as Aristotle says a few sentences later. How
the eternal prime mover has efficacy in the mode of lure
we must briefly explain, although we shall limit ourselves
to one aspect of the matter.
It is well known that in Book XII of the Metaphysicswherein the analysis of motion (Physics) and the analysis of knowing (Book III of De Anima) converge in such
a way that the first cause of motion is revealed as noeseos
noesis-God is presented as moving the universe by being an object of desire, Himself unmoved. But to understand this thought somewhat more exactly, we may
perhaps begin with a passage in Book II of De Anima concerning what Aristotle calls the nutritive soul (415a27-b8):
Its operations are reproduction and the assimilation of food.
For this is the most natural operation among living creatures
... namely to reproduce one's kind, an animal producing
an animal and a plant a plant in order that they may participate in the eternal and divine in the only way they can; for
all strive for this, and for the sake of this act according to nature ... Since, then, they cannot participate in the eternal
and divine by continuity of existence, because no perishable
thlng can remain numerically one and the same, they participate in these in the only way they can, some to a greater
and some to a lesser extent; what persists is not the individual
itself, but something in its image, identical not numerically
but specifically.
Thus all animate being attempts to participate in, is
moved by its desire for, the "eternal and divine." The
eternal and divine-that means, to strive for the highest
kind of being is to strive to be outside of time; divinity
seems almost to be an epiphenomenon of timelessness,
rather than the other way around, so that it is difficult
not to be reminded of Nietzsche's analysis of classical
philosophy as animated by "the spirit of revenge" as
"the revulsion of the will against time and its 'it was."'
However that may be, plants and animals share in the
eternal and divine, not individually, but by virtue of the
everlastingness of their species. Everlastingness is the
most perfect reflection or approximation within time of
the eternal in the sense of the timeless. The heavenly bodies possess a still more perfect kind of being, since not
by mere participation in a species, but in their very individuality, they enjoy everlastingness as the product of
their orexis toward the most perfect, i.e., timeless being.
This fact is the ground of Aristotle's assertion in Book VI
of the Ethics that man is by no means the highest being
in the cosmos since, to say nothing of other considerations,
he is inferior to the heavenly bodies. What Aristotle refers
to, of course, and properly inasmuch as the Ethics forms
part of his political writings, is man insofar as he lives
in cities. For man insofar as he transcends the city, namely
man insofar as he engages in contemplation, thereby participating, however intermittently, in the perfect and
timeless life of the divine nous, enjoys not mere everlast-
WINTER 1986
�ingness but actual timelessness: contemplation is according to Aristotle the activity par excellence which is
impervious to time.
Appendix B
The French Revolution and Christianity
We have said, on the basis of texts whose purport,
however strange, seems unmistakable, that the reconciliation with reality which Hegelian wisdom claims to provide requires, above all, insight into two great events: the
life and death of Christ, and the French Revolution culminating in Napoleon; and that according to Hegel the
relation between these two events is such that the second
is a killd of repetition of the first or, more precisely, that
the proper understanding of the second makes possible
for the first time the authentic appropriation, in the mode
of Er-innerung, of the first. Formally considered, the common term between the two events, seemingly so disparate, is according to Hegel a certain understanding of
the relation between part and whole. Therefore the decisive question is: what is the whole of which Hegel, on
the basis of his insight into these events above all others,
recognizes himself to be a part and is thereby reconciled?
Or, what is the meaning of history?
At first sight Hegel appears to give as straightforward
an answer to this question as one could desire: the meaning of history is the progressive realization of freedom
in the world. In a famous passage of his Lectures on the
Philosophy of History, Hegel sketches a development from
the Oriental world, where only one is free, through the
Greek and Roman worlds, where some are free, to the
modem Christian world, shaped by the Reformation
(which Hegel calls "the German Revolution") and the
French Revolution, where all are free. Thus a line runs
from Christ through Luther to the French Revolution distinguishing the modern world from the ancient and signifying the advance of freedom: Plato's Republic is said
in Hegel's Philosophy of Right to be inimical to "freedom"
or u subjectivity" or u subjective freedom."
But although "freedom" is the key term in the
Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of Right (in contrast to the Phenomenology itself where "knowledge" or
"wisdom" occupies the corresponding place; this difference seems to indicate not a shift in Hegel's thought but
rather the greater suitability of "freedom" as a readily
accessible and exciting lecture theme), it is very difficult
to say exactly what Hegel means by the term. Three principal meanings can be distinguished in Hegel's fluent
usage. First, there is freedom as liberal democracy, corresponding with the most obvious meaning of the French
Revolution: the overthrow of "despotism," secular and
clerical, in the name of the "rights of man," the privatization of religion, the emancipation of commerce from
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pre-capitalistic restraints and in general the elaboration
of the distinction between state and society. The second
principal meaning of freedom is that in virtue of which
Hegel regards the Christian view of man as superior to
the classical philosophical view: having discussed this before, we may summarize it here as ''wholeness of personality," symbolized by the "resurrection of the body"
over against the perfection of the "agent intellect" alone.
This is the understanding of freedom which was made
possible by Christ and mediated by Luther. The third
principal meaning of freedom in Hegel's writings is that
intended, in their diverse ways, by Plato and Spinoza,
whereby freedom is understanding, and he who does not
understand is radically unfree, especially if he is unhindered from doing "whatever he likes."
In Hegel's popular presentations, especially the
Philosophy of History, the celebration of freedom seems
most obviously to intend freedom in the first sense, that
of liberal democracy. But this is hardly Hegel's last word
on the subject, as becomes clear if one reflects on his deeply pessimistic characterization of capitalism in the
Philosophy of Right-the inevitable pauperization of the
masses under capitalism leads directly to imperialism and
finally has no other remedy than war in the interest of
domestic unity (compare paragraphs 245, 246 and 324)-to
say nothing of the much more bitter indictment contained
in the so-called Jena system (which Hegel never published), written before the Phenomenology. Thus although
one must say that Hegel was willing to accept modem
liberal democracy for various reasons-some of them not
so different from the reasons of Spinoza, for examplehis acceptance of it was surely not so unqualified as to
enable him to regard the emergence of liberal democracy, taken by itself, as the meaning of history. Rather, it
was freedom in the other two senses which we have
distinguished-Christian freedom as "wholeness of personality" and Platonic freedom as wisdom-whose emergence Hegel regarded as constituting the meaning of
history, and in view of which he affirmed himself to be
reconciled. And of the two, Hegel understood the former to terminate in the latter: when he criticizes classical
philosophy for having severed "pure thinking" from Einzelnheit, he has in view not at all the replacement of "pure
thinkillg" by Einzelnheit but rather the integration and
redemption of Einzelnheit within "pure thinking." The
meaning of history is the emergence of wisdom.
Thus wisdom recognizes that the meaning of history
is the emergence of wisdom, of itself. But what is therelation between recognition and reconciliation? Or, what
is the temper or mood of Hegel's "reconciliation with
reality"? Is Hegel's view more like Aristotle's (according
to which happiness from understanding depends on the
intrinsic goodness of what is understood: as Aristotle
puts it in Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, "there are
141
�some things which it is better not to see than to see");
or is it more like Spinoza's (according to which intellectual joy derives from the understanding of necessity as
such, in which the primarily good and evil are subsumed
and neutralized)? Conclusive texts are lacking, but it is
difficult not to feel that Hegel is very far from Aristotle
in this matter.
Hegel's Phenomenology will be incorporated in the text by page
number only, with reference always to Volume II of this edi-
tion of Hegel's works. Ed.]
4. Ibid., Vol. XV, p. 328
5. Alexandre Kojeve, Hegel, Versuch einer Gegenwarligung seines
Denkes (Stuttgart: Kolhammer, 1958)
6. The exposition offered here is greatly indebted to Martin
Heidegger's commentary on the ''Introduction'' to the Phenomenology, found in Holzwege (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann,
1950), pp. 105-192.
Notes
1. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (Anchor
Books; New York: Doubleday and Co., 1961), p. 135
2. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,
trans. R. Milligan (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 19560, p. 80
3. G.W.F. Hegel, Samtliche Werke, ed. Hoffmeister (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1928- ), Vol. II, p. 19 [Hereafter all citations of
142
7. Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality, trans. Kate Loewenberg (New York: Dover Publications, In., 1962), p. 43
8. Kojeve, op. cit., pp. 51-7, 67, 211-12, 223
9. Hegel, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 40
10. Compare Hegel, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 462-4 (Encyclopedia
of the Philosophical Sciences, 3rd ed., paragraph 552)
11. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (New York: Rand-McNally,
1964), p. 120
WINTER 1986
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Coughlin, Maria
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O'Grady, William
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The St. John’s Review
Volume XLVII, number three (2004)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Shanna Coleman
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson,
President; Harvey Flaumenhaft, Dean. For those not on the
distribution list, subscriptions are $10.00 for one year.
Unsolicited essays, reviews, and reasoned letters are welcome.
Address correspondence to the Review, St. John’s College,
P Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are
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Bookstore.
©2004 St. John’s College. All rights reserved; reproduction
in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
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The St. John’s Public Relations Office and the St. John’s College Print Shop
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
3
Contents
Essays and Lectures
Educating by ‘the Question Method’:
The Example of Kierkegaard.........................................5
Mark W. Sinnett
What It Means To Be Human:
Aristotle on Virtue and Skill........................................43
Corinne Painter
Reviews
Kant’s Afterlife
Immanuel Kant’s Opus Postumum...............................59
Eva Brann
Odysseus’s World of the Imagination
Eva Brann’s Homeric Moments....................................87
Paul Ludwig
The City: Intersection of Erôs and Thumos?
Paul Ludwig’s Erôs and Polis.....................................105
Michael Dink
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
5
Educating by ‘the Question
Method’: The Example of
Kierkegaard
Mark W Sinnett
.
“There was a young man as favorably endowed as an
Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he
looked about for a Socrates but found none among his
contemporaries. Then he requested the gods to change him
into one.” This is an entry in the Journal of Søren
Kierkegaard from the winter of 1842,1 when he was putting
the finishing touches on his first great aesthetic work,
Either/Or. It is a reference to the pseudonymous author of the
texts that compose the first volume of Either/Or, and as such
it contains within it both the purpose and the origin of
Kierkegaard’s entire literary work. Kierkegaard’s works
embody the attempt of this gifted young man to be the
Socrates whom he could not otherwise find among his
contemporaries; they represent Kierkegaard’s attempt to
educate by what he calls “the question method,” to educate
by the method he has learned from his own teacher, “the
simple wise man of antiquity.”
In My Left Hand and in My Right
In the midst of the long-standing and ongoing disarray of
scholarly interpretation of Kierkegaard, there are two facts
on which there is general agreement. The first of these
presents us the fundamental problem in understanding
Kierkegaard’s work, while the second, as I argue, presents us
the solution.
Everyone knows, first, that Kierkegaard divided his
writings into two streams: the works, such as Either/Or, Fear
Mark Sinnett is a tutor on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College. This
lecture was delivered at Annapolis on April 6, 2001.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
and Trembling, and Philosophical Fragments, which are
populated by various pseudonymous authors and editors; and
the “religious” works, such as the six volumes of Edifying
Discourses published concurrently with the above works in
1843-44, and signed in Kierkegaard’s own name.2
Kierkegaard’s rather elliptical explanation of this curious
procedure is given in The Point of View for My Work as an
Author which he wrote (but did not publish) in 1848. Written
in anticipation of the republication of Either/Or, the The
Point of View emphasizes that his writings have been misread
and misunderstood, but that from the proper “point of view”
they can be understood “in every detail” (16). The misunderstanding in question, Kierkegaard explains, is inseparable
from the fact that he has come to be regarded as an aesthetic
writer turned religious. He asserts, to the contrary, that he has
been a “religious author” from the beginning; that “the
whole of my work as an author is related to Christianity, to
the problem ‘of becoming a Christian’, with a direct or indirect polemic against the monstrous illusion we call
Christendom” (5-6). This is demonstrated, he says, by the fact
that from the beginning of his authorship his pseudonymous,
“aesthetic” works were accompanied by “religious” works
signed in his own name. The “duplicity,” thus, “dated from
the very start. For the Two Edifying Discourses are contemporaneous with Either/Or. The duplicity in the deeper sense,
that is, in the sense of the authorship as a whole, is not at all
what was a subject of comment at the time: the contrast
between the two parts of Either/Or. No, the duplicity is discovered by comparing Either/Or and the Two Edifying
Discourses” (11).
Unfortunately, however, not only did no one undertake
this comparison, virtually no notice of any kind was taken of
the little volume of discourses, notwithstanding its relatively
greater significance. “Although Either/Or attracted all the
attention, and nobody noticed the Two Edifying Discourses,
this book betokened, nevertheless, that the [upbuilding]3 was
precisely what must come to the fore, that the author was a
SINNETT
7
religious author, who for this reason has never written
anything aesthetic, but has employed pseudonyms for all the
aesthetic works, whereas the Two Edifying Discourses were
by Magister Kierkegaard” (12).4 The popular success of the
pseudonymous work was very gratifying, especially that of
“The Seducer’s Diary”—“how wonderful!”—but it was of no
avail since no attention was paid to the “contemporaneous”
discourses, another instance of the all too frequent phenomenon that “things of the most vital importance often seem
insignificant, . . . [like] ‘a little flower hidden in the great
forest, not sought out either for its beauty, or for its scent, or
because it was nourishing’” (19). And he summarizes the mishandling of his works as follows: “I held out Either/Or to the
world in my left hand, and in my right the Two Edifying
Discourses; but all, or as good as all, grasped with their right
what I held in my left” (20); and, we may add, grasped not at
all what he held in his right.5
These remarks, brief as they are, furnish certain basic
parameters for the interpretation of Kierkegaard’s authorship, namely, that what is offered with the left hand is to be
received with the left hand and, simultaneously, what is
offered with the right is to be received with the right. Until
quite recently there have been no interpretations of the writings that satisfy these parameters. The “true explanation,”
nevertheless, “is at hand and ready to be found by him who
honestly seeks it” (16). It is to be found, as we shall see, in
Kierkegaard’s references to his “dialectical position” (6), to
the “dialectical” character of his authorship (15), to “dialectical reduplication” (16, 17), to his “indirect method” that
“arranges everything dialectically” (25), to “patient finger
exercises in the dialectical” (38), to “the criss-cross of dialectics” (39)—and many more can be adduced.
This brings us to the second generally accepted fact about
Kierkegaard’s work; namely, that his “dialectical method” is
also his “Socratic method” (40); in other words, that his
procedure is inspired by the “simple wise man of antiquity”
who is his “teacher” (41). Although many have written about
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Kierkegaard’s use of Socratic “irony,” and referred to
Kierkegaard’s maieutic role as “midwife,” and even to
Socratic “dialogue,” we find nowhere in the secondary literature a detailed comparison between Kierkegaard’s efforts and
his Socratic model as presented in Plato’s dialogues.
The insight that emerges from a close, comparative reading of the chronologically associated texts, and that makes
sense of the “duplicity” of the authorship as a whole, is that
these texts constitute between them the question and answer
of Socratic dialectic. The reason both sides of the authorship
are needed—the reason the dramatis personae on both sides
have a real dramatic role to play—the reason Kierkegaard
insists his intended meaning will emerge only through
“comparing” the pseudonymous works with their associated
discourses—is that the associated texts constitute between
them a “conversation” (dialektos), a dialogue, within which
“Magister Kierkegaard,” speaking in his own voice, is able to
critically examine the perspectives of his own pseudonyms,
and thus to apply his “indirect polemic against the monstrous
illusion we call Christendom.”
The task of understanding this dialectical structure of the
authorship of Kierkegaard requires that we understand the
inspiration he received through the example of Socrates. We
begin our quest for this understanding with Kierkegaard’s
discussion of Socratic dialectic—what he calls “the question
method”—in his doctoral dissertation, The Concept of Irony,
with Continual Reference to Socrates.
The Question Method
The significance of Socrates in The Concept of Irony lies in his
being, in Kierkegaard’s view, the originator of irony (9).
Among the members of the “Socratic movement” known to
him—Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes—Kierkegaard
prefers the latter two, laying particular emphasis upon the
“narrative” and “dramatic” dialogues of the one and the
Clouds of the other. Clearly realizing that all of these texts are
artistic constructions, Kierkegaard nevertheless believes that
SINNETT
9
the “genuinely Socratic” can be recovered from them through
careful comparative study. But this brings us to what
Kierkegaard regards as the single most important source of
the “Socratic,” Plato’s Apology, which, he believes, presents
us “an authentic picture of the actual Socrates” (80).
The first lesson we learn from Apology, according to
Kierkegaard, concerns the utter “negativity” of Socrates. This
is illustrated in the course of Socrates’ defense by his indifference to the order of the family (184-85)6 and to the
collective authority of the state (193-94).7 This implies, says
Kierkegaard, Socrates’ “completely negative relation” both to
the “state” (160) and to “the established order with respect to
religion” (168). The latter is especially clear in Socrates’
reliance on the daimonion, whose silence in the face of the
Council’s death penalty persuades Socrates that he has nothing to fear from it (Apol. 40B-C). This suggests, according to
Kierkegaard, not only the privacy of Socrates’ religious life in
what is otherwise a very public Greek world (160-61), but
the silence that is here substituted for the “divine eloquence”
that permeated the whole of Greek religion (161). This is
consistent with the characteristic of the daimonion, which,
even if it is “something divine,” is “something that precisely
in its abstraction is above definition, is unutterable and
indescribable, since it allows no vocalization” (158). And the
negativity of Socrates is confirmed, Kierkegaard asserts,
by the same qualities of abstraction and silence in the
“dramatic” dialogues: the negative character of love as an
“empty longing” in Symposium (45, 46, 49); the “total
negativity” of teaching in Protagoras (52); the completely
“negative” views of death and of the soul in Phaedo (64, 71);
and the “negative conclusion” of Republic, book 1 (111,
115). What is significant, Kierkegaard insists, is that in each
case the discussion ends, not simply with no conclusion, but
with a “negative conclusion”; in other words, that it ends, not
simply with no positive result, but with Socrates’ “ironic
smile” at the vacuous result (57).
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
This suggests the quality that is actually Kierkegaard’s
principal concern, namely, the irony in which the negativity
of Socrates is properly expressed. Apology, once again, is a
good illustration, for its “total structure” lets “Socrates’
position become apparent as irony” (79). For example, in
speaking, not in his own defense but on his accusers’ behalf
(Apol. 30D), “lest they sin against the gift of the deity” (96),
the relation of prosecution and defendant has been unexpectedly reversed, demonstrating not only the lack of any real
point of contact between Socrates and his accusers (88), but
“the ironic infinite elasticity, the secret trap-door through
which one suddenly plunges down . . . into irony’s infinite
nothing” (26). In Socrates, in short, Kierkegaard sees “irony
in all its divine infinitude, which allows nothing whatever to
endure” (40).
That “irony levels everything” (79), moreover, is in
Kierkegaard’s view no accidental circumstance: it is not
simply expressive of Socrates’ “negative relation” to the
established order of things, but the means of his conscious
and unrelenting challenge to it. The irony of Apology, thus, is
not simply Socrates’ failure to present any real defense, but
the fact that it is Athens that is on trial and Socrates who is
proceeding as “counsel for the prosecution” (173). The irony
of his “wisdom” was the weaponry of his “campaign” (175),
the means of his “cutting off all communication with the
besieged, . . . which starved the garrison out of opinions,
conceptions, time-honored traditions, etc. that had been
adequate for the person concerned.” He purposed, not to
supply “the idea” which he had glimpsed, but, by the
application of that “causticity . . . which nothing can resist”
(206), to strip away anything and everything that stood in the
way. Although his “total skepticism” (115) often invited comparison with that of the Sophists, Socrates singled out the
“teachers of wisdom” for his most intense “polemic” (209,
210): “When the Sophists, in good company, had befogged
themselves in their own eloquence, it was Socrates’ joy to
introduce, in the most polite and modest way of the world, a
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slight draft that in a short time expelled all these poetic
vapors” (37). Socrates’ irony was the means of his challenge
to both the ancient order of the polis and the Sophists’
attempted “surrogate” order; it was the “the glaive, the twoedged sword that he swung like an avenging angel over
Greece” (211).
Of course Socrates is especially known for the particular
means by which he presented his challenge: As illustrated by
his examination of Meletus and Anytus in Apology (24C-28A),
his “customary way is that of asking questions” (45). The
“question method” (55), which Kierkegaard also describes as
Socrates’ “dialectical method” (124), was precisely the means
of his challenge to the surrounding culture. Socrates begins
his inquiry where people already are—“on the periphery, in
the motley variety of life endlessly interwoven within itself ”
(32)—and “an exceptional degree of art is needed to unravel
not only itself but also the abstract of life’s complications.”
The “art” in question is “the Socratically disciplined
dialogue,” “the rather well-known Socratic art of asking
questions or, to recall the necessity of dialogue for Platonic
philosophy, the art of conversing” (33).
This art is preserved by Plato, the dialogical form of
whose writings appear, in Kierkegaard’s view, to be not only
inspired by but also intended as an extension of Socrates’ life
and teaching (30, 188-89). What we find in Plato’s dialogues,
according to Kierkegaard, is a Socrates created by “poetic
productivity” (15, 18, 125), and a literary form engendered
by the “epoch-making” experience of him (29). And thus is
revealed Socrates’ significance “in the world-historical development”; namely, “to be the infinite beginning that contains
within itself a multiplicity of beginnings” (216-17), including
the “beginning” undertaken by Kierkegaard himself in 1843.
We are surely entitled to ask, however, what this “beginning” really amounts to. If the result of Socratic inquiry is
simply “negativity”—if, as already suggested, this method
“allows nothing whatever to endure”—is it not better
described as the end rather than as a “beginning”? What we
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will now discover in considering somewhat more fully
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the nature of inquiry is that
“the question method,” both in the classical tradition and in
his own employment of it, is neither “negative,” nor “positive,” but always in between the two.
The In-Between Structure of Inquiry
“To ask a question,” Kierkegaard insists, “ultimately became
the primary issue for [Socrates]” (37). The crucial point is
that Kierkegaard regards this endeavor as being a form of
knowing. The polemic Socrates directed at the established
religious tradition, for instance, reflected his intimation of
better things to come: “The heavenly host of gods rose from
the earth and vanished from mortal sight, but this very
disappearance was the condition for a deeper relationship”
(173-74). Socrates’ insight represented, in this respect, “the
beginning of infinite knowledge” (174) and a “new direction”
for the age (175). According to Kierkegaard all of Socrates’
inquiry implies his apprehension of a reality worthy of being
explored and more fully understood. He describes Socrates’
questioning of his fellow citizens as the means by which “the
bonds of their prejudices were loosed . . . [and] their intellectual sclerosis was softened” (190)8; but “when his questions
had straightened everything out and made the transformation
possible, then the relation culminated in the meaningful
moment, in the brief silvery gleam that instantly illuminated
the world of their consciousness.”9
Kierkegaard elaborates on this image by means of a story
about “an Englishman who traveled in order to see the sights”:
When he came to a mighty forest and found a
place where he could open up an amazing vista by
having the intervening woods cut, he hired people
to saw through the trees. When everything was
ready, when the trees were sawed through for
toppling, he climbed up to this spot, took out his
binoculars, gave the signal—the trees fell, and his
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eyes instantaneously delighted in the enchanting
view, which was even more seductive because in
almost the same moment he had the opposite. (190)
“So also,” Kierkegaard says, “with Socrates. By means of his
questions, he quietly sawed through for toppling the primeval
forest of substantial consciousness, and when everything was
ready—look, then all these formations vanished, and the eyes
of the soul delighted in a vista such as they had never seen
before.”10 This illustration is significant in that it suggests the
directionality of questioning. Just as the traveler, glimpsing
the light filtering through the trees, “found a place where he
could open an amazing vista by having the intervening woods
cut,” so Socrates knew how to direct his inquiry so as to
reveal to “the eyes of the soul . . . a vista such as they had
never seen before.” The “ideality” that irony demands is
clearly already present in the desire because, as Kierkegaard
claims, “intellectually that which is desired is always in the
desire already, inasmuch as the desire is regarded as the
agitation of the desired itself in the desiring” (213).
“In Socrates’ demand,” otherwise said, “the satisfaction was
[kata dunamin (potentially)] present” (214). The challenge of
Socrates’ polemic, therefore, was just as much a beginning as
it was an ending, “for the destruction of the earlier development is just as much the ending of this as it is the beginning
of the new development, since the destruction is possible only
because the new principle is already present as possibility.”
This invites comparison with the importance placed
upon questions and the process of questioning in the thought
of such modern philosophers as Gadamer, Lonergan
and Polanyi.11 Kierkegaard’s account of questioning is particularly reminiscent of Eric Voegelin’s understanding of
philosophical inquiry “as a movement in the psyche toward
the [divine] ground that is present in the psyche as its
mover.”12 The philosopher’s wondering and questioning,
Voegelin argues, is itself a form of cognitive participation in
the reality being sought—a “knowing questioning and a
questioning knowledge.”13 As such, “the questioning unrest
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carries the assuaging answer within itself inasmuch as man is
moved to his search of the ground by the divine ground of
which he is in search.”14 “The man who asks questions, and
the divine ground about which the questions are asked, . . .
merge in the experience of questioning as a divine-human
encounter and reemerge as the participants in the encounter
that has the luminosity and structure of consciousness.”15
This realm of divine-human encounter is further characterized by Voegelin as the “In-Between,” or the “metaxy”:
Question and answer are intimately related one
toward the other; the search moves in the metaxy,
as Plato has called it, in the In-Between of poverty
and wealth, of human and divine; the question is
knowing, but its knowledge is yet the trembling of
a question that may reach the true answer or miss
it. This luminous search in which the finding of
the true answer depends on asking the true
question, and the asking of the true question on
the spiritual apprehension of the true answer, is
the life of reason.16
The symbolism of the metaxy is derived from Diotima’s
account of the “spiritual realm” in Plato’s Symposium, a
discussion which it will be helpful (in the following sections)
to bear in mind.17
Inhabited not only by “the great spirit,” Erôs, but also by
the man who has “skill” (sophos) in spiritual matters, “the
whole realm of the spiritual,” Diotima explains, “is in
between [metaxu] the divine and the mortal”; it “is the means
of all relation [homilia] and converse [dialektos] of men with
the gods and of the gods with men” (Symp. 202E-203A). The
“spiritual man” is also described as a “lover of wisdom”
(philosophos); that is, as one (like Erôs) who is neither
“resourceless” or “wealthy,” but “is in the middle between
wisdom and ignorance [sophias te au kai amathias en mesô
estin]” (203E). In order to explain this, Diotima notes that
neither the “gods” nor the “ignorant” (amatheis) are “lovers
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of wisdom” (philosophousin) (203E-204A). The former
already possess wisdom and the latter, though they utterly
lack it, are satisfied with themselves and have no desire for
that of which they feel no defect (204A). “Who then,” asks
Socrates, “are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the
wise nor the ignorant?” Diotima responds: “They are the
ones in between [metaxu] the two, and one of them is Erôs”
(204B). The “lovers of wisdom” are subsequently characterized by Diotima in terms of their loving quest of wisdom and
beauty: Each of them climbs aloft, “as on the rungs of a
ladder, from one to two, and from two to all beautiful bodies, . . . to beautiful institutions, . . . to beautiful learning, and
from learning at last to the special lore which is study of none
other than the beautiful itself [ho estin ouk allou ê autou
ekeinou tou kalou mathêma]” (211C). “Whoever has been
initiated so far in love-matters [ta erôtika], viewing beautiful
things in the right and regular order [theômenos ephexês te
kai orthôs ta kala], suddenly, as he draws near to the end of
his dealings in love, an amazing vision, beautiful in its nature,
may be revealed to him [pros telos êdê iôn tôn erôtikôn
exaiphnês katopsetai ti thaumaston tên phusin kalon]; and
this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils”
(210E).
Here we see the in-between structure of inquiry, the
character of inquiry as being neither empty nor full, neither
ignorant nor wise, neither “negative” nor “positive,” but
always in between. Accordingly, we see also the character of
inquiry as a form of knowing, displaying a rational structure
(as indicated by Diotima’s “ladder”) and providing a sense of
orientation through the intimation of a reality worthy of
being more fully understood, a reality, indeed, that invites the
philosopher into the quest for understanding. This is especially clear in Symposium in that Socrates, in attacking the
uncritical opinion of Agathon as to the beauty of Erôs, admits
that he is only re-enacting the examination by which the
priestess “honored by the god” (diotima) had challenged the
same viewpoint in himself (201E).18 The philosopher’s
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inquiry, in other words, is an encounter in which the philosopher “is moved to his search of the ground by the divine
ground of which he is in search,” or, otherwise said, in which
what is desired is recognized to be “in the desire already,
inasmuch as the desire is regarded as the agitation of the
desired itself in the desiring.”
That Kierkegaard does indeed share this understanding of
the in-between structure of inquiry is confirmed in an entry
from his Journal from 1851: “I certainly do think that my
presentation or illumination of the essentially Christian
comes some points closer to the truth than the proclamation
of Christianity hereabouts ordinarily does—but I am only a
poet.”19 Commenting on this disclaimer, Kierkegaard
concedes that “‘the pastor’ can make capital of this; he can
say: To be a pastor is something higher; a poet, and Magister
Kierkegaard is right here, is inadequate when it comes to the
essentially Christian, and Mag. K. is only a poet—oddly
enough, says so himself.” Kierkegaard then emphasizes, however, that this is not what he said: “I have not said that I,
measured against ‘the pastor,’ that is, every pastor as such, am
only a poet, but measured against the ideal, I am only a poet”
(emphasis added). Similarly, a little farther on, he notes that:
I have also said “that before God I regard my
whole work as an author as my own education”;
I am not a teacher but a learner. Every teacher of
religion, every music teacher, every gymnastics
coach, every part-time teacher may make capital of
this if he wishes and say: There you see what it is
to be a teacher if Magister Kierkegaard, who is for
all that a gifted person, is only a learner, as he
himself says. But I have not said that I, measured
against every part-time teacher, could not be called
a teacher, but that before God, measured against
the ideals for being a teacher, I call myself a learner.
(emphasis added)
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Recalling the ironical stance of Socrates in Symposium, we
recognize here the daimonios aner, the “spiritual man,” who
moves “in between” the amatheis, the spiritual dullards
(represented especially by the “pastor,” complacent in his
authoritative possession of what is “higher”), and transcendent reality (represented here as the “ideal,” embodying the
inexhaustible challenge and invitation of God’s truth);
we find, in other words, the one who is wise only in his
admission of ignorance, who is a teacher only because he is
first and always a learner.
As we now turn to Kierkegaard’s account (in The Point of
View) of his own application of “the question method”—
what he calls the “criss-cross of dialectics”—we will find
Plato’s Symposium a useful guide.
The Criss-Cross of Dialectics
We begin with Kierkegaard’s description of the “monstrous
illusion” of Christendom that he seeks to challenge. A situation in which everyone is automatically certified by the
church and state as a Christian (22-3) indicates the presence
of “a tremendous confusion, a frightful illusion” (23). At the
motivating center of this illusion, Kierkegaard maintains, is a
profound horror at the possibility of uncertainty in relation
to God: in a manner analogous to those in Socrates’ time who
sought the technai, the techniques, with which to insure the
attunement of human society to divine reality,20 the common
characteristic of those residing comfortably within
Christendom is to have suppressed all conscious awareness of
“the problem of ‘becoming a Christian.’” Given that “the
problem,” as a problem, is for Kierkegaard inherent to
Christian faith, the “monstrous illusion” of Christendom can
only be maintained through suppression of this fundamental
question. Kierkegaard’s endeavor, in turn, may then be
described as the effort by means of “the question method”
to restore to his society conscious awareness of “the
problem”; in other words, to gain a hearing for this fundamental question.
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The first thing to be understood about this task,
Kierkegaard says, is that it cannot proceed directly. “Direct
communication,” after all, “presupposes that the receiver’s
ability to receive is undisturbed” (40), a condition that is not
satisfied in the case of those who live in a state of illusion. In
a manner reminiscent of Plato’s contrast between Socratic
inquiry and Sophistic speech-making, Kierkegaard asserts
that there is “an immense difference, a dialectical difference,
between these two cases: the case of a man who is ignorant
and is to have a piece of knowledge imparted to him, so that
he is like an empty vessel which is to be filled or a blank sheet
of paper upon which something is to be written; and the case
of a man who is under an illusion and must first be delivered
from that” (40).21 The “dialectical difference,” furthermore,
corresponds to that “between writing on a blank sheet of
paper and bringing to light by the application of a caustic
fluid a text which is hidden under another text” (40). This
“caustic means” is also described as “negativity” (40),
indicating again the ambition which Kierkegaard shares with
his “teacher” to dispel the mists and clouds of illusion.
Kierkegaard subsequently says that “negativity understood in relation to the communication of the truth is
precisely the same as deception” (40). This “deception,”
Kierkegaard explains, “begins with self-humiliation: the
helper must first humble himself under him he would help,
and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to
be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean
to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to
endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the
wrong and does not understand what the other understands”
(27-8). In this way, precisely as he describes his “teacher”
doing, Kierkegaard begins by getting in touch with a person
where he is (26); not by vaunting himself over the other as
teacher over learner, but by identifying himself with the other
as a fellow learner (29), and thereby submitting himself to the
other’s perspective (30).22
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At this point, however, we discover the ultimate purpose
of the deception, for of course, neither for Socrates nor for
Kierkegaard, is it an end in itself. There is one thing, indeed,
“the author must not forget, namely, his purpose, the distinction between this and that, between the religious as the
decisive thing and the aesthetic incognito—lest the criss-cross
of dialectics end in twaddle” (39). The “criss-cross of dialectics” refers to the conversational collision between the aesthetic and the religious in which Kierkegaard’s aesthetic
deception is intended to involve his unsuspecting readership:
If a man lives . . . in categories entirely foreign to
Christianity, in purely aesthetic categories, and if
some one is capable of winning and captivating
him with aesthetic works, and then knows how to
introduce the religious so promptly that with the
momentum of his abandonment to the aesthetic
the man rushes straight into the most decisive
definitions of the religious—what then? Why, then,
he must take notice. What follows after this, however, no one can tell beforehand. But at least he is
compelled to take notice. (37, emphasis added)
Just as Socrates seduced his interlocutors into conversation
through his repeated admission of ignorance, the religious
writer must begin with the aesthetic in order to gain the
attention and willing participation of the person lost in
aesthetic illusion, but “he must have everything in readiness,
though without impatience, with a view to bringing forward
the religious promptly, as soon as he perceives that he has his
reader with him” (26, emphasis added). The “simultaneous
achievement of aesthetic and religious production,” thus, was
no accident (31-32), for it is the “criss-cross” of the two—the
dialectical interrogation of the former by the latter—that was
intended to bring the inhabitants of Christendom unexpectedly and unwittingly into collision with the challenge of the
“religious.”
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As we began the section by noting this occurs indirectly:
the “indirect method,” in fact, “loving and serving the truth,
arranges everything dialectically for the prospective captive,
and then shyly withdraws (for love is always shy), so as not to
witness the admission which he makes to himself alone before
God—that he has lived hitherto in an illusion” (25-26). By
directing the critique of the discourses at the pseudonymous
perspectives of the aesthetic works, Kierkegaard leaves his
reader free to judge the state of his own existence, just as the
readers of Plato’s writings are left free to judge between the
different participants in the various dialogues.23 Only insofar
as the reader is indeed made “captive” to the pseudonymous
perspectives—only insofar as the reader finds himself in
them—is he then possibly, and “indirectly,” subject to the
challenge of reality, which is what Kierkegaard means by “the
most decisive definitions of the religious.”
This leads to the further similarity with Socrates that is
clear in Kierkegaard’s understanding of his work as commissioned and empowered by “Governance.” His work,
Kierkegaard explains, had to be performed under conditions
of strict “divine discipline” (67). Unlike the poet, who is supplied his thoughts under inspiration of the divine muse,
Kierkegaard “needed God every day to shield [him] from too
great a wealth of thoughts” (68). From the beginning, God’s
“aid” was experienced by Kierkegaard in his being “under
arrest” (69), in his vast talents for “poetical” and “aesthetic”
productivity being under restraint by God. “It is as if a father
were to say to his child: You are allowed to take the whole
thing, it is yours; but if you will not be obedient and use it as
I wish—very well, I shall not punish you by taking it from
you; no, take it as yours . . . it will smash you. Without God
I am too strong for myself, and perhaps in the most agonizing of all ways am broken” (69-70). In the midst of the overwhelming riches of his imaginative capacities, he repeatedly
confronted “the frightful torture of starving in the midst of
abundance” (70).
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This tension between his poetic talents and the divine
“arrest”—what Kierkegaard refers to as the “dialectical
factor” (69) in his work—is subsequently described in terms
of a conversation between himself and “Governance.”
The actual work began with “an occurrence,” a “collision”;
namely, his failed engagement with Regine Olsen.24 “What
was to be done? Well, obviously the poetical had to be evacuated, anything else was impossible for me. But the whole
aesthetic productivity was put under arrest by the religious.
The religious agreed to this elimination but incessantly
spurred it on, as though it were saying, Are you not now
through with that?”
It had been Kierkegaard’s original plan to be “through
with that” (i.e., through with the aesthetic work) very
quickly indeed. “In a certain sense it was not at all my
original intention to become a religious author. My intention
was to evacuate as hastily as possible the poetical [by
publishing Either/Or]—and then go out to a country parish”
(86). On its own, Kierkegaard emphasizes, Either/Or did not
communicate his religious intentions, for “there was as yet no
scale presented, nor was the duplicity posited” (85, n.).
He had initially thought that “the most vigorous expression
of the fact that I had been a religious man and that the
pseudonyms were something foreign to me was the abrupt
transition—to go immediately out in the country to seek
a cure as a country parson” (86); but “the urge of productivity” remained so great within him that he sought another way
to present the “scale” that was needed for the proper
interpretation of Either/Or: “I let the Two Edifying Discourses
come out, and I came to an understanding with Governance.
There was allowed me again a period for poetical productivity, but always under the arrest of the religious, which was on
the watch, as if it said, Will you not soon be through with
that?” The “duplicity” of the authorship, thus, is the outward
expression of the “divine arrest” of “Governance,” the outward expression of the divine inward challenge to
Kierkegaard’s own poetic “reflection.” The dialectic of
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pseudonym and discourse, in other words, is the outward
expression of the inward “dialectical factor,” an outward
expression of Kierkegaard’s inward conversation with God.
Kierkegaard, furthermore, clearly understands the outer,
literary expression of this inner dialogue as the means of his
transmission of God’s challenge to the surrounding society.
He writes, he claims, “without authority” (87), since the
critique that the discourses present to the aesthetic perspectives of the pseudonyms has its origin in the inner “divine
arrest” to his own “poetic production.” Governance, thus,
has “educated” him, “and the education is reflected in the
process of the productivity” (73); he has been “conscious of
being under instruction, and that from the very beginning.”25
This, however, far from disqualifying him as the agent of
God’s challenge to others, is the real source of his power:
And now as for me, the author, what, according to
my opinion, is my relation to the age? Am I perhaps the ‘Apostle’? Abominable! I have never given
an occasion for such a judgment. I am a poor
insignificant person. Am I then the teacher, the
educator? No, not that at all; I am he who himself
has been educated, or whose authorship expresses
what it is to be educated to the point of becoming
a Christian. In the fact that education is pressed
upon me, and in the measure that it is pressed, I
press it in turn upon this age; but I am not a
teacher, only a fellow student. (75, emphasis
added)
The comparison with Socrates is, once again, irresistible.
In Symposium, as we have seen, the examination to which
Socrates subjects the Sophist Agathon is presented as the
re-enactment of the examination to which Socrates had
himself been subjected by Diotima. In both cases, thus, the
Socratic figure not only begins by sharing the delusions of
those around him, but is able to challenge others outwardly
only by means of the challenge he himself has received
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inwardly; he “press[es]” upon others the challenge that “is
pressed upon [him], and in the measure that it is pressed.”
Kierkegaard, in particular, seeking a hearing for the question—“the problem of ‘becoming a Christian’”—pursues outwardly, through the dialogue of discourse and pseudonym,
the inward dialogue within which he himself has heard the
question posed by God.
Finally, there is one further similarity with Socrates to
which Kierkegaard draws our attention in The Point of View,
namely, to the fact that the Socratic figure is, in both cases,
entirely without assurance as to the effect of “the question
method.” Kierkegaard can hope, as we saw, that “with the
momentum of his abandonment to the aesthetical [a] man
rushes straight into the most decisive definitions of the religious”; and Kierkegaard is confident that thereby the man
“must take notice.” “What follows after this, however, no one
can tell beforehand”(emphasis added). As with Socrates, who
could reliably arouse in his interlocutors the “sacred rage”
but could not guarantee their response to it,26 Kierkegaard
admits that “it is impossible for me to compel a person to
accept an opinion, a conviction, a belief . . . [even though] I
can compel him to take notice” (35). This is by way of
contrast with the standards of Sophistic education, with its
emphasis upon the assurance of reliable techniques and
predictable results.
We will now find that this contrast between Socratic and
Sophistic education is an important theme in Kierkegaard’s
first dialogue, that which unfolds between Either/Or and the
Two Edifying Discourses of 1843.
Educating the Poet
In Either/Or, the first of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works,
we are presented with a conversation between two friends.
The first volume (Either) contains various texts pertaining to
the “poetic” life, written by an extraordinarily gifted young
man (hereafter referred to as “the poet”). Through a bewildering variety of compositions, ranging from the seemingly
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random aphorisms of the “Diapsalmata,” through several
essays in literary and musical criticism of a very high order, to
the concluding “Seducer’s Diary,” all of it communicating an
equally bewildering variety of moods and emotions, many
troubling aspects of human existence are examined, many
comfortable conventions of respectable life exploded. In
volume two (Or), as if in response to the poet’s challenge, we
find two long letters from a magistrate, Judge William, along
with a sermon by his friend, a Jylland pastor, all of it intended as advice for the guidance of the errant young poet. Here
we find an elaborate and rather clever defense of the sort of
respectable life—and especially of married life—the poet
appears to hold in derision. Here also, especially with the
help of the pastor, we find reliable techniques for the overcoming of the despair that the poet does in fact clearly
display. The two volumes together present (what appear to
be) two very different views of life in conversation with each
other, the “poetic” life on the one hand challenging, and
being challenged by, the “ethical and religious” life on the
other.
As we learn from The Point of View, however, the “two
sides of Either/Or” do not by themselves fulfill Kierkegaard’s
intentions for his writings. Several months after the publication of Either/Or there appeared, signed in Kierkegaard’s
own name, Two Edifying Discourses, through which
Kierkegaard shows us exactly what he thinks of the characters
of Either/Or.27
The question of educational method is explicitly
addressed in the first of the discourses, “The Expectancy of
Faith,”28 and is, in and of itself, a main point of Kierkegaard’s
challenge to Judge William. In the introduction to the
discourse (8-16), Kierkegaard presents us a man—the
“perplexed man”—who is seeking to share his faith with a
friend and falling into greater and greater perplexity in the
attempt. He learns that, while it is indisputably a good gift,
faith is the one gift he cannot give his friend by wishing it for
him, realizing in the process the questionable character of his
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own faith.29 Finally giving over care of his friend to God,
who alone, the man realizes, is the teacher all men can equally claim (12-13, 14-15, 28-29), he contents himself with the
essentially negative, maieutic role of challenging the
delusions which, as he knows from his own experience, shut
his friend off from faith (15-16).30 Like Socrates in his inner
dialogue with Diotima, and like Kierkegaard in his inner
dialogue with “Governance,” the perplexed man has no
pretensions to question his friend except in terms of that
which has first questioned him. The “perplexed man,” in others words, precisely in his perplexity, has been equipped as
the expert practitioner of “the question method.” He is to be
assisted in his task by the main section of the discourse
(16-28), which is devoted to description and analysis both of
the forms of “expectancy” by which human beings seek to
maintain control of their own lives, and of “the expectancy of
faith” in which alone that control is given over to God.
The “friend” Kierkegaard really has in mind, however, is
the poet of Either (1.17-445). The categories of expectancy in
the discourse, in fact, correspond exactly to the measures
taken by the poet to defend himself from the threat of time.
The essence of the “poetic life,” in fact, is the “making” (from
the Greek verb poein) of an illusory world in which the poet
can shield himself from the anxieties of temporal existence.
As he says at the close of the “Diapsalmata,” from the sorrow
which is his “baronial castle,” sitting “like a eagle’s nest high
up on the mountain peak among the clouds,” “I swoop down
into actuality and snatch my prey” (42, no. 88). He does not
stay there, of course, for the whole point is to bring his booty
home,
and this booty is a picture I weave into the tapestry at my castle. Then I live as one already dead.
Everything I have experienced I immerse in a baptism of oblivion unto an eternity of recollection.
Everything temporal and fortuitous is forgotten
and blotted out. Then I sit like an old gray-haired
man, pensive, and explain the pictures in a soft
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
voice, almost whispering, and beside me sits a
child, listening, although he remembers everything
before I tell it.
Depicted here is one whom the poet himself calls “the unhappiest one,” a man “turned the wrong way [in time] in two
directions” (225), hoping for what lies behind him, recollecting what lies ahead, a man utterly lost in the illusion of his
own “making.”
The matter receives particularly clear treatment in the
poet’s essay entitled “Rotation of Crops.” This refers not
to an agricultural procedure but to the necessity of constantly varying our experience, and more importantly to a
technique for the proper “cultivation” of experience. The
recommended procedure is to achieve an appropriate balance
“between recollecting and forgetting.” No part of life should
be allowed such importance that it cannot be forgotten at
will; neither should any part of life be relegated to such
triviality that it cannot be remembered at will (293). The key
is to throw hope “overboard” (292), for only then “does one
begin to live artistically; as long as a person hopes, he cannot
limit himself.” “It is indeed beautiful to see a person put out
to sea with the fair wind of hope,” but hope makes for a
dangerous pilot of one’s own ship, steering a course and
speed which threaten the greatest of all calamities (292-93).
For he who “runs aground with the speed of hope will recollect in such a way that he will be unable to forget” (293). Far
better to throw hope overboard than to collide with that
experience so recalcitrant as to defy every attempt at the
poesis of recollection.
The challenge Kierkegaard seeks to present the poet
through the discourse is to set sail with hope still on board,
to face the future as it really is, in all its threatening and
indeterminate contingency, and yet with the “expectancy of
faith [which] is victory,”31 the trust that whatever comes will
reflect the will of God, that it will be the victory to which no
one can give a shape beforehand. And there is reason for
confidence that Kierkegaard’s challenge may not fall on
SINNETT
27
entirely deaf ears. The poet says himself that he can imagine
being converted from his boredom and despair through experience of “the faith that moves mountains,” but this remark
only serves to demonstrate that he has never had that experience. To the contrary, in several further remarks in
“Diapsalmata,” he emphasizes his disdain for the “timorousness” of the representatives of Danish Christendom (33-34,
no. 67) who are pale and bloodless, without sufficient
courage to passionately affirm or deny anything (23, no. 22),
and who can know nothing of salvation (20, no. 8), since they
are too “wretched” even to sin (27-28, no. 41). The poet, we
recall, is the gifted young man looking for a Socrates, looking
for someone who can question him, who can give his confusion direction and sharpen it into the joyous perplexity
known as faith.32 The poet’s despair, therefore, is part of
Kierkegaard’s indirect polemic against the society that could
not challenge him.
We most directly encounter the society in question in the
person of Judge William (Either/Or 2.3-333). As husband,
father, magistrate, church member, and devotee of fashionable philosophy, the good Judge is representative of
respectable Danish society in every respect. Judge William is
Danish society writ small. Kierkegaard’s “direct” attack on
the Judge’s “ethical and religious” life, therefore, is also
simultaneously his “indirect” critique of the spiritual poverty
of Danish Christendom. Particularly at issue is the Judge’s
educational method. Judge William, too, is anxious to help
the poet, and, unlike the “perplexed man” of the discourse (as
well as the perplexed man who wrote the discourse), he
knows exactly how to go about it. The poet is afraid of the
uncertainties and discontinuities of time, so the Judge shows
how the disjointed and contingent facts of “outer history”
may be “transformed and transferred” into the “continuity”
of “inner history” (98-9, 250-51). The poet is afraid of the
rigors of duty and responsibility, so the Judge explains that
duty is the road sign that never directs a person anyplace he
doesn’t already wish to go (149), the old friend that never
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
commands anything a person is not already ready to do
(146).
The poet is afraid of dependence upon the uncertain
things around him, so the Judge shows him how he can posit
his own “self ” in “absolute security” (213). Choose something, says the Judge; choose anything; choose even to
despair (208-9). By freely choosing to despair the poet will
have posited an “either/or,” one of many possible either/or’s,
and this, being a realm which implies a discernible distinction
between what he will have chosen and its alternative, will
lead him to the “ethical.” Since this choice will have been
made in freedom, moreover, the self which chooses will have
been established in complete independence from anything
outside itself (180).
A particularly important case of this desired independence is that of the complete independence of the self from
God. This is to be achieved, says the Judge, by that free
choice in which we place ourselves always in the stance of
“repentance” before God (216). Only by the freedom of this
choice, in which human love for God is unmotivated by
God’s love for humanity, and in which humility before God
bears no relation to the majesty and holiness of God, can the
self choose itself “absolutely” (216). By placing ourselves reliably in the wrong before God, more importantly, we also
deny ourselves the perspective from which to notice what the
Judge regards as being otherwise unavoidable, the necessity
to “take God to court” for the ills and injustice of human
existence (216-17, 237). To do otherwise would be to confront the “riddle” that throws everything into confusion; it
would be to acknowledge the possibility that we may not
know what God intends for us in this life, the possibility that
the complacent joys of hearth and home may not be God’s
ultimate purpose for us; it would be to acknowledge the
contingencies of existence in time which would be for the
Judge of all things the most horrifying.
These procedures, the Judge claims, not only produce
predictable results for himself, but will do so as well for
SINNETT
29
anyone who employs them. His pretensions to “absolute”
security notwithstanding, the real goal of the Judge’s
technique is to fight down his own despair in facing the
uncertainties of life, to bring the threat of time (and, in
particular, of the poet) under control. As in various of Plato’s
dialogues we find a sharp contrast of educational method
between the Socratic figure who is powerful only in his
perplexity, and the practical man of affairs (like Callicles in
Gorgias, to whom Kierkegaard clearly compares the Judge33)
who, if he is not himself the Sophist, ideally represents the
end-form of Sophistic education. He thus also represents the
society that Paul Shorey (in his edition of Republic) calls “the
Great Sophist,”34 the society in which the Sophist has become
the representative human being.
The Sophist himself we find in the Jylland pastor, whose
“edifying discourse” comprises the “final word” (ultimatum)
in Or (2.335-54). It has often been asserted, of course, that
the pastor’s sermon is actually Kierkegaard’s, that it represents Kierkegaard’s commentary on the conversation that
unfolds between the poet and the Judge.35 This, however, is
inconsistent with the dramatic structure of the dialogue; with
the fact, namely, that the Judge sends the sermon to his
younger friend in support of his own writings (337-38). The
pastor, like Judge William, is deeply troubled by the ills of
human life as well as by the merest possibility of uncertainty
in our human dealings with God (342-44). As with the Judge,
moreover, the solution is to lay hold of “the upbuilding that
lies in the thought that in relation to God we are always in
the wrong.” In this way, not only do we establish for
ourselves a determinate relation with God, we also avoid
the necessity of imputing evil to God. The pastor asks his
listeners to imagine that they have been wronged by a
beloved friend. In this situation, he reasons, we would derive
no comfort from the thought that we were entirely in the
right with our friend. “If you loved him, [the thought that
you had done right by your friend] would only alarm you;
you would reach for every probability, and if you found none,
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
you would tear up the accounting to help you forget it, and
you would strive to build yourself up with the thought that
you were in the wrong” (348). “So also,” he continues, “in
your relationship with God. You loved God, and therefore
your soul could find rest and joy only in this, that you might
always be in the wrong” (349). In effect, as an expression of
his love for God, the pastor has extended to God a mercy and
forgiveness that he believes God doesn’t deserve. The pastor’s
“God,” in other words, is “without hope except in the sovereign grace and mercy of [humanity].” The pastor is indeed the
Sophist, the man who can make the worse appear the better
case, the man possessing the technical virtuosity to disguise
his cowardly “projection” in the persiflage of Christian
proclamation. He is precisely the man who can provide the
Judge the intellectual support he needs to defend himself
from the terror of contingency in relation to God.
He is also a man who has placed himself in the direct line
of fire from Kierkegaard’s second discourse, “Every Good
and Every Perfect Gift Is from Above.”36 The two discourses
are in fact mirror images of each other: whereas the pastor
emphasizes the “upbuilding” that arises only through free
choice, Kierkegaard emphasizes the power of the
Omnipotent One to crush such arrogant pretension and the
repentance that arises only through the challenge of God’s
Word (38); whereas the pastor extends his grace to God,
Kierkegaard emphasizes the creative power of God’s grace
through which alone we celebrate each circumstance of life as
“the good and perfect gift of God” (40-2); whereas the
pastor seeks the security of a relationship—being always in
the wrong before God—that can never change, Kierkegaard
emphasizes the mercy of God that is even greater “than the
anxious human heart,” the mercy that may place us
unaccountably in the right before God (48). Kierkegaard’s
brightest hope is therefore the pastor’s (and the Judge’s)
worst nightmare, that we cannot know the future God has
prepared for us. The sense of contingency that both the Judge
and the pastor fear, especially in relation to God, is the whole
SINNETT
31
point of the “conversation” Kierkegaard pursues with his
characters, the whole point of the question for which he seeks
a hearing in the midst of the “monstrous illusion” they
represent.
The Conversation Continued
The conversation Kierkegaard began with the personalities of
Either/Or continued throughout the remainder of his short
life. We meet them again in Stages on Life’s Way, published
on 30 April 1845, one day after the publication of Three
Discourses on Imagined Occasions, a volume of “edifying
discourses” signed in Kierkegaard’s own name. And, of
course, they appear again with the republication of Either/Or
on 14 May 1849, the exact same day as the publication of
The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, a collection of
“three devotional discourses” which, once again, are signed
in Kierkegaard’s own name, and which seek to gain a hearing
for the same question—“the problem of ‘becoming a
Christian’”—that the personalities of Either/Or are variously
attempting to ignore.37
In the course of our brief consideration of Kierkegaard’s
“direct” conversation with the personalities of Either/Or, we
have noted some indications of the “indirect” conversation
Kierkegaard was hoping to pursue with his fellow Danes. The
subtlety of his dialectic, however, was too great, and the
shades of meaning that distinguished him from the plausible
Sophistry of his pseudonyms too fine, for his critique to be
generally noticed. Kierkegaard’s “indirect” conversation with
Danish Christendom, thus, never really came off; nor, with
the passing of that cultural arrangement, will it ever do so.
Other conversations remain, even today, a lively possibility. Kierkegaard’s “interrogation” of the pseudonyms, in the
first place, will now be “indirectly” applicable to those moderns, such as the philosophers of existentialism, who are
variously adherent to the pseudonymous perspectives. Thus
may Kierkegaard’s strategy finally be vindicated: having gotten his readers with him—even if not quite the readers he had
�32
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
in mind—it is still possible to bring “the religious” promptly
forward so as to effect the “collision” through which one can
be compelled to “take notice.” There are surely as many in
our day as in that of Socrates or of Kierkegaard who look
about them for a practitioner of “the question method.”
There are many in our day, in fact, who resemble no one
so much as that gifted young man with whom we began: He
lost his way in the world. In his need, he looked about for
someone who could transmit to him, someone who could be
for him, the “true question”: He went to the “good people,”
looking for the “the faith that moves mountains,” only to find
them comfortable, and competent, and full of good advice.
He went to the magistrate, longing to see the self-sacrifice of
duty; only to learn that duty is an old friend who never
demands anything we are not already prepared to perform.
He went to the pastor hoping to hear of the grace of the
Omnipotent One to call his fantasy in question and to remake
him in the divine image; only to hear of the “God” who
stands in need of our human grace to avoid indictment for the
ills of human existence. He looked about for a Socrates, but
found none among his contemporaries. Then he requested
the gods to change him into one.
We have the evidence before us, in the dialogue of
discourse and pseudonym, to know who that gifted young
man was, and to know also that his request was granted.
Notes
1
Kierkegaard, JP 5.5613 (Pap. 4 A 43).
SINNETT
33
4
See also the “First and Last Explanation” at the close of
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, in which Kierkegaard claims
responsibility as “the dialectically reduplicated author of . . . the
[pseudonymous] authors” (627); but also insists that “in the
pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me” (626).
5 Cf. the Preface to the Two Edifying Discourses of 1844 (in
Eighteen Edifying Discourses, 179), where Kierkegaard describes
“that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader, who with the right hand accepts what is offered with the right
hand.” The same point is emphasized in the Preface to
The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Devotional
Discourses, in Kierkegaard, Without Authority, 3.
6 This
is indicated, according to Kierkegaard (184-85), by Socrates’
assertion that sons should not necessarily be taught by their fathers,
as was traditional, but by whoever was most competent.
7 This follows, according to Kierkegaard (193-94), from the fact
that in remarking on the closeness of the vote by which he was
condemned Socrates indicates his exclusive concern for the beliefs
of people as individuals and his utter indifference to the “opinion”
of the Council as a whole.
8 The imagery of “bonds” refers to the imagery of the Cave in
Republic, 7.514A-515D.
9
Cf. Symp. 210E; Rep. 515E; and Ep. 7.341D.
10
For subsequent uses of this notion of a “clearing in existence,”
see Heidegger, Being and Time, 171 (and n. 2), 214, 401; and
Voegelin, “Anxiety and Reason,” in Collected Works, 28.87.
11
Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 362f; Lonergan, Method in
Theology, 22f; and Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,
33-46, 309-15; and Polanyi, Knowing and Being, 117f.
2
Cf. the appended “Publication Schedule of Selected Works of
Søren Kierkegaard.”
3
The term opbyggelig is variously rendered as “edifying” (W F.
.
Lowrie) or “upbuilding” (H. V and E. A. Hong). The latter, more
.
recent, translation is preferred as implying a more broadly existential development of life than a merely intellectual growth.
12
Voegelin, “Reason: the Classic Experience,” in Collected Works,
12.277, 272 (emphasis added). For an introduction to Voegelin’s
thought, see Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History; Sandoz,
The Voegelinian Revolution; and Sinnett, Eric Voegelin and the
Problem of Theological Paradox.
13
Voegelin, “What Is Political Reality?” in Anamnesis, 148.
14
“Reason,” 271.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
15
Ibid.
16
Voegelin, “The Gospel and Culture,” in Collected Works, 7.175.
17
The importance of Symposium for Kierkegaard is demonstrated
by his extensive discussion of it in The Concept of Irony and by his
use of it as a model for his own “banquet” dialogue, “In Vino
Veritas,” in Stages on Life’s Way. For an extended version of the
following discussion, see Sinnett, “Eric Voegelin and the Essence of
the Problem”; and Restoring the Conversation, ch. 3.
18 Similarly,
in Republic (515E-520A), the philosopher who seeks to
free the prisoners from their bonds is one who begins as a prisoner
himself, only to be mysteriously freed, forced to turn around,
dragged “by force up the ascent which is rough and steep . . . [and]
drawn out into the light of the sun.”
SINNETT
35
who find ourselves addressed and who are called upon to account
for what we are saying.”
24
Cf. Lowrie, Kierkegaard, 1.191f.
25
Cf. Diem, 187-88.
26
Cf. Symp. 215D-E.
27
Cf. Sinnett, Restoring the Conversation, Part 2.
28
Kierkegaard, Eighteen Edifying Discourses, 8-29.
29 The challenge that brings the “perplexed man” to this realization
is supplied in an excursus on the nature of faith (10-13) which
interrupts his meditations.
30
20
In Symposium the first speeches in praise of Erôs by Phaedrus
(178A-180B), Pausanias (180C-185E), and especially by
Eryximachus (185E-188E), variously praise the technai of sacrifice
and divination which reliably establish that “communion between
gods and men” which is the basis of the right order of society.
Cf. esp. “The Expectancy of Faith,” 15: “And if he does not
possess it, then I can be very helpful to him, because I will accompany his thoughts and constrain him to see that it is the highest
good. I will prevent it from slipping into any hiding place, so that
he does not become vague about whether he is able to grasp it or
not. With him, I will penetrate every anomaly until he, if he does
not possess it, has but one expression that explains his unhappiness,
namely, that he does not will it—this he cannot endure, and then he
will acquire it.”
21
31
Kierkegaard, “The Expectancy of Faith,” 23.
32
Cf. “A,” “Diapsalmata,” in Either/Or, 42-3, n. 90.
19 Kierkegaard, JP 6.6786 (Pap. 106 B 145) n.d., 1851, in the
Supplement to Eighteen Edifying Discourses, 488-89.
Cf. Symp. 178A-D: In response to Agathon’s request to have
Socrates sit next him in order that he might be able to share in “the
piece of wisdom” that “occurred” to him as he was entering the
banquet hall, Socrates denies that genuine wisdom is so easily, or so
directly, transmissible: “I only wish that wisdom were the kind of
thing one could share by sitting close to someone—if it flowed, for
instance, from the one that was full to the one that was empty, like
the water in two cups finding its level through a piece of wool.”
22 Cf.
Symp. 175D-E: “[If direct communication of wisdom was possible,] I’m sure I’d congratulate myself on sitting next to you, for
you’d soon have me brimming over with the most exquisite kind of
wisdom. My own understanding is shadowy, as equivocal as a
dream.”
23
Cf. Gadamer, “Plato’s Unwritten Dialectic,” in Dialogue and
Dialectic, 128: “In [Plato’s] dialogues we ourselves are the ones
(thanks to the lasting effect of Plato’s artful dialogical compositions)
33
Cf. “B,” Either/Or, 2.16: “The intellectual agility you possess is
very becoming to youth and diverts the eye for a time. We are
astonished to see a clown whose joints are so loose that all the
restraints of a man’s gait and posture are annulled. You are like that
in an intellectual sense; you can just as well stand on your head as
on your feet. Everything is possible for you, and you can surprise
yourself and others with this possibility, but it is unhealthy, and for
your own peace of mind I beg you to watch out lest that which is
an advantage to you end by becoming a curse. Any man who has a
conviction cannot at his pleasure turn himself and everything topsyturvy in this way. Therefore I do not warn you against the world but
against yourself and the world against you.” Compare this description of the poet by the Judge with Callicles’ description of Socrates
in Gorgias, 485A-C: “It is a fine thing to partake of philosophy just
for the sake of education, and it is no disgrace for a lad to follow it;
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
36
but when a man already advancing in years continues in its pursuit,
the affair, Socrates, becomes ridiculous; and for my part I have
much the same feeling towards students of philosophy as towards
those who lisp or play tricks. For when I see a little child, to whom
it is still natural to talk in that way, lisping or playing some trick, I
enjoy it, and it strikes me as pretty and ingenuous and suitable to
the infant’s age. . . . But when one hears a grown man lisp, or sees
him play tricks, it strikes one as something ridiculous and unmanly,
that deserves a whipping.”
34
Cf. Paul Shorey’s Loeb Classical Library edition of Republic,
2.34, n.d.
35
Cf. W Lowrie, “Translator’s Preface,” in Either/Or, 2 (1944), 19.
.
36
Cf. Kierkegaard, Eighteen Edifying Discourses, 31-48.
37
37
SINNETT
Publication Schedule of Selected Works
of Søren Kierkegaard
Pseudonymous (“Esthetic”) Works
20 Feb. 1843
Either/Or, I-II
edited by Victor Eremita
16 Oct. 1843
Repetition
by Constantin Constantius
Fear and Trembling
by Johannes de Silentio
Cf. Sinnett, ch. 10.
Signed (“Religious”) Works
16 May 1843
Two Upbuilding Discourses
16 Oct. 1843
Three Upbuilding Discourses
6 Dec. 1843
Four Upbuilding Discourses
5 Mar. 1844
Two Upbuilding Discourses
13 June 1844
Philosophical Fragments
by Johannes Climacus
17 June 1844
The Concept of Anxiety
by Virgilius Haufniensis
Prefaces
by Nicolaus Notabene
8 June 1844
Three Upbuilding Discourses
31 Aug. 1844
Four Upbuilding Discourses
30 April 1845
Stages on Life’s Way
published by Hilarius Bookbinder
29 April 1845
Three Discourses on Imagined
Occasions
27 Feb. 1846
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
by Johannes Climacus
27 Feb. 1846
“A First and Last Declaration,”
appended to Postscript
14 May 1849
Either/Or, I-II
edited by Victor Eremita
14 May 1849
The Lily in the Field and the Bird of
the Air: Three Devotional Discourses
�38
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
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________. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. London:
Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983.
Lowrie, W Kierkegaard. Two volumes. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter
.
Smith, 1970.
McCarthy, V A. The Phenomenology of Moods in Kierkegaard. The
.
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978.
Mackey, L. Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971.
Malantschuk, G. Kierkegaard’s Thought. Ed. and trans. H. V Hong
.
and E. H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Pattison, G. “A Dialogical Approach to Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding
Discourses,” in Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte / Journal
for the History of Modern Theology, 3, 187-202.
Perkins, R. L., ed. International Kierkegaard Commentary:
Either/Or. Two Parts. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995.
Planinc, Z. Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the Republic
and the Laws. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.
Polanyi, M. Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969.
________. Restoring the Conversation: Socratic Dialectic in the
Authorship of Søren Kierkegaard. St. Andrews, Scotland: St. Mary’s
College, 2000.
________. Under the Impact of the Answers: Theological
Meditations on the Reformed Faith. Manuscript in preparation.
Vander Waert, P A., ed. The Socratic Movement. Ithaca: Cornell
.
University Press, 1994.
Vlastos, G. Platonic Studies. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981.
Voegelin, E. Order and History. Vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1957.
________. Anamnesis. Trans. and ed. G. Niemeyer. Notre Dame:
Notre Dame University Press, 1978.
________. Collected Works. Vol. 12: Published Essays, 1966-1985.
Ed. E. Sandoz. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1990.
Press, G. A., ed. Plato’s Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 1993.
________.Collected Works. Vol. 28: What Is History? and Other
Late Unpublished Writings. Ed. T. A. Hollweck and P Caringella.
.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
Ricoeur, P The Symbolism of Evil. Trans. E. Buchanan. Boston:
.
Beacon Press, 1967.
Watkin, J. Kierkegaard. Outstanding Christian Thinkers. Ed. B.
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Webb, E. Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History. Seattle: University
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.
Trans. P Cartledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
.
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43
What It Means To Be Human:
Aristotle on Virtue and Skill
Corinne Painter
In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle argues very forcefully
that virtue and skill are distinct. Although a distinction
between virtue and skill can be seen as philosophically important in a number of ways,1 and despite the force with which
Aristotle argues for this distinction, it is nonetheless the case
that Aristotelian virtue runs the risk of being mistaken for a
sort of skill, and vice versa. In fact, Aristotle’s lengthy
argument for their distinction suggests that he was aware that
this risk existed. The likely reason for such a mistake is that
virtue and skill to some extent share two important qualities:
each has a necessary connection with the knowledge of how
to do something and the exercise of each is connected to a
desired end that is taken to be of distinctive “value.”2
Moreover, because of these “shared qualities” it is even
possible to associate both virtue and skill with happiness,
since knowledge of how to do those things that we take to be
of value, i.e., those things that are connected to our desired
ends, is usually considered an essential ingredient of a happy
life. To speak more generally, it is even understandable to
conceive of the virtuous person as the one who has mastered
“the art—the skill—of living,” indeed as the one who knows
how—has the requisite skills—to do whatever he or she
deems is necessary to bring about a fulfilled and satisfying
life. In this case, it would seem to follow that exactly those
persons who possess this so-called “skill of living” will enjoy
the happy life.
In this essay, I will carefully reconstruct Aristotle’s
argument for the distinction between virtue and skill, in
order to bring out why he argues for it. In so doing, I will
Corinne Painter is a visiting Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University.
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44
attempt to show that this crucial distinction is intimately
bound up with Aristotle’s conception of the essential relationship between virtue and happiness. Toward this end, I
will first examine the key claims that attempt to establish the
distinction between virtue and skill, which appear in Book 2,
chapter 4 and Book 6, chapter 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics,3
and, second, I will consider Aristotle’s account of the
relationship between virtue and happiness, which we find
within various chapters in Book 1. Finally, I will conclude by
arguing that because of the distinctive nature of virtue, which
serves to separate it in fundamental ways from skill, and
which links it to the distinctive nature of being human, and
because of the distinctive nature of happiness, which characterizes the way of life of those human beings who live most
excellently, virtue alone is a prerequisite for attaining happiness in the full Aristotelian sense.
Virtue and Skill
In Book 2, chapter 4 as well as in Book 6, chapter 5 of
the NE, Aristotle argues that the exercising of virtue is
not analogous to the exercising of skill. Aristotle firmly establishes virtue’s distinction from skill by offering several
related arguments that show how the two activities are
fundamentally different. One argument for their distinction is
that while what might be called the “value”—or, more appropriately, the “being-well-made”4—of a product of skill is
independent of the actual ability (skill-level) of its producer,
so that the value of such a product is the same regardless of
how (e.g., by accident) or by whom (e.g., an unskilled laborer) it is produced, the “value” or the “being-well-made” of a
virtuous act depends on whether it is done virtuously, on
whether, that is, the person performing the act is virtuous or
not. As Aristotle states in a central passage in Book 2:
It is not the same in the case of the arts as with the
virtues, for the things that come into being by
means of the arts have their being-well-made in
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themselves, [so that] it is sufficient for these
[i.e. the products] to come into being in a certain
condition. But with the things that come about as
a result of the virtues, just because they themselves
are a certain way it is not the case that one does
them justly or temperately, but only if the one
doing them also does them being a certain way:
if one does them first of all knowingly, and next,
having chosen them and chosen them for their
own sake, and third, being in a stable condition
and not able to be moved all the way out of it.
(1105a27-35, emphasis mine)
A second, closely related reason for maintaining that virtue
and skill are distinct lies in the latter’s necessary connection
to external results as compared to virtue’s connection not to
external results or achievements, but rather to the internal
source from which acts done in accord with virtue5 are
generated, namely, acting virtuously or being virtuous; for
according to Aristotle, “the end of making is different from
itself, but the end of action could not be, since acting well—
virtuously—is itself the end” (1140b6-7). In appealing to the
differing ends of making or exercising skill and acting well or
exercising virtue, this passage intimates that for Aristotle one
of the primary ways in which virtue and skill are distinct
involves the motivation or reason for exercising a skill in
comparison to the motivation or reason for exercising a
virtue.
Interestingly, in emphasizing the distinction in the ends,
this passage in a sense binds together the first and second
ways in which virtue and skill are said to be distinct one from
another. It should be clear that Aristotle holds that one exercises a skill in order to bring about or produce a good that is
other than or distinct from the activity by which it is brought
about, so that skills are not exercised simply for the sake of
themselves. Skills, then, in Aristotle’s view, are intimately
related to the distinctive products that they are responsible
for bringing into being. Virtue, however, is engaged in for the
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sake of itself and not simply for the sake of bringing about
another good that is wholly distinct from itself,6 which it is
said to “produce.” Thus, in connection with the first
argument, we may reaffirm that the “value” of exercising a
skill is determined on the basis of evaluating the worth of the
product of the skill rather than on evaluating either its
producer or the process by which it came to be produced. In
contrast, the value of virtue lies primarily in its exercise,
which is dependent upon the character of the person
performing the virtue and not simply on its “result.” As
Aristotle himself claims, “it is possible to produce something
literate by chance or by being advised by someone else”
(1105a23-24, emphasis mine), whereas this is not possible in
the case of virtue (1105a27). In connection with this, it may
be instructive to appeal to Aristotle’s discussion in Book 1 of
the possibility of engaging in an activity either for the sake of
itself or for the sake of some thing other than itself. While
exercising virtue belongs to the former sort, according to
Aristotle, exercising a skill belongs to the latter, and, given
that the former kind of activity “is more complete (teleion)
than an activity pursued on account of something else”
(1097a31-33), exercising virtue is more complete than
performing a skill. Later, I will return to this point in order
to argue why virtue is essential to happiness while skill is not.
A third and equally important way in which virtue is
distinct from skill can be formulated thus: skills are abilities
that stem from knowing how to do something, such that the
“knowing how” has (at some point) been satisfactorily
demonstrated in practice, whereas virtues are firm and stable
character traits of an agent, indeed, active conditions of the
soul. This suggests that, although it is possible for one to have
a skill and not exercise it even in a situation in which its exercise is called for, it is impossible for a person to possess a
virtue and knowingly fail to exercise it, given the proper
circumstance and barring any exceptions.7 Thus, in the case
of skill, Aristotle writes, “these things [i.e., choosing the act
for its own sake as well as performing the act from a firm and
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unshakable condition] do not count, except the mere
knowing, but for having the virtues, the knowing is of little
or no strength, while the other conditions have not a little but
all the power” (1105b1-4, emphasis mine). Here we can see
that for Aristotle, possessing virtue, which is to say, acting in
accord with virtue, is a “taller task” than possessing a skill.
As an example of this, one can properly be characterized
as a skilled basketball player if one has satisfactorily demonstrated in practice that one knows how to play basketball
well, so that if the skilled player chooses not to play in
perfect playing conditions, he will not lose his status as a
skilled player. In contrast, one may not be properly characterized as virtuous, as possessing, e.g., the virtue of courage,
just in case one has demonstrated in practice that one “knows
how” to hit the middle mark between cowardice and rashness
that courage, as the mean condition between these two
(vicious) extremes of deficiency and excess, is said to represent. Rather, in addition to “knowing how” to be courageous,
whenever the conditions call for courage, the virtuous person
will actively and willingly choose to be courageous from out
of a firm and unshakable character. To put this in the words
of another scholar, “unlike skills, virtues are entrenched
character traits that one cannot turn on and off as one
pleases. Virtues are always on, so to speak, and if one fails to
perform virtuous acts, it is either because one has encountered an exception or because one is not [really] virtuous.”8
The discussion of the conditions that must be met in
order for an action to be properly characterized as virtuous
brings us to a fourth way in which Aristotle attempts to establish that virtue and skill are distinct. Although it is preferable
for the skilled person to make mistakes willingly, so that the
mistakes are not made accidentally or unintentionally, as this
would certainly call into question the actual skill, it is
“better” if the practically wise person—i.e., the virtuous
person—make mistakes only accidentally and not knowingly,
especially as one cannot purposefully behave nonvirtuously
and remain virtuous. Aristotle claims, in fact, that “in art
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someone who makes an error willingly is preferable, while in
connection with practical judgment this is worse, as it is in
connection with the virtues” (1140b24-27).
Thus far we have discovered that the following conditions must be met in order for an act to be rightfully called
virtuous: (1) it must be done with knowledge, that is to say,
knowingly, (2) it must be freely chosen for its own sake, and
(3) it must stem from a firm and unshakable character. Given
these conditions, we must attempt to understand what
Aristotle might mean when he claims that it is “better” if the
virtuous person make mistakes only accidentally rather than
knowingly or willingly. For on the basis of what we have
discovered, it would seem that virtue cannot be exercised
erroneously, unwillingly, or accidentally. Aristotle in fact
states repeatedly (e.g., at 1111b5-7, 1113b4-6, 1114b29) that
this is the case. Consequently, what renders virtuous acts
“better” or “more valuable” than those acts “performed by
accident” or “in error” cannot be that virtuous acts are
performed intentionally and with knowledge. Indeed,
virtuous acts are always and in the strictest sense voluntary
acts of choice9 for Aristotle, and thus they simply cannot be
performed accidentally10 or unwittingly by a person who
lacks the virtue in question.11
Consequently, even though action comes first, virtue
grows out of it, so that truly virtuous action can only come
about after the formation of virtue occurs, through repeated
actions. In this connection, Aristotle writes “active states
[e.g., virtue] come into being from being at work in similar
ways. Hence it is necessary to make our ways of being at
work be of certain sorts, for our active states follow in accordance with the distinctions among these” (1103b23-25).12
This passage indicates that while a person may unwittingly
perform an act that could be said to “look like” or “imitate”
a virtuous act, and while he must willingly attempt such acts
in order to become virtuous, strictly speaking, Aristotle
would not permit us to characterize these acts as virtuous
until they are the result of an active virtuous character at
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work. It is for this reason that he writes: “while actions could
be called [e.g.] just or temperate whenever they are the sorts
of things that a just or temperate person would do, the one
who does them is not just or temperate unless he also does
them in the way that just and temperate people do them”
(1105a29-b9, emphases mine). Admittedly this passage most
directly thematises the conditions that must be met in order
for a person to be correctly called virtuous. Nevertheless,
I submit that it at the same time shows that unless an act is
performed by such a person, it is at best a virtuous act “in
name only,” but it is not truly virtuous, given that it is not
performed by one who does it while “being in a certain way”
(1104b32).13
Furthermore, we must reject the notion that virtuous
action can be the result of an intentionally performed
mistake, as seems possible in the case of exercising a skill. For
in the case of skill, it seems at least possible that the skilled
person can actually demonstrate skill by intentionally making
a “mistake” in the performance of the skill. For example, the
skilled person might intentionally make a different product
than is expected, or may intentionally proceed differently as
he or she exercises the skill. Interestingly, both cases reveal
that “intentional mistakes”—“willing deviations,” if you
prefer—could be ways to display skill rather than call it into
question, especially since such deviations point to the skilled
person’s ability to exercise skill creatively. Alternatively, to
intentionally err in hitting the middle mark between the vices
of excess and deficiency that virtue is said to consist in does
not produce virtuous action, it produces precisely the opposite, namely, vicious action. Indeed, it is not only impossible
for the virtuous person to demonstrate a virtuous character
by accidentally hitting the middle mark, since a virtuous act
must be performed knowingly, it is also impossible to
willingly stray from hitting the middle mark between the
vices of excess and deficiency and still act in accord with
virtue, for to act virtuously requires that one deliberately hit
the appropriate middle mark.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Finally, then, the claim that prompted us to consider what
Aristotle could mean when he suggested that it is “better” for
a virtuous person to make a mistake accidentally rather than
on purpose is meant to point out not whether the knowing,
deliberate and intentionally chosen virtuous act is better than
the accidentally or erroneously performed virtuous act;
rather, this claim is meant to highlight a fundamental distinction between virtue and skill, namely, that while it is possible
and even preferable for the skilled person to err in the exercise of skill willingly, since this could be a way to demonstrate
skill, to do so in the case of virtue has the opposite effect, as
it brings to a crashing halt the possibility of acting in accord
with virtue.
Virtue and Happiness
Having considered the central Aristotelian arguments for the
distinction between virtue and skill, we are now in a position
to consider the special relationship that Aristotle claims exists
between virtue and happiness, so as to show that only virtue
is a prerequisite for attaining happiness in the full Aristotelian
sense.
Notwithstanding the sense in which the exercise of virtue
is to be understood as an activity whose goodness lies in its
very doing, as argued earlier,14 if we are to fully understand
how Aristotle conceives of virtue, we must not make the
mistake of claiming that virtue remains completely untied to
any good or activity that is distinct from itself. For as we learn
in Book 1 of the NE, virtue in its very essence is linked to
human happiness, which is not to be identified with virtue but
should be understood as the proper end of virtue. This is to
say that virtue functions as the means for achieving the end
of human happiness (1097b5-6), which constitutes the
ultimate good for human beings, as it is the only good that
is sought only for its own sake and never for the sake of
another good, whereas virtue, in contrast, is chosen both for
its own sake and for the sake of bringing about happiness
(1097b1-8).
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Indeed, happiness, as we will see shortly, is not a fluctuating, fleeting, temporary, circumstance-dependent, or
incomplete good or activity, as are all other goods and a
ctivities to some extent, including moral virtue, about which
Aristotle states that as great as virtue is, “even it seems too
incomplete” (1095b30-33) to be awarded the role of the
highest and most complete good. No doubt this is hardest to
understand in the case of virtue; as we have taken great care
to show, it would be incorrect to characterize the truly virtuous person as being virtuous in a merely fluctuating, fleeting,
or temporary manner. In addition to the passages we considered earlier, which show quite clearly the stable and
unwavering nature of the virtuous character as well as of the
action that comes from such a character, Aristotle, speaking
of moral virtue in Book 1, confirms virtue’s stable
nature, claiming that “in none of the acts of human beings is
stability present in the same way it is present in ways of being
at work in accordance with virtue” (1100b12-14). Notwithstanding virtue’s stability, we must also admit that the actual
exercise of any particular virtue is connected to certain
conditions that present themselves within the context of varying circumstances. For virtue as a whole is itself “divided,”
that is to say, it breaks up into many kinds—e.g., courage,
temperance, patience, generosity, justice—each of which is
called for in a particular situation, given certain circumstances, but none of which alone is enduring, self-sufficient,
complete, or final. In this connection, it is instructive to
consider what Aristotle writes in the context of discussing the
distinction between moral virtue and the intellectual virtue of
contemplation: “a just person still needs people toward
whom and with whom he will act justly, and similarly with
the temperate and the courageous person and each of the others” (1177a32-34). Here we see rather clearly that the particular virtues are not always performable, as certain external
conditions, over which the actor has no or very little control,
must be met in order for their performance to take place.
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In contradistinction to virtue, happiness is an active
(1100b19-20), enduring and permanent (1100b18), self-sufficient (1097b8-9), complete (1097b1-2; b20-21), and final
way of life (1100b34, 1101a8); for happiness is the “thatfor-the-sake-of-which” every other activity is ultimately
performed (1097b5-7; 1102a2-3). Happiness does not need
particular external circumstances or conditions in order to be
exhibited; once one’s life has earned the “right” to be
characterized as happy, that life exhibits happiness at each
and every moment (1100b21-22). Indeed, happiness is the
active condition—the constant being-at-work of the soul—
that describes or defines the way of living of the excellent
human being. More specifically, happiness characterizes the
kind of life that is lived by those who are able to live excellently, which is to say, by those who exercise moral virtue
regularly (1098a15-17; 1099b5-7; 1101a15; 1102a4-5), in
the varied and distinct ways that are called for on the basis of
the specific circumstances with which one is faced at different
intervals in one’s life.15 In this way, happiness characterizes
the whole of the virtuous person’s life, while the exercise of
moral virtue characterizes the way in which the virtuous
person responds to each individual practical situation with
which he or she is confronted, where the exercise of such
virtue constitutes the means by which the happy life comes
into being (1099b17). “[T]he virtue of a human being,”
Aristotle writes, “would be the active condition from which
one becomes a good human being and from which one will
yield up one’s own work well” (1106a24-25, emphases
mine).16 This passage highlights the sense in which the exercise of virtue yields or brings about a good that is distinct
from itself, to put it simply, the good—the happy—life, albeit
certainly not in the same sense in which the exercise of a skill
produces a “product.”
In order to better understand the relationship between
virtue and happiness, particularly how the former is said to
bring about the latter, as well as why happiness is ultimately
that condition of being for the sake of which we do every-
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thing else, it may be instructive to remember that according
to Aristotle while virtue is “praiseworthy” (1101b13-15;
b32), “happiness is . . . the prize of virtue . . . the highest end
and something divine and blessed” (1099b15-18, emphases
mine). Acknowledging both the supremacy of happiness that
this passage suggests as well as its status as the “prize of
virtue” allows us to go a long way towards understanding the
special place that happiness occupies in the thought of
Aristotle, as well as how he conceives of virtue’s relation to it.
If we add to this our recognition of what we noted earlier,
namely (a) Aristotle’s claim that “no one chooses happiness
for the sake of . . . anything else at all” (1097b6-7), (b) his
claim that happiness is complete and self-sufficient (1097b2021), together with (c) his related claim that happiness constitutes the only good to which nothing may be “added” in
order that it become “better,” given that happiness is lacking
in nothing (1097b14-21), then it becomes clear why happiness is characterized as that condition of being towards which
all human activity ultimately aims and beyond which there is
nothing else.
At this point we have recounted how Aristotle establishes
that happiness is the final “that-for-the-sake-of-which” all
other human activity ultimately aims; so also have we
elucidated its completeness, self-sufficiency, and permanence.
But in order to bring our consideration to its proper end, we
must say more clearly why Aristotle claims that happiness
characterizes the most excellent human life, for as Aristotle
himself admits, “perhaps to say that the highest good is
happiness is . . . something undisputed, while it still begs to
be said in a more clear and distinct way what happiness is”
(1097b22-24). Here, we would do well to follow Aristotle’s
lead and elucidate what it is about virtue that causes it and
not skill to serve as the means for becoming happy. Indeed
Aristotle suggests that if we “examine virtue . . . we might get
a better insight into happiness” (1102a7-8), and, thus, into
the life of human excellence.
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If we are to discover what kind of life is most excellent for
man as distinct from all other living creatures, we will have to
determine what work is distinctive to him and his unique way
of being (1097b25f). In a central passage about this in Book
1, Aristotle maintains:
If we set down that the work of a human being is
a certain sort of life, while this life consists of a
being-at-work of the soul and actions that go
along with reason, and it belongs to a man of serious stature to do these things well and beautifully,
while each thing is accomplished well as a result of
the virtue appropriate to it—if this is so, the
human good comes to be disclosed as a being-atwork of the soul in accordance with virtue.
(1098a12-17)
From this passage we get a clear statement of just how
uniquely special virtue is, since we are told without ambiguity that virtue consists in the “being-at-work” of the human
soul who lives its life and acts in accord with reason in the
most beautiful and best way. That such a life, i.e., the
virtuous life, is the most beautiful and best for man, that it is
the way in which man shows forth his unique way of being in
the way that he ought—for this is what is meant when we
claim that something is “best”—immediately leads us to link
virtue to the good life for man, whatever this turns out to be.
But if we are led to make the connection between virtue and
the good life for man, then given what we know about
happiness, we should be compelled to further understand
both (a) that the good life for man is nothing else than the life
of happiness, and thus (b) that virtue is therefore linked to
happiness. For indeed, happiness, according to Aristotle, is
that condition of being that characterizes the human life of
excellence, that is to say, the life of virtue.
Notwithstanding the clarity we have gained concerning
the nature of happiness, one last step must be made if we are
to understand why Aristotle does not think that skill plays an
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essential role in securing the life of happiness. Toward this
end, we should not forget that unlike virtue, skill is less
stable and less complete than virtue, since (a) skills seem to be
performed, or not, according to the “moods” of the skilled
person, which are easily changeable, and (b) skills are never
exercised for the sake of themselves but only for the sake of
the distinctive products that they produce. Alternatively,
whenever virtue is called for it is exercised, and, moreover, it
is exercised both for the sake of itself and for the sake of
happiness. Thus, given that exercising virtue is a more stable
and complete activity than exercising skill, naturally it will be
a better candidate for the role of securing happiness, even if
only because it is a more reliable and satisfying activity. If,
then, we understand the reasons why exercising virtue brings
about the life of happiness, we should immediately understand why exercising skill does not. For virtue secures the life
of happiness because (1) it is that activity on account of which
“people become apt at performing beautiful actions”
(1101b32-3), (2) it allows one “to live well and act well”
(1098b24), and especially, (3) it is the way in which man, as
man, does what he ought to do and is how he ought to be.
But skill, in stark contrast, neither makes one apt to perform
beautiful actions (inasmuch as skill can also be connected to
knowing how to perform ugly actions) nor makes one live
and act well (since skills bear no necessary association, for
Aristotle, with living or acting well). Furthermore, while the
exercising of skill allows one to demonstrate a special ability
to perform a particular act or to make a particular product,
as our earlier consideration of skill should have made apparent, there is nothing about skill that suggests that it allows
one to do or be what one ought to do or be as a human being.
Consequently, since the life of happiness constitutes the
fullest expression of the most excellent human life, which is
to say the human life that is in the best and fullest way what
it ought to be most essentially, skill will not be ableto to get
ithe job done, so to speak. Indeed, the only virtue can fulfill
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
this important task, which is nothing short of the human project itself.
Notes
1
For instance, contemporary ethical theorists may employ
Aristotle’s arguments for the distinction between virtue and skill to
support the general consensus that whatever moral virtues are, they
are not best conceived as skills. However, although the distinction
between virtue and skill is fairly widely maintained in the Ethics
literature, some scholars argue against a (strong) distinction, including Julia Annas, Paul Bloomfield, and Robert Roberts. See: Julia
Annas, “Virtue as a Skill” in International Journal of Philosophical
Studies, Vol. 3 (2), 1995: 227-43; Paul Bloomfield, “Virtue
Epistemology and the Epistemology of Virtue” in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 1, 2000: 23-43, as well as
Moral Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and
finally, Robert C. Roberts, “Will Power and the Virtues” in Robert
B. Kruschwitz and Robert C. Roberts, eds., The Virtues:
Contemporary Essays on Moral Character (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1987): 121-136.
In addition to the relevance of this distinction within ethics,
Aristotle’s arguments for the non-identity of virtue and skill can
also be of use within contemporary debates in epistemology. In fact,
the movement referred to as “virtue epistemology” has as one of its
primary goals to call in to question the paradigmatic status that
perceptual knowledge has enjoyed in the tradition, by showing how
something like Aristotelian virtue is necessary for knowledge. The
scholarship that discusses the connection between virtue and
knowledge, or “virtue epistemology,” is extensive, and thus I will
not give a listing of sources here, except to mention that the literature includes work from scholars such as Robert Audi, Lorraine
Code, Alvin Goldman, Alvin Plantinga, Ernest Sosa, and Linda
Zagzebski (just to mention a few). For quick reference to an introductory essay on virtue epistemology, I refer the reader to an
article published on the world wide web, which can be found at the
following address: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemologyvirtue. Especially impressive is this article’s extensive bibliography,
which offers many references to works that deal with the question
of the connection between virtue and knowledge.
PAINTER
57
2
Shortly, I will discuss my employment of the term “value” in this
context, as it is in need of explanation.
3 All
references to the Nicomachean Ethics (except where the translations are my own) are from: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
Translation, Glossary, and Introductory Essay by Joe Sachs
(Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company,
2002). Hereafter, in this essay, the text will be referred to as NE.
4
Aristotle never really speaks of “value” when discussing the
“being-well-made” or the excellency of a thing or an act, but as we
can easily understand what is in a significant sense at issue here for
Aristotle, namely, what makes a product or a virtuous act “full of
worth,” by using the English term “value,” I have chosen to include
it in my explanation of the text.
5
Not incidentally, a closer translation of the Greek demonstrates
that Aristotle never uses the phrase “virtuous action” or “virtuous
act”; rather, he uses always “action resulting from (or, in accord
with) virtue.”
6
Although later, in the second part of my paper, in the context of
considering the special relationship between virtue and happiness, I
will discuss how virtue is also exercised for the sake of bringing
about happiness, as it is the means for securing the happy life.
7
In order to respond to a possible objection to this strict view—
which many scholars advance against Aristotle’s “virtue ethics”—
we should acknowledge that Aristotle does not rule out the possibility that the virtuous person might, in some, very infrequent and
exceptional cases, fail to act virtuously. These cases would likely
only include, however, the following scenarios: (1) the virtuous
person is deceived by others; (2) the virtuous person accidentally
(i.e., non-willingly and unknowingly) makes an error in determining how to attain the virtuous end; and possibly, (3) different
virtues prescribe incompatible actions.
8 This formulation comes from a paper delivered by Heather
Battaly at the Northwest Philosophy Conference held at Lewis and
Clark University, Portland, Oregon (October 2002), entitled “Linda
Zagzebski and Aristotle on the Distinction between Virtues and
Skills.”
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9
Aristotle distinguishes between willing acts and chosen acts,
claiming that while chosen acts are always willing (voluntary) acts,
chosen acts cover a narrower range (1112a15-16), since they
involve greater capacities (1111b8-18ff), most especially, the capacity to “reason and think things through” (1112a16). For a fuller
discussion of what is involved in choice, especially its connection to
deliberation, see Book 3, chapters 2 and 3.
10
This is also the case for vicious acts (see: 1113b6-15ff and
1114b21-25).
11
In this connection it might be helpful to remember Aristotle’s
discussion of the praiseworthiness of virtuous acts and the blameworthiness of vicious acts (which actually begins in Book 2 and is
filled out in Book 3). This discussion strengthens his claim that
neither virtuous acts nor vicious acts are performed accidentally,
since people typically do not praise or blame persons for committing an act accidentally, without knowledge, intent, or choice.
12
For a fuller discussion of this, see 1103b7-26.
13
Recall the central passage quoted in its entirety early on in the
paper, for it directly confronts us with the strict conditions that
must be met in order for an act to be rightfully called virtuous.
14
There are in fact numerous passages in which Aristotle claims
that virtue is exercised for the sake of itself, some of which we
considered earlier, many more of which are dispersed throughout
the NE.
15 And this is to neglect mention of the practice of contemplation,
which also figures into the happy life, and which is, according to
Aristotle, unlike the exercise of moral virtue, “the only activity that
is loved for its own sake, for nothing comes from it beyond the contemplating, while from things involving action [e.g., moral virtue]
we gain something for ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent,
beyond the action” (1177b3-5).
16
Some scholars might object to the use of the words “yield up,”
preferring the more usual translation of “perform,” but in agreement with Joe Sachs, I submit that “yield up” better captures the
true sense of Aristotle’s meaning: to give back a return on one’s
effort.
59
Kant’s Afterlife
Eva Brann
“Better late than never” is the motto of this review. The work
known as Kant’s Opus Postumum occupied him during the
last fifteen years of his working life, from 1786 to 1801. (He
died at 80 in 1804.) The first English translation, which
underlies this review, was published in 1993. The first
German printing began in bowdlerized form in a Prussian
provincial journal in 1882.
1882—that is the year after Michelson and Morley
carried out their epoch-making experiment in search of the
ether wind that must sweep over the earth if it indeed travels
through space filled with some sort of observable matter. It
had a dramatic null result. The ether, however, had a huge
role in Kant’s final project—final in both senses: last and
eschatological. Whether Kant’s ether is in principle amenable
to experiment or not is, to be sure, problematic; nonetheless
there is, to my mind, a certain pathos to the posthumous
work’s first publishing date, a pathos over and above the fact
that it took nearly a century to appear.
Eckart Förster’s English edition of 1993 (which I should
have studied ten years ago) is both an ordering and a selection. Kant left a manuscript, its pages covered in small tight
writing with even tinier marginalia, of 527 sheets (1161 pages
in the great Prussian Academy edition). The unnumbered
leaves had at one time evidently been dropped on the floor—
It was a labor to arrange and date them, a task mainly
performed by Ernst Adickes in 1916, and then to make the
Immanuel Kant. Opus Postumum. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
Eckart Förster. Translated by Eckart Förster and Michael Rosen. The
Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Eckart Förster. Kant’s Final Synthesis: An Essay on the Opus Postumum.
Cambridge, Mass.: The Harvard University Press, 2000.
Ms. Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis.
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work accessible by judicious selection, which is what Förster
has done in the Cambridge edition. The latter effort was
called for by the character of Kant’s writing—and, evidently,
thinking—which is obsessively repetitive, ever circling about
the issues in the terminological German of the Critiques
glossed by formulaic Latin, only to explode suddenly into
astounding new resolutions.
But then, this whole post-Critical legacy is astonishing. In
1790, Kant declared in his third Critique, the Critique of
Judgment, that here “I conclude my entire Critical enterprise”
(¶ 170). Only the dependent metaphysical doctrine was to be
worked out, that is, the system of a priori cognitions that
are implied in the Critical foundations. But almost simultaneously finished business turned into unfinished business.
People who first saw the discombobulated manuscript put
about the rumor of Kant’s senility. On the contrary: If in the
three Critiques we see everything fall into its systematic
“architectonic” place, in the Opus Postumum we see the
foundations of the edifice broken open in the attempt to
make the system more encompassing. Not that Kant is
countermanding any major postulate of the Critical system
but rather that, in the effort to specify it, to make embodied
nature and man fall out from it, he opens up its abysses, not
only for the enthralled reader but, palpably, for himself—
though the one chasm he steps over without the slightest
regard is, to my mind at least, the most abysmal one; more of
that below. In any case, during the last years, before he
stopped writing, Kant seems to have returned not to a second
childhood but to a second vigor, to the searching modes of his
pre-Critical years.
Here I want to insert a personal note. Why ever, I ask
myself, did it take me so long to come to this remarkable
work, especially when I was trying to think about Kantian
topics: imagination, time, memory, and nonbeing? Well, I
sought help in the Critiques and then elsewhere, in Aristotle,
Plotinus, Augustine, Russell, Meinong, Husserl. Of the Opus
Postumum only one—unforgettable—fragment had penetrat-
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61
ed to me: “I, the Proprietor of the World.” It should have
been intimation enough that the Critiques were—possibly—
being transcended.
To me Kant had never been primarily the systematician,
whose thinking was a relentlessly unificatory construction
and whose expression was an intricate terminological rococo.
He was rather the philosopher who, more than the selfavowed tightrope dancer Nietzsche, built his edifice over an
abyss. I found this the more absorbing since Kant seemed to
me the soul of probity, a philosopher of originality and
rectitude, the rarest of combinations in a vocation whose
business ought to be not novelty but truth, though it has
occasionally incited its professors to the self-exaltation of
invention and the blue smoke of mystification. Kant is the
man who reconceived philosophy as work (in the essay “On
a Refined Tone Recently Raised in Philosophy,” 1796). Yet in
that sober mode he works himself late in life into strange new
territories. Förster, to be sure, ends his book by saying that it
is a futile exercise to speculate on the ultimate—
unachieved—destination of this last phase. But to me this
speculation, though it may well be beyond the reach of
scholarship, has a particular attraction: Do these late second
sailings, to be found, for example, in Homer (Odyssey), Plato
(Laws), Shakespeare (e.g., Cymbeline), Jane Austen (the
unfinished Sanditon), as well as in the great musicians,
express a necessary development implicit in the work of their
floruits or novel, adventurous departures into terra incognita?
So as not to mystify the reader let me say here, for later
amplification, what seems to me the drift of the Opus
Postumum: It is a drift toward solipsism, the radical selfauthorship or “autogenesis” of the human subject and the
nature with which it surrounds itself.
Now to Kant’s work itself. My advice is to reverse good
St. John’s practice and to read Förster’s explication of the
Opus Postumum first. It is a conscientious and in places
brilliant introduction to what is, after all, an unwieldy,
unrevised and unfinished masterpiece.
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Since, however, the Opus Postumum takes off from the
three Critiques, particularly from the first, the Critique of
Pure Reason (A edition 1781, B edition 1786), I will give a
very stripped-down and tailored version for those few alumni who don’t perfectly recall that high point of their junior
year (1). Then, since I can make the attraction of the Opus
Postumum most plausible by listing the above-mentioned rifts
and chasms in the first Critique, I will articulate the global
perplexities that have always accompanied any local understanding I thought I had achieved (2). Then, with Förster’s
help, I shall give a brief sketch of the main topics of the Opus
Postumum (3), which I shall follow with a summary of the
way in which Kant’s last work confirms or reshapes or
resolves my perplexities (4). Finally I will attempt to say a
word about the work’s bearing on Kant’s afterlife in our
contemporary thinking (5).
1. Though Kant did not expect, while working on the first
Critique (which deals with theoretical reason as it constitutes
nature), to write a second Critique on practical reason (that
is, on moral action), it is arguable that his central concern is
all along with morality, with human reason as it causes deeds.
From that point of view, the mission of the first Critique is to
ground a system of deterministic nature in deliberate juxtaposition to the spontaneity of the freedom evinced by the
rational will when it acts as it ought, from duty. The realm of
nature is a system of necessary and universal rules which we
ourselves both constitute and cognize: We can know nature
with certainty because we are its authors. (The terms pertaining to this cognition itself rather than to its objects are called
“transcendental,” or almost synonymously, “Critical”:
concerned with the conditions that make knowledge possible.) Though the first Critique, as it finally appeared, has as
its positive consequence the grounding of experience, meaning the real knowledge of nature, its negative impact is to
clear a region for human freedom conceived as autonomy,
self-subjection to self-given law. Kant does this by showing
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that the theoretical understanding and the reason which
organizes it are strictly limited to human experience and incapable of dealing with transcendent questions except in terms
of “ideals” expressing the human need for completeness.
The crucial difficulty in establishing a sure and certain
knowledge of nature is for Kant the doubt cast by Hume on
causality: Cause is nowhere to be observed; we see constant
conjunctions of events but never necessary interconnections
among them. Kant’s answer, the crux of his solution, is that
we know our way through nature with complete certainty
because and insofar as we make it. Thus its laws are ours from
“the very first”—a priori.
Our cognitive constitution is twofold: by our understanding we think spontaneously (that is, originatingly, out of
ourselves) and also discursively (that is, by connecting
concepts), thereby unifying manifolds; by our sensibility we
are affected receptively by intuitions which are already given
as unities. The understanding is thus a formal, logical faculty
whose categories are adapted from a well-established
tradition. But these categories are empty grasps in the absence
of the pure material of the intuition to fill them, where
“pure” means unaffected by ordinary sensory influence.
To me this pure, pre-experiential sensibility and its pure,
non-sensory matter is Kant’s most original, not to say mindboggling, discovery (or invention—I am as perplexed about it
now as ever), for a sensibility is, after all, usually understood
to be a capacity for being affected by the senses. It has two
branches. The pure “inner” intuition is our sense of time. It
is pure because it is analytically prior to sensation. It is
“inner” because it is, in ways that become progressively more
unclear in the second edition of the Critique and in the Opus
Postumum, closer to our ego, called the “transcendental
apperception,” meaning the subject, the I that underlies every
object we present to ourselves. For that is what human
consciousness means for Kant: presenting objects to
ourselves. Self-consciousness or apperception is awareness of
the I that is putting this object before itself. It is that
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awareness which is said in the first Critique to represent itself
to us as a phenomenon in inner sense; we know ourselves as
pure egos when we attend to numerable time as it ticks away.
The corresponding outer sense is pure space. All we
intuit (except ourselves—so far) we give the form of space;
space is not formal (as is thinking) but formative. In this
pre-sensory sensorium we find externality within us. Or better, to assume the form of externality objects must be within
our receptive sensibility, together with the sensations that
give them their quality, the material manifold that gives them
body. Nothing could be more contrary to our ordinary sense
of things, where “outside” means precisely not within.
What is the purpose of this dizzying reversal, Kant’s
sequel to the Copernican revolution? That first revolution
made the sun stand still and our earth move, while this one
makes us again home base, though now the world moves to
our measure rather than to a divine maker’s plan. Kant’s
purpose is to bring causality from an outside world, where it
is objectively non-observable, into us where it is subjectively
an inherent necessity of our cognitive constitution.
There is a missing step in this sketch, the notoriously
fugitive “Schematism of the Pure Concept of the
Understanding” (B 176 ff.). It is the crux of the crux of the
positive Critique, and its brevity should warn us that something is the matter. Schematizing is the work of the imagination; it is not the capacity for fantasy but a “transcendental”
faculty, one that makes knowledge possible. It is, in its depths,
responsible for the mystery of conjoining the unconjoinable.
It effects this by bringing forth a general diagram (Kant calls
it a “monogram”) intended to draw together the absolutely
disparate effects of the formally functioning understanding
and the formatively receptive intuition. Thus time and space
are to be conceptualized or, if you like, the concepts of the
understanding are to be time- and space-affected.
Kant hurriedly carries out this “dry and boring dissection” for the case of time. For example, the concept of cause,
when time-imbued, becomes the necessary succession of one
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65
thing upon another according to a ruling concept. At this
moment the possibility of a causal science that has certainty is
grounded. (Here “possibility” does not refer to what might
happen but to that which enables knowledge to become real.)
Kant silently and completely omits the schematizing of
space. I had always supposed that, whatever difficulties I
might have, Kant thought it was too easy. I couldn’t have
been more wrong. Förster shows that it was too hard, and
thereby hangs the tale of the Opus Postumum (59).
2. First to me among those deep perplexities that gives the
Critiques their philosophical poignancy have been the space
puzzles already alluded to (the underprivileging of space in
the Schematism) along with other, related ones.
In the second edition of the first Critique Kant inserted a
sort of time bomb, the famous section called the “Refutation
of Idealism” (B 274, xxxix), in which he aimed to show
that time itself can only be perceived as a determined
phenomenon by us when observed against “something
permanent in space,” that is, against matter: “The consciousness of my own existence is at the same time a consciousness
of other things outside me” (B 276). Where, I ask myself, has
the first function of the “inner” sense gone? What is now
particularly internal about my self-perception?
But so is the very meaning of space as “outer sense” a
puzzle. Outerness seems to mean three things at once: It
means extension, the way a spatial dimension consists of parts
outside of each other, stretching away from themselves. It
means, second, externality, the way objects are experienced
as outside of the subject. And it means, third, outside and
“going beyond” us—the literal sense of “transcendent” (as
distinct from “transcendental”), though this is a region in
principle unreachable. For what we know, we know in us.
That is, after all, what Kant intends to show in the negative
part of the Critique, the “Transcendental Dialectic” which
exposes the illusions reason falls into in going beyond the
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limits of our experience”—and is thus the critique of pure
reason proper.
There is, second, a puzzle that arises incidentally from the
multivalence of Critical terms. The categories, Kant repeats
emphatically, have no being on their own and achieve meaning only as they grasp intuitive material. Take then the category of unity which imposes oneness on manifolds of sense.
There is, however, also the unity that reason strives for as an
ideal but can reach only illusorily. And there is “the synthetic
unity of apperception,” the unifying work of the subject deep
beneath appearance, its chief theoretical effect. Whence, we
might ask, does Kant get the notion of unity to begin with? Is
there not something suspect about this transcendental
notion—and others, for example, “thing”—which are necessary to establish the transcendental terms of the Critiques but
which are in traditional metaphysics terms of transcendence,
the attributes of Being that are beyond sensory experience?
How does Kant come to know these terms of Critical thought
that are antecedent to properly certified knowledge?
A third enigma is immediately connected with the space
puzzles. The dialectic of reason is intended to clear the decks
for human freedom and for the exercise of practical reason,
which expresses itself in deeds. But the system of nature
grounded in the positive part of the Critique is deterministic.
There are no loose joints. How then does moral action appear
in the natural world? How does it actually change events
determined by natural laws? How do we as moral beings
insert ourselves into, intervene in, nature? Further, where, in
fact, are we in the world as phenomenal, perceiving subjects?
In the Critique of Pure Reason there is matter, but no bodies,
human or natural—nor in the second Critique, that of
Practical Reason. The simultaneous actuality of moral deed
and natural events is a mystery: How does the practical
reason make our muscles do the right thing?
The fourth open question is this: How far is nature
specified by the Critical grounds and their ensuing principles?
Are the types of forces necessarily operating in nature
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specifiable, and are their mathematical laws determinable a
priori? How thoroughgoing are the grounds of possibility, or
in Kant’s terms: Can a complete metaphysical doctrine of
nature be worked out such as will descend to and determine
the actual laws of physics? But then, what of observation,
what of contingency? Is anything not under our own rules? Is
the world nothing but our mirror?
Thence arises the fifth question, truly a mystery. Whence
comes the matter of sensation which fills our space with its
quantities and qualities and reflects to us our time by being
the permanent material background against which motions
appear? Is the occasion for the appearance of this matter
infused into us transcendently, from beyond, or are we its
authors not only formally, formatively, but really, substantively? I would say that this is the most unregarded, the totally
unregarded, question in Kant’s writing—and in his thought as
well: Are we, after all, buffeted by transcendent influxes? Or
are we, when all has been worked out, shown to be our own
authors in every respect—which would be brute solipsism,
the philosophy of solus ipse “I alone, by myself ”? But then
what becomes of the ideal republic of mutually respectful
moral beings and of the real political community of embodied human beings? What access do we then have to each
other’s subjectivity?
Finally, the sixth problem, not of doctrine but of
argumentation: In the first Critique God is an ideal of reason,
a required hypothesis or postulate if we are to act morally, an
“as if ” representation whose existence is to us a necessary
thought though its actuality is provably unprovable. As Kant
works on the Opus Postumum the thought of a necessary God
is increasingly sharpened and the claim more pointed, as
shown in III: There are reasons that drive us to think that
God is necessary; thus God’s existence must be first postulated and then acknowledged as real. He is actual for us:
Est Deus in nobis, “There is a God—in us” (my dash and italics, O.P. 209, 248). And: “Everything that thinks has a God.”
That is to say, thinking requires a divinity and what thinking
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requires it must have—but only for the thinker. I simply
cannot make out whether this God really exists or is after all
what Kant himself would call a “subreption,” a surreptitious
rustling of Being by a needy reason, or perhaps some third
being I am too literal-minded to comprehend. To me it is
marvelous how scintillatingly ambiguous the severely systematic Kant really is at great junctures.
Whether the above items are enigmas, questions, problems, puzzles, they each open up abysmal depth for the
inquiry concerning human knowledge, action, and faith.
Except for the spectacularly absent fifth question, concerning
the origin of sensation and its stimulating matter, the Opus
Postumum will show Kant grappling with these problems,
sometimes only to focus them the more pressingly.
3. The early title of the Opus Postumum was “Transition from
the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics.”
The final title is “The Highest Standpoint of Transcendental
Philosophy in the System of Ideas: God, the World, and Man
in the World, Restricting Himself through Laws of Duty”
(Förster xliii). The distance between the titles betokens Kant’s
winding himself from system-driven, downward doctrinal
specification into ascending, comprehensive speculation. An
obvious question will be whether these speculations in the
main confirm or undermine the Critical enterprise. I want to
say here that either way it is a thrilling business. If the gaping
holes in the architecture of the system can be stopped and the
foundations reinforced, the edifice will surely be the more
magnificent and rivaled only by Hegel’s system. (I omit
Aristotle, not so much because his philosophizing historically
preceded the notion of philosophic system-making, but
because he would in any case have thought that first philosophy should be problem- rather than system-driven.) But if
Kant is impelled to let his own system implode the outcome
surely glows with the sober glory of thought outthinking
itself. In the event, it seems to be a little of both.
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The first question that has occupied students of the Opus
Postumum concerns the project of the title. Why was a transition needed, where was there a gap? The Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science of 1786 seemed to provide a
doctrinal transition from the general principles of the first
Critique (which ground the laws of action and reaction, of
causation in time and of the conservation of matter,
“Analogies of Experience,” B 218 ff.) to the specific
Newtonian Laws of Motion. That is to say, Kant has “constructed” these proto-laws, which means he has exhibited
them in the intuition so as to display their necessary characteristics. Why, then, does this transition require another
Transition?
Förster gives a thoroughly satisfying answer (59 ff.). As
we saw, the spatial schematization of the categories is missing
in the first Critique. The Metaphysical Foundation is in fact
this missing schematism, the spatialization of the categories;
I omit the details of Förster’s proof, but the argument is on
the face of it convincing. At this point matter comes in: Kant
must analyze empirical matter and its motion and then “construct” or “exhibit” the concept so obtained in space. (This is
an epicycle in the so-called Critical circle: Kant analyzes the
object, here matter, he intends to certify cognitively and then
provides its transcendental conditions of possibility.)
But in order for matter not just to occupy and traverse
space but to act dynamically (as it is empirically observed to
do), to compact itself into bodies capable of moving each
other, the forces of matter must be established. But forces are
not to be observed as appearances (as Hume insisted) and are
thus not constructable, that is, exhibitable as configurations in
the intuition. The Metaphysical Foundations do not succeed
in solving the problem of cohesive bodies (as opposed to
shapeless matter) held dynamically within their boundaries
and exercising attractive as well as repulsive force on each
other. Thus this metaphysical transition cannot present
physics with its basic concepts. A gap bars the way to the
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categories’ objective validity, that is, to their empirical applicability; the attempted schematism is incomplete.
So a large part of the early work on the Opus Postumum
is devoted to the Tantalus-labor of finding, a priori, the kinds
and ratios of forces that will underwrite our natural world of
dynamically moving cohesive bodies. Clearly Kant now
intends (or always did) for the Critical grounding to reach
very far into empirical, supposedly adventitious (unpredictable) cognition. We may wonder what will survive that
passage between the Scylla of complete systematicity and the
Charybdis of empirical science.
Now come the ether proofs, a huge and weighty presence
in the Opus Postumum. From a certain point on, Kant regards
it as established that ether (or caloric), an “imponderable,
incohesible, inexhaustible,” medium that is “universally
distributed, all-penetrating, and all-moving” (O.P. 98, 92) is
the condition of possibility of all the mechanical forces of
matter whose effects (if not they themselves) are apparent in
the making and the motions of bodies. Förster has lucidly
reconstructed the intricate essential proof from its many sites
and disparate approaches in the text (89 ff.). It is worth
attending to in spite of the negative Michelson-Morley ether
experiment of 1881, not merely because it makes vivid the
exigencies of the transcendental system (a system which
someone—not myself—might indeed regard as having merely historical interest), but because it is the result of a deep
meditation on the conditions of spatial experience.
To begin with, Förster points out that the Opus
Postumum reverses the first Critique on the source of the
unity of all appearances (84). In that Critique it was an ideal
of reason to bring unity into our necessarily piecemeal
perception. Then, in the third Critique, the Critique of
Judgment (1719), a new source of unity comes on the scene:
Nature herself is purposive and systematic. Under the
influence of this reversal from reason ideally unifying nature
to nature herself really unifying its forces into a system, a
strange new situation arises. (The ultimate possibility of its
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arising I would trace back, without having worked it out
sufficiently, to the above-mentioned ambivalence of the term
“unity” in the first Critique: Is unity a subjective function or
a transcendent characteristic of beings?) This situation is that
nature herself must now contain a priori principles of its
objective possibility; no longer are all a priori conditions of
experience in the subject.
Or are they? Förster is inclined to think that the ether, as
a condition of possibility of a system of nature (and hence of
its science, physics) is an ideal of our reason, hence subjective
(91-92). But he does not deny that Kant himself wavered and
sometimes speaks of the underlying medium as existing “outside the idea” (O.P. 82); this oscillating effect is not unlike
that of Kant’s treatment of God’s existence (see below).
The chief elements of the existence proof for the ether are
as follows. From the subjective side: Empty space is not
perceptible; a single space filled with moving forces is the
condition of the possibility of unified experience which is
knowledge of connected perceptions; hence we must form
the idea of an elementary material that is in space and time
and has the characteristics listed above; thus we get a subjective principle of the synthetic unity of possible experience
such as must underlie physics.
From the objective side: Nature is the complex of all
things that can be the objects of our senses and hence of
experience, and we do have experience of outer objects. But
experience requires that its objects form, for our judgments,
a system which has a necessary unity according to one
principle. The ether, distributed through space yet forming a
collective whole, is the one and only candidate for such a
system. Therefore, as making the whole of experience
possible, it is actual.
Thus the ether is a unique—and very peculiar—external
object that really exists in the—to my mind—oscillating way
of Kant’s existence proofs, which argue from the enabling
grounds of knowledge to the real existence of the object.
As a ground of possibility it is not itself perceptible or
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observable. Thus Kant might have replied to MichelsonMorley that, since the ether hypothesis was the condition of
all experiments, it was itself not falsifiable by experiment. But
they, as presumably positivist physicists, would have turned
this reply around and said that what is not falsifiable is not
positive knowledge. To me, too, the transcendental ether is,
as I said, illuminating less as a real ground of science than as
a reflection on the nature of our experience of space and its
contents. For isn’t it the case, after all, that the material ether
having been eradicated from physics, other fillers of space
had to be found, such as fields of force and geometric
conformations of space itself?
In any case, Kant considers that the specific dynamic
properties he assigns to his ether solve the problem of
systematizing the mechanical forces, attraction, repulsion,
cohesion, whose effects are mathematicized in the Newtonian
manner. The—surely superseded—details of this grounding
are obscure to me and I can summon interest in the argument
about them only insofar as they realize that “transition,”
announced in the early title of the Opus Postumum, from the
metaphysical doctrine of perceptible matter in motion to
bodies subject to an a priori determinable system of forces.
And now Kant realizes that a question looms that will
have made a reader of the Critique of Pure Reason and of the
ensuing Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science uneasy
all along: However does a scientist get wind of this now
systematically embodied nature? How does the subject come
to know its now exhaustively knowable external object?
This realization brings on a pivotal moment in the later
fascicles of the Opus Postumum, when the Selbstsetzungslehre,
the “doctrine of self-positing,” comes to the fore. Again,
Förster is a much-needed guide through the text (101-116).
The terms of the first Critique are, all in all, wellmarshalled—systematic and precise—within the work; it is
when we think beyond it that they become scintillatingly
obscure. We might worry that we are undercutting Kant’s
explicit intention in thus thinking outside the box. The later
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Opus Postumum shows us Kant doing it himself. One might
go so far as to say that the older he got the more radically he
thought (which, rightly considered, is the way it ought to be).
The late work reconsiders self-consciousness, at first in
the spirit of the Critique, but then in increasingly more
boldly enunciated ways. Everything begins with “I think,” the
self-recognition of the subject. It is a piece of mere logical
analysis (since no intuition is involved) by which I make
myself into an object to myself (O.P. 182). So stated this first
transcendental event makes me ask myself: Can so momentous a self-diremption, that of exercising my autonomy in
making myself into my own object, occur by a merely logical
act, the analysis of the meaning of “I think”? Doesn’t it
require some onto-logical activity? Kant answers this
question, though along Critical rather than metaphysical
lines. The first act can occur only together with a second one:
This is an act of synthesis, meaning one in which thought
grasps and unifies something given that goes beyond mere
logic—to begin with, pure time and space. In space and time
the subject posits itself, or better the subject posits itself as an
“I.” This is the doctrine of self-positing.
To appreciate how astounding this doctrine is we must
look at the notion of positing. For Kant, to posit is to assign
existence, the one and only way to realize existence (an
identification that goes way back to an essay on the proofs of
God’s existence of 1763). Thus in self-positing I bring myself
into existence. It is an act of self-creation. This way of putting
it tells me that existence is a subordinate condition depending on a somehow prior subject which is, however, itself
not—or is not knowable as—a being that has an essence, an
actuality, or, so far, personhood. The I-subject is a mystery
into which Kant himself proscribes inquiry in his critique of
dialectical reason.
So far, however, though I exist, I have not yet made it into
the natural world. This is where the ether does its service. It
makes space real to the senses, filled as it is with a universal
proto-matter that is the condition of connected perceptions
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wherever I find myself in it. Space is thus not only the
subjective form of sensation but a real unified object outside
me, unified by the ubiquitous presence of a weightless,
unbulkable ether.
And yet I, in turn, am in it. For as space becomes perceptible because of the ceaseless dynamism of its system of ethergrounded forces, so I can perceive it since I myself am an
organic body that is sensitive to forces because this body is
itself a system of organized forces: To get sensation I must be
sensitive, to get sensations from a dynamic system I must be
such a system myself—I must be continuous with nature.
Here at last is the embodied subject in the world. Selfpositing thus has a second phase. As I made myself exist
within my pure cognitive constitution, so I posit myself as
affected by forces that I have organized to enable me to
experience nature: “Positing and perception, spontaneity and
receptivity, the objective and subjective relations are simultaneous because they are identical as to time, as appearances of
how the subject is affected—thus are given a priori in the
same actus” (O.P. 132). Förster observes that the last phrase
means that the same original transcendental act brings about
the duality of empirical self and material world. Because in
apprehending the undetermined material manifold I insert
into it certain fundamental forces I can simultaneously
represent myself as an affected body and as so affected by an
external cause (107).
So it seems that the system finally has closed in on the
human body from the inside out through the transcendental
spatial intuition and from the outside in through the “hypostatized” forces of nature (meaning forces “supposed, but as
real”): the elementary dynamical ether and the mechanical
forces of physics known against its ethereal ground. Better
late than never, though this body be merely a self-moving
machine, which, incidentally, responds to impinging outside
forces as would a system of rigid and moving parts. The
subject has now called into existence not only itself but also
its world and its body—has made itself aware of itself as a
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certified knower and simultaneously as a participating inhabitant of perceptible space. Perceptibility, however, is just what
existence means for Kant: existence is a by-product of the
relation between a cognitive subject and the object it posits
for itself, even outside itself. I would put the puzzle here thus:
How real can such existence be, in the ordinary meaning
of the word, that is, indefeasibly and self-assertively independent of me? Yet Kant would find, had found, such a
question offensively obtuse since it voids the whole Critical
enterprise and its compelling motives. Nonetheless, it does
seem that in setting the limits of reason Kant has abolished
the finitude of human autonomy, the finitude that implies
something beyond me which I am not.
Förster interprets the doctrine of self-positing as a schema
for (perceptible) outer space (114) since a schema brings
together the spontaneous understanding with the receiving
sensibility, in this case, matter- or sensation-filled space. This
schema completes the conditions for a science of nature—
though something else is missing.
There is as yet no personhood. But since persons are
subjects to which deeds can be imputed, since they are moral,
that is, free and responsible beings, and since one purpose of
the whole enterprise was to ground human freedom and with
it morality, Kant is driven to a second, a moral self-positing
and, hard upon it, yet beyond, to a focusing of the idea of
God. More precisely, from the start of this final part of Kant’s
last work these two topics, human morality and God, are
more intimately related than they ever were in the Critique of
Practical Reason. For there God is merely a postulate of
practical reason (2.2.5), a kind of by-thought, required
because nature by herself offers no ground for assuring us of
happiness commensurate with our deserts. So we must
believe that there is a cause, working outside of nature, that
will bring about such a reward. But the moral necessity of
God is subjective, that is, it is a need, not an objective ground
of duty or belief. In the Opus Postumum it is as if man,
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having brought himself, his world, and himself-in-the-world
into existence, was now ready to posit God as well.
But there are more serious, systematic reasons for Kant to
turn to God in his last work. The said postulate of the second
Critique calls upon God as a condition of making moral
actions achievable for humans. Förster traces the various
functions God is assigned (summarized on pp. 134-135). The
last of these, stemming from Kant’s Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), is that of God as founder
of an ethical commonwealth. But in the Opus Postumum
Kant says repeatedly that the divine power cannot make a
man morally good: “He must do it himself ” (O.P. 249). So
here opens what Kant himself calls an “abyss of a mystery”;
Förster interprets this phrase as Kant’s realization that human
moral autonomy and God as founding father of an ethical
commonwealth are in contradiction (133). Kant finds a way
out, adumbrated in Religion and sharpened in the late Opus
Postumum.
The self-positing so far described had been theoretical,
cognitive. But now Kant introduces a second, moral-practical
self-positing, analogous to the first in having its own a priori
moving forces: the ideas of right that unite all persons, as
expressed in the Categorical Imperative (which commands,
unconditionally, the subjection of individual inclination to
laws acknowledged as universal, O.P. 198); the difference is
only that the first involves being affected by outer, spatial
forces, the second consists of obedience to one’s own rationality—self-forcing, one might say. Self-positing, recall, was
bringing oneself into existence by becoming conscious at
once of oneself as thinking and as being affected by objects
determined by oneself. So too moral self-positing is self-consciousness together with the consciousness that I can subjugate my inclinations and can myself determine my will, that
is, choose morally—which is what Kant calls freedom.
Kant now argues that the idea of human freedom, whose
force is formulated in the Categorical Imperative, brings with
it immediately, analytically, the concept of God. For the
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imperative is a command, which, like the law of a civil commonwealth, unites all rational beings, and therefore it
requires a law-giver and enforcer. Thus God must exist, and
to do as we ought (that is, our duty) is a divine command.
But God’s existence is not that of a being independent of
human reason (Förster 142). Rather just as we postulated an
ether to make a system of forces possible, so we postulate
God as real to give the idea of duty a moving force. Thus the
contradiction of human freedom and divine imposition
certainly seems to be resolved.
There is one more step to be taken. God is now an ideal
of practical reason, said, however, to exist—in some way.
What is the divinity’s relation to nature, particularly human
nature? This is Kant’s “abyss of a mystery,” mentioned above:
God and the world are heterogeneous ideas; as God cannot
make men better, for that would abrogate their moral freedom, so he cannot interfere with nature, for that would abrogate its lawful determinateness. Kant reaches for the solution
we would now expect: The unification of God and nature lies
in the human subject. It is to be found in “Man in the World,
Restricting Himself Through Laws of Duty,” as the penultimate title page puts it (O.P. 244). He is an ideal, an archetype;
the wise man, the philosopher, who knows God in himself
and the laws of nature and the imperative of action. Kant has
been, significantly it now turns out, in the habit of using the
term Weltweisheit, “world-wisdom,” for philosophy. With the
human ideal Kant has reached “The Highest Standpoint of
Transcendental Philosophy.” Förster says he has therewith
solved one of the oldest problems of philosophy, how to unify
theoretical and practical reason (146). And so he has—if we
can comprehend this solution.
From Religion on through the Opus Postumum Kant has
been emphasizing the importance of a human ethical community, superintended by God to the realization of morality.
In the latter work, it is this union of rational beings that
makes the force of moral law analogous to the unifying ether
of the natural system. Since now man has finally turned up in
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the body, a major enigma of the Critique of Practical Reason
appears to be resolved: How transcendental subjects, each,
moreover, locked within its own self-constituted natural
world, can ever appear and speak to each other.
I say the enigma appears to be solved because the subject
is now embodied and has material appearance. But that
doesn’t really help: How does my appearing body enter your
self-posited world—unless we hypostasize, very seriously, a
true outside, a transcendent Beyond, through which I can
come to you by infusing your intuition with a sensory manifold expressing my person in an appearance? But this is
language so alien to Kant that I am almost abashed to use it.
Nonetheless, the grounds of that intersubjective communication without which Kant cannot conceive an ethical
community—a human one, at least—are missing from the
Transcendental System. This enigma is clearly conjoined to
that of another’s body, because before we apprehend each
other as rational beings we must appear to each other as
material bodies. For we have no way (short of entering each
other’s minds) of conveying thought except in embodied
form.
Nor is the God implied in our recognition of “human
duties as divine commands” intelligible to me. This subjective
God induces in me a desire to get down to brass tacks: Is a
god who is “the inner vital spirit of man in the world”
(O.P. 240) a God who exists in any ordinary sense, that is, a
God who is a stand-alone substance, who is there, in his
realm, whether I exist or not?
Kant refuted, more than once, Anselm’s proof that God
exists (e.g., in the Critique Of Pure Reason B 626) because it
depends on regarding existence not as the subject’s positing
of an object but as a property of the object itself; thus Anselm
argues that in conceiving God we must necessarily include his
existence in his essence. Yet it seems to me that Kant has
accepted a precondition of Anselm’s proof, namely that when
thought necessarily conceives of (and therefore conceives
necessarily) the object as existing, then it must exist—only
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where Anselm would say “beyond me,” Kant says “in my
thought.” Is this an argument that gains anything as it goes?
I think the final pages of his life’s work, preoccupied though
it is with God-positing, show no sign that this question
oppressed Kant, that he felt an insufficiency in the thought
that the unifier of all realms is the dutiful man who has God
within but is otherwise left on his own, is “his own originator” (O.P. 209) and also the maker of Heaven and Earth—
except that once he says this: “There is a certain sublime
melancholy in the feelings which accompany the sublimity of
the ideas of pure practical reason” (O.P. 212).
4. Here, to conclude, is a summary review of the perplexities
that I found in the Critiques and of the bearing the Opus
Postumum has on them.
First, the space puzzles. The Opus Postumum acknowledges what the transcendental Critiques had, ipso facto, no
place for: that if the transcendental subject is to be affected
by sensation through, or better, in its sensibility, it must be
embodied. Kant now puts the subject’s body in space so that
through its own forces it may interact with the forces of
nature. This somatic positing quite literally fleshes out the
system, and it does so by fixing on one of the several meanings of “external” that “outer sense” seems to carry in the first
Critique: As one would expect, Kant now sometimes speaks
as if the ether-filled space, where my body meets nature’s
bodies, was in some real sense outside of myself as subject.
That cannot be, however, since space never ceases to be what
it was in the first Critique, the pure content (so to speak) of
our receptive outer sense, the spatial intuition. But that fact
results in this strangely involuted condition: The body,
through which the world affects me, is within this Kantian
sensorium, the intuition, the spatial sensibility; so we project
a body within ourselves to receive sensations from an “outer”
world we have ourselves created (Kant’s own term, e.g.,
O.P. 235). I keep asking myself how Kant would have
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responded to this construal of the post-Critical layout. Would
we could raise the dead!
On the second, more general, question concerning the
origin and fixing of the transcendental terms that stake out
the system, the Opus Postumum is silent, though Kant asks
himself over and over what transcendental philosophy is—his
very last proposed title (at least in Förster’s selection) is
“Philosophy as a Doctrine of Science in a Complete System.”
The question I am asking could be put like that: Where does
the philosopher stand when he establishes “The Highest
Standpoint of Transcendental Philosophy”? If Kant considered this question he does not say—perhaps he would have
thought it madness—much as Aristotle thinks it is ridiculous
to try to show that there is nature (Physics 2.1).
The third question, “How is moral action actually inserted into a deterministic natural world?”—is in fact answered
in the Opus: The rational subject exerts a moral force analogous to natural forces. But is it an answer? How exactly does
the force of reason move bodies? Psychokinetically?
My fifth question, “Whence comes adventitious sensation
and hence that contingency of nature which makes science
empirical in detail?,” is simply and spectacularly untouched
in the Opus Postumum, as it was in the Critiques. Yet it is not
an unreasonable problem to raise, because, though Kant likes
to describe what it is that comes to us as a mere “manifold”
(manyness simply), sensation is in fact the material of specific
appearances; hence, as it seems to me, some sort of
evidence for its origin must be forthcoming (for from
antiquity on, appearance is appearance of something, that is
to say, is evidence and screen at once of something beyond it).
One motive for drawing sensation more and more into
the subject is precisely the principled specification of natural
science: The more detail comes under the subject’s control
the more transcendentally grounded physics becomes, that is,
the more it can anticipate its findings and make laws by analogy. As it is, the ether theory goes pretty far in prescribing, a
priori, the types of mechanical force whose effects are to be
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noticed in bodies, even up to dictating some of their
mathematical laws, for example the inverse square law of
attraction: Kant explains that the following argument holds
for any force that is diffused from the center of force through
concentric spherical shells. Since the spherical surfaces vary
as the square of their radii, the larger the sphere, that is the
more distant from the center, the less will be the force distributed over each unit surface. Thus the effect of the force
will vary inversely as the square of the distance or as 1/r2
(Met. Found. ¶ 519).
Could it be that Kant might be driven to say that we ourselves are the creators of our sense material? In the
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) he distinguishes bounds that are positive in having an enfolding
Beyond, from limits that are mere negations. In that work he
says that metaphysics leads to bounds beyond which lie the
“things in themselves,” which are inaccessible to experience
and cognition because they are beyond our cognitive faculties, but which it is nonetheless necessary to assume as
sources, presumably, among other things, of sensation (¶ 57).
In the Opus Postumum that Beyond seems to have receded;
then must we ourselves be the generators of sensation? Might
we be driven to suppose that the unknowable transcendent
noumenal I is itself the source of the sensations that affect
me? And if so, how is Kant’s system in that respect different
from Fichte’s Science of Knowledge, in which the subject is
completely self-posited, including its sensory affects, and of
which Kant says that he regards it “as a totally indefensible
system . . . for the attempt to cull a real object out of logic is
a vain effort” (O.P. 264)? Call it absolute idealism or
solipsism, in putting the world in man it leaves him solus, a
subject alone without a confronting object, and Kant seems to
find that insupportable in the Fichtean system. Recall from
hints above that the first Critique itself was already vulnerable to the charge of solipsism. Sartre, for example, in the
chapter “The Reef of Solipsism” in Being and Nothingness
(3.1.2), raises it with respect to time, insofar as it is an inner
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sense: How then can a Kantian “I” be synchronous with any
“Other”?
I want to insert a reflection here. Philosophers pride
themselves on following wherever honestly consequential
thinking leads, even into the insufferable. There came
generations after Kant who took a kind of unholy joy in their
desperate conclusions. But Kant is the philosopher of “conditions of possibility,” of finding the terms that enable the
satisfaction of rational humanity. So I imagine him to be open
to the question: Quo vadis?, “Where are you going?” For that
the love of wisdom should turn out to be totally self-love
seems indeed to be insufferable.
Finally, the sixth perplexity, the proof, no, rather the
positing of the existence of God: In the first Critique the
understanding, our faculty for organizing given material into
experience, sets the starting terms; the theoretical reason is
considered mainly as a faculty for attempting, indefeasibly, to
marshal judgments connecting these terms into inevitably
illusory syllogistic conclusions. In the Opus Postumum, however, the practical reason is paramount, for its requirements
come to be dominant. It leads the way in the positing of self,
body, and finally God. This God-positing is no longer the
“as-if ” postulation of Kant’s moral works, which entitles us
to act merely as if there were a God who sanctions and
rewards. In the Opus Postumum reason is compelled to posit
God as actual—though in me and not as a substance. Actual
though not substantial, subjective but an object—I seem to
lack the intellectual wherewithal for entertaining these
conjunctions. Indeed, one of the benefits of entering into the
ratiocinative preoccupations of a Kant, who explores and
pushes his own concepts to their limits and who is
moreover—as I think—incapable of mere invention or simple
confusion, is that one is confronted in precise and compelling
terms with the limits of intelligibility.
5. The Kant we study as a community is and will continue to
be the Kant of the two Critiques of Pure and Practical
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Reason, and so it will be, I think, for most students of philosophical works. Thus Kant’s influence on the thinking world
(where attention to Kant is growing rather than waning, for
example in cognitive science and in ethics) will be mostly
Critical.
That Kant had a living post-Critical afterlife is in itself a
source of fascination, which the review has tried to express.
The Opus Postumum, however, though it may never, and
probably should not, exert the direct influence of the
Critiques, also contributes to Kant’s posthumous afterlife, not
so much, as I said, in directly influencing the thinking of
people now alive, as in projecting a drift that is being realized
among us.
I am referring primarily to the topic of subjectivity. In
many departments of life the outcome of a venture is an
advance over the beginning—which is called progress. In
philosophy, however, the working-out of the origin is often a
shallowfication, to coin a term. One reason is precisely that
philosophy is treated as progressive, which entails either
contracting the deep open questions of original inquiry into
more effectively resoluble tight problems, or, on the contrary,
loosening the precisely significant terms of a coherent philosophy to connote its bowdlerized, or at least more relaxed,
possibilities. Kant’s terms are more liable to the latter fate.
For Kant expands, late in life, and late in the Opus
Postumum, on what he had asserted earlier: “Philosophy is to
be regarded either as the habitus of philosophizing or as a
work: through which there arises, proceeding from it, a work
as a system of absolute unity” (247; I can’t resist quoting a
neighboring entry, which shows Kant in what he would call a
“technical-practical” mode, that is, displaying mundane
practicality—always an index of mental alertness: “N.B. The
melon must be eaten today—with Prof. Gensichen—and, at
this opportunity, [discuss] the income from the university.”)
Consequently Kant’s terms are from the beginning welldefined and well-seated in a system, and thus apt to descend
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to the public by acquiring more diffuse rather than narrower
usages.
System-building is out of style at the present moment; the
mood is anti-foundationalist. Particularly out of favor in
philosophy are the two great Critical assumptions, the one so
deep beneath Kant’s thinking that there is no overt reflection
on it in the Critiques, the other perhaps the central preoccupation of the Opus Postumum. The former is representationalism, the apprehension of thinking as the activity of putting
objects before the cognitive faculties; the German for “representation” is Vorstellung, literally “setting [something] before
[oneself].” (I should mention that representationalism at least
is alive and well in the cognitive sciences, as opposed to
philosophy.) The latter assumption is the one expressed in the
quotation above, that the work of philosophy is “architectonic,” the building of a well-grounded, completely unified,
and thoroughly detailed edifice representing the activities and
aspects of the rational subject, the “I.” (To be sure, Kant’s
system is only the penultimate great Continental system; in
the ultimate one, however, that of Hegel, the dialectic of
concepts supersedes representational thinking, and the
system is not constructed architectonically but develops
organically.)
Three hugely influential shapes that the “I” as an object of
reflection has taken are: the Cartesian Ego, a thing that
knows of its existence as it thinks and can apply itself to
mathematicizable spatial extension; the Rousseauian Self, a
pure interiority that knows and revels in its mere sense of
existence; and a Kantian Subject, an I that knows itself in two
capacities, as theoretical (the subject of formal thinking and
of a formative sensibility which together give laws to external
nature), and as practical (an autonomous person that gives
the law to itself as a moral actor).
All three, Cartesian quantification, Rousseauian selfconcern and Kantian personhood, have been absorbed and
naturalized into contemporary thinking. The subject of the
Critiques, however, being the most complex and comprehen-
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sive of these ideas, has also been most liable to second-hand
connotations. For example, the word “subjective” evidently
got into general philosophical and hence into common use
through the Critiques, though when we say something is
“purely subjective” we tend to mean it in a denigrating sense:
lacking hard, public objectivity.
But the expanded terms of the Opus Postumum are not,
as far as my reading goes, known to our contemporaries—the
work has, after all, been available for barely a decade—
neither to the proponents of human self- and world-construction nor to the post-Nietzschean value-relativists who
hold some version of the idea that man himself is the creator
of values, or the religious thinkers who regard God as a selfgranted response to human need. Yet all these notions are in
a more disciplined, systematic form adumbrated in the Opus
Postumum: in the self-positing of the subject and its worldconstruction, in the autonomy of its moral life, and in the
required postulation of its God.
But in what mode, to return to a question asked in the
beginning, has Kant thus become the occulted projector of
our modernity? Did he succumb—Förster thinks this implausible (76)—to the then-current craze of “posito-mania”
(Setzkrankheit)? Is he spinning out the deep implications of
the Critical enterprise, perhaps into originally unintended
consequences and to his own uneasy amazement? Or has he,
in adventurous old age, leapt beyond the Critiques into the
stormy oceans that he once said surrounded the land of the
pure understanding, an island of truth enclosed by the
unchangeable bounds of nature (Critique of Pure Reason,
B 294)?
These questions I am in principle unable to answer for
myself, because I am not sure whether there can be a philosophical system with joins so tightly fitted that its inherent
necessities are unambiguously fixed, and in particular,
because the transcendental system of the Opus Postumum
offers surprises (the ether), superadded requirements (the
specification of empirical physics), shortfalls of closure (the
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source of sensation). Nor am I certain in general whether,
when a philosopher takes a structure of thought to a new
level either by fine-tuning its technicalities or by driving it to
its ultimate conclusions, he is doing the work of interpretation or of deconstruction. Instead I want to express this, my
sense of Kant’s late unfinished work: If “awe” signifies a
mixture of admiration and unease, here is the occasion to
recall a good word to its proper use, and to say that the Opus
Postumum is indeed awesome.
87
Odysseus’s World of the
Imagination
Paul Ludwig
Eva Brann’s Homeric Moments teaches where and how to
find hidden delights in the Odyssey and the Iliad. The book
aims to be a companion to Homer that can modestly step out
of the way after pointing out “moments,” those episodes or
imaginative visions within episodes that achieve vibrant stasis
and are therefore at once stations and peaks in the narrative
flow—an idea based on Aristotle’s distinction between
episodes and bare plot. The slow or static parts such as long
similes and apparent digressions, which many readers wish to
skip over in order to get on with the story, Homeric Moments
regards as affording the intellectual pleasure peculiar to reading epic. Brann’s interpretative assumptions are provokingly
face up on the table, and her conclusions are surprising and
radical: there is no archaic “mentality” by which heroes think
differently from us or which enables them to see a world full
of gods rather than natural causes. A world populated by
gods is superior to most of our own modern accounts of the
world: Odysseus’s tales of his adventures, like Homer’s gods,
are imaginary but true, factually false but better than a
recounting of material facts because they are spun from
Odysseus’s imagination, an imagination that practically
requires that he lose or destroy his men.
Epithets, Similes, and Gods
Homeric “moments” are primarily visual snapshots, including word-paintings such as Hephaestus’s shield and many
Homeric similes as well. Their meanings, like the meanings of
paintings, are not simply told to the reader. At issue is the
Eva Brann. Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and
the Iliad. Paul Dry Books, 2002.
Paul Ludwig is a tutor on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College.
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place of surmise—including, for Brann, wild surmise like that
of Cortez’s men—in literary interpretation. What sorts of
surmises Brann makes about moments can be seen from her
treatment of an actual painting, Ajax’s suicide as depicted on
a sixth-century amphora. The vase painter’s huge but delicate
Ajax squats over his task of fixing into the ground the hilt of
the sword he will fall upon. A few choice words explain the
difference between black-figure and red-figure techniques of
vase painting: in the earlier genre, figures appeared as black
silhouettes on red clay backgrounds, but in the later genre
figure and ground were reversed. “Rather than black bulks
blocking the light, [figures] will appear as sunlit openings in
the lustrous black glaze” (Moments 73). For Brann, the blackfigure genre “seems made to depict a Hades-bound soul, a
prospective shade,” for example Ajax leaving the light. Few
classicists in their right minds would venture such a claim.
Since the painter is thought to have died around the time redfigure was invented, to give him a choice flirts with anachronism. The lack of clear historical evidence that the blackfigure artist ever worked in red-figure dictates that his genre
left him no recourse but to paint Ajax black. Since it is safer
to posit only one cause per event (shades of Occam’s razor),
and this generic explanation is sufficient, scholars discipline
themselves to refrain from speculating further. Brann by contrast “surmises” that the black-figure artist intended to
exploit that unique resource of his genre (blackness of
figures) that made it peculiarly appropriate for this depiction
(a soul in shadow). The crucial thing about interpretative
surmises is that they can never be conclusive. Here, the
generic cause screens or hides the existence of another cause,
the artist’s intention. Doubt, in the historical or critical
methods Brann opposes, takes on a life of its own, and lack
of a proof effectually becomes proof of a lack. Unconfirmed
means untrue. As with vase painting, so it is with Homer’s
epithets and the issue of their significance: Brann freely
admits that some epithets are scarcely significant and are
governed by metrical convenience, but that admission does
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not stop her from investigating each epithet or cause her to
doubt the appropriateness, irony, or other significance she
finds in many of them (28-9). Of course it remains obvious
that an epithet can both fill the meter and signify (i.e., fulfill
two purposes at once, thus having two “causes”) since even
the weakest epithet performs better than any random word
would have done. It would seem to follow that epithets may
sometimes have further significance; the issue is whether it is
more sophisticated to ignore these or to point them out.
Vision becomes double in Homer’s similes. First the
reader is presented with a visual background (“like a
poppy”), against which the vision of the thing or event
described (“he let his head droop”) can be seen afresh. The
insight that similes usually work better when the background
comes first can be substantiated simply by trying out some
Homeric similes backwards (139). The real situation quickly
entrenches itself and the comparison becomes mere embellishment (“he let his head droop like a poppy”). Such natural
occurrences are often the likeness made for manslaughter in
the Iliad; Brann concludes that the function of the simile is to
mitigate the horror of war. The Odyssey, with less gruesomeness to mitigate, specializes in uglier similes and tends to
magnify rather than mitigate. If, however, the horror is worsened and Nature seems all the more peaceful when the two
are juxtaposed, the sharpness of the contrast might work
against alleviating the pain in the Iliad. Homer’s observing
the horrific together in one vision with peaceful nature is a
“dry truth” akin to when economic considerations obtrude
on Diomedes’ and Glaucus’s exchange of armor, a truthfulness which Schiller thought “naive” and said often gave an
impression of insensitivity (Moments 122). The modern taste
prefers to concentrate on one side of life at a time: sweeping
the other temporarily under the rug becomes sensitivity.
Gods do the same work as similes and therefore they, too,
can make Homeric moments: they transfigure human life.
“Faith” is a term misapplied to the Homeric deities because,
unlike the invisible one God of the Abrahamic faiths, no one
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believes or disbelieves in them; rather, everyone senses their
presence unless or until the gods themselves choose to withdraw (36). Brann thus overcomes a misleading dichotomy of
the gods as either superseded objects of a naive faith or background machinery created by the sophisticated agnostic
Homer. A third alternative not considered might be
Herodotus’s claim that Hesiod and Homer essentially gave
the Greek gods their birth, honors, arts, and shapes (Histories
2.53). If Homer is telling a story of a fictional past time when
belief was not necessary because the gods were accessible, this
would not eliminate the possibility that belief might become
necessary in “latter” days, e.g., for Homer’s audience. Every
so often a Greek did opine that the Olympians were fabrications: Xenophanes said that if horses could draw, they would
draw gods shaped like horses.
It is here that Brann proudly declares her radicalism:
Homer’s gods are both imaginary and true, or at least truer
than many a world without them. Their manifestation to us
through the faculty of our imagination says nothing about
whether they originate in the imagination alone; rather, the
denigration of that faculty would seem to be the only motive
for dismissing the gods on the grounds that they manifest
themselves through our imagination. Because the gods transfigure the human, we are better off with them than without
them. Brann uses Athena’s visual transfigurations of Odysseus
to make this clear. Whenever the goddess is upon him,
Odysseus is most himself. His beautiful moments are
bestowed by the goddess yet are totally his own. Homer
observes something natural and calls it a divine gift. “Nothing
happens to [Odysseus] that does not happen to us all; we too
glow and crumble and have our alternating moments. What
is wonderful about that? Or rather when is it ever less than a
wonder?” (49-50; emphasis added). Thus the gods are a mode
of access to the all-important appreciation of the wonder in
everyday life. We are measured by our ability to see gods, but
what we mainly see them doing is watching us. Nothing
would change in result if the gods ceased to look on, but
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everything would change in significance (43): we would no
longer be dignified by the respect—literally “regard”—of
being watched, and we would no longer be blessed, or cursed
since it still dignifies life to have a Poseidon who curses us).
There could be none of that magnification and beautification
that Thucydides warned against (1.20). In a contrasting way,
the gods also bring gravity to mortal life by their own lightness of being. Because they do not die, nothing is serious for
them, and as a result, they lack seriousness. The gods, for
whom the living is easy, achieve a vulgarity in their bickering,
favoritism and one-upmanship that only the wealthiest and
most independent mortals can dream of, and they lead parodies of lives. This amounts to magnification, too, because the
“ability to lose one’s life is magnified by the divine inability”
(41). The gods represent the pinnacle of ordinary human
desire, and while for some Greeks the gods simultaneously
act as their own reductio ad absurdum to show why no one
should desire immortality, in Homer the grace and elegance
with which the gods carry through their vulgarity make it
possible for mankind to take a “proud delight” in them (42).
Like black-figure painting, their lightness and brightness form
a backdrop against which the dark shapes of mortals act. If
one grants that the gods, as products of the imagination, are
more true or genuine than the brute or material facts of the
world, one still feels cornered into a false choice between
materialism and imagination. Could the gods be propaedeutic to wonder at the cosmos and man’s place in it, a wonder
also devoted to the use of the imagination, as in geometry or
philosophy?
Mentality
The question of whether the gods cause events or merely
observe them involves an interpretative surmise governing
much of Homeric scholarship, namely, that Homer or his
heroes have a “mentality” different from our own. For Brann,
the issue comes down to exhibiting a passage in which Homer
or his heroes “think in an alien mode” rather than merely
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thinking about different things than we do (27). Some
previous scholars have seen the alien mentality at work when
the gods cause events which nature also causes. Two causes
then exist for the same effect, and Occam’s razor says that
should not be. A Homeric event is “overdetermined” if it has
two or more causes. The simplest physical occurrences such
as a spear’s ceasing to quiver in the ground can be attributed
to the gods (“Ares took away its impulse”; Iliad 13.442-4
with 6.611-13). Brann is nuanced on the issue. In the seaside
meeting with Nausikaa, “[n]othing happens that does not
happen to us all; balls get tossed wide and land in the drink;
people are woken up by shouts. Yet nothing happens that is
not under Athena’s aegis—both at once” (221). “Both at
once” sounds like overdetermination, but Brann provides an
avenue of escape from mentality, which she regards as a trap.
Homer and his characters see the wonder in everyday
occurrences and accordingly ascribe to divine interference
what would have happened anyway. Hence no miracles occur
in the strict sense of events running contrary to nature.
Nothing unnatural occurs, even at surprising moments, such
as when Eurycleia recognizes the scar and drops Odysseus’s
foot in the bathwater. Though he seizes her by the throat to
keep her silent, the old woman seeks out Penelope with her
eyes trying to tell her the stranger is Odysseus. Penelope,
however, “‘is unable to meet her glance or to pay it any mind,
for Athena had turned her mind away’” (280). Brann
interprets: on the merely mundane or unimaginative level,
Penelope is exercising tight self-control; she refrains from
even glancing in the direction of the husband she knows is
sitting disguised in her house. Brann’s Athena represents—or
is—the evocation of our wonder at Penelope’s control, her
mindfulness, Athena’s specific province. Thus Athena does
not cause the event in any way that would compete with
natural causes. A reading that allowed for miracles might
assume that Penelope has not recognized Odysseus yet.
The occurrence which, in the ordinary course of events,
would have been the occasion of her recognizing him is
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miraculously taken away by Athena’s interference. The goddess intervenes causally; she prevents nature from taking its
course. This miraculous reading, too, can avoid overdetermination, since there are many ways of being a cause, with the
proximate efficient cause being the least of these. The hand
which threw the spear could be one kind of cause, while Ares’
will is another (and Zeus’s plan a third). To find a Homeric
mentality in causal overdetermination would entail meeting a
higher bar of evidence, showing two causes of the same type
simultaneously causing the same event in the same way. For
Brann, modern critics have thought their way into a mentality: the only people with a mentality are those who think they
have one.
But Brann’s rejection of Homeric mentality goes further
and seems to entail rejecting the weaker, epistemologically
less radical assumption of ethical alienness. For many years,
an anthropological approach has been looking for “difference” in Homeric society. Brann asks students to see the
similarity between the heroes’ hunger for beautiful gifts and
their own patronage of department-store gift counters; she
uses the students’ own suppressed longings for recognition to
help them understand the glory-seeking of the heroes (26-7,
179-80). Here one wonders whether the vastness of the difference in degree does not cover over ethical differences that
could be historical or social developments. Few of Brann’s
students would enter the Cyclops’s cave to see if he would
give them gifts. Brann’s objection that societies as wholes do
not think and that only individual humans can do the thinking seems answered by the lemming or herd instinct. Societies
do tend to produce recognizable types; notwithstanding that
many individuals remain free to think their way out of their
society’s prejudices, a majority could be left (perhaps including or composing the sovereign) who thoughtlessly imitate
one another. Ethical alienness could then be responsible for
protagonists’ behaving in ways that modern readers do not
instinctively find admirable.
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The ethically alien preoccupation with fame is at issue in
Brann’s controversial interpretation of Penelope (see also
below). When, if ever, does Penelope consider remarriage,
and what constitutes faithfulness toward the husband she has
every reason to believe is dead? Penelope like the male
heroes—with the possible exception of Odysseus himself—
appears to be motivated primarily by a desire for fame. Brann
acknowledges this glory-seeking when she quotes the line
with which Penelope explains her motivations to the suitors:
“If Odysseus were to come home and be handmaid to my life,
my glory would be greater and finer that way” (Odyssey
18.254-5). But the primacy of fame over fidelity has broad
implications for Penelope’s intention to remarry. For Brann,
Penelope’s sudden announcement that Odysseus told her to
remarry once Telemachus had his beard is Penelope’s way of
signaling to the husband she knows is in the room that she is
mindful of his instructions. But what is alleged to be
Odysseus’s instruction could also be Penelope’s own newlyminted invention, designed not only to save what is left of the
throne for Telemachus (she says she will “leave the house” to
make clear that marrying the queen does not bring the kingship with it; 273), but also to recoup or secure such fame as
remains possible for a famous widow. This widow says
privately that the Olympians ruined her magnificence or
splendor the day Odysseus went away (18.180-1). That
splendor depends on her beauty and cosmetics (18.178-9;
192-6). So too in their speeches to her, the suitors exhibit
what they think she wants to hear: “You excel women in
looks and stature and the balanced mind inside you”
(18. 248-9; cf. 19.124-6, 108). Her rejoinder scarcely denies
that what she wants is to excel other women, although she
subtly changes the bill of goods by starting with aretê: “my
prowess and looks and figure the immortals destroyed, when
the Argives embarked for Ilion and with them went my
husband Odysseus” (18.251-3). A husband like Odysseus is
required for feminine magnificence or splendor. Penelope has
a conventionally acceptable motivation, then, for setting up
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the Bow contest: her fame has been diminished by Odysseus’s
delay or demise. Her fame can be partially recouped by
remarriage, but she needs a husband who approaches the
stature of Odysseus (one who can string his bow) so that her
fame will not be diminished further than necessary. In the
event, Odysseus’s successful return takes her fame to new
heights, but that is irrelevant to her motivations now. If these
motives were not sufficient, the suitors also appear capable of
forcing Penelope into marriage: since she has no protector to
prevent strong-arm tactics so long as the suitors feign obedience to the convention, she herself breaks the convention by
extending the courtship indefinitely. Brann admits that
Penelope may at times have seriously considered the unthinkable (262-3). If sometimes, why not now, with Odysseus
unrecognized in the room?
The difficulty with imputing this “alien” social ethic to
Penelope is that it makes her into a woman unlike any we
could admire under modern assumptions (though the still,
small voice of assumptions like ours is also present in Ithacan
assumptions: 23.149-51). Brann in another context rebuts
Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief,” perceiving the
futility of the attempt studiously to “cancel” our instincts
(36). Intellectual honesty at its best would assume the fault
lies with us: our current prejudice prevents us from seeing the
good in Penelope’s acceptance of a remarriage that is “hateful” to her. The ascription of alienness, like the ascription of
mentality, renders interpretation at once easy (they were different, that is all) and difficult since we implicitly assume that
our receiving equipment has a flaw. Artificially canceling and
correcting for our alleged flaws can produce monstrous
chimerical interpretations that say more about ourselves than
about Homer. For Brann, the fame-talk is mainly a screen, a
likely story Penelope tells about what another woman in her
circumstances might want, behind which she hides her true
intentions. But the likely story proves the rule for Homeric
woman generally. We tolerate Achilles’ desire for fame in
the Iliad, why not Penelope’s in the Odyssey? Brann thus
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rehabilitates fame-seeking but hesitates to ascribe it wholeheartedly to Penelope. Does she perhaps surmise a
Penelopean analogue of the conclusion Odysseus himself
arrives at—that fame is empty?
Penelope
Penelope penetrates Odysseus’s disguise the moment she sees
him. Moments supports this surmise with a host of small
details. Odysseus himself understands her beguiling the
suitors into a more standard gift-giving courtship to be a
sneaky Odyssean way of getting material wealth out of men
not long for this world (18.281-3; 273). The Bow contest
itself is all her own genius, a perfect way of getting a weapon
into the hands of the disguised Odysseus. Brann shows that,
in the foot-washing scene, Penelope’s thought pattern stumbles over both caesura and diaeresis, as she catches herself so
as not to betray her knowledge to Eurycleia. “Wash your
lord’s—agemate; and perhaps Odysseus/ By now has such
feet and such hands” (19.358-9; 279-80). The dash is the
caesura, the semi-colon the diaeresis. Penelope was about to
say “Wash your lord’s feet,” but caught herself, hesitated only
an instant and hastily substituted “agemate.” Then during the
diaeresis she thought up how to cover her faux pas with
speculations about how Odysseus’s feet—and hands—must
have aged. This is beautifully observed.
Yet the thesis that Penelope helps orchestrate Odysseus’s
retaking of the palace would have to explain away a soliloquy
(hence without guile) in which Penelope imagines Odysseus
far away or in Hades, wishes to join him there, and states that
the oblivion of sleep will help her to endure pleasing an
inferior husband (20.79-83). Brann’s thesis would also have
to explain away a good deal of weeping. During her interview
with the disguised Odysseus, the word used for her “weeping” is that used for the lamentation made for the dead
(19.210). Homer says explicitly that Odysseus hid his own
tears of sympathy with a trick (19.212). Why not construe
this small deception as a part of a successful overall
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deception? Perhaps Penelope’s tears at recognizing the “sure
signs” that the stranger met Odysseus long ago might be
explained as tears of relief that Odysseus is home rather than
as tears of renewed loss (19.249-50). But why go to bed and
weep for Odysseus until Athena throws sweet sleep upon her
eyelids if she has just met him (19.602-4)? Likewise she
weeps as she retrieves the Bow from its closet, and weeps for
Odysseus when sent away from the Bow-contest she herself
devised (21.55-7, 356-8). Is it tension about the long odds
against his successfully killing all the suitors with it? Or is it
grief over a cherished marriage that is finally coming to an
end?
Which is artistically more satisfying: to show that
Odysseus can fool even his nearest and dearest, or to show
that Penelope’s deviousness is the equal of, and hence a match
for, his own? Brann finds a number of telling ironies in the
dialogue between Penelope and the disguised Odysseus.
Would we rather hear innuendo in such lines as “Odysseus
will never again come home” (sc. “because you’re already
here now”; 276) or is it more poignant to make such lines
examples of her talking against her own hope? Brann points
out that he calls himself polystonos [much-groaning], intending that she hear odyssamenos [hated], directly after signaling
his name with odynaon [feeling pain] (244, 278); he is transmitting, but is she receiving? Irony there is for sure, but
whose irony is it: Homer’s or one of the two protagonists’,
that is to say, is the irony dramatic or verbal? If the ironies in
her own speech remain dramatic, Penelope could remain
ignorant that she is speaking to Odysseus in disguise, and
Homer would be teasing us with how close their conversation
comes to admitting his presence without her knowing it. It
would elevate Odysseus’s deviousness to read this teasing as
analogous to his later teasing of Laertes.
Here as in a host of other ways Moments shares assumptions with Seth Benardete’s The Bow and the Lyre even while
arriving at different conclusions. Both authors see in Queen
Arete of the Phaeacians what a female ruler can be and that
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her co-ruler husband can defer to her (Moments 223).
Benardete accepts that Odysseus deceives Penelope and
deprecates his shutting her out of the power struggle to
retake Ithaca. Brann refuses to accept what she too would
deprecate and pushes on with a thesis of equality: Penelope
cannot be a match for Odysseus if her cleverness is only a
diminutive version of his. For her worth to rest elsewhere and
not be defined by his, is not fully entertained (258-60),
probably because Penelope is in fact clever, self-possessed,
and steadfast—all virtues Odysseus has too. Brann finds it
more satisfying intellectually if the Bed-test shows recognition in a fuller sense than mere factual identity; this fuller
recognition can only be premised on Penelope’s already
knowing Odysseus is Odysseus. The “mutuality of their memory” is at stake: has Odysseus changed, or is he the same person he was before (283-4, 287)? Perhaps a “return of Martin
Guerre” situation, in which suspicions about imposture could
exist in tandem with worries about forgetfulness, would be
too confusing. The crucial passage occurs where Penelope
tricks Odysseus into an anger that betrays his selfsameness.
Odysseus feels betrayed by Penelope, but in what way precisely? He may think Penelope herself has forgotten the rootedness of the bed, but more likely it is a “How could you
think I thought” situation: he blows up at the injustice of her
gambit. “How could you think I would forget and fall for a
trick like that!” Penelope’s trick would then be two-pronged,
with her test of (or pretense about) his imposture also being
exactly the right instrument to test mutuality of memory.
Odysseus
Brann finds for Odysseus a motive to destroy his men still
more shocking than Benardete’s motive of prideful anger at
their opening the bag of winds (The Bow and the Lyre 83).
For Odysseus to be what he is—the soul of imagination—he
must rid himself of their unimaginative minds (Moments
175). Odysseus’s separate goals for his men and for himself
(striving for their homecoming but for his own soul, in the
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fifth line of the poem) prove to be incompatible aims (116).
Where many readers would say Odysseus indulges a reckless
curiosity, Brann stresses his imagination. The emphasis on
imagination makes better sense of how he transforms his
experiences into the concrete and tangible. If he is curious to
view the towns of mortal men and to know their mind, his
imagination transforms this mental intercourse with mortal
men in towns into carnal knowledge of immortal women
who live in isolation (249). To his men, the captain must seem
to be plunging ever deeper into a world of his own, losing
his grip on “reality.” Ordinary concerns such as security
and profit fade for him as he pushes them into greater and
greater dangers for smaller and smaller hopes of plunder.
Companions are required for the early experiences, for example, six to serve the Scylla. But as he retreats ever deeper into
his imagination, the issues become utterly private. The choice
Calypso offers between mortality and immortality is a choice
offered to a solitary (171). A self-referential narrative opens
up, in which the men are extras in a plot which has decreasing need for them and so Homer must invent ways to kill
them off (175). But Brann insists that Odysseus is culpable of
nothing worse than neglect leading to mutiny—he lets them
die, opportunistically passive (for example, asleep) at the
right times.
Striving for his soul means externalizing his own soul
through the exercise of his imagination. For Brann, the
fictional Wanderings are the progress of his mind (31, 177);
they unfold Odysseus’s true self or identity. By contrast,
Benardete’s Odysseus must cease to be himself and become
the anonymous universality of mind, living up to the pun on
one of the pronouns of negation in the Cyclops episode:
mêtis means “no one” but also “mind.” By struggling to maintain his identity as king of Ithaca and husband of Penelope,
Odysseus succumbs to the temptation of pride and self-glorification, and fails to sustain the peak of humanity he achieved
on Circe’s isle: knowledge of nature rather than desire for
fame. For Benardete, learning means becoming no one in
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particular. For Brann, learning entails being an “I” who learns
(51); Odysseus’s flexibility is all about using tricks to endure
or be steadfast, that is, to stay himself. Brann’s idea of learning saves Odysseus’s desire to return home from being overwhelmed by the wanderlust that overwhelms Dante’s and
Tennyson’s Odysseus. But it may be significant that domestic
bliss remains a promissory note at the end because of the
prophesied final journey. Brann admits that Odysseus prays
(like Augustine): help me return home, but not yet (116).
The encounters with Scylla and Charybdis never
happened; nor did any of the tall tales Odysseus tells, such as
the Cyclops, Circe and the rest. What Odysseus was really
doing during the decade he says he was having these adventures can be gleaned from the lies he tells upon his return in
disguise to Ithaca. The mundane events that actually made up
his journeys consisted of piracy and marauding, trading, and
the giving and receiving of gifts, all on known sea-routes and
in known countries such as Crete, Cyprus, and Egypt (182,
242, 247). Nymphs like Calypso are fairyland versions of the
prostitutes whom sailors dream about and find in port (1923). The lies Odysseus tells in the persona of a Cretan are “lies
like the truth” (19.203). They may not have happened, but
they are the kind of things that do happen. By contrast, the
adventure tales are lies of a different order: they are like
nothing that ever happens. The truth about Scylla and
Charybdis is that they are a fanastically-rendered image of a
universal human dilemma: the Choice of Dangers, when
neither alternative is good (211). Odysseus may have experienced several mundane versions of this choice, but none
could have captured the essence of the Choice like the
fantastic story he eventually relates. Therefore, the tall tales
are true, while the underlying trip is merely real (183-4). The
reader may consult his or her own experience: Scylla and
Charybdis are as proverbial today as the devil and the deep or
the rock and the hard place. And if that is what Scylla and
Charybdis are now, why not also for Homer’s first audience
and ever since? Brann dares to read our modern experience
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back onto the poem. Lotus-eating is equally proverbial, as is
the sirens’ song. Meeting a man with one eye? Readers will
have to savor this brief foray into postcolonial theory for
themselves.
Homer
It is especially daring to disbelieve the factualness of
Odysseus’s tales (while accepting their essential truth) in a
poem where Homer himself recounts equally mythical occurrences such as conversations in Hades, as well as vouches for
Calypso’s magical island (169). Distinguishing between fairyland adventures (made up by Odysseus) and “real” places like
Hades (known to all Greeks) introduces an odd literalism
into Brann’s interpretations. To declare, on behalf of the
Greek people, that Hades is “as real a place as there ever was”
comes close to attributing a mentality to the Greeks. Hades is
real until some Greek finds out differently. But Brann means
to draw a distinction between what Homer appropriates from
(or for) the tradition, and what he adds. Even if Homer is
making it all up, he presents some of it as made up by
Odysseus and pretends the rest is real. Brann’s Homer subtly
makes concrete to the imagination the way his epic brings
Greek mythology to the Greeks: Odysseus’s return from
Hades (the treasure house of memory) represents the poet
bringing the tales of great women and men back with him
(17, 200, 204-7). The mundane reality is that we remember
the dead, but the imagined truth is that the dead remember.
The poet tells us that none of the people in Hades are
fictions; they live down there and he heard of them through
the Muses. Brann is at pains to take Homer at his word: she
thus avoids rationalizing away her chance to engage with his
claim. But this feels odd because Brann permits no looking
behind that claim. Her refusal to know Homer better than
Homer knows himself could lead her into the trap of conflating Homer’s poetic persona with the real Homer. “The
Author” is a character in his own right in novels like Tom
Jones or Don Quixote, which are episodic and picaresque
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
(and therefore comparable to the Odyssey although still
generically different). It would be a mistake to identify “The
Author” with the author of such a novel, or the intentions of
“The Author” with those of the author, who wishes us to
penetrate his persona in order to have access to yet greater
delights. The humor or absurdism in these modern novels
vitiates the comparison because the self-referentiality of an
authorial persona also generates humor. But it is unclear in
principle why, in a poem with the complexity Brann attributes to it, Homer might not have employed a similar subtlety, giving glimpses of himself that are equally important but
equally contrived. Surely the road to understanding Homer’s
intention runs through Brann’s careful distinctions, but she
does not base many surmises on those distinctions.
A related literalism is Brann’s insistence that Odysseus’s
tales were never meant for publication (notwithstanding the
fact that she has published a book about them). Observing
that the tales’ first audience, the Phaeacians, is cut off from
the world (though if Odysseus did not anticipate the
enclosure of their land, he might have expected these seafarers to carry his fame to all lands; 226), and their second
audience is Penelope in the privacy of home, Brann preserves
the possibility that Odysseus is exceptional among heroes: he
truly seeks something other than fame. Odysseus cannot
know that the Muses will find out about his private tale and
tell Homer, who will publicize it. The fact that Odysseus prefaces his account to the Phaeacians by saying his fame reaches
heaven does not imply a hero’s desire for more glory but
rather that he rests secure in the fame he already has (180).
Odysseus learned his lesson when he shouted his name to the
Cyclops, from which deed he earned the undying enmity of
Poseidon (189). Brann sums up: Odysseus’s adventures “will
never become a myth among public myths” (300; cf. 205).
And yet they did. Odysseus’s exceptionality may be indicated
by the fact that Homer in the Odyssey never calls him a hero;
only Circe does, after his return from Hades (180, 196).
Odysseus hears from Achilles that it is not better to reign in
LUDWIG
103
Hell than serve on earth. The discovery that fame is empty
may help Odysseus to transcend heroism. Yet Odysseus ends
up with a poem of comparable (though shorter) length to the
one Achilles gets, a poem which furthermore has acquired a
title which names it securely after Odysseus, an honor
Achilles is denied. Odysseus is very lucky to have won maximum fame after ceasing to seek it. His alleged eschewal of
fame is rewarded with fame. Virtue rewarded always entails
the problem of whether the virtue was sought for its own sake
or only for the reward. But Brann would never let such
skepticism essentially eliminate the possibility of true virtue
rewarded; to allow that would be to fall into a mentality. As
we saw, Brann’s Penelope also chooses what could be called
the path of least fame—to remain in widowhood—but thereby gains the greatest fame possible. If Odysseus learns to
demote fame, then Homer portrays a character who thinks
his way out of a central tenet of his society’s ethics, thereby
giving the lie to the inevitability of mentality.
Moments opens up many more windows on Homer than
can be discussed here. Not the least of these are the myriad
quotations of modern lyric poets—from Keats to H. D.—who
interpret Homer. Each of these, too, provides a moment in
which readers can lose themselves. Not to be missed are the
Helen chapter and the chapters laying out the structures of
the Odyssey and Iliad. Brann is particularly wonderful with
time, and many delightful intricacies come into focus when
she juxtaposes the order of occurrences with the order in
which they are narrated. The simple device of generous crossreferencing, so lacking in most books, enables the ripples to
spread. The accomplishment of Homeric Moments is to
progress from the visual to the invisible, but observation
remains its greatest virtue.
�104
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
105
The City: Intersection of Erôs
and Thumos?
Michael Dink
Ludwig takes us on a tour of sex and politics in Greek
political theory, focusing largely, but not exclusively, on the
political effects of the practice of homoerotic pederasty as
understood by certain Greek thinkers, using as his principal
texts Plato’s Symposium (primarily Aristophanes’ speech),
Aristophanes’ plays, and a few selected passages from
Thucydides. The ultimate goal seems to be to investigate how
these thinkers understood the political relevance of erôs in its
various forms. Not surprisingly, Ludwig finds that, at least in
its political manifestations, erôs is always mixed up with
thumos.
The path taken by the exposition can seem labyrinthine,
as Ludwig moves back and forth among different texts, and
takes up in sequence various loci of the intersection of erôs
and politics, while at the same time trying to develop an
account of what erôs is, what different forms it takes, how it
is related to thumos and its forms, and which aspects of it are
natural and which are conventional or “socially constructed.”
For a reader like myself, primarily interested in the intertwining of erôs and thumos, it is helpful to have a clear, even
if initially oversimplified, statement of the distinction
between erôs and thumos as a thread with which to negotiate
the labyrinth. Since Ludwig himself does not provide this
thread, I have spun my own, which I will share with you.
Let us define erôs as the striving to fulfill a perceived lack
in oneself and thumos as the striving to assert something
present in oneself, perceived as good. In erôs, one feels an
Paul Ludwig. Erôs and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political
Theory. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Michael Dink is a tutor on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College.
�106
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
emptiness of self in need of fulfillment; in thumos, one feels
a fullness of self in need of expression.
The striving of erôs tends to seek possession of some
object outside of the self, in the expectation that this will fill
its lack. The object sought is usually regarded as being high,
exalted, or beautiful; the lack is considered to be grave and
its fulfillment of the greatest importance because tantamount
to finding happiness, and thus the striving is accompanied
with great intensity of feeling
The striving of thumos tends to be in opposition or antagonism to some object other than the self, either one that
threatens the self or one that is in some way in opposition to
the goodness that the self strives to assert. The sense in which
goodness is perceived in the self and the sense in which it is
asserted may vary widely: as existence asserted in selfdefense; as, excellence asserted in the striving for recognition; as rule over others asserted in the pursuit of conquest.
Ludwig begins with Aristophanes’ speech in the
Symposium, in which he finds two manifestations of erôs. The
one which Aristophanes explicitly calls erôs and makes the
object of his praise is the desire of each split half of the original circle people to rejoin with its former other half in order
to recover its (their?) original wholeness. The other impulse
which Ludwig identifies as a form of erôs is whatever motive
caused these original circle people to ascend into the heavens
and seek to displace the gods, thus provoking the splitting
that brought into being the first kind of erôs. Aristophanes
himself does not even name this second impulse, much less
call it erôs, and he does not give any explicit characterization
of its object. Ludwig names it ‘Ur-erôs’ and characterizes it in
a number of different ways. He argues that it is more original
and natural than the erôs of the split halves and that the
latter is the result of efforts to restrain ‘Ur-erôs’ in most
people, an effort originally made by a tyrant in the service of
better fulfilling his own ‘Ur-erôs.’
While Ludwig has not yet introduced the distinction
between erôs and thumos at this point, it seems to me that the
DINK
107
erôs of the halves does fit the definition of erôs, insofar as it
strives to fill a perceived lack, even if there is lack of clarity
about what constitutes this lack and its fulfillment. Ludwig,
however, treats this aspect of Aristophanes’ account as a
romantic dressing up of a less attractive reality: a desire for
what is like oneself, which uses the self as the criterion of
likeness. Ludwig calls this “horizontal erôs,” twisting it in a
direction that strikes me as more thumotic: he makes it into
a kind of assertion of the goodness of the self, as if what it
seeks is only more of the same.
The other form of erôs, which Ludwig calls ‘Ur-erôs’ or
‘vertical erôs,’ is an impulse implied in Aristophanes’ very
brief statement that the original circle people made an ascent
into the heavens and launched an attack upon the gods. I find
both thumotic and erotic aspects in this impulse. The antagonistic and assertive aspect of thumos is manifest in the
attempt to overthrow or displace the gods by a violent struggle, as if they were a hindrance to be overcome. Nevertheless,
the erotic component emerges insofar as the circle people are
attempting to gain something high and exalted that they lack.
Ludwig does not initially thematize this duality or relate it to
thumos, but later adumbrates it in the phrase “violent
admiration.” He gives a wide range of characterizations of
the goal sought by the circle people without an explicit
attempt either to unify these or to choose among them: tyrannical domination of others; equality with or superiority to an
admired object; becoming a more grandiose version of oneself; higher status; self-aggrandizement; self-apotheosis; an
inhuman wholeness and perfection. In many of these phrases,
I find the peculiar implication that the one who seeks to
fulfill a lack nonetheless manages to suppress his recognition
of this lack, by somehow believing that what he does not yet
possess is rightfully his own or is the fitting external expression of what he really already is.
Ludwig reads Aristophanes’ speech as covertly acknowledging the natural character of this “Ur-erôs” while recognizing that it is dangerous and needs to be restrained, both by
�108
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
laws and by civil religion. The other kind of erôs is derivative
from the restraining effects of convention, but is safer.
Aristophanes tries to make it more attractive by playing up
the romantic and idealistic side of it and covering up its dark
and selfish side.
Ludwig, however, identifies a particular problem in
Aristophanes’ strategy. He has included male homosexual
love as one of the forms of the convention-tamed erôs. Yet in
noting that the political men come from lovers of this kind,
he recognizes that Ur-erôs is less tamed in them, and that they
represent a tendency to reconstitute the original whole at the
political level, rather than at the private level. As a consequence, they tend toward the dangers of internal tyranny and
external imperialism.
This question of the political effects of the Greek practice
of homosexual pederasty forms one of the main strands of the
book’s analysis. The practice combines erotic neediness on
the individual level with ambition to rule and conquer on the
political level. Ludwig identifies a basic internal contradiction
in the practice as one of the principles of its dynamism. While
the relationship of older lover to younger beloved was in part
understood as a path to political power for the beloved, the
acceptance of the passive sexual role by one male in relation
to another was regarded as shameful and as a disqualification
from the exercise of citizen rights (technically only if in
exchange for money). Hence the threat of such hubris on the
part of the lover was guarded against by a convention that
encouraged the pursuit of young males by older ones, while
at the same time discouraging sexual consummation. Ludwig
argues that this convention fostered the sublimation of sexual desire into a kind of love that expressed itself largely in an
attempt to educate the beloved so as to win the favor of his
recognition. But Ludwig points to a number of elements in
this education that strike me as thumotic: the lover first seeks
to cultivate and display his own excellence in rivalry with
other lovers, and then to impress the stamp of his own excellence on the beloved. Insofar as this excellence has a political
DINK
109
character, and insofar as erotic energy is directed away from
heterosexual love and the private household and is denied
sexual satisfaction, it tends to spill over into ambitious political activity. Insofar as this pederastic relationship was an aristocratic or oligarchic practice, the political activity tended to
be oligarchic, and to be viewed as a threat by the democrats.
In his plays Aristophanes often satirizes the pederastic
proclivities of Athenian politicians, and suggests that heterosexual desire is more compatible with contentment with
private life and avoidance of dangerous political ambition
and the wars brought on by imperialism. Yet Ludwig finds
evidence in the plays that Aristophanes is aware that heterosexual desire and the pleasures of private life may have their
own admixture of thumos, in a kind of belligerently possessive and even randomly cantankerous behavior.
In connection with the practice he calls “civic nudity,”
in which Greek males exercised and engaged in athletic
competition in the nude, Ludwig explores politico-erotic
phenomena along a different axis, stretching from shameinduced covering of the body to its shame-free (but not
shameless) uncovering. He seems to want to argue, on the
one hand, that some degree of covering up out of shame or
modesty is a necessary condition of the emergence of love as
distinct from sexual desire, but on the other hand, that an
obsession with covering up is an over reaction that generates
a vicious cycle of “modesty—sensitization—predation—modesty.” Ludwig argues that Thucydides, at least, regarded
Greek civic nudity as a sign of civic trust and a display of
“conspicuous moderation,” in contrast to what is reported of
modern nudist colonies, that universal nudity of itself
suppresses sexual desire. In treating this as a single axis, he
may not give sufficient attention to the distinction between
the shame or modesty involved in covering and uncovering
the body and that involved in the desire for privacy for sexual intimacy.
In a bold extrapolation, he claims that a “structural
feature of erôs” emerges from this dialectic of covering and
�110
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
uncovering. What erôs really desires is not the consummation
of sexual desire, much less the naked body, but rather the
transgressive motion from one degree of covering to the next
lower degree, ad infinitum, albeit per impossible. He even
suggests that beauty itself may somehow have a structure that
lures us on to such transgressive unveiling. If his claim is that
this is a structural feature of all erôs, he has not substantiated
it by showing how it is present in all the cases he has
examined. Although he does not make this explicit, the transgressive character that he finds in this kind of voyeuristic erôs
bears traces of the aggressive and antagonistic features of
thumos.
In his final chapter, Ludwig both introduces new political
manifestations of erôs and tries to sort out some of the possibilities he has surveyed. The augmented range of possibilities
includes the narrow attachment to and preference for one’s
own because it is one’s own; the attempt to extend this to the
city as a whole in part by weakening it at the family level;
homoerotic pederasty, as a practice which diverts erotic
energy from love of one’s own into a relationship with civic
consequences both beneficial and dangerous; Periclean love
of the city because of its grandeur or merit, along with a
desire to be honored by it, shadowed by the ambition to possess it as sole tyrant and/or to leave one’s stamp on it; love of
seeing things exotic and alien, which undermines the effort to
conquer them; and love of acquiring foreign things, which,
when assimilated, undermine loyalty to and defense of one’s
own.
Ludwig tries to marshal this motley crew into a single
orderly column or spectrum, with the narrow, possessive love
of one’s own on one end, and the selfless love of beauty on
the other end. He further suggests that Sparta and Athens
each marched gloriously over the cliff at one end of the spectrum, Sparta staying too close to the narrow love of one’s
own, although transferred from family to city, and Athens
flirting dangerously with love of the beautiful as detached
from one’s own.
DINK
111
Ludwig’s book does much valuable work in uncovering
and exploring many aspects of erôs in Greek political
phenomena and theory. His tone is always judicious and
non-polemical, and his mastery of a wide range of material,
primary and secondary, ancient and modern, philological,
sociological, and philosophical, is impressive. From the point
of view of explicating the intertwining of erôs and thumos,
however, the organization of the book presents a significantserious structural impediment. His discussion of the two
kinds of erôs in Aristophanes’ speech in the early chapters
precedes his introduction of the distinction between erôs and
thumos. When he introduces thumos in chapter 4, his discussion focuses almost exclusively on ways in which it shows up
in combination with “horizontal erôs.” His primary example
is a character from the Wasps, Philocleon. An old man who
loves to serve on juries, his attitude is one of punitive moralism, ostensibly in response to threats against the common
good of the city. In contrast, Ludwig’s discussion of
Peisetairos, a character from the Birds, who resembles the
circle people in making an ascent into the heavens that turns
out to be tyrannical, is couched entirely in terms of erôs. In
other words, despite a brief allusion to the connection of thumos to the ascent of the circle people, Ludwig never makes
an explicit attempt to assess the thumotic elements in
“vertical erôs.” Thus we are left with the impression that
verticality and violence belong together intrinsically, and that
this togetherness is the most fundamental form of erôs.
In contrast, when he lines up the many manifestations of
erôs along a spectrum in the final chapter, he seems to put the
violence together with the selfish and the possessive on the
horizontal end of the spectrum, which is therefore regarded
as more thumotic than erotic, and to put self-forgetting in the
presence of the beautiful at the other, vertical, end, which is
therefore regarded as more erotic than thumotic. We can’t
help wondering where on this spectrum to fit vertical erôs as
the aspiration to tyranny.
�112
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Perhaps this apparent inconsistency could be resolved if
we said that the violence and assertiveness in the aspiration of
the circle-people are due to an admixture of thumos with the
erotic desire for a certain kind of perfection. This would still
leave us with a number of questions. Are erôs and thumos
halves of an original, natural whole, which are only split from
one another by convention? Or are they intrinsically distinct
principles, whose co-presence in any phenomenon is in need
of explanation? If the latter is the case, is one more natural
than the other? Is the impulse to ascend more fundamentally
due to one rather than to the other? Is the desire to acquire a
perfection that one finds lacking in oneself necessarily linked
to an impulse to displace others who are seen as possessing
this perfection? If erôs and thumos are mixed along both
horizontal and vertical axes, what determines the difference
between these axes?
113
�
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Kraus, Pamela
Brann, Eva T. H.
Carey, James
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Coleman, Shanna
Sachs, Joe
Sinnett, Mark W.
Painter, Corinne
Ludwig, Paul
Dink, Michael
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STJOHN'S
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE FIRST SEMESTER 2009-2010
(Revised Dece mber II , 2009)
College
ANNA POLI S • SANTA P£
August 28
Mr. Michael Dink
Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
Mol iere's Le
Misanthrope
September 4
All College Sem inar
Percy Shelley's
'1\Defense of Poetry'
September I I
Professor Roderick Hills
New York U ni vers ity
Schoo l of Law
Alcohol, Guns, and
Federa lism: Two Case
Studies on the Dangers
Of Nationalizing the
Culture Wars
September 15
(Steiner)
Dr. Elie Wiesel
An Afternoon with
Eli W iesel
September 18
E lliott Fisk
Conceit (Gu itar)
September 25
Mr. Pedro Martinez-F raga
Miam i, FL
Love, Romance, and Law
in Don Quixote
October 2
Mr. Samuel Kutle r
Tutor
St. John's Coll ege
Annapolis
Poetry and Mathematics
October 9
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 16
Professor Patricia Fagan
U niversity of Windsor
W indsor, Ontario Canada
The Anxiety of Democratic
Revolution : The Greek Hero ic
in Plutarch's Life ofCoriolanus
October 23
(Steiner)
Professor Mitchell Mi ller
Vassar Coll ege
Poughkee ps ie, NY
Odysseus as Poet
as Philosopher:
Reflections on the
Great Wanderings
October 30
Anonymous 4
Secret Voices: The Sisters
of Las Huelgas, Music of
Thi1teenth-Century Spain
November 6
Mr. Gary B01jesson
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapo lis
Spirited Friends: On Dogs
and Friendship
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box 28oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
21404
410-626-25II
FAX 410-295-6937
www. sjca. edu
�November 13
Mr. Yannis Simonides
Plato's Apology: A dramatic
Performance
November 20
Professor Sybol Cook Anderson
St. Mary's College of Maryland
St. Mary's City, MD
Revisiting Hegefs Dialectic
of Desire and Recognition
November 27
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
December 4
Professor Danielle Allen
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Why Plato Wrote
December 11
King William Players
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
December 18January 10, 2010
Winter Vacation
No Lectures
�S!JOHN'S
College
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE SECOND SEMESTER 2009-2010
(Revised April 2, 20 I 0)
January 15
Mr. David Stephenson
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
The Novefs Moral
Playground
January 22
Mr. Jeffrey Smith
Tutor
St. Jo hn's College
Annapolis
A ltruism in the Eyes of an
Antichrist: On Laurence
Sterne's Sentimental Journey
January 29
Ms . Mary Kinzie
Northwestern University
Writing Long: The Shift
Toward the Long Poem in
Frank Bidm1 and Others
February 5
Long Weekend
No Lecture
Februmy 12
All College Sem inar
Ecclesiastes
February 19
Parker String Quar1et
Concer1
February 26
Mr. Joseph Smith
Tutor
St. John's Coll ege
Santa Fe
Kanfs Rational Being
as Moral Being
March 5-2 1
Spring Vacation
No Lectures
March 26
Brother Donald Mansir
St. Mary's College
Cal ifornia
The D ialogue Between
Faith and Reason: A
Qur'anic Strategy for
Governance
April2
Mr. E lliott Zuckerman
Tutor E meritus
St. John's College
Annapolis
Falstaff and C leopatra
April9
Mr. Paul Ludwig
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
What is Agape?
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box 2.8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.1404
410-62.6-2.511
FAX 4I0-2.95-6937
www. sjca. edu
�April 16
No Lecture
April 23
Mr. Jacques Duvoisin
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
The Paradox of Pity
in Rousseatis Second Discourse
April30
King William Players
Machiavellfs Mandragola
May?
Reality Weekend
No Lecture
May 14
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
�
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Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
4 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule First Semester 2009-2010 (Revised December 11, 2009) & Second Semester 2009-2010 (Revised April 2, 2010)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-2010
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2009-2010 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2009-2010
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dink, Michael
Hills, Roderick
Wiesel, Elie, 1928-2016
Fisk, Elliott
Martínez-Fraga, Pedro J.
Kutler, Samuel
Fagan, Patricia
Miller, Mitchell
Anonymous 4 (Musical group)
Borjesson, Gary
Simonides, Yannis
Anderson, Sybol Cook
Allen, Danielle
Stephenson, David
Smith, Jeffrey
Kinzie, Mary
Parker String Quartet
Smith, Joseph
Mansir, Brother Donald
Zuckerman, Elliott
Ludwig, Paul
Duvoisin, Jacques
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2576b8282de15fc8a731398b0e3f7851.pdf
f4c3dcd5761e96d26ab0edf36bc71f51
PDF Text
Text
S!JOHN'S
College
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2008-2009
(Revised 12/19/08)
August 29
Mr. Michael Dink
Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
Lead Us Not Into
Temptation: Milton's
Paradise Lost
September 5
All College Seminar
Emerson
September 12
Professor Peter Edelman
Georgetown University
Law Center
The Constitution: A
Living Document
September 19
Mr. David Townsend
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
William Blake's
Flourishing Vision
September 26
Professor Steve Morse
Solid Progress: How
Five Regular Solids Turned
into Seventy-Five
October 3
Parker String Quartet
Concert
October 10
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 17
Dr. Thomas L. Short
Can Philosophy be a Science?
October 24
Professor Noah Feldman
Harvard Law School
The Fall and Rise of the
Islamic State
October 31
Professor Walter Nicgorski
University of Notre Dame
In Defense of Cicero
November?
Mr. Michael Grenke
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
The Question of Questions
November 14
Professor Robert Bernasconi
University of Memphis
Universal isms Partially
Applied : On Locke's and
Kant's Raci sms
November 21
Mr. Alan Pichanick
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Sophrosune as WholeMindedness: Socratic
Self-Knowledge in Plato's
Charm ides
AN N APO L IS • SA NTA FE
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. B ox zBoo
ANNAPOLI S, M ARYLAN D
2I404
4ro-6z6-zs:n
FAX 4I0 -295-6937
www. ~jca. edu
�November28
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
December 5
Professor Jonathan Lear
University of Chicago
Plato's Cave:
The Role of Allegory
in Philosophy
December 12
KWP Production
Racine's Phedre
December 19January 11,2009
Winter Vacation
No Lectures
January 16
Mr. Jonathan Tuck
Tutor
St. John's College
Armapolis
Gargantua's Games
January 23
Professor Steven Lubin
Cornell University
Mozart's Tonal Pathways
January 30
Ms. Joan Silver
Tutor
St. John's College
Armapolis
On Same and Other, Image and
Being in Flannery 0' Connor's
Story with the Unspeakable
Name
February 6
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 13
Ms. Cecile Licad
Piano Concert
February 20
All College Seminar
Nietzsche's The Problem of
Socrates
February 27
Professor Christia Mercer
Columbia University
The Weirdness and Beauty
of Leibniz's Philosophy
or Why You ARE God
March 2-22
Spring Vacation
No Lectures
March27
Mr. Jeffrey Smith
Tutor
St. John's College
Armapolis
Rousseau's Republic
of Desire
April3
Professor Burt Hopkins
Seattle University
The Unwritten Teachings in
Plato's Symposium: Socrates'
Initiation into the
Arithmos of Eros
AprillO
Professor Ryan Tweney
Bowling Green State University
From Invisibles to
Infinitesimals: Faraday's
Intuitive Calculus
�Aprill7
Mr. Henry Higuera
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Multiplication Ancient and
Modem: Sorting Out the
Shifts in Meaning
Multiplication
April24
Mr. Stefan Jackiw
Violin Conceri
May I
King William Players
MayS
Reality Weekend
No Lecture
May !5
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule 2008-2009 (Revised 12/19/08)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-2009
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2008-2009 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2008-2009
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dink, Michael
Edelman, Peter
Townsend, David
Morse, Steve
Parker String Quartet
Short, Thomas L.
Feldman, Noah, 1970-
Nicgorski, Walter
Grenke, Michael W.
Bernasconi, Robert
Pichanick, Alan
Lear, Jonathan
Tuck, Jonathan
Lubin, Steven
Silver, Joan
Licad, Cecile, 1961-
Mercer, Christia
Smith, Jeffrey
Hopkins, Burt
Tweney, Ryan D.
Higuera, Henry, 1952-
Jackiw, Stefan
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
January 16, 2009. Tuck, Jonathan. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3801" title="Gargantua's games">Gargantua's games</a> (audio)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e6015cf6aee2a3214e83c8c7bfa13ac0.pdf
6899f88d5891b764167b442e820e296a
PDF Text
Text
STJOHN'S
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2007-2008
(Updated 3/26/08)
College
August 24
Mr. Michael Dink
Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Rhetoric and Liberal
Education"
August 31
Mr. Louis Petrich
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"The Questions of Lear
and Cordelia"
September 7
Professor Julie Fiez
University of Pittsburgh
"Agonizing Over a Decision:
What Can Neuroscience Tell Us
About the Relationship Between
Thought and Emotion?"
September 14
Mr. Michael Grenke
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"The Costs o f Civilization"
September 18
(Tuesday Afternoon)
Professor Deborah Malamud
New York University
School of Law
"Affirmative Action Today:
Race, Class, Immigration, and
the Constitution"
September 21
All College Seminar
September 28
Professor David McNeill
University of Essex
"Knowledge, Ignorance and
Imitation in Book 10 of
Plato 's Rep ublic"
October 5
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 12
Ms. Janet Dougherty
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Cartesian Certainty, or
Awakening from the Dreams
of a Slave"
October 19
Professor Angela DiBennedetto
Villanova University
"Cell Death"
October 26
Ms. Claudia Honeywell
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Logos and Power in Book One
of Herodotus' Histmy"
November 2
"Cafe Zimmennarm"
Baroque Orchestra
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.I404
4I0-62.6-2.5II
FAX 4I0-2.95-6937
www. ~jca. edu
�November9
Professor Mario Livia
Senior Astrophysicist at the Space
Telescope Science Institute
"The Golden Ratio"
November 16
Ambassador Andrew Young
"Race in America Today"
November 30
Brendan Lasell,
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"'Leibniz's New Gemnetry''
December?
King William Players
"The Tempest"
January 11
Professor Alan Levine
American University
"The Idea of America in
European Political
Thought: 1492-9/11
January 18
Professor Thee Smith
Emory University
"The Gospel at Colonus"
January 25
Professor Corinne Painter
Washtenaw Community College
"Capturing the Sophist in
the Space of Non-Being"
February 8
"Pomerium" Chapel Choir:
"Mannerist Music of the
Renaissance" (works by
Marenzio, Giaches de Wert,
Monteverdi, Gesualdo)
February 15
Mr. Robert Druecker
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"'YouAreThat!': The
'Upanishads' Read
Through Westem Eyes"
February 22
All College Seminar
March 21
Professor Mitchell Miller
Vassar College
'"Making New Gods'?:
Reflections on Plato's
Symposium "
March 28
Ms. Ingrid Marsoner
Piano
"Bach, Goldberg Variations"
April4
Mr. Adam Schulman
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Self-knowledge and
Moral Seriousness in
Jane Austen's
Pride and Pr~judice"
�April II
Mr. Chester Burke,
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Searching for 'Being'
in Maxwell's Electromagnetic
Field"
Aprill8
Mr. Matt Caswell,
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Kant on Evil and
Human Nature"
April25
King William Players
Arcadia
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule 2007-2008 (Updated 3/26/08)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-2008
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2007-2008 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2007-2008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dink, Michael
Petrich, Louis
Fiez, Julie A.
Grenke, Michael W.
Malamud, Deborah
McNeill, David
Dougherty, Janet
DiBennedetto, Angela
Honeywell, Claudia
Café Zimmermann (Musical group)
Livio, Mario, 1945-
Young, Andrew
Levine, Alan
Smith, Thee
Painter, Corinne Michelle
Pomerium Chapel Choir
Druecker, Robert
Miller, Mitchell
Marsoner, Ingrid
Schulman, Adam
Burke, Chester
Caswell, Matthew
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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ee2c7bb3f779e5da7fa2a3bc6021390f
PDF Text
Text
S!JOHN'S
College
ANN A POLlS • SANTA FE
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE FIRST SEMESTER- 2006-2007
(August 24, 2006 - conected copy)
August 25, 2006
Mr. Michael Dink
Dean
St. John's College
" In the Eyes of Others, Part II:
Rousseau and Smith"
September 1
All College Seminar
Montaigne's essay
"On Friendship"
September 8
Mr. Andre Barbera
Tutor
St. John's College
"Is There Great Jazz?"
September 15
Mr. L. Harvey Poe
Annapolis, MD
"On the Roots of the Political
Philosophy of the Constitution"
September 22
Mr. J. Walter Sterling IV
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"The Visibility of Dying
in Homer's Iliacf'
September 29
Mr. Samuel Kutler
Tutor Emeritus
St. John's College
"The Republic of Letters and
the Republic of Numbers"
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P. 0 . Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYJ, AND
21404
410-626-25II
FAX 4I0-295-6937
www.sjca. edu
October 6
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 13
Mr. Jonathan Tuck
Tutor
St. John's College
"Baudelaire's Swan Song"
October 20
Professor Paul Bagley
Loyola College
Baltimore, MD
"On Why Spinoza's Teaching
in the Tractatus Is Necessarily
Theologico-Political"
October 27
Professor James A. Arieti
Hampden-Sydney College
Virginia
"Achilles, the Moral Pioneer"
November 3
Mr. Andreas Haefliger:
Concert
Piano Sonatas of Beethoven
November 10
Professor David Branning
Trinity College
"Quantum Mechanics"
November 17
Mr. Frank Pagano
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Masks of the Naked Animal:
Herodotus on Shame and
Ci vi I ization"
�December I
Mr. John Tomarchio
Tutor
St. John's College
"Aquinas and the Object
Proper of Metaphysics"
December 8
King William Players
Midsummer Night's Dream
�S!JOHN'S
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE SECOND SEMESTER- 2006-2007
College
Januaty 12, 2007
Professor Kirk Sanders
University of lllinois
at Urbana-Champaign
"Epicurean Emotions"
January 19
The Aulos Ensemble
Handel 's "Acis and Galatea"
January 26
Mr. Joseph Smith
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"The Diffidence of Reason- A
Reading of the Conclusion of
Book 1 of Hume's Treatise"
February 9
Ms. Ange Mlinko
Croton-On-Hudson, NY
Modern Poetry
February 16
(Steiner Lecture)
Professor Camille Paglia
University of the Arts
in Philadelphia
"Form and Figure in Greek Art:
Ideal Beauty, Individualism, and
Political Space in Greek
Architecture and Sculpture"
Februaty 23
Professor James Nonis
Howard University
"The Negro Spiritual: A
Choral Art Form"
March 23
Concett
Talich String Quartet
March 30
Prof Christina von Nolcken
University of Chicago
"Another "Lollere in the
wynd"? Chaucer, his Miller,
and Nicholas' Door"
April6
All College Seminar
April 13
Mr. George Russell
Tutor
St. John' s College
"Freedom and Equality in
Lincoln's Understanding of
the American Polity''
April20
Mr. Jason Tipton
Tutor
St. John's College
"Man's Emergence from the
State ofNature: An Account
Founded on Darwin's
Discussion of Sexual Selection"
April28
King William Players
17te Good Doctor
MayS
Reality
No Lecture
ANNAPOL I S • SANTA PE
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P. 0. Box 2.8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.I404
4I0-62.6-2.5rr
FAX 4I0-295-6937
www.sjca. edu
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule First Semester - 2006-2007 (August 24, 2006 - corrected copy) & Second Semester - 2006-2007
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-2007
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2006-2007 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2006-2008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Relation
A related resource
October 13, 2006. Tuck, Jonathan. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3800" title="Baudelaire's swan song">Baudelaire's swan song</a> (audio)
October 13, 2006. Tuck, Jonathan. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3797">Baudelaire's swan song</a> (typescript)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dink, Michael
Barbera, André
Poe, L. Harvey (Luke Harvey)
Sterling IV, J. Walter
Kutler, Samuel
Tuck, Jonathan
Bagley, Paul
Arieti, James A.
Haefliger, Andreas
Branning, David
Pagano, Frank N.
Tomarchio, John
Sanders, Kirk R., 1966-
The Aulos Ensemble
Smith, Joseph
Mlinko, Ange
Paglia, Camille, 1947-
Norris, James
von Nolcken, Christina
Russell, George
Tipton, Jason A.
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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035967152d83e3029b0ac8127000a7e9
PDF Text
Text
S!JOHN'S
College
November 28, 2005
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE- FIRST SEMESTER 2005-2006
ANNAPOLIS · S ANTA FE
26 August 2005
Mr. Michael Dink
Dean
St. John's College
"In the Eyes of Others"
2 September
All-College Seminar
Kant - "What is
En I ighterunent?"
9 September
Mr. Thomas May
Tutor
St. John's College
"Finding Perspective and
Staying in One's Room:
Thoughts on Several of
Pascal's Pensees and
LaTour's Repentant
Magdalene"
16 September
Professor Nelson Lund
Alumnus
George Mason University
Law School
"The Roots of Our
Supreme Court's
Preeminence,
and Its Troubles"
23 September
Play - St. John's Tutors
"Othello"
30 September
(Homecoming)
Mr. Charles A. Nelson
Alunmus, Class of 1945
Annapolis, Maryland
"In The Beginning ... The
Genesis of the St. John's
Program, 1937"
7 October
Long Weekend
No Lecture
14 October
Nordic Voices
Norway
Concert by six singers
21 October
(Cochran Lecture)
Professor Sir Michael Berry
Physics Department
Bristol University
United Kingdom
"Making Light of Mathematics"
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.I404
4 Io-6z6-zsn
FAX 4W-2.95-6937
www. sjca. edu
�28 October
Mr. John Verdi
Tutor
St. John's College
"On Seeing Aspects"
4November
(Parents' Weekend)
Mr. N. Scott Momaday
Member of Board of
Visitors and Governors
New Mexico
"Language, The Fifth Element"
11 November
Mr. J. Jonathan Schraub
Independent Scholar
McLean, Virginia
"Job and the Jewish
Tradition of CounterTestimony"
18 November
Professor Wendy Allanbrook
Music Department
University of California
Berkeley
"Rising to the Surface:
A Reading of a Mozart
Piano Sonata"
25 November
Thanksgiving
No Lecture
2 December
(Steiner Lecture)
Professor Freeman Dyson
School of Natural Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton
"Gravitons"
9 December
King William Players
"The Lion in Winter"
16 December 8 January
Winter Break
No Lectures
�LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE- SECOND SEMESTER 2005-2006
S!JOHN'S
College
13 January, 2006
Mr. Karl Walling
U. S. Naval War College
"Thucydides on Strategy: The
Case of the Sicilian Expedition"
20 January
Mr. David StalT
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Person and Divinity"
27 January
Mr. Mark Sinnett
Mr. William Braithwaite
Tutors
St. John's College
"The Mathematics of
Motion Versus The
Mathematics of Change"
3 February
Long Weekend
No Lecture
10 February
New York Chamber
Soloists
Conce11 - Chamber Music
Strings and Winds
17 February
Mr. Michael Comenetz
Tutor
St. John's College
"Literature"
Spring Break
No Lecture
17 March
Szymanowski Quartet
Warsaw
Concert - String Quariet
24 March
Ms. Jacqueline Pfeffer MelTill
Tutor
St. John 's College
"Polity in Aristotle's Politics"
3 1 March
Mr. Jeffrey Smith
Tutor
St. Jolm's College
"Pity and Rousseau's
Three Savages"
ANNAPOL I S· SANTA FE
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.1404
41o-6z6-zsn
FAX 410-2.95-6937
www. ~jca. edu
24 FebruaryMarch 12
�7 April
Ms. Joanna Tobin
Tutor
St. John's College
14 April
All-College Seminar
21 April
Capital Campaign Kick-Off
No Lecture
28 April
King William Players
Shakespeare's As You Like It
5May
Reality Weekend
No Lecture
12May
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
"A Liberating Restlessness:
Emerson and Tocqueville
on Democracy and the
Individual"
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
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5 pages
Original Format
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paper
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Creator
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Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule - First Semester 2005-2006 & Second Semester 2005-2006
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005-2006
Description
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Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2005-2006 Academic Year.
Identifier
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Lecture Schedule 2005-2006
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
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pdf
Contributor
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Dink, Michael
May, Thomas
Lund, Nelson
Nelson, Charles A.
Berry, Michael
Verdi, John
Momaday, N. Scott, 1934-
Schraub, J. Jonathan
Allanbrook, Wendy
Dyson, Freeman J.
Walling, Karl
Starr, David
Sinnett, Mark, 1963-
New York Chamber Soloists
Comenetz, Michael, 1944-
Szymanowski Quartet
Merrill, Jacqueline Pfeffer
Smith, Jeffrey
Tobin, Joanna
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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5741171d527e6f19bf8c90d396113cca
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
2 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
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Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule - 1995-96
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1995-1996
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1995-1996 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1995-1996
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Relation
A related resource
September 1, 1995. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="For the first time" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/266">For the first time</a> (audio)
September 1, 1995. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="For the first time" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1246">For the first time</a> (typescript)
February 9, 1996. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3587" title="Song and dance and faith and prayer">Song and dance and faith and prayer</a> (audio)
February 9, 1996. Ruhm von Oppen, Beate. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3586" title="Song and dance and faith and prayer">Song and dance and faith and prayer</a> (typescript)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Buchenauer, Nancy
Grant, Ruth
Wiggins, Grant
Weigle, Marta
Brown, Peter
Cosans, Christopher Ernest, 1963-
Schoener, Abraham
Seeper, Dennis L.
Davis, Wade
Page, Carl
Higuera, Marilyn
Smith, Brother Robert
Salm, Eric
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Watkins, Calvert
Skinner, Jody D.
Dink, Michael
Sparrow, Edward
Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
Dougherty, Janet
Littleton, Daniel
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/eca3b452e936a9c4ff2eb3b5fc896811.pdf
eea47fc2105f091e02b211ea4f1a481d
PDF Text
Text
•
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
P.O. BOX 2800
ANNAPOLIS/ MARYLAND 21404
November 1991
fOUNDED 1696 AS KING WILLIAM' S SCHOOL
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - 1991-92
August 30, 1991
Ms. Eva T. H. Brann, Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
What is a Book?
September 6
Mr. Michael Dink, Tutor
St . John's College
Annapolis
The Wrath of Achilles
September 13
Ms. Judith Seeger, Tutor
and Professor Anthony Seeger
St. John's College
Annapolis
The Anatomy of Shame:
A Shameless Excursion
from Athens to the Amazon
September 20
Professor Lucius outlaw
Department of Philosophy
Haverford College
Haverford, PA
'Race' and Social Justice :
On W.E.B. DuBois' 'The
Conservation of Races'
September 27
Professor Ellen Davis
New York, New York
Story-Telling With
Pictures: A Greek
Invention
October 11
Concert
October 16
(Wednesday)
Mr. Howard Fisher, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
The Body Electric
October 25
Professor Gregory Nagy
Department of Classics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Myth as Exemplum
in Homer
November 1
Professor Amy Kass
Chicago, IL
The Education of
Telemachos
November 8
Ms. Dorothy Guyot, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Are Police Officers to
American Cities as the
Auxiliaries are to the
Platonic Republic
November 15
Ms. Linda Wiener, Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
Shark Dissection as
Poetry and Philosophy:
The Practice of Science
TELEPHONE 301-263-2371
�The Ecology of Human
Reproduction
November 22
Professor Peter Ellison
Department of Biology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
December 6
King William Players
January 10, 1992
Is Thinking Spontaneous?
Professor Stanley Rosen
Department of Philosophy
Pennsylvania state University
University Park, PA
January 17
Mr. Leo Pickens
Director, Athletics
St. John's College
Annapolis
'Box Where Sweets Compacted
Lie': An Explication of
Donne's "Nocturnal Upon
st. Lucies Day"
January 24
Mr. Andre Barbera, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
An Account of Musical
Taste
February 5
(Wednesday)
Ms. Lila Luce, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Logic After Aristotle
February 7
Mr. Peter Seeger
Concert
February 14
Professor Edward C. Smith
School of Education
The American University
Washington, D.C.
Frederick Douglass's
Influence on the War
Strategy of Abraham
Lincoln
February 21
Mr. Harvey Flaumenhaft, Tutor Reluctance, Risk, and
st. John's College
Reputation:
George
washington Decides to
Annapolis
Preside
March 20
Mr. Mortimer J. Adler
Institute for Philosophical
Research
Chicago, IL
March 27
Professor Don E. Fehrenbacher Lincoln and the American
Department of History
Literary Figures of
stanford University
His Time
Stanford, CA
April 3
Mr. Joe Sachs, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
War and Peace
The Battle of the Gods
and the Giants
�April 10
Professor Tu Weiming
East Asian Languages
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
An Interpretive Reading
of the Great Learning
April 15
(Wednesday)
Mr. Erik Sageng, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
A Baconian Mathematics:
MacLaurin's Motivation
for His Adherence to
'Ancient Standards of
Evidence and Certainty'
April 24
King William Players
May 1
Professor Ray Coppinger
Hampshire College
Amherst, MA
The Domestication
of Evolution
May 8
Mr. John E. Pfeiffer
New Hope, PA
Paleolithic Painting:
The Origins of Art
and Religion
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule - 1991-92
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991-1992
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1991-1992 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1991-1992
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
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Brann, Eva T. H.
Dink, Michael
Seeger, Judith Leland, 1944-
Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944-
Davis, Ellen
Fisher, Howard
Nagy, Gregory
Kass, Amy
Guyot, Dorothy
Wiener, Linda F., 1957-
Ellison, Peter
Rosen, Stanley
Pickens, Leo
Barbera, André
Luce, Lila
Seeger, Peter
Smith, Edward C.
Flaumenhaft, Harvey, 1938-
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Fehrenbacher, Don E. (Don Edward), 1920-1997
Sachs, Joe
Weiming, Tu
Sageng, Erik Lars
Coppinger, Raymond
Pfeiffer, John E., 1915-
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
August 30, 1991. Brann, Eva, T. H. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1242" title="What is a book?">What is a book?</a> (typescript)
March 6, 1992. Sachs, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3719" title="Battle of the gods and giants">Battle of the gods and giants</a> (audio)
March 6, 1992. Sachs, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3720" title="Battle of the gods and giants">Battle of the gods and giants</a> (typescript)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b6b50290f2bf08b23c0b09a5067e5e85.pdf
74038a96af953c82c5fe4e22a60cafa5
PDF Text
Text
�On O’Connor
“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time andplace
and eternity somehow meet. His problem is tofind that location. ”
STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
lannery O’Connor’s fiction tends to elicit strong reactions from her
F
readers. Some object to the mixture of comedy and pathos (country girl
wooed for her wooden leg) and the blend of the mundane and shocking
(senseless violence emerges from a clear blue day on a lonely country
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly by
St. John’s College, Annapohs, MD
and Santa Fe, NM
readers was
uncomfortable.
OthersCeorgia,
are entirely
devoted
toon
hertoand
will
Mary Flannery O’Connor
born in Savannah,
in 1925,
went
earn
a read
and
re-read
her
fiction,
prose,
and
letters,
even
as
they
feel
the
discomfort
sociology degree at the Georgia State College for Women, and studied at the Iowa Writer’s
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
and
discordance
witnesses
to anfirst
accident
to beLiterary
lookingconnections
so closely. In
the interest
Workshop,
whereofshe
began her
novel. ashamed
Wise Blood.
made
in Iowa, of
full
editors
of’sThe
Colleger
admit
to in
devotion:
wc She
havewas
been
scheming
to get who
and disclosure,
later at the the
Yaddo
writer
colony,
helped
her
her career.
a devout
Catholic
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
road). The freaks, misfits, and fools who populate her world make many
O
’Connor on the
cover for
now,
and here
is in her
rightful
corresponded
regularly
witha while
Thomas
Merton,
theshe
Trappist
monk
who place.
shared her love of writing
along with her deep faith. She suffered from lupus, the wasting disease that killed her father
when she was 15. (It left her near death in 1950.) She was proud of being a Southerner and loved
many aspects of the quiet rural life she was forced to live in Milledgeville because her illness left
her dependent on her mother’s care. On the family’s dairy farm, she raised peafowl that dined on
her mother’s Herbert Hoover roses. She wrote, she explained, because she had a gift lor it.
O’Connor wa.s often amused by those critics who tried to label her. She argued eloquently
with those who insisted that something “socially uplifting’’ must come from fiction: “The
novelist must be characterized not by his function but by his vision, and we must remember that
his vision has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of his audience will very
definitely affect the way he is able to show what he sees” {Mystery and Manners}.
The focus of this issue, “Revelation,” was one of her last stories, published a few months
before she died on Aug. 3,196/,. We know from her letters that the story was inspired by a visit
to the doctor’s office and that she wasn’t making fun of her protagonist or offering her up for
scorn: “I like Mrs. Turpin as well as Mary Grace. You got to be a very big woman to shout at the
Lord across a hogjten” {The Habit ofBeingY O’Connor made her first appearance on the Read
ing List of St. John’s College in 1989 with “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” Throughout
the years, the standard reading has been “Parker’s Back.”
In addition to paying homage to a favorite Program author. The College accomplishes
another important goal in this issue by showing off the tutors and the interesting things they
have to say when we give them a chance. We posed a question about the short story “Revela
tion” to a group of tutors from both campuses, and they approached it with zeal. (Advancement
vice president Barbara Goyette, A73, wa.s inspired by a church sermon to contribute an essay.)
To get the most from this feature, read or revisit “Revelation” before exploring these essays.
-RH
Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
postmaster:
Annapolis
410-626-2539
reharty@sjca.edu
Rosemary Harty, editor
Sussan Borden, managing editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Barbara Goyette
Kathryn Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Jo Ann Mattson
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
alumni@sjcsf.edu
John Hartnett, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
Michael Franco
David Levine
Andra Maguran
Margaret Odell
Roxanne Seagraves
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�"I “I v„.
College
The
ZINE
FOR
Alumni
of
t
St. John’s College
Annapolis •
{Contents}
PAGE
JO
DEPARTMENTS
Revelations
a
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
A routine visit to a doctor’s office ends in
a painful revelation for a self-satisfied
farmer’s wife. But what is really being
revealed? Pondering Flannery
O’Connor’s “Revelation.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
Santa Fe Initiative invests in student life.
A new Web site debuts.
Johnnies and Journalism
Mids and Johnnies on Thoreau
Middle States affirms accreditation.
Wine, art, and conversation
PAGE 2izj.
9
LETTERS
The Habit oe Writing
PAGE la
Chris Lynch (A87) on Machiavelli’s
Art of War
A GI alumna considers the lost art and
missed opportunities of letter writing.
PAGE
30 BIBLIOFILE
35 ALUMNI NOTES
2i6
PROFILES
31 Tias Little (EC98) brings Eastern
classics to yoga.
34 Ben Bloom (A97) finds fame.
38 Owen Kelley (A93) pursues monster
hurricanes.
The Mind in Winter
The challenges of the examined life keep
Johnnies young.
PAGE
Zj.6
41 STUDENT VOICES
Summer at Stag’s Leap
Is wanting good grades a bad thing for
Johnnies?
Fine wine, good company, and seminars
make a traditional Northern Cahfornia
chapter event a popular summer
tradition.
44 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
48 ST. John’s forever
PAGE 46
ON THE COVER
Flannery O 'Connor
Illustration by David Johnson
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
The Santa Fe Initiative
Concerned by the toll deferred
maintenance was beginning to
take on the Santa Fe campus,
the college’s Management
Committee came up with a
comprehensive plan: the
Santa Fe Initiative, a $4.5
miUion investment in buildings
and grounds, improved staffing
in the areas of student life, and
immediate upgrades to two of
the campus’ six laboratories.
When he unveiled the commit
tee’s initiative to the college’s
Board of Visitors and Gover
nors, Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson, interim
president in Santa Fe, received
a standing ovation from the
board. The reception from
tutors at a Santa Fe faculty
meeting was equally
enthusiastic.
For Nelson, serving as
interim president of the Santa
Fe campus in addition to his
regular duties in Annapolis, the
need for an immediate injection
of capital to the Western cam
pus was apparent. Even as the
college plans a Capital Cam
paign to fund a strategic plan of
long-needed initiatives such as
raising faculty salaries, Santa
Fe’s needs couldn’t wait. Nelson
had already seen what could
happen to a campus during lean
years: the Annapolis campus
found it expensive and time
consuming to catch up on main
tenance deferred when funding
for improvements was unavail
able in the early 1990s.
“With the Santa Fe initiative
we are jump-starting a program
of improving opportunities for
students outside the classroom
and for the improvement of
buildings and grounds,” says
Nelson. “This is just the start of
what we need to do over an
annual or intermittent basis
over a period of a decade or
more. We’ve invested about $35
million in the Annapolis physi
cal plant over the last 13 years.
We don’t want to see Santa Fe’s
physical plant deteriorate to the
level that Annapolis was.”
The purpose of the plan is
to make the kind of improve
ments that will encourage
student retention and enable
the admissions office to attract
a larger pool of qualified appli
cants to Santa Fe. Thus the
initiative focuses on areas that
affect student life, the appear
ance of the campus, and the
operation of the admissions and
financial aid offices.
At the same time, the college
will provide funding for an
internship program similar to
the Annapolis program funded
by The Hodson Trust while the
college seeks long-term grant
support for internships.
Costs for the Santa Fe Initia
tive will represent a a percent
''This isjust the
start ofwhat we
need to do over
an annual or
intermittent
basis... ”
Christopher Nelson,
Annapolis President
increase in the operating budg
et each year. The funds for the
initiative will come from unre
stricted endowment funds and
early unrestricted gifts to the
college’s Capital Campaign,
expected to officially begin in
June 2005,
Improvements that affect stu
dent life include funding for
additional staff in the Assistant
Dean’s office.
Career Services
office. Security,
and Student
Activities office.
Facilities
improvements
include renovat
ing the laborato
ries; resurfacing
all roadways and
parking lots,
curbs, and cen
trally located
walkways; adding
a new parking
lot; replacing
After 40 years,
THE Santa Fe
CAMPUS IS SHOW
ING SIGNS OF AGE.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
hardscape between the upper
dorms and Peterson Student
Center; repairing concrete
walls and steps; installing
uniform campus lighting;
installing patios for outdoor
study and social fife; and adding
attractive signs and a security
kiosk at a more formal campus
entrance. Some funding for a
director of buildings and
grounds and an additional
maintenance staff member is
also included.
While it will mean significant
short-term improvements in
Santa Fe, Nelson emphasizes
that the initiative is just a start
ing point: “The campus needs
an investment of about $30
million over time: new dormi
tories, a home for the Graduate
Institute and a new lecture hall,
renovations of the Evans
Science Laboratory, plus
additional renovations
campus-wide. For so many
years, we’ve sacrificed every
thing else to the Program.
We’re on a slow, steady plan of
improvement that requires
investments to make up for
deferred maintenance, for
poor salaries, and insufficient
student services-it’s time to
turn our attention to them with
out taking anything away from
the Program.”
To oversee the implementa
tion of the initiative, Annapolis
treasurer H. Fred “Bud” Billups
(HA03) will assume a new
college-wide position as special
assistant to the chair of the
Management Committee
(a position that alternates
between the two campus presi
dents). Billups will split his time
between the Annapolis and
Santa Fe campuses, providing
oversight over the two admis
sions offices, the two financial
aid offices, and the college-wide
Information Technology office.
He will prepare a college-wide
budget that will allocate annual
operating funds between the
campuses. 4^-Rosemary Harty
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
3
One College, One Web
Ifyou can make the time to
search all of the 4,285,199,774
Web pages available through the
search engine Google, let us
know ifyou find another college
with a Web site like St. John’swhere the dominant image is of a
chair and the valuable center real
estate is not a shot of smihng stu
dents or the beautiful campus,
but ofwords: the names of great
book authors.
On March i, after two years
of planning and gathering
comments from as wide a sector
of the St. John’s community as
possible, the college launched
the new site: www.stjohnscollege.edu. Previously, the col
lege’s student-designed site
diverged into two separate
paths for the Santa Fe and
Annapolis campuses right after
the home page. This new site
was designed from the start to
present St. John’s as one college
with two campuses. Thus what
is emphasized is the common
curriculum and the prevailing
Johnnie culture.
The front-page tour is also a
departure. The links in this
Web tour introduce Johnnies
and their wide range of reasons
for attending the college, the
unique and lively community of
learners, the Santa Fe and
Annapolis communities, and
the chair thing. Alert visitors
will also find surprises-“Easter
eggs” in Web lingo-on the
front page.
The new Web site was
designed to introduce the college
to prospective students and to
better serve alumni, current stu
dents, parents, faculty and staff,
and the communities of Annapo
lis and Santa Fe. The alumni sec
tion, developed with extensive
input from Alumni Association
president Glenda Eoyang and a
team of alumni testers, offers
something particularly useful: a
secure, password-protected
online Alumni Register.
Previously, the college issued
a printed directory of alumni
every five years. With support
and guidance from the associa
tion, the college now offers this
directory online. The search for
mat allows alumni to look up
classmates, find alumni in a new
city, or identify a group of alum
ni working in a particular field.
Like many areas of the Web site,
the directory is a work in
progress. Information in the
Register is drawn from two
separate databases, and the
program the college uses to
“marry” the data often falls
short of the ideal. The college’s
Information Technology and
advancement staffs are working
to remedy this. The more alumni
who use the database to update
their records, the more accurate
the register will be.
A few caveats: to protect
alumni privacy and restrict the
directory to alumni, the system
currently requires the college to
authenticate each user who
attempts to log
in. Once an
alumnus regis
ters, it will take
college staff
about two busi
ness days to pro
vide a password
that will grant
access. Similarly,
any changes
made to an indi
vidual record will
take a few days to
appear. Alumni
can choose at any
time to restrict
their information
to “name only”
or to not appear
in the Register.
If you encounter any
difficulty with the Register or
the Alumni section, or have
thoughts about how the Web
site can better serve alumni,
contact either of the alumni
directors: in Annapolis, Jo Ann
Mattson at 410-626-2531; in
Santa Fe, Roxanne Seagraves at
505-984-6103.
Diving with Sharks in South Africa
OR Wrestling with Plato in Santa Fe?
Along with articles about
pumping iron and healthy eat
ing, the April edition of Men’s
Health listed Santa Fe’s Sum
mer Classics among its “25
Greatest Getaways for Men.”
“We’ve found the best places
you’ve never been,” the article
begins-“high-point adventures
you can plan right now and
brag about for years.” The fea
ture lists opportunities such as
climbing the sand dunes of
Namibia, cage-diving with
Great White sharks in South
Africa, and piloting a subma
rine in Mexico. Studying the
classics at St. John’s sounds
pretty cool, too: “Do you really
want to check out of this life
without having known what
Shakespeare, Mozart, and Tol
stoy were going on about? Take
{The College-
a crash course in the human
experience-and spend a sab
batical summer to rememberby registering at St. John’s Col
lege, where laymen are invited
to delve into the great works of
man in small classes....”
This year’s Summer Classics
offerings are luxuriously eclec
tic, combining classics of the
East and West with modern
fiction and a generous serving
of music.
The first week, July rr-i6,
features Joseph Conrad and
Henry James, Xenophon, and
Freud in the morning; in the
afternoon participants take on
the stories and short novels of
Dostoevsky and Gregorian
Chant,
During week two, July 18-23,
morning session participants
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
can choose from Mozart or Lao
Tzu, or Jane Austen paired with
Shakespeare. Afternoon partic
ipants can take on Copernican
meditations, the short stories
of Thomas Mann, or the
Platonic dialogues Laches,
Charminides, otEuthyphro.
The third week, July 25-30,
features a.m, offerings of
Mahler, the Yoga Visitha, and
Spinoza. In the afternoon par
ticipants can study Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenolo
gy ofPerception, Montaigne
essays, or Faulkner’s Absalom!
Absalom!
The full schedule of seminars
and tutors are available on the
college Web site: www.sqohnscollege.edu.
�{From the Bell Towers}
Journalistic Johnnies
The
Gadfly
What Dfcl You Do During the Hurricane?
The Moon ^z/z^/The Gadfly/
Politics, Poetry, Punditry
Of the four individuals who
edited the student newspapers in
Annapolis and Santa Fe this past
academic year, not one has the
shghtest interest in pursuing a
journahsm career. Yes, it had
crossed their minds at one point
or another, hut they have all
talked themselves out of it.
Cathy Keene, a rising junior
in Annapolis who helped edit
The Gadfly for two years, admits
to being a deadhne junkie and
loves being in the know on
controversies or breaking news.
But one summer spent working
at a magazine convinced her
she should consider another
way to make a living. “Too
much stress,” she explains.
Ian McCracken, her co-editor
this year, is graduating and head
ing to law school. Santa Fe Moon
co-editor Jonathan Morgan,
a senior, is more interested in
biotechnology; senior Margaret
Garry is now leaning toward law
school and politics.
So, if it’s not a career goal that
tethers these individuals to to to
12 hours a week of writing, edit
ing, and production headacheson top ofwork-study jobs and
all the regular rigors of the
Program- what is it?
“1 have no idea why 1 do it,”
Keene admits. “We’re all
friends at The Gadfly, and it’s
really fun getting it out every
week. It gives me a real connec
tion to the Polity.”
“We get to produce this little
snapshot of St. John’s,” says
Garry. “And it’s really cool
seeing the Moon come together,
from somebody’s idea to
publication.”
The two periodicals differ
significantly in graphic style,
content, and tone. The Gadfly is
heavy on politics and Polity
issues; fiction and poetry are
more hkely to turn up in the
Moon (though it doesn’t shy
away from hard news either).
The Gadfly savors the backand-forth of intellectual argu
ments between two people
j
that can span several issues.
In the Moon, the “campus
moralist” expounds on issues
of student conduct; The Gad
fly has “You Make the Gall,”
athletic director Leo Pickens’
regular sports rules quiz.
Consider some of the offer
ings in Volume 8, Issue 4, of the
Moon', an opinion piece honor
ing military veterans; a feature
on the Web site bartcop.com, a
first-person parody of a seminar
on The Runaway Bunny, an
explanation of the Student
Review Board, a think piece
about the value of studying clas
sical languages, an investigative
report on problems concerning a
Common Room, and a science
fiction fantasy offering on
“Poster Wars.”
And Volume 25, Issue 20, of
The Gadfly: of review of tutors’
performance of The Birds', an
extensive piece on a cover-up by
the liberal media, three-and-ahalf pages of letters to the edi
tors, a review of Mr. Grenke’s
Friday-night lecture on Kant,
and “Why 1 Hate George W.
Bush, the Final Installment,”
including the author’s offer of a
cup of coffee for those who
would sit down and talk with him
about their opposing views.
Both publications attracted
controversy this year. The Gad
fly was delayed when assistant
dean Judith Seeger and student
services director Joy Kaplan
decided two stories should not
run. One included potentially
libelous material, the other con
fidential college information.
Seeger doesn’t see her role as
a watchdog; she reviews the
publication with an eye to
{The College-
protecting the college from law
suits. “We have occasionally
seen things that we think are
sometimes cruel, and we’ll
say ‘do you really want to put
that in your paper?’ And some
times they have listened and
reconsidered.”
The Gadfly was also blasted
for running a sham review
submitted by two students on a
movie they called “Tough Jew.”
“What really got people mad was
the photo we ran with it-Leo
Strauss. The cutline was: ‘Leo
Strauss: tough?’ One tutor wrote
in and said, basically, ‘how dare
you?’ We were totally blown
away by the response. We
defended ourselves, and then
we learned the movie was a
fake-we looked even stupider.
It was a learning experience,”
Keene says.
The Moon editors also had a
learning experience in the
Santa Fe campus response to
the newspaper’s “2003 Dirty
Poetry Contest” issue last fall.
The issue included photographs
of female students that some in
the campus community consid
ered racy; others considered
them degrading.
“There were several different
objections to the issue from
faculty members, the administra
tion, even a couple of students,”
Morgan says. “I think the most
valid point is that showing
certain students in that frame
work contributed to kind of an
uncomfortable classroom
environment. I hadn’t really
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
thought it was that immense of a
deal. People have bodies.”
After Morgan and Garry sent a
letter to the faculty apologizing
for the issue, and promising to
be more responsive in the
future, a proposed resolution
condemning the Moon turned
into a resolution supporting the
newspaper. “I regret that we
offended some people, but I
still think it was a great issue
because it got people’s atten
tion,” he says.
While both publications
accept advertisements, they’re
not self-supporting and, like
other student groups, get fund
ing allocated by the college.
McCracken believes the publica
tions might be better if they were
independent and funded by ad
revenue. “Given all the guidefines, I sometimes think it would
be easier if we weren’t affiliated
with the school. I know of people
who would write more things if
they knew their copy wasn’t
going to be reviewed by the
administration first,” he says.
Morgan hopes future Moon
editors work to maintain the
publication as a voice for
students. “I like that the Moon
doesn’t have a strict focus,
that we can have poetry and
artwork, a commentary on
Dante’s Inferno or the Iliad,
philosophical pieces and funny
pieces,” he says. “I like the
creativity. ”4-Rosemary Harty
�{From the Bell Towers}
5
A Meeting of Mids: Students Launch
Joint Seminars with the Naval Academy
The Johnnies wore
jeans and t-shirts
and lounged
comfortably at the
seminar table. Bolt
upright in their
chairs, white caps
set neatly in front of
them on the table,
the midshipmen
were clad in their
dark uniforms and
polished shoes.
As they spoke, they
looked to the semi
nar leaders, tutor
Louis Miller and
Naval Academy
Professor Lt. David
Bonfili, and resisted
the urge to raise
their hands.
The text before
the group of to students was
Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedi
ence.” Miller’s opening ques
tion drew from Thoreau’s
words: “Can there not be a
government in which
majorities do not virtually
decide right and wrong,
but conscience?-in which
majorities decide only those
questions to which the rule of
expediency is applicable?”
For two hours, students
grappled with the text not as
students from a military
academy or liberal arts
college, but as intelligent,
self-directed individuals eager
to grasp the heart of an idea.
The discussion quickly drew
out strong responses, but it
didn’t evolve into a debate
between students from the two
institutions. Thoreau’s stance
on not paying taxes and his
views about resisting an unjust
government were seen by
some of the midshipmen as
ideological luxuries. One
midshipman was distinctly
annoyed by what he described
as Thoreau’s “arrogant” ideal
Junior Rachel Hall
AND Midshipman
David Buck
ism. “He’d like to be a martyr,
but he’s not,” said a midship
man who pointed out that
Thoreau did not resist when
his friends bailed him out of
jail. And several studentsJohnnies and mids alikedisagreed with Thoreau’s
stance that it was not his
“business” to petition the
government to remedy what
he viewed as unjust laws.
Saida Johnnie, “Thoreau
believes that we won’t need gov
ernment if we’re enlightened.”
Enlightenment is a fine
thing, a midshipman coun
tered. But who will build the
roads? Can we convene a
government just when we need
one to accomplish some
particular goal? Can we call
up a military force only when
under attack?
One of the midshipmen said
that governments do make bad
decisions and meddle in per
sonal liberty; citizens should
protest when a government’s
actions are unjust. “There are
people who don’t have any
thing to do with me making
{The College.
decisions about how I live my
life,” she said.
“Not all of us,” said another
midshipman, “can be Martin
Luther King or Gandhi. If
everyone stopped supporting
the government, I don’t know
where we’d be today.”
After the seminar, the
group gathered in the Great
Hall with the participants of
the five other seminars, about
70 in total. Midshipman David
Buck attended all three semi
nars, partly out of interest in
the readings, but also because
his girlfriend, St. John’s junior
Rachel Hall, helped to organ
ize them. Hall hit on the idea
when she began reading Sun
Tsu’s The Art of War last year
and found she wanted to dis
cuss it with a group of people.
She brought the idea to Navy
Professor David Garren, and
Garren helped recruit Navy
co-leaders and organize the
seminars. “He was very enthu
siastic about it,” said Hall,
who found St. John’s tutors
were also pleased to partici
pate. The first seminar, in
St. Jo hn’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
January 2003, was
on Sun Tsu’s The Art
of War. Johnnies
went to the Naval
Academy to discuss
Plato’s Crito last fall.
Jacob Thomas,
a junior, found the
Thoreau seminar the
best of the three so
far, because mid
shipmen had caught
on to the dynamic of
seminar. In discus
sion of Sun Tsu,
their superior
military knowledge
tended to lead them
to dominate the conversations,
he said.
“But this time, they really
became involved in the discus
sion and in Thoreau’s ideas,
which was wonderful,” said
Thomas.
“It’s good for our students to
be exposed to each other,” said
Lt. Bonfili, a political science
professor. “I see the diversity
of opinions coming out.”
Having encountered John
nies during waltz parties,
croquet, and Reality, Buck
has been impressed with the
intellectual side of St. John’s.
Still, he added, “Johnnies are
crazier than mids.”
Like croquet, the joint
seminars seem to have become
another tradition, says junior
Mark Ingham, who helped
organize the seminars. “The
more you talk with the mid
shipmen, the less intimidated
you are by the uniform,”
he said.
-Rosemary Harty
�{From the Bell Towers}
6
News and
Announce
and in Santa Fe from 1989-96
before she came to Annapolis
in 1997-
ments
Steve Linhard, assistant
Appointments
In the Graduate Institutes,
effective June i: Tutor
Krishnan Venkatesh
becomes director in Santa Fe;
tutor Joan Silver the director
in Annapolis. Venkatesh has
been a tutor since 1989. He
earned a bachelor’s in English
from Magdalene College,
Cambridge. He spent more
than three years conducting
postdoctoral research in
Shakespeare and Renaissance
English at the University of
Muenster, West Germany, and
later taught at Shanxi Universi
ty, People’s Republic of China,
where he helped develop an
ESL curriculum.
Silver earned her bachelor’s
degree from the State Univer
sity of New York, College at
Old Westbury, a master’s from
St. John’s, and a doctorate in
Theology and the Arts from
Graduate Theological Union.
She was a tutor in Annapolis
from 1974-77, a tutor for several
summers beginning in 1985,
Middle States Review
Annapolis Appointment
St. John’s in Annapolis has earned a lo-year reaccreditation
from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
The college’s accreditation was reaffirmed at the March
meeting of the commission and followed a review of the
college’s extensive self-study.
A report from the evaluation team affirmed that St. John’s
is carrying out its educational objectives. The college
community found its opening words most gratifying:
“St. John’s College (SJC) deserves its reputation as one of
the best and most distinctive institutions in the United States,
indeed the world. The College has a long and unswerving
history of commitment to a single ideal: the life of the mind
as principally represented in the great books of the Western
tradition. Everything in the educational program evolves from
this ideal and it has worn well over many years. By design,
change occurs slowly at SJC and this deliberateness buffers the
College from the swings of fad and momentary diversions that
often plague other sectors of higher education.”
The college this year also sought accreditation from the
American Academy for Liberal Education; a decision from the
AALE is pending.
treasurer in Annapolis, will fill
the position of treasurer on the
recommendation of St. John’s
President Christopher Nelson
and the campus faculty. The
college’s board approved the
appointment. Linhard came
to the college in 1997 as con
troller. Prior, he was the
accounting manager/
controller for the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation.
New Staff
in
Santa Fe
Doug Single joins the college
as director for college-wide
major gifts. He brings
extensive fund-raising and
management experience to
the new position. After earn
ing bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in political science
from Stanford University,
Single became associate
director of athletics and
assistant football coach at
Stanford; he also served as
athletic director at Southern
Methodist and Northwestern
universities. Single recently
served as chief executive
officer of the David Douglas
Marketing Group in San
Francisco.
John Hartnett (SF83) has
been named communications
director. Hartnett attended
the Santa Fe campus before
going on to earn undergradu
ate degrees in philosophy and
economics from the University
of Illinois. He also holds a
master’s degree in writing
from Hamline University in
St. Paul, Minn. Most recently,
he was the president of his
own marketing communica
tions company. 4"
Consider Consolidating
Alumni with student loans may
want to look into consolidating
them into one fixed-rate loan,
the college’s Financial Aid
offices advise. Student-loan
consolidation involves paying
off current federal education
loans in full and creating a new
loan with a new interest rate
and repayment term up to 30
years. Federal Stafford and
PLUS loans charge variable
rates that are set by formulas
based on the last auction of 91day U.S. Treasury bills in May.
Federal consolidation loans,
however, carry fixed rates that
are based on the rates of the
loans being consolidated.
In recent years, the variable
student loan rate, determined
by the government, has been
at record lows (3.4 percent
on Stafford loans in May), but
interest rates are expected to
rise this year. Parents of college
students who have taken out
PLUS loans may also consoli
date these loans at current
rates.
There’s another reason to act
quickly, says Caroline Chris
tensen, financial aid director in
Annapolis. Legislation expected
{The College -Sf.
to come before Congress as part
of its renewal of the Higher
Education Act this year could
turn that low fixed rate into a
variable rate in the future.
Proponents of the bill say the
government is losing millions
in subsidies it pays to lenders
and want the savings directed
to other aid programs for
currently-enrolled students.
However, new alumni face
complications. “Ifyou consoli
date during your six-month
grace period, you lock in at the
in-school rate, currently 2.82
percent,” Christensen says.
John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
“What ifyou lock in at 2.82 per
cent, then rates drop on June
30? You’ll have a higher rate for
the fife of your loan, in addition
to losing remaining months of
interest-free grace period when
you consolidate. So you want to
wait until very close to the end
of your grace period.”
Contact your lender or the
Financial Aid office on either
campus: in Annapolis,
410-626-2503; in Santa Fe,
505-984-6058. Information on
researching and comparing
loan programs is available at
www.estudent.com.
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Board Approves Polity Amendments
Among the many actions it took
at its quarterly meeting in April,
the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors approved a
change to the college Polity,
the governing document for
St. John’s College.
The Management Committee-which oversees non-aca
demic policy and coordinates
administration of the two campuses-was made a permanent
part of the St. John’s governing
structure. The Management
Committee was established in
3000 and included as an addi
tion to the Polity with a five-year
sunset clause. The board voted
to delete the sunset clause, thus
continuing the committee.
This action represents the
culmination of a several-year
review of the Pohty, which also
resulted in a rewording to reflect
gender-neutral language and
10 amendments being passed in
April 3003. One of these amendments-the addition of sexual
orientation to the college’s
non-discrimination poUcy-had
been controversial a decade ago.
During a review of the Polity in
r993, the board failed to adopt
an amendment that specifically
prohibited discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation.
Five years later, in 1998, the
issue was not even raised.
“The first time it came up, it
was so bitter, so divisive, that
people were afraid to bring it
up again,” said Jean FitzSimon
(A73), a lawyer who served on
the board committee that took
up the most recent review of
the document. Original resist
ance to adding to the document
was centered on the belief that
discrimination based on sexual
orientation was covered by
other laws, and therefore did
not need to be spelled out,
FitzSimon said.
FitzSimon and other commit
tee members believed other
wise: “Even if it [discrimination]
isn’t happening at the college,
the Pohty is the Polity. We talked
about the public nature of this
document, and we felt that this
was something that had to be
speUed out,” FitzSimon said.
This time around the Polity
Review Committee, led by Greg
Curtis, did bring up the issue as
it began to work through possi
ble revisions in 3003. This com
mittee recommended, and the
Board adopted, a revised
non-discrimination clause:
“There shall be no discrimi
nation at St. John’s College in
appointments, conditions of
employment, admissions,
educational policy, financial aid
programs, athletics, or other
activities, on the basis of race,
religion, age, sex, national
origin, color, disabiUty and/or
physical handicap, sexual orien
tation, or other characteristic
protected by any applicable
federal, state or local law.”
In the Nick of Time
A TRAFFIC STOP ON THEIR WAY TO THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE NEARLY MADE THIS GROUP OF AnNAPOLIS SENIORS
MISS THE MIDNIGHT DEADLINE FOR TURNING IN THEIR SENIOR ESSAYS. (ThE POLICE OFFICER WAS UNIMPRESSED
WITH THE students’ PLEAS TO LET THEM GO ON THEIR WAY.) FrOM LEFT TO RIGHT ARE DeAN HaRVEY
Flaumenhaft, Justin Berrier, Hayden Brockett, Melissa Thomas, and Joseph Method. A rattled
Thomas is more than ready to hand over copies of her essay, “Reconciling Faith with Action.”
{The College
■ St. Jo hn ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
7
Taxing
Bachelors
As Maryland’s legislators grap
pled this spring with measures
to raise money for the state’s
coffers, word of an innovative
approach from the past-a tax on
bachelors-reached The College,
thanks to Richard Israel, retired
Maryland assistant attorney
general.
While browsing through pages
of General Assembly proceed
ings, Israel found that in 1761
legislators issued a series of
proposals for funding a college
that eventually resulted in
St. John’s. The “batchelor’s tax”
was expected to have a value of
500 pounds or more, according
to a bill aimed at acquiring
Bladen’s Folly, now McDowell
Hall. Listed also were 600
pounds to be raised through
licenses for public ordinaries
(pubs), 150 pounds from taxes
on wheel carriages, and 90
pounds through fees on card
and billiard tables.
The idea wasn’t just to raise
money, but also to encourage
single men to settle down, as
Israel found in the Acts of the
General Assembly, 1755-56:
“Forasmuch as Divine Institu
tions ought to be strictly
observed in every well-regulated
Government, and as that in
Regard to the entering into the
holy Estate of Matrimony may
tend to the more orderly Propa
gation of Mankind, it ought, not
only in a rehgious, but pohtical
View, to be promoted, and the
continuing in a State of Gehbacy
discountenanced, especially in
every Infant Country.”
The measure, however, was
never signed into law. After
several subsequent attempts,
St. John’s was chartered as a
college in 1784, soon after the
end of the Revolutionary War.
The charter provided that the
college would be financed by the
revenue from several different
taxes.
— Rebecca Wilson
(AGI82)
�{From the Bell Towers}
8
Fun-Raising, East and West
Art, Wine, and Good Conversation Brighten Winter's Dark Nights
Two events in January show that alumni and other college support
ers won’t pass up a chance for self-improvement along with the
opportunity to stay connected to St. John’s. Fine wine and good
food can’t hurt, either.
In Santa Fe, Larry Turley (SF69) brought the extraordinary
wines of Turley Wine Cellars to a benefit hosted by the Philos
Society-a group of local patrons of the college. The event had
wine-lovers buzzing over Turley’s hard-to-find wines, paired with
gourmet food.
Philos Society Event
Features Turley Wines
“Wine is the glass ofthe mind. ’’-Erasmus
A wine dinner hosted by the
Philos Society of St. John’s
College brought too people
from the Santa Fe community
to the rooftop garden room of
La Fonda Hotel in January.
While the opportunity to learn
more about St. John’s College
and fine wines attracted many,
it was clear that the main
attractions were the Napa
Valley wines provided by Larry
Turley (SF69). After all,
there’s a two-year waiting list
for Turley’s coveted wines,
such as a aooi bottle of The
White Coat. The event was
limited to 100, and the tickets,
at $125 apiece, sold out well in
advance.
Now the owner of Turley
Wine Cellars, Turley earned a
medical degree and became an
emergency-room physician
after leaving St. John’s.
He co-founded the Frog’s Leap
Winery in 1981, and then
moved on to open Turley Wine
In Baltimore, Philanthropia (the Alumni Development
Council) and President Christopher Nelson hosted a “Conversa
tion About the State of the College’’ at the Baltimore Museum of
Art. Wintry weather in December cancelled the first attempt at
the BMA event, but the rescheduled event was well-attendedencouraging Philanthropia to plan future stimulating occasions
to keep Johnnies informed and involved in the college.
Cellars with his sister,
Helen (A67).
The hotel’s wine
experts and chefs
worked to create the
night’s dinner menu.
The White Coat was
paired with appetizers;
langostino and goat
cheese empanadas with
toasted pinon-green
apple slaw. Next came
the duck confit on
greens tossed with chile
cascabel-basil vinai
grette, served with a
aooi Pesenti Vineyard
Zinfandel. Paired with
the third course
(pan-roasted chicken
breast with white truffle
demi-roasted garlic
mashed potatoes and sauteed
spaghetti squash) was a aooi
Hayne Vineyard Zinfandel.
A aooi Library Vineyard
Petite Syrah accompanied
cheese and fruit.
The event raised $6,500 for
the college’s Annual Fund.
Left: Philos board member
Charmay Allred shares her
APPRECIATION FOR LaRRY
Turley’s wine.
Above: Richard Morris,
A PAST BOARD MEMBER OF THE
COLLEGE, AND
JeFF BiSHOP
(HA96), VICE PRESIDENT FOR
COLLEGEWIDE ADVANCEMENT,
PERUSE SILENT AUCTION
OFFERINGS.
{The College.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
Turley donated some of the
wine for the event and provided
the rest at cost. In his holo tie
and denim shirt, he circulated
among the guests, talking
about wine and wine-making
and graciously accepting
compliments from wine lovers
grateful for a chance to experi
ence something extraordinary.
The Philos Society of
St. John’s College was founded
to foster and enhance commu
nication, understanding, and
joint activities between the
college and its community.
Co-chairs of the board are
Donn Duncan, M.D., and
Robert Zone, M.D.
�{From the Bell Towers}
9
Friday at the BMA
WITH Chris
Thanks to Philanthropia (the Alumni Development Council)
and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson, BaltimoreWashington alumni had an opportunity to enjoy a private viewing
of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Cone Collection. Afterwards,
the 82 alumni gathered for conversation, refreshments catered by
The Classic Catering People, owned by Harriet Dopkin (A77), and
an update on the college by the president.
The sights and sounds of the evening echoed the style of the
Cone Collection, creating an impressionistic tableau of delights
for the eyes, treats for the tongue, fellowship for the soul, and
ample food for thought. Thus, as an homage to the Cone
Collection, The College offers its report in the style of the
impressionists.
The Art
time in Paris among the expatriates. It was as though he had memo
rized all the accompanying notes on the walls. It was great fun hstening to him-he completed the experience for me. I’m not sure going
through the Cone Collection will ever be the same.
“Although I didn’t ask a question of Chris Nelson, I liked hear
ing what he had to say, and I know that people felt free to ask him
anything about the college. I was reminded that I still don’t know
very much about the Santa Fe campus and what its financial needs
are, or what those needs grow out of.”
Matisse, Purple Robe and Anemones, Interior, Flowers, and
Parakeets
Picasso, Mother and Child
Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seenfrom theBibemus Quarry
Monet, Waterloo Bridge
Van Gogh, Landscape With Figures
Fete avec Biere et Vin
Caprese skewers of pesto-rubbed grape tomatoes, baby mozzarella,
and kalamata olives
Dried fig, walnut, and goat cheese tapenade
Tenderloin roulades with spinach and portobello mushrooms
Jumbo lump crab fondue with a hint of dry sherry and old bay
Miniature fruit tarts, petite brownies, raspberry almond bars, and
fresh strawberries
DeGroen’s micro brew. Banrock Station wine, coffee, tea
Report of the President
Applicant pool up, attrition down.
Graduate Institute-healthy.
A new dormitory with water view is being built for 48 students.
The Santa Fe Initiative invests $4.5 million in the campus and
student life.
Gratitude for The Hodson Trust’s
$10 million grant, which funded
the Mellon renovation and new
dormitory.
Two or three additional major gifts
this year: a possibility.
The help and support of aU alumni
at all levels of giving: priceless.
President Christopher Nelson with Mark Lindley (A67).
Stacey Andersen (AGI93): “While we were wandering through the
Cone Collection, we noticed it was noisy: not normal museum
behavior. Yet we were expected to talk. There’s a commonality
we’ve run into with people who’ve gone to St. John’s. There’s a
shared dialogue. It’s a tone that was set and carried throughout
the evening. I think that’s what led to the discussion that contin
ued after Chris Nelson gave his introductory talk. We thought the
venue for an alumni function was fantastic. Is there abetter place
to unleash a group of Johnnies than in a museum? Thank you for
giving us the text! ”
- SUS3AN Borden, A87
The Reviews
Sara Stuart (Ago): “Mark Lindley
(A67) must have gone through the
Cone Collection before Brad (A89)
and I arrived. He was able to teU us
about all of the paintings and art
objects, and about the Cone sisters’
Above: The feast
Right: Sara Larson Stuart (Ago),
Brad Stuart (A89), and Philanthropia
EVENT CHAIR Steph Takacs (A8g)
{The College.
5t. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Letters}
Febbie Question Answered
Wendell Finner’s account of his query
concerning SJC’s lack of Eastern authors
(Winter 2004) brought back a memory of
Douglas Allenbrook that 1 cherish more as
political correctness continues to elimi
nate free speech.
During convocation for the Febbie 1980
class, one student asked about the lack of
Eastern authors. Without hesitation, and
with a charming smile, Mr. Alienbrook
replied “...the only thing good that has
come out of the East was the Sun.” Memo
ries like these convince me that St. John’s
College is more important than ever to
liberal education and free thought.
Steven D. Brower
(A83)
The Lost Languages
It was a joy and consolation to read the
article about the intensive Latin summer
classes in the Fall 2003 issue of
The College. It made up for the allegation
by a recent commencement speaker that
the students in front of him were lucky to
have the best education: liberal arts,
i.e. trivium and quadrivium-or, as my
Munich editor explained to colleagues at
the Beck publishing house, the “Septem
Artes”'we did at this interesting college in
America. Yes, the liberal arts, all seven of
them, and four foreign languages, the
commencement speaker said: Greek
and Latin and German and French.
The graduates kept a straight face.
Latin had already been dropped from the
curriculum when I joined St. John’s in
i960. German survived another couple of
years; then it, too, was gone. I taught one
of the last classes. It was a pleasure, and a
profitable one. We read bits of the Luther
translation of the Bible, the beginning of
Genesis and the opening of the Gospel of
John, and the juniors recalled some of the
Greek New Testament. We read Lessing
and a little Kant (with the surprising
earthiness of his vocabulary); we read
some Goethe; some of the rhymed caution
ary tales of Heinrich Hoffmann...and stuck
to texts that seemed more memorable and
discussable.
There was a young man in that class, Jim
Forrester (A62). He took the very first
[translation], six weeks into the first
semester. I was amazed at the result, which
included a perfect translation of a page
from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. He
translated it into real English, not translaterese, and showed an astonishing feel
''Yes, sing ye and
chant id andyou il learn to
speak and read it.. ”
Beate Ruh m von Oppen
for nuances. Next time the class met I
asked Mr. Forrester if he had been a begin
ner when we began six weeks ago. He said:
“Yes”-and after a moment’s reflection he
added: “I’d sung some Bach.”
Bach makes the language, especially
the biblical language, Luther’s German,
memorable. It sticks in the mind-even
as some of Picander’s poetry in the
St. Matthew Passion does, or perhaps just
first words like “Buss undReuf though
the Gospel of Matthew itself is more
memorable, e.g., “Der Geist ist willig,
aber das Fletsch ist schwach ” quotable
and even usable in daily life...
That remark by Jim Forrester taught me
that singing is the best way to learn a
language. Perhaps poetry, anything that
scans is the next best. So we now leave
German (and Latin) to the freshman
chorus and the other, voluntary singing
groups. Yes, sing ye and chant it! - and
you’ll learn to speak and read it...
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Tutor Emerita
Thailand’s War on Drugs
I wanted to address something that [Tiitor
Linda] Weiner said in describing her
summer in Thailand (Winter 2004).
Ms. Weiner suggested that Thailand
benefits from an “enlightened monarch”
and described the king’s policy of replac
ing opium farms with organic farms.
While the king may be enlightened, Thai
land’s Prime Minister and police force are
not. In Thailand’s own war on drugs, 2,245
people were killed in an anti-drug cam
paign from February to April 2003. The
police admitted to killing 50 themselves,
and many others were killed as they
returned from police stations. Thai
officials have neglected to investigate or
prosecute the killings. In August Prime
Minister Thaksin said, in reference to drug
smugglers crossing from Myanmar to
Thailand, “From now on if their trafficking
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
caravans enter our soil, we won’t waste our
time arresting them, but we will simply kill
them.” This and other policy statements of
the Prime Minister suggest that more extra
judicial killings will come.
The international community, including
the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudi
cial, summary or arbitrary executions;
Amnesty International; and the Drug
Policy Alliance, have expressed outrage
over the human rights abuses stemming
from Thailand’s war on drugs. I would hate
for Johnnies to get the impression that the
program described by Ms. Wiener is
indicative of Thai drug policy. More
information can be found in the Amnesty
International report “Thailand-Grave
Developments-Killings and Other
Abuses” available atwww.amnesty.org
Renate Lunn
Room
for
(A96)
Gauss
Doing year-end cleaning I chanced upon
Sheri McMahon’s letter in the Spring 2003
issue of The College. I guess it’s a recurring
topic among alumni who reflect upon the
mathematics tutorial.
I personally have often thought it a pity
not to pursue geometry a little further.
I always felt a historical approach to
Gauss’s Theorema Eregiurn on curved sur
faces or something like that might be pos
sible. Michael Spivak does something
along these lines in his Comprehensive
Introduction to Differential Geometry.
I always felt there was no greater figure left
out of the program than Gauss, that there
was a route to some of his work in geome
try that would be accessible to seniors, that
it was the perfect context for glimpses of
non-Euclidean geometry and general
relativity that were offered in the tutorial
(nearly three decades ago!), that it has a
perfect antecedent in the spherical
geometry of Ptolemy.
Mark Copper
(SF76)
Words and Deeds
Thank you for the article in the Winter
2004 issue on Santa Fe’s martial artists.
The Annapolis campus has also enjoyed the
Asian martial traditions over the years.
In 1977 tutor David Starr persuaded one of
his former philosophy students from the
University of Rhode Island, a prodigiously
talented gentleman named Robert Galeone, to move to Annapolis to teach the
Okinawan system of Uechi-ryu karatedo.
continued on nextpage
�{Letters}
I was Mr, Galeone’s first student at the col
lege club, which met in one of the handball
courts in Iglehart Hall on Tuesday and
Wednesday evenings, and Saturday morn
ings. Mr. Galeone, a 5th-degree black belt,
produced quite a few serious students over
the seven years that he led the dojo....
Today, Annapolis students interested in
aikido may join the U.S. Naval Academy’s
Aikido Club, which holds classes on both
the Naval Academy campus and in Iglehart
Hall. (For more information, see
http://www.geocities.com/navyaikido/.)
It seems to me that study and practice of
the martial arts, whether from Asia or the
West, is essential to the development of a
free citizen. Whether the pen is mightier
than the sword is not the right question.
Rather, why should the study of one pre
clude the study of the other? To paraphrase
a Japanese proverb, in the hands of an
educated individual, the sword and the pen
are one. Unfortunately, it is too easy for a
student of the liberal arts to acquire a great
and unjustified faith in the power of speech,
along with an all-too-ready skepticism
concerning action. Words need the support
of deeds. As Mr. Galeone once said, “The
body remembers what it does, and not what
you tell it.” Martial arts training provides
the student with the framework to become
as proficient in the world of action as he or
she is in the world of reason, by teaching
balance, grace, and poise, all while facing
an adversary. I hope that students on both
campuses will take advantage of the
opportunities to pursue these disciplines.
Jim Sorrentino (A8o)
Calendar Mysteries Revealed
I was quite amazed to open the 2004
calendar and find a photo of my high
school math teacher (February 2004).
He is Thomas Yoon (A58), and he taught
me trigonometry and led a philosophy
seminar at Scarborough School, in
Scarborough, N.Y. My guess is that it
was 1967. He was an inspiring teacher with
a great sense of humor, and was the one
who told me about St. John’s College.
Pippi Ellison
few lists I have. The whole scene was
contrived, which is why there is a smirk on
the face of the guy front center and guy
left. Girl center was trying to look serious
and guy rear was told to pose in an
awkward position. The people at the end of
the table were told to look at each other.
No one has the same book. The photos
were intended for a catalog redesign, or a
flyer for the admissions office.
I was the student aide for Marsha Drennon, then admissions director, and helped
find the students and arrange the furni
ture. Notice how there aren’t any empty
chairs? We did have a blast doing the series
of pictures around the campus.
Michael David
(SF87)
Dumping Concerns
While I found the “Night Crawlers” letter
(Winter 2004) somewhat amusing as a
piece of black humor, I was taken aback
that there was no editorial note as to the
state of affairs since the dumping
occurred. Has all that stuff been leaching
into the ground and water and possibly the
creek ever since with nothing being done,
or was it cleaned up at some later date?
If not, I think [the college] is morally, and
perhaps legally, bound to address the prob
lem. Surely, SJC is not so philosophically
preoccupied that it doesn’t care what it
does to our environment?
Natalie Chambliss (class
of
1964)
Editor’s Note:
Steve Linhard, treasurer on the Annapolis
campus, says thatfor an undetermined
period oftime, a dumping ground was sited
on the college’s back campus. When the
college investigated severalyears ago, it
uncovered bricks, broken china, bottles.
(Aya)
The May 2004 photo of students at a table
on the dining hall balcony was taken in
June or July 1985. It was a PR photo from a
whole set of photos taken that day all over
the campus. The students in the photo are
mostly January freshmen, though I can’t
remember or find their names in any of the
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
cans, kitchen utensils, and similar domestic
refuse. “'Testpits were dug by an outside
survey company three summers ago, and
nothing ofany chemical nature was
found,” Linhard says. “In addition, core
samples were taken by a geological testing
firm to examine the soil contentforfeasibil
ityfor thermal conductivityfor the geother
mal heating systemfor the new dormitory.
These samples were examined and nothing
hazardous was discovered. ”
Errata
An article in the Fall 2003 issue stated that
Hans von Briesen attended and taught at
Stanford and the University of Rochester.
He attended the universities, but did not
teach at them.
The reading list on St. John’s history that
accompanied an article on the attempted
Navy takeover of St. John’s (Winter 2003)
should have included these works by
Charlotte Fletcher (HA69), former
librarian at the Annapolis campus: Cato's
Mirania: A Life ofProvost Smith, and
“St. John’s ‘For Ever’: Five Essays on the
History of King William’s School and
St. John’s College,” published in the
St. John'sReview (1990-91).
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters maybe edited
for clarity and/or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance of being
printed in their entirety.
Please address letters to: The College
Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404 or The College
Magazine, Public Relations Office,
St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz
Blanca, Santa Fe, NM
87505-4599Letters can also be
sent via e-mail to:
rosemary.harty
@sjca.edu.
�{Revelation}
la
REVELATION
and
REDEMPTION
hat is the revelation in Flannery
O’Connor’s “Revelation”?
That was the question
The College asked of a group of
tutors and others in the St. John’s
College community. The short
essays that follow are presented as thoughtful responses to
a question posed in search of gaining more insight into a
puzzling and multi-layered short story. If you have not read
“Revelation,” or read it long ago, put this feature aside
until you can.
W
Ripe for Revelation
by Joan Silver
Lastfall I received a letter from a stu
dent who said she would be “graciously
appreciative” if I would tell her “just
what enlightenment” I expected her to
getfrom each ofmy stories. Isuspect she
had apaper to write. I wrote her back to
forget about the enlightenment andjust
try to enjoy them. I knew that was the
most unsatisfactory answer I could
have givenbecause, ofcourse, shedidnt
want to enjoy them, shejust wanted to
figure them out.
In most English classes the short story
has become a kind of literary specimen
{The College -John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
to be dissected. Every time a story of
mine appears in a Ereshman anthology,
I have a vision ofit, with its little organs
laid open, like afrog in a bottle.
I realize that a certain amount ofthis
what-is-the-significance has to go on,
but I think somethinghas gone wrong in
theprocess when, for so many students,
the story becomes simply a problem to
be solved, something which you evapo
rate to get Instant Enlightenment.
A story isn I really very good unless it
successfully resistsparaphrase, unless it
hangs on and expands in the mind.
Properly, you analyze to enjoy, but ids
equally true that to analyze with any
discrimination, you have to have
enjoyed already.. ..”
Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners.
I will assume that all who have read
Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Revela
tion,” have enjoyed it. We enjoy the
story, and her remarks above, somehow
as wholes, and also in their humorous
and penetrating details. In the spirit of
the above remarks, I would like to notice
numerous revelations which spring from
�{The Colleges?.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�14
{Revelation}
''In a crucial moment
ofthat vision, she
finds her own kind
bringing up the rear... ’
this story, which calls itself “Revelation” in
the singular. I hope that together they may
“hang on and expand in the mind.”
Perhaps the key revelation in the story is
the return to Mrs. Turpin of the enraged
question she asks of God, “‘Who do you
think you are?’”: “The question carried
over the pasture and across the highway
and the cotton field and returned to her
clearly like an answer from heyond the
wood.” This answer is a distillation of the
revelation already embedded in her earlier
questions: “‘How am I a hog and me both?
How am I saved and from hell too?’” At this
reply, Mrs. Turpin’s mouth opens (is it in
wonder or in understanding?), and she
does not speak. But this revelation is not
the end of the story.
Other revelations follow, mediated by a moment in which
she imagines the death of her husband, his truck hit by anoth
er, his “brains all over the road.” Seeing his truck return, she
herself begins to move, “hke a monumental statue coming to
life.” Only now do initial events of the story receive their
answering revelations.
An early revelation in the story is that “living demonstra
tions” are present in the world. When the story begins Mrs.
Turpin (who is “very large”) is entering the “very small”
waiting room of a doctor’s office; she is said to be a “living
demonstration that the room was inadequate and ridicu
lous.” As the story goes on, of course, we see that the waiting
room is exactly the right size for the events which take place
in it. A later echo which replies to this apparent “living
demonstration” immediately follows Mrs. Turpin’s “coming
to hfe.” The “old sow” and young hogs, above whose “pig
parlor” she confronts God, find their places in their “waiting
room” with ease: “They had settled all in one corner around
the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suffused
them. They appeared to pant with a secret hfe.” It is the sow
and the other pigs who become a real “living demonstra
tion” for Mrs. Turpin and for the reader. Her earher “glow
ering down” at the hogs and disdaining of others has become
a “gazing down”; she “remained there with her gaze bent to
them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving
knowledge.”
{The College -
Two more echoes follow. The first is a
revelation and echo for Mrs. Turpin and
the reader alike; the second, for the read
er alone. Early on, Mrs. Turpin’s charac
ter is revealed by one of her inner
“games.” In one, she lies awake at night
“naming the classes of people.” She sep
arates and tries to rank human beings by
certain combinations of race and proper
ty, but the real people of her acquain
tance will not stay put in the places that
she gives them: “Usually by the time she
had fallen asleep all the classes of people
were moiling and roiling around in her
head, and she would dream they were all
crammed in together in a box car, being
ridden off to be put in a gas oven.” The
impulse from which such grading and judging spring leads
ultimately to the gas chamber-to spiritual and physical
death for all. This dream is echoed and transformed at the
end by Mrs. Turpin’s vision of the “vast horde of souls
rumbling toward heaven” in which all classes and kinds
are present. In a crucial moment of that vision, she finds
her own kind bringing up the rear: “she could see by their
shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were
being burned away.” Not the fire which makes the gas
chamber, but the fire of purgatory is needed. Note, too,
that hogs are easier to clean than humans; for pigs, only
water is needed.
The final echo is concerned with seeing (and with size).
Mrs. Turpin’s eyes were initially described as “little
bright black eyes . . . [that] sized up the seating situation”
and all else around her. After the vision just mentioned,
O’Connor tells us that her eyes are “small but fixed
unbfinkingiy on what lay ahead.” We may need to ask just
what is intended by “what lay ahead,” but, in this changed
description, we receive the revelation both that a kind of
steadfast looking is necessary for us, and that a transfor
mation of one’s manner of seeing in the world is possible,
(and that size-at least relative human size-does not
matter).
Among the many other revelations in the story, two
seem worthy of note in the context of the ones mentioned
above. The first concerns the catalyst for revelation, the
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
second the capacity to receive it. The story shows revelation-or the beginning of it-coming from the strangest
source: Mary Grace. The suffering of one human being,
her anger and anguish, gives birth to grace for another.
And in Ruby Turpin the story shows inquiry, linked with
sin, as a potential path to revelation and grace. Mrs.
Turpin’s inner “games” embody inquiry in a strange form:
who might I have been if not myself; what is my place with
in all of humanity? They also, of course, reveal pride mas
querading as gratitude. This picture remains a revelation,
if a comic one, of what can make one ripe for revelation.
Joan Silver is a tutor and incoming director ofthe Graduate
Institute in Annapolis.
In the Eye
of
15
Judgment Day
by Pamela Kraus
Ruby Turpin knows what should be and does her part to
make it so. She notices every instance of the messy, dirty,
unregulated world. She has her faults, she knows that, but
she’s a respectable, church-going woman who always tries to
make things right. She keeps pigs-just a few of the preemi
nent unclean animal-but she’s built them a concrete pen, a
“pig-parlor,” to keep them from wallowing in mud and slop,
and she hoses them down regularly. On the day of this story
Ruby accompanies her husband Claud to the doctor and sizes
up the waiting room: it’s small and dirty and filled with
slovenly, careless people. To counter the disorder she exer
cises the best force she can, her good disposition generously
Since the emergency, a wrathful Mrs. Turpin has been
demanding why Mary Grace called her an old wart hog from
hell. Mrs. Turpin is convinced that Jesus sent her the mes
sage and, though she has negotiated with him before, for
once, she finds that defense is futile. She has no one to turn
to. She doesn’t trust the cotton-pickers, whose comments
she finds intolerable and full of flattery. She can’t confide in
Claud (whose name sounds like “clod,” and who can’t shore
up her failing faith). She shouts defiantly to Jesus, “Who do
you think you are?”
The sight of the sun setting in the back pasture, “looking
over the paling of trees like a farmer inspecting his own
hogs,” triggers the collapse of her carefully-tended beliefs.
She inspects her own hogs, who are glowing rosy in the cor
ner of the pig parlor, and takes in the “abysmal life-giving
knowledge” from them-sees, I think, that though there is
no one out there measuring each person for a future crown,
yet we have the present life. There is no doctor behind the
waiting-room door, about to call our names. Mrs. Turpin
sees the vast parade of people, carried to heaven on the pur
ple bridge shouting hallelujah. She knows, for the moment
at least, that this is nothing but a dream.
Heaven
by Basia Miller
Mrs. Turpin’s revelation is pretty dark. She has experienced
the dark before-at the end of her dreams, everyone is
crammed in a boxcar and sent off to a gas oven. Today when
she and Claud enter their own dirt road on the way back from
the doctor’s, she is ready to see her home destroyed, “a burnt
wound between two blackened chimneys.” A few moments
before the end, she imagines the pickup truck being crushed
and her husband’s and the fieldhands’ brains oozing out on the
road. Her final revelation seems, too, to be of a world
destroyed, a kind of apocalypse that nevertheless offers “life
giving knowledge.”
First, Mrs. Turpin’s vision was affected in the waiting room.
When Mary Grace sent the book flying at her head, Mrs.
Turpin saw things smaller first, then she saw everything larg
er. The impact was particularly powerful because Mrs. Turpin
sensed that the girl had a deep, timeless knowledge of her,
perhaps of her soul. We who have heard Mrs. Turpin talking
incessantly, all afternoon, about her own goodness have to
ask if much of this talk isn’t inspired by self-doubt. She’s con
verted everyone’s gestures, everyone’s shoes, green stamps, Basia Miller is a Santa Fe tutor.
and traces of snuff into material for affirming her worth in the
eye of heaven, like a person feeding an insatiable hunger.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�i6
{Revelation}
''Thepurgatorial
vision reveals
all manner of
sinners lined up
ingroups...
bestowed, a veneer of nice manners and char
•
itable platitudes barely covering harsh judg
ments. This is her way of following the com
mandment Love Thy Neighbor. Both her
justice and her mercy are superficial rather
than utterly misplaced. They are poor imita
tions of the divine, not complete aberrations.
Yet they are not harmless: they hold her fast
in easygoing self-righteousness and could
forever blind her to herself.
Mary Grace is the only occupant of the wait
ing room who won’t submit to Ruby’s intru
sive geniality. An ugly, cranky, even mean
young woman, Mary Grace sees a deeper dis
order than Ruby sees, and her penetrating
eye is right on Ruby Thrpin. Mary Grace
waits in the waiting room but is sickened by
the world that surrounds her, as if she has
taken in its ugliness. She is most revolted at
Ruby, its banal and self-satisfied leading citi
zen. Seemingly lost to charity, or too bur
dened for it, she freely offers this world
her scorn.
Each of these judges is drawn to the other
from the first as to a perfect enemy. Mary
Grace rebuffs Ruby’s attempts at cordial
small talk, even when not directed to her, by making
grotesque faces. The affronts enliven Ruby’s insistence on
the virtue of good-naturedness. The garrulous, prettied-up
world of Ruby’s waiting room advances upon the stark,
friendless one defended by Mary Grace. When Ruby’s enthu
siasm reaches its peak, she bursts out in praise: “Thank you,
Jesus, for making everything the way it is! ” Mary Grace retal
iates. She launches her book at Ruby and goes for her throat.
Both fall in this battle. Mary Grace inflicts the blows, yet
she is the one sedated and removed to a hospital. The purple
swelling above Ruby’s eye and the marks on her throat are on
the surface; deeper is a more grievous wound. Not the book,
not the hands clenched around her throat, but the words
Mary Grace whispers as the two lock eyes hit home: “Go back
to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” These words
“brooked no repudiation.” They strike Ruby’s center of grav
ity, confusing her sight and toppling her confidence. Ruby is
turned, readied for revelation; Mary Grace, an inadvertent
{The College-
cause of grace, goes to a fate we do not know.
The vision of an ugly wart hog besets Ruby
all afternoon. Driven by anger, confusion,
and need, she spills her story almost in spite
of herself to the Black cotton workers in her
employ. This veiled plea for compassion is
met with highly spirited but superficial concern-the kind of concern Ruby has been so
proud of and good at herself, especially with
the Blacks-and it angers her to receive it
from those she has considered so far beneath
her. She goes to her pig-parlor seething as
intensely as Mary Grace in the waiting room,
turns the hose on the pigs, and, like a comic
Job, thrusts question after question at God.
The questions begin in a forceful whisper,
“How am 1 a hog and me both?”, and reach a
summit of fury: “Who do you think you
are?”, the fundamental question to which a
vision is the mysterious answer.
The purgatorial vision reveals all manner
of sinners hned up in groups, each rejoicing
in its distinctive way, and puts Ruby in
her place. Ahead in line are the leapers
and rollickers; she, Claud, and the other
respectable people are last in the procession,
their virtues the sins being burned away. The vision is a
reminder of our essential unfitness to understand and follow
the commandment to love even when we desire to and a reve
lation of God’s inscrutable, comic ways. As Ruby stands gaz
ing upon “what lay ahead” and hearing at the crickets’ chirps
hallelujahs of praise, we wonder in what world Ruby now
is and whether it may embrace the edge that Mary Grace
inhabits.
99
Pamela Kraus, a tutor in Annapolis, also serves as editor of
the St. John’s Review.
The Private Hell
of
Ruby Turpin
by Cary Stickney
Without rereading the story, 1 want to say that the primary
revelation is what the girl in the doctor’s office says that
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�{Revelation}
wounds Mrs. Turpin so: “You are a warthog from Hell!”
Ruby Turpin cannot forget it, and it brings on a kind of crisis
of faith, I presume because on some level Mrs. Turpin
acknowledges its truth. It is at least in part-the warthog
part-an inevitable consequence of existing as a creature in
the same cosmos with an infinitely good Creator. In this
sense I suppose even archangels are warthogs, compared to
the beauty of God. That the warthog is from Hell seems to me
to say that we have each taken the finite beauty and goodness
we might have had and thrown it away. That is, we are sin
ners, and we make a kind of hell for ourselves.
Looking back at the story I see that the girl in the waiting
room says, “Go back to Hell where you came from, you old
warthog!” Mrs. Thrpin had been revealing by her conversa
tion with the girl’s mother that she lives in a world of careful
ly maintained distinctions, and that she compensates herself
for the efforts she makes to be good by looking down on all
those who seem not to try as hard. She would not describe her
own world as a hell. But I see something hellish in the dream
we are told she sometimes has, in which her struggles to
17
maintain the picture of a well-ordered hierarchy of human
virtue and vice correlated with property ownership and
worth ancestry, to say nothing of skin color, give way to a
vision of a cattle-car crowded with every kind of human on
the way to a gas oven. In her waking hours, she sees a world
in which good people are the exception and things are get
tingworse. To be “saved,” as she believes she is, requires that
she think better of things than that, at least in an ultimate
sense, but it looks as if she has reduced God to a scorekeeper
and that her gratitude to have been created as the one we see
is dependent at least on her fear of and contempt for others.
The Wellesley girl, Mary Grace, may see that, and may mean
that she is far from heaven and fairly close to hell, so that it
would be easy to just go back. Of course being an effective
messenger may not require that the aptly named Mary Grace
fully understand the message she delivers.
Both the aspects of the revelation, that she is a warthog and
that she came from Hell, carry with them a redeeming and
mysterious grace: namely that in spite of our vanishingly
small claim to significance or beauty or even to being at all.
{The College -St John’s
College • Spring 2004 }
�i8
{Revelation}
we somehow do exist in the same cosmos with infinite beauty
and heing-God has made room for us and wants us to be.
That turns out to involve, in the Christian understanding,
that He has moreover forgiven us the waste of our time and
gifts, the pettiness and cruelty we might have avoided, and
that He offers us His love. What Mrs. Turpin demands to
know, namely how she can be herself and a hog too, or saved
and at the same time from hell, is the mystery that requires a
further revelation, or a deeper view of the one she has been
given.
In the story, Mrs. Turpin is hosing out the hog pen and
shaking her fist at God when the shape of the stream of water
momentarily comes to resemble a snake. She is at that
moment complaining to God that she might as well have
never tried to lead a good life at all, if she can be so insulted
and feel it so deeply; if, in a word, she is still just a warthog: in
spite of all her efforts still essentially no better than the worst
of sinners, the most lazy and wicked. This is a form of the
temptation to think that she should. Godlike, be able to make
herself, to accomphsh her own goodness and merit by her
unaided efforts, and thus, implicitly, to know good and evil:
to have the right to judge and condemn others presumably
less industrious or tasteful than herself. For if it does not ulti
mately matter what she does, and all saving power remains
with God, why has she troubled herself all these years? “Why
should we not sin the more, that Grace may abound?” asks
Paul, before repudiating the question.
The mystery and the final aspect of the revelation, granted
in her sunset vision, is that it does and does not matter. It
does: before she sees the highway into heaven she has seen
the setting sun like a farmer looking over the fence of the
treetops at his hogs, and she has seen her own hogs, clean
now and gathered around the old sow, the source of their
hves, and one kind of image of herself. She gazes “as if
through the very heart ofmystery,” and again, “as if she were
absorbing some abysmal, life-giving knowledge.” It is a
knowledge set off both by the previous sight of her husband’s
truck going down the road no bigger than a toy, liable at any
moment to be smashed, and by the fact of sunset itself. Even
without accident we are not here long. From the abyss, the
depths at greatest distance from God, she absorbs the knowl
edge that life-finite, particular, hog-ugly hfe-precisely in its
finitude, is beautiful, is full of God, its secret source. If those
hogs are beautiful, then so is she; it is right that she is who she
{The College-
is. But then it is equally right that others are who they are.
Her struggles to do right have not made her superior. When
she sees the horde of ascending souls, led by the crazy, lazy,
crippled, and off-key, she sees she had to make the efforts she
made to be who she is, not because God would not love her
otherwise, but because there must be all kinds of saved sin
ners, and it is a divine gift to be whatever kind you are.
It does not matter: the very virtues of the decent and
upright like herself are being burned away in the purging
fires of the ascent; that is, even their virtues are small and
small-minded in the hght of God’s love. That God’s love is not
hmited by human wickedness and yet does not annihilate the
significance of an individual life is part of the same revelation
as that an infinite being should make room for finitude to
begin with. Greation and redemption are revealed to be at
one.
Carey Stickney (A75) is a tutor in Santa Fe.
The Presence
of
Evil
by George Russell
Flannery O’Gonnor did not write about the lives of the
great, but the lives of the ordinary and the lowly. By conse
quence, the situations and actions of her characters are
most often the stuff of comic and not tragic report. One
finds himself laughing spontaneously at the human beings
in her stories. Nevertheless, she is not condescending to
her characters. She takes them seriously, holding them
accountable for their weaknesses and transgressions. They
may be ridiculous in the smallness of their views and
desires, but they suffer nonetheless for their sins, and one
is brought to feel for them in their sufferings and in the
realizations that their sufferings allow.
“Revelation” is a story about a day in the life of Ruby
Turpin, a farming woman who, as far as she knows, is
“saved” (“And wona these days I know I’ll we-era a
crown.”) and who, in her own words is “a respectable, hard
working, church-going woman.” From the first we are told
that Ruby Turpin is a woman, big in size (“I wish I could
reduce...”), blessed with a “good disposition” and “a little
of everything,” with the emphasis on “everything.” In the
story, we see her settled conclusions about the world
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
around her and her place and identity in that world and in
the divine plan come under an unexpected and jarring
attack during a visit with her husband to the doctor’s
office; and we witness a recovery which is as remarkable as
the fall.
A story with two distinct parts, “Revelation” in its first
part takes place in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.
The waiting room is emblematic of the shared human
condition. Human beings are susceptible to injury and
sickness. And their susceptibility is real; they get injured;
they get sick. However that maybe the case, the story is less
about bodily injury and illness than it is about another abo
riginal susceptibility, the proneness to sin and especially to
pride. It reminds one of the passage in the Bible from
On
the
Road to Damascus
by Michael Dink
The revelation that comes to Ruby, in the form of a book
thrown by Mary Grace that knocks her off her chair in the
doctor’s office, is in essence identical to that which came
to Saul, in the form of a flash of light that knocked him to
the ground on the road to Damascus. Prior to the revela
tion, Ruby and Saul shared a sense of their superiority to
certain other human beings, a superiority achieved by reg
ulating their conduct according to certain precepts and
recognized in the eyes of God. In Ruby this sense takes the
form of a self-congratulating condescension, in which she
sees herself as kind and tolerant to those inferiors, while
in Saul it took the more aggressive form of trying to pun
ish or reform those who had strayed from the right path.
When Ruby is called “a wart hog from hell” and Saul is
asked, “Why do you persecute me?” they are confronted
with the claim that they are sinners, certainly no better
than those they had despised, and perhaps even worse,
precisely because of the claim to righteousness implicit in
their despising, a claim that Saul, reborn as Paul, denies
that any human being can truthfully make.
Ruby struggles valiantly to deny this message, “But the
denial had no force.” She resents its being directed to her,
“a respectable, hard-working, church-going woman,”
19
Proverbs, “Pride goeth before destruction, and haughty
spirit before a fall.” The central dramatic incident that
takes place in the first part of the story occurs in the con
text of a conversation between three women, Mrs. Turpin,
a poor white woman, and the mother of a college student
named Mary Grace. The conversation of the women, taken
together with the reports of the narrator, reveals the pride
of the three women and of Mary Grace, but especially that
of Ruby Turpin.
About Mrs. Turpin we learn early on, that when she is
restless and unable to sleep, she has two nocturnal occupa
tions. In one, she seems to be acutely aware of the contin
gent character of her present life. Like Eve, who is tempted
by an alternative vision of the world, Mrs. Turpin’s imagi-
“though there was trash in the room to whom it might
justly have been applied.” A kiss from her husband and
flattery from the black womenfolk of their hired help fail
to assuage her resentment.
When she goes to the pig parlor and tries to cleanse the
pigs, she speaks out her resentment, evidently to God,
indicating that she does recognize the source of the reve
lation, despite her resistance to it. She continues to justify
herself, to defend her innocence, her charity, her superi
ority to lower orders of people. Her fury bursts forth in a
defiant challenge, “Gall me a hog again. From hell. Gall
me a wart hog from hell. Put that bottom rail on top.
There’ll still be a top and bottom.”
After seeing her husband’s truck in the distance as tiny
and vulnerable, she gazes at the hogs for a long time, “as if
she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.”
Then she has a vision of a procession of souls marching
toward heaven. Leading the way are “the bottom rail,” all
the kinds of people she despised, “shouting and clapping
and leaping like frogs.” Behind them, with “great dignity”
but with “shocked and altered faces,” come people like
herself and Glaude, and she sees that “even their virtues
are being burned away.” In this final vision, she at last sees
how she is “saved and from hell too.”
Michael Dink fAyjJ is an Annapolis tutor.
{The College -5f. John ’5
College ■ Spring 2004 }
�ao
{Revelation}
Priestess and Visionary
by Elizabeth Engel
Mrs. Turpin’s revelation builds from the first face the girl
makes at her through Mrs. Turpin’s wonderful defiant
questions to God as she stands at the pig parlor; “What
do you send me a message like that for?” “How am I a hog
and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?” The set
ting sun, now far more mysterious than when Mrs. Turpin
saw it, hke her, “looking over the paling of trees like a
farmer inspecting his own hogs,” transforms everything.
Mrs. Turpin, ignoring the transformation, dares God again
and ends with roaring “who do you think you are?” An
echo comes back at her “like an answer from beyond the
wood.” God answers her by questioning her and her pride,
with far more right than she had to question him.
Mrs. Turpin begins to see who she really is as she sees the
fragility of human life in Claud’s tiny truck, which from her
position looks like a child’s toy: “At any moment a bigger
truck might smash into it and scatter Claud’s and the nig
gers’ brains all over the road.” When she has seen the truck
home safe, she turns to the pig parlor: “Then, hke a monu
mental statue coming to life, she bent her head slowly and
gazed as if through the very heart of mystery, down into the
pig parlor at the hogs. They had settled all in one corner
nation brings her to envision the world other than it is. She
wonders how things would have gone “If Jesus had said to
her before he made her...You can either be a nigger or
white-trash.” Her preference, she decides, is for Jesus to
have made her “a neat clean respectable Negro woman,
herself but black,” changed but still saved, sidestepping the
lowly. In her other nocturnal activity, Mrs. Turpin is said to
have “occupied herself at night naming the classes of peo
ple.” She lies awake at night trying to sort out the people in
her world into classes, in accordance with their material
and social standing in the world. She assumes blindly that
she possesses the standard and judgment for the task of sav
ing and condemning. However, the fluctuations in the for
tunes of the human beings that she would rank make such a
jumble of her very attempts to rank them, that she finally
falls off to sleep, imagining them all condemned, (“she
would dream they were all crammed together in a box car,
being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.”). Her virtues
notwithstanding, Mrs. Turpin remains prey to these temp
tations, and we see her assailed by them too in the light of
{The College.
around the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suf
fused them. They appeared to pant with a secret life.” The
hogs have become beautiful gathered around the maternal
and musical old sow, a vision of animal life filled by grace.
This is how we can be both hogs and ourselves too.
Mrs. Turpin is herself transformed by gazing at the hogs;
she becomes a sort of priestess, raising her hands “in a ges
ture hieratic and profound.” Her transformation allows her
final vision, the bridge over which souls are marching
towards Paradise. The most respectable, the group she
thinks she belongs to, come last, and “even their virtues
were beings burned away.” In relation to salvation, virtue
doesn’t matter, nor does top and bottom, dignity and luna
cy, white and black. This, I think, completes Mrs. Turpin’s
revelation. O’Connor says, “she lowered her hands and
gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed
unbhnkingly on what lay ahead.” We see what she sees, and
we see her seeing it, pig-like, with her small eyes, and still
as priestess and visionary. Is this our revelation? Our judg
ment of her has become irrelevant, just as have her judg
ments of other people. We turn with Mrs. Ihrpin back onto
the darkening path-surely O’Connor intends us to think of
Dante-and with her we hear “the voices of the souls climb
ing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”
Elizabeth (Litzi) Engel is a tutor in Santa Fe.
day. Mrs. Turpin feeds her false pride by imagining the infe
rior world or worlds that might have been. Those imagina
tions of worlds inferior to her world feature the lowly ones
of the here and now whom she judges so severely.
As Mrs. Turpin’s prideful attitudes leak out in the waiting
room conversation, they become contagious. In the chief
exchange in the waiting room, an exchange about the
Turpin farm, Mrs. Turpin and Mary Grace’s mother silent
ly join together against the opinions of the “white-trash
woman.” The two women form an alliance inasmuch as
“...both understood that you had to have certain things
before you could know certain things.” An antagonism
erupts between the poor white woman and Mrs. Turpin
regarding their differing opinions about the possessions
and associations that Mrs. Turpin has; Mrs. Turpin raises
pigs and associates with black people. According to
Mrs. Turpin, the Turpins have “a couple acres of cotton and
a few hogs and chickens and just enough white-face that
Gland can look after them himself.” That report elicits a
retort from the white-trash woman that she doesn’t want
St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
''The corruptive
power ofpride takes
its toll once more.''
anything to do with hogs: “Hogs. Nasty
stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all
over the place.” It does not matter to her
that the Turpins have a “pig-parlor” a con
crete-floored pen where the pigs are raised
and where “Claud scoots them down with
the hose every afternoon and washes off
the floor.”
The poor woman wouldn’t stoop to
“scoot down no hog with no hose.” And as
to the black people that the Turpins hire
(“butter up”) to pick their cotton, the
“white-trash woman” is equally as
adamant: “Two thangs I ain’t going to do:
love no niggers or scoot down no hog with
no hose.” As far above the “white-trash
woman” as Mrs. Turpin seems to place
herself, the “white-trash woman” places
herself above hogs and “niggers.” The
corruptive power of pride takes its toll
once more.
In the doctor’s office, then, we witness
Mrs. Turpin’s awareness of the contingent
character of her life (“When I think who
all I could have been besides myself and
what all I got...It could have been different!”) and how that
awareness contributes to her false pride and a lack of
understanding both of who she is and of the true character
of her world. Behind her “good disposition,” we see her
judgment on the world as it is given to her. Despite the fact
that her virtue has no positive ground, she imagines that
her goodness is sufficient both to judge and re-order the
world and to do that without any assistance: “It’s no use in
having more than you can handle yourself with help like it
is.” Hers is not a position where she needs help, and she
doesn’t ask for any. She divides her world into those like
herself and Mary Grace’s mother, who don’t need help, and
those like the poor white woman. Of the latter, she thinks,
“Help them you must, but help them you couldn’t,” even
though, “To help anybody out that needed it was her philos
ophy of life.” Mrs. Turpin is saved and she is a would-be sav
ior. From that vantage point of self-sufficiency, hers is a posi
tion of gratitude. (“Oh, thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!”)
But she is more grateful for what she is not than for what she
is, perhaps grateful even that she is child
less. What she does not seem to acknowl
edge is that bad things and evil itself can
not be relegated to what is not or to
absence, and for that reason in part, no one
is completely “saved” in this world, cer
tainly not by dint of one’s own efforts
alone, from the power of temptation and
malevolence.
It is in the context of her ignorance of
the forces of evil in the world that Mrs.
Turpin comes to consider Mary Grace
(“Why, girl, I don’t even know you...”),
who gives up her reading and bears wit
ness to the display of pride. She takes up
her station, staring relentlessly at Mrs.
Turpin and making ugly faces at her until
she feels the need to defend herself. But
most importantly, at the point where Mrs.
Turpin claims not to know Mary Grace,
she thinks that Mary Grace, “was looking
at her as if she had known and disliked her
all her life-all of Mrs. Turpin’s hfe, it
seemed too, not just the girl’s life.” What
there was to be known all of her hfe is
nothing but the susceptibility to temptation and the
depredations of evil which are coeval with the garden and
human existence.
Mary Grace, possessed of money, family, education, is a
real puzzle for Mrs. Turpin. So obviously lacking in grace,
she is loaded with the worldly goods by which Mrs. Turpin
partially takes her bearings. It does not make sense to her
that Mary Grace with all of her books could be possessed of a
false pride dwarfing that of her and the others. (“The girl
looked as if she would like to hurl them all through the plate
glass window.”) It does not make sense to her that Mary
Grace as Mary Grace could be a source of evil. Mary Grace
would open her eyes though, and so she throws the book at
her. The incongruity of first being silently intimidated, and
then being assaulted with a book by someone such as Mary
Grace, convinces Mrs. Turpin that there is more to the situa
tion than meets the eye. And so she seeks out Mary Grace,
“What you got to say to me?” And she receives the retorted
command, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old
{The Colleges?. John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
�aa
{Revelation}
wart hog.” When Mary Grace tells Mrs. Turpin to go to heU,
Mrs. Turpin does not understand what she means, does not
accept the evil that confronts her. She thinks that God is
telhng her that she is not saved. The second part of the story
addresses that mistake and achieves in a way a resolution to
the story.
The shift in the story from the doctor’s office to the farm
marks a shift from pride to humility, the doctor’s office hav
ing pride of place. Mrs. Turpin is so convinced that God has
abandoned her, that when she and Claud drive home, and she
looks for their house, “She would not have been startled to
see a burnt wound between two blackened chimneys.” She
and Claud he down, but she cannot escape what had hap
pened or the image of her that had been deposited in her
soul. “She had been singled out for the message.” In her feel
ing of sohtude, she cries, but when her tears dry, “Her eyes
began to burn with wrath”: she is “a respectable, hard-work
ing, church-going woman.”
When her self-pity turns to anger, Mrs. Turpin turns to
the farm community, which she rules for affirmation and
assurance of who she is. In a sense, she wants the message
to be overruled by her loved ones, her husband, her black
field hands, and her hogs. But the fact of her rule presents
a problem for her, because now she needs help. She turns to
Claud for solace-(“‘Listen here,’ she said.” ‘“What?”’
“‘Kiss me.’”)-and Claud obliges her, as he does through
out the story, “as if he was accustomed to doing what she
told him to,” but nothing happens. She turns to the black
workers, but the workers think that Mrs. Turpin is beyond
anything bad happening to her, as if “she were protected in
some special way by Divine Providence.” When Mrs.
Turpin leaves the black workers, she goes down to the pig
parlor and takes the hose from Claud; on the farm, she is
“the right size woman to command the arena before her.”
When he goes off, Mrs. Turpin begins speaking to God,
raising her questions, wanting to know how she is herself
and a hog both and how she is “saved and from hell too.” In
a final display of pride, hosing down her hogs, she rants and
raves at God until she comes to the more general form of
her question, “Who do you think you are?” the question
echoing back to her.
The humihty on the farm appears to be the antidote to the
diseased pride infesting the doctor’s office. There Mrs.
Turpin comes face to face with someone “above” her, who is
{The College.
not thankful to Jesus, who does not “read from the same
book” as she does and who takes her bearings from what
Mrs. Turpin ostensibly is, a fat, indulgent, prideful woman,
who, just like Mary Grace, “complains and criticizes all day
long.” The evil in Mary Grace would claim Mrs. Turpin for
itself; hence, the condemnation. But because Mrs. Turpin
thinks that she is saved, she thinks that evil is somehow
warded off, existing in some imaginary alternative world;
and so, she mistakenly interprets what Mary Grace says.
Mrs. Turpin mistakenly thinks that God is turning away
from her because evil makes its presence known to her and
even as having a root in her; she thinks that she is no longer
one of the saved.
But to say that God is not turning away from Mrs. Turpin
is not to say that God was not working through the force of
evil. O’Connor clearly beheves that God does work through
evil, and that He is able to do such work just because of the
inroads that evil has made in the souls of human beings. God
was not turning away from her, but turning her so that she
might face the reality of her continual need for salvation. On
the farm, in her rant, Mrs. Turpin would fight God with her
pride-until she hears herself. Then it is that the day’s lesson
begins to come clear to her, the lesson about the world and
the serpent and the lesson of Job and God and the Adver
sary. Then she sees Claud’s truck, looking “like a toy,” and
sees the downside of that technological marvel, that it could
be smashed by a bigger truck and everyone in it destroyed.
Then Ruby turns to her hogs gathered around the sow,
where “A red glow suffused them;” they were God’s crea
tures, panting “with a secret life.” Her acknowledgement of
the presence of evil in this world and of the goodness of
God’s creation even in the lowly allows her to have a vision
of a new order marching to salvation; in that order the lowly
are entering first.
It is hardly accidental that the setting of the first part of
the story is in a doctor’s office, that there is even a black den
tist in town, or that the book that Mary Grace throws at Mrs.
Turpin was titled Human Development. Today, many people
have a difficult time talking about good and evil, preferring
instead to talking about health and sickness. But O’Connor’s
character, Mrs. Turpin, when she is in need of help, does not
want the doctor’s help. What is aihng her is a matter of the
spirit. Of course, the terms in which she understands the
“classes of people” and herself belong to the contemporary
John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
^3
revelation is not a
quiet Inull...
•
United States South, where the old
notions of rank based on land owner
ship and breeding issue in such cate
gories as “good blood” and “white
trash” and “niggers.” She is a stock
character in O’Connor’s repertoire of
stories, each one having its place as in
a series of echoes originating in and
echoing from a single homeland,
O’Connor’s powerful imaginative
intellect. O’Connor is a Catholic
writer from the South, for her, the
land of the humble and the humbled.
Persisting in her faith and her South
ern roots and in allusions to the Holo
caust and the dark sides of technolog
ical life, O’Connor helps us navigate
our own darkness and locate the beau
tiful in lowly and humble lives. On
that account, in the aist century, she
is a writer whose meanings are not
only important but urgently needed.
George Russell is a tutor in Annapolis.
The Message-Bearers
by Barbara Goyette
Perhaps this story is not only about a revelation but about
revelation itself, the nature of a mysterious occurrence
that serves as a link between our everyday world (or the
somewhat off-kilter but nevertheless recognizably every
day world of Flannery O’Connor’s South) and some deeper
reality.
Revelation involves drama and it involves some kind of
truth or disclosure about something that wasn’t realized or
known before. In a theological sense, revelation involves a
manifestation of the divine will. A revelation is not a quiet
truth: Mary Grace hurls a textbook at Mrs. Turpin and then
pronounces her verdict, “You are a wart hog from Hell.”
The black field-hand ladies also tell her the truth: “ ‘Ain’t
nothing bad happen to you! ’ the old woman said. She said
it as if they all knew that Mrs. Turpin was protected in some
{The College.
7
99
special way by Divine Providence.”
This truth infuriates Mrs. Turpin; she
fervently hopes that it is as false as
Mary Grace’s revelation. And then
there’s the wild and wooly vision of the
souls marching up to heaven, violent
in its intensity and in its absolute nega
tion of all that Mrs. Turpin thinks she
believes to be right and just.
Revelation does not need proof. It
can’t be arrived at by logic, and one
can’t be persuaded to it. Revelation
suggests someone or something as the
medium of higher truth or another
level of reality. In this story, the irony
of the message-bearers-a disaffected,
angry, acne-scarred intellectual; a
troop of respectable, sycophantic field
workers; and the pigs, hosed off to spot
lessness from their naturally filthy
state-reinforces the disjunction that is
at the root of Mrs. Turpin’s sinful view.
Her sin is that of not seeing, not understanding the most
fundamental fact of grace-that it applies to everyone at all
times, no matter what their level of receptiveness or worthi
ness. Mrs. Turpin fails just as we aU fail, by virtue of being
human. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. In the
beatitudes, the unhappy are blessed and the happy are
cursed (this complementary “woe to...” set of pronounce
ments is often ignored in our recollection of the beatitudes—
it’s not only that the downtrodden have a special place in
God’s consideration, it’s that those who are successful do
not, at least not insofar as they are successful). Our measures
of success, those that Mrs. Turpin admires and with which
she measures the worthiness of others, are worse than mean
ingless. They get in the way of our understanding that we are
all in need of grace. Revelation is a gift, presented to
Mrs. Turpin and to us. It’s there every day for all of us, and
everyone around us is a messenger.
Barbara Goyette (A’^g) is vice presidentfor advancement in
Annapolis.
John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�24
{Alumni Voices}
THE HABIT OF
WRITING
BY Brigid K. Byrne, AGI03
hen I open my mailbox to find an
ingly [reflects] the object, the being, which [specifies] it.”
envelope addressed in a bold, careful
Studying O’Connor’s letters, I decided that Fitzgerald had
script and bearing an Iowa City post
given the collection the perfect name. O’Connor offered
mark, mixed in among bills and cata
her correspondents thoughts about everything: her pet
logs, I feel a small thrill, an excite
peacocks, her writing habits, and her peculiar interpreta
ment that there is something meant especially
It
tion offor
theme.
Catholic
faith. Her letters to friends, fans, pub
seems strange that finding a personal letterlishers,
in my mailbox
and fellow writers reveal a woman who wrote them
gives me so much joy. Yet, how often do we get a letter from
not only to maintain her connection to those she loved, but
someone we know and love? How often do we take the time
also to explore and reveal the parts of herself which the
to write to others? Most of the written communication we
intended recipient had the power to bring out.
send and receive are hasty e-mails, typed quickly, in lan
I was most struck by O’Connor’s correspondence with
guage created to speed up the time spent composing mes
Cecil Dawkins, a college professor who introduced herself
sages. While e-mail has perhaps kept us closer to those we
to O’Connor in a letter. Dawkins challenged O’Connor by
may otherwise have drifted apart from, our brief electron
asking her advice in matters concerning her career, her
ic conversations lack the richness and intimacy that are
desire to write, and her faith. In a response to a question
vital parts of human relationships. We compose our mes
Dawkins raised about the effectiveness of the Catholic
sages so quickly that we forfeit the benefits of self-reflec
Church, O’Connor wrote, “You don’t serve God by saying:
tion and personal growth that we can gain when we write
the Church is ineffective. I’ll have none of it. Your pain at
letters to others. The flow of thoughts seems better suited
its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God.
to the flow of ink from the pen than to the pecking of
We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suf
fingers on a plastic keyboard, and the act of sealing an enve
fering on account of it.” Reading this unusually lengthy
lope much more satisfying than hitting the “send” button.
response, I realized that Dawkins had asked a question that
I felt the loss of the art of letter writing poignantly as I
O’Connor herself struggled with and wondered if O’Con
recently revisited The Habit ofBeing, Sally Fitzgerald’s col
nor was speaking more to Dawkins or to herself.
lection of Flannery O’Connor’s letters. Fitzgerald titled
In her introduction to the book, Fitzgerald notes that “on
her collection The Habit ofBeing because she saw that the
the whole, [O’Connor’s] correspondence was an enrichment
writer’s correspondence reflected the attainment of that
of her life, to say nothing of the lives of her correspondents”
habit, which she defines as “an excellence not only of
and that “almost all of her close friendships were sustained
action but of interior disposition and activity that increas
through the post.”
W
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Alumni Voices}
As I reread
O’Connor’s let
ters, I realized
that my own
habit of letter
writing
has
enriched my life.
1 was not much
of a letter writer
until about five
years ago when
I began corre
sponding with
Sandra, an honors student from Iowa, whom I met while
interning at the U.S. Department of Education. After rais
ing her children, Sandra enrolled in a community college
near her home and was so successful in her studies that she
gained an internship through Phi Theta Kappa. Over that
summer, Sandra and I had many conversations, and I
learned much from her about courage and faith. When our
internships ended, Sandra and I exchanged addresses in the
way parting people do, intending to keep in touch, but
doubtful whether such a brief acquaintance would with
stand time and distance.
I returned to college that fall, but I could not forget San
dra. I pulled out the scrap of paper on which she had care
fully printed her address and wrote her a letter. Thus began
years of correspondence that have led me to question and
contemplate many of my ideas, choices, and beliefs. When I
first began writing to Sandra, I was feeling uncertain about
my faith. Having been raised Catholic and force-marched to
Mass, I purposefully spent each Sunday of my first few years
away at college lingering over breakfast in the dining hall,
ignoring the bells chiming at St. Paul’s, just a few hundred
yards away. I was torn between rebelling against my parents
and discovering my own sense of faith. In writing to Sandra,
I found that I could wrestle with my doubts and hesitations.
Through my letters to her, I came to recognize my struggle
was not between me and God, but one of becoming an adult.
{The College-
25
learning to make
choices for my
self. Sandra’s res
ponses, resonat
ing with her faith
in God, even in
the face of hard
ship and sorrow,
gave me the
strength to travel
my own spiritual
road. Without
Sandra as my
audience, I am not sure that I would have found that part
of myself.
While my relationship with Sandra has led me to a deeper
sense of faith, having a variety of correspondents challenges
me to look at many sides of myself. One of my favorite audi
ences is my friend Sally, who lives in Atlanta. Although Sally
and I talk on the phone frequently and see each other occa
sionally, letter writing is still an important part of our
friendship. We enjoy what Shakespeare might term “a mar
riage of true minds,” as our thoughts, interests, and experi
ences run uncannily parallel. Writing to Sally is almost like
writing to myself, except that I wait in anticipation for her
honest replies, replies that demand that I look into myself
more alertly.
In my day-to-day habit of living, running from job to job,
eating in my car, I have little time for reflection and clarity.
I have come to see this habit of living, which requires me to
direct so much energy away from myself, as distinctly differ
ent from the habit of being, which allows me to spend time
inside, listening only to myself. Like O’Connor, I have
found that I can practice my habit of being most effectively
as I sit down to write. So I will find time today to retreat
from the habit of living and write to my friend and fellow
St. John’s alumna, Sarah. I can’t wait to see what my letter
will reveal.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Johnnies
2,6
on
Aging}
THE MIND IN
WINTER
Living an ExaminedLife in Later Years
wi Sus3AN Borden, A87
would lose meaning and she knew that there have even
been suicides [among older people]. To provide meaning
to their lives, she endowed the institute, which provides
high-quality, exciting courses for seniors. The faculty,
illiam Butler Yeats
Institute, where he explores the world -W
from
a classroom.
from neighborhood universities and the U.C. Medical
“Hannah Fromm was worried that the life of retired people
Center, are also mostly seniors,” explains Brunn, who has
ohn Brunn (class of 1947) is no Magellan, no
studied history, literature, science, and music at the insti
Columbus, no Ernest Shackleford or Neil
tute since his retirement.
Armstrong, but in an important way, he has
Brunn’s explorations are important to an aging mind,
remained true to his childhood ambition to
says Helen Hobart (class of 1964). Hobart works with
become an explorer. “I thought of it then as
older people who are experiencing dementia, and she’s a
physical exploration,” he says of the ambition
true believer in the adage “use it or lose it.” “The more
that has become increasingly intellectual as he
we exercise our minds, the more protection we have from
has aged. “When I first came to California,
the effects of dementia,” says Hobart. “People who com
I fell in love with the Sierra and have spent
plete loth grade have five more years of protection from
vacations exploring the mountains, at first with friends
theand
effects of Alzheimer’s than those who don’t. You may
later with my wife. With increasing age-I have turned
be 77showing signs of the disease neurologically, but symp
that has become difficult. Most of my learning istomatically,
now
you’ve got enough other brain connections
indoors, but I am still curious about the world.”
that function because you’ve stimulated their growth, so
the assault of Alzheimer’s won’t show up.”
While keeping the mind active slows the effects of
aging, Hobart encourages us to recognize that, with the
loss of cognitive ability, other strengths can come into
Life moves out ofa redflare ofdreams
Into a common light ofcommon hours.
Brunn is fortunate to live in San Francisco, not just for
Until
old age and
brings
the but
redflare
the mountains
the city,
also foragain.
the Hannah Fromm
J
{The College -Sr. John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
�27
{Johnnies on Aging}
play. “Roughly half
of people over 85
have Alzheimer’s
and we’re aU hving
longer,” she says.
“So it behooves
us to consider
what it means to
be human in addi
tion to our cogni
tive functions. I’ve
seen a lot of suffer
ing because people
feel they’re no
longer worthwhile
because their memoryis failing or they can’t figure out how to do something
that they used to do. But there are so many wonderful
ways of being in relationship with the world and other
people. The epidemic of dementia as we grow older really
invites us to consider our humanity, our affections, our
spirituality, our art, our love of music. All these things
can thrive, even flourish, if our cognitive functioning
{The College -St
Playing the piano is
JUST ONE RETIREMENT
PURSUIT FOR
Carolyn Banks
Leeuwenburgh .
gets out of our way
a little.”
Carolyn Banks
Leeuwenburgh
(class of 1955) has
yet to notice a drop
in her cognitive
abilities. She’s an
avid reader, an
insightful conversationalist, and a freelance teacher of
English as a foreign language. She also pursues a number
of interests that will serve her well if cognition begins to
fail. A retired opera singer, she is still involved with the
arts, maintaining subscriptions at the McCarter Theater
in Princeton in drama, dance, and music. She’s also an
avid movie-goer and a fairly active practitioner of several
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�2,8
{JohnniesonAging}
experiences mostly loss. Although
arts: “I paint, very poorly, but I
only 46, Nick Giacona (SFGI98) is
paint,” she says. “I play the piano
now facing the physical effects of
poorly. I still can sing and I still sing
'Tve always believed
age as he cares for his 8i-year-old
publicly.” Leeuwenburg performs in a
thatpeople older than
mother, Betty, who moved in with
small cafe just outside of Princeton,
him and his family last spring. “My
singing mainly popular music, blues,
mepossessed some
mom is a retired schoolteacher with
and torch songs.
wisdom.
Pre
always
an alert mind and a body that’s fail
Music has been the saving grace for
ing.
She has very bad arthritis and is
many older people, even those whose
felt they were worth
pretty much confined to an electric
other faculties are deteriorating, says
working with and
wheelchair. Yet her mind is still very
Hobart. “It’s fantastic to watch people
active. She goes on the computer,
start playing the piano again. The
learninp^from, worth
does e-mail. She’s a voracious read
parts of the brain formed when we’re
sharing with.
er and we have great theological,
younger last the longest, so the capac
spiritual, and political discus
ity to play the piano can come back,”
sions,” he says.
she says. There may be no ability to
Philip Valley (SFGI75)
Giacona sees first-hand the trials
make a coherent sentence, but the
of life in an aging body. “I’m learn
reward and beauty of making music
ing day by day with her and I really
can persist for a long time.”
admire how she’s handling it,” he says. “It’s hard and
There are other compensations to counter deteriorat
frustrating for her to do the little things we take for grant
ing cognitive ability, according to Virginia Seegers Harri
ed, even something as simple as making herself a meal.
son (class of 1964), a geriatric case manager. “Over time
Yet
she’s handling that with grace and courage.”
you learn to tune out nonsense more quickly,” she says.
A discussion on aging that former Santa Fe campus
“The experience you’ve had in life makes it easier to say,
president John Agresto gave years ago left an impression
‘uh-huh, right.’ From observation and personal experi
on Giacona. “He said that our culture doesn’t really pre
ence, I would consider that a real advantage.”
pare
us for aging and death. I thought he was so wise. He
She describes the benefits that come in later years as we
said that death and aging should be the culmination of a
grow to accept our lives. “You can bring your mind to
well-lived life, an examined life,” recalls Giacona. “While
bear more easily on what is actually accessible, doable.
my mom didn’t have a St. John’s education, I’ve turned
You learn to pick your battles. You learn to pare down and
her on to the Apology and the Crito and the Tibetan Book
be satisfied. There’s a feeling in youth and middle age,
of the Dead."
‘this world is out there-where do I start?’ When some
Giacona says that his mother seems prepared for her
options have closed behind you, there can be a sense of
own death: “We’ve already discussed the whole memorial
liberation. That may be what makes working with elders
service. She wants to be cremated and have her ashes
so sweet, so affirming, for people in middle age who are
scattered where my father’s ashes were scattered. She’s
still struggling to be greater than they ever will be. When
even decided what songs we’re going to sing. If she died
people accept themselves and their lives, that in a sense is
tomorrow, she would feel that she had a good life.”
where life really begins.”
When his mother’s life does end, Giacona will consider
Harrison underscores her point with a joke: “A retired
himself lucky for the time that he and his family spent
woman is listening to several young mothers talking
with her. “My wife, Keiko, is so great and supportive. She
about when life begins. One says at conception. Another
helped convince my mom to stay with us. My mom had
says, no, it begins when the fetus quickens. A third says,
concerns about moving in and invading the family, but
‘I think life begins at birth.’ Finally, the retired woman
Keiko told her that when she was a kid her grandfather
leans over and says, ‘Listen, I’ll tell you when life begins.
lived with her family and she appreciated the time she
Life begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies.’”
spent with him.”
While it’s comforting to know that the mind enjoys
gains to offset its losses, a sad fact of aging is that the body
{The College -Sf. John’s
College - Spring 2004 }
�{JohnniesonAging}
ag
Although she’s a young
Giacona’s own chil7a, Leeuwenburg knows
dren-Sarah, 13, and
Kyle, ii-respond to his
she has some tough times
mother in different
ahead. “Many years ago I
ways. “My son is outgo
heard Bette Davis say
that getting older is not
ing and loves to hug
her and sit and talk to
for sissies,” she says. “As
her. My daughter’s really
you get older you aren’t
shy, so it’s harder for
really aware of getting
her. She appreciates hav
older, but you are aware
ing her there, but she
that you don’t do the
shows it in a different
same things you used to
way. It’s so rewarding to
do physically. There are
have three generations
times when I get out of
in one house.”
bed in the morning and I
don’t think I can move
Philip Valley (SFGI75)
runs day programs in
and other times I’m
New Hampshire for
fine.”
Leeuwenburg swims
adults over 55 with
nearly every day, but a
developmental disabili
recent cancer scare
ties. He says that sharing
revealed
her true attitude
time across the genera
Nick Giacona and his mother, Betty, are
tions is rewarding even for people LEARNING TOGETHER ABOUT AGING.
about exercise. “I was thinking, ‘hell,
who are not related. “Maggie Kuhn,
if I’m going to die. I’m certainly not
going to swim,”’ she says. “This is
head of the Gray Panthers, once
not something I’m doing for the
gave a talk where she told the audi
'She s a voracious reader sheer pleasure of it. At my age your
ence, ‘We are not wrinkled babies,
metabolism gets so slow that, even if
we are elders of the tribe.’ I’ve
and we have great
you do all your cleaning, all your gar
always believed that people older
theological, spiritual,
dening, you still have to exercise.”
than me possessed some wisdom.
Leeuwenburgh has not reached
I’ve always felt they were worth
andpolitical
working with and learning from,
the point where she feels encum
worth sharing with.”
bered by aging, but she has begun to
discussions.
ponder her own mortality. “I don’t
Harrison, the case manager, has
NickGiacona (SFGI98)
think anyone ever really comes to
nothing but scorn for those who
grips with the reality of their own
subscribe to the “wrinkled babies”
death. When we view ourselves, we
view of seniors. “Many people who
work in nursing facilities call the elderly ‘baby.’ That’s
view a disembodied creature. Chronologically, I’m 7a
absolutely not right,” she says. But she’s also disturbed by
years old. I’m at the point where I know I’m not going to
a subtler form of infantilizing. “Even older people who
be here in 20 years. Yet there’s a part of me that you could
are quite cogent are pretty much treated like they have to
stand up and say, ‘Caroline, you’re getting old,’ and I
be fed, clothed, and then amused. I really have trouble
would say, ‘I am?’”
with that. Yes, it takes time to go at the slower pace and
hear someone tell his story, but it’s usually extremely
worthwhile. I would encourage anybody to start to talk to
people over 75. Ask them about their lives. Ask them what
they remember.”
{The College* St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
�30
{Bibliofile}
Approaching
Machiavelli’s
Art OF War
Art of War
Niccolo Machiavelli, translated, edited,
and with a commentary by
Christopher Lynch
University of Chicago Press, 2004
hris Lynch (A87) traces the
origins of his newlypubhshed translation of
Machiavelli’s Art of War to
the questions posed hy what
is known in the academic
throats. As I studied him more, I realized that
world as the ancient/modern split.
Lynch says
Machiavelli
’s emphasis on the bellicose
that Johnnies have a more intimate
relation
aspect
of human
beings, an aspect acknowl
ship with the split, and rephrases its essence
edged but not emphasized by the ancient
for the SJC crowd: “Why was everything so
philsophers, was part of his overall goal to
much fun sophomore year and why did
transform the terms in which human life is
everyone get so depressed junior year?”
generally understood.”
Lynch arrived at the University of
Fortunately for Lynch, his academic inter
Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought in
ests dovetailed with a hole in Machiavelli
the fall of 1988 with this question (in its grad
scholarship. Of Machiavelli’s four major
school expression) very much on his mind:
vtorks—Prince, Discourses on Livy, Florentine
What is the end of human hfe? Is man natu
Histories, and Art q/' UAr-almost no one had
rally social or essentially alone? What is the
seriously studied Art of War. Lynch threw
purpose of philosophy? As he pursued these
himself into that text and, seven years (and a
questions, Lynch came to see Machiavelli as
Ph.D.) later, emerged with an impressive
the pivotal writer in the transformation
between the ancient and modern worlds.
“The most sahent aspects of the transfor
mation that Machiavelli tried to affect were,
first, to change the general climate of opinion
“Controversy abounds as to what caused
and discourse such that human hfe would no
the dizzying military changes during
longer be understood in terms of its ultimate
Machiavelli’s day. Also debated is
goal or purpose but instead in terms of its
whether these changes constituted a
origins and roots,” says Lynch. “The second
full-blown military revolution or instead
is the attempt to bring about in this world the
represented a particular moment in a
best regime human beings can come up with,
long-term evolution. In considering
the best way of living together, instead of
these questions, it is important to
leaving it to chance hke Plato. And the third
remember that the sense at the time was
is really a corollary of the first, to get subse
that tumultuous change was indeed
quent thinkers to be primarily concerned
afoot, but not rapid change in a single
with human freedom and independence as
direction driven by gunpowder technol
opposed to virtue as understood as obhgation
ogy. On the tactical level especially,
and duty to something higher.”
each of the battles that occurred on the
These issues gave Lynch a clear direction
Italian peninsula, from the battle of
for his graduate work. “The more I saw
Fornovo in 1495 to that of Pavia in 1525,
Machiavelli as the key figure in the
seemed to offer a new lesson to be
ancient/modern spht, the more I wanted to
learned, a new innovation that trans
figure out what was on his mind,” Lynch says.
formed the ways armies ought to be
“I started to see war as central to his thought,
armed, ordered, led and used.”
to understand that for Machiavelli, humans
- Christopher Lynch
are not social beings, but at each others’
C
Excerpt:
{The College -Sf.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
pubheation to his credit: a translation of the
text with an introduction, interpretive essay,
and (he points out with the pride of a Johnnie
who’s successfully negotiated secondary
sources) more than 600 notes.
Lynch originally wrote the translation for
himself, “blasting through it” in just a few
months, he says. “I wrote the initial transla
tion as a way to study it carefully. I translated
it as literally as I could so I could think about
it the way we do with readings in language
class, as a tool for closer reading,” he says.
Over several years. Lynch returned to the
translation, making changes after improving
his Italian by translating works by Machiavelh’s predecessors, including Dante and
Boccaccio. Later, when he decided to submit
a proposal to the University of Chicago Press
to turn his translation into a book, he first
reworked a portion of the text to see if he
could make it valuable to other readers.
Once the proposal was accepted. Lynch
had to rewrite the entire translation several
times. In the process, he discovered a practi
cal approach to translation that satisfactorily
answered for him the issues that arise in
discussions about translation in St. John’s
language tutorials: “You start off as literal
and as consistent as you can, then you puU the
translation back toward understandabihty,
readability and accuracy,” he says, “In the
next phase, you forget about the Italian and
ask what the passages mean in Enghsh and
how they sound. If it’s not in readable
English, you pull the Itahan out again and
start thinking about changes.”
Lynch notes that this is not the process for
most non-Johnnie or non-Strauss-influenced
translators. “They think about how it sounds
right away,” he explains. “But I think that
puts too much emphasis on the translator and
makes him think he is a sort of god mediating
between two languages with full omniscience
of what the author intended. I think it’s better
to approach it humbly, to cleave to the hteral
andonlybepushed toward readabi 1 i ty when
it’s clearly necessary.”
With the time and energy Lynch lavished
on Art of War, you’d think he’d be a fierce
Machiavellian, but that’s hardly the case.
“Machiavelli presents himself as the
ultimate antagonist to the basic understand
ings that I’m inclined to-ancient, philosoph
ic, and religious,” Lynch says. “However, I
think he’s also the most trenchant critic of
ancient thought, both philosophic and rehgious, and therefore I see him as the person
to understand if I’m going to understand the
truth about the big questions at stake in the
quarrel between ancients and moderns.”
-SUS3AN Borden
�{Alumni Profile}
31
Tias Little, EC98
Santa Fe Yogi Combines Wisdom with Practice
BY Andra Maguran
such as the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra and
he word “yoga” once con
Bhagavad-Gita, along with studying San
jured images of health nuts
skrit or ancient Chinese in order to read
contorting their bodies in
works in their original language.
impossible, seemingly
Reared in Amherst, Mass., Little attend
painful positions. Now
ed Amherst College, where he earned a
women, men, even children
bachelor
are flocking in droves to yoga. An
estimat’s degree in English. Inspired by
mother,
who also taught yoga. Little
ed 15 million Americans say theyhis
have
a
began his studies in the Iyengar system in
regular practice; more than double that
the early 1980s, and continued his study in
number say they expect to try yoga in the
Mysore, India. Frequent trips to visit his
next year, according to a Harris poll. The
grandfather, a Presbyterian minister who
reasons for yoga’s newfound popularity are
served on the board of directors at
many: stress reduction, improved strength
Abiquiu’s Ghost Ranch, fed Little’s love for
and flexibility, and heightened concentra
New Mexico. He moved to Santa Fe in 1991
tion are among the many benefits linked to
to teach yoga, and in January aooo, he
this 5,ooo-year-old practice.
opened Yoga Source with his wife, Surya.
Inside Yoga Source, a small studio
Little began hearing about the Eastern
tucked into a Santa Fe shopping center,
Classics program at Santa Fe, established
studio founder Tias Little {EC98) walks
in 1994, from others in the Santa Fe yoga
among the students after his morning
community. Friend and fellow yoga teacher
class, preternaturally serene, his voice as
Nicolai Bachman (EC96) persuaded him
soft as a temple bell. Like yoga teachers
that the fledgling program was worth
everywhere. Little is benefiting from the
pursuing. “I was very enthusiastic [about
wave of yoga popularity-his studio sched
Eastern Classics] from the first day,” says
ules more than 40 classes every week,
Bachman, who now leads workshops across
many of them packed. The Santa Fe
the country in Sanskrit, Ayurveda (healing
New Mexican recently described Little
as “one of the emerging stars
of the yoga phenomenon.” He
leads classes for yoga teachers,
writes articles and serves as an
expert for a leading yoga
magazine, holds clinics all over
the country, and offers yoga
retreats in venues such as
Costa Rica.
But even if the craze wanes
and the numbers drop. Little
believes that people will con
tinue to seek out something
beyond yoga’s physical
benefits. His own devotion to
the practice, he says, was
informed and deepened by
intense study of the works in
the St. John’s Eastern Classics
program, a yearlong program
in which students read works
T
Tias Little’s yoga practice is
INFORMED BY HIS STUDY OF
Eastern classics.
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
arts), and the Yoga Sutra. “I knew it would
be a great chance for Tias to deepen his
understanding of the Indian, as well as
Chinese and Japanese, traditions.”
Little began by auditing a seminar on the
Upanishads, after which he applied to the
program in full. After 15 years of practice.
Little hoped to find a solid foundation in
the original texts for his own philosophy
toward yoga, the Mahayana Buddhist
“middle way” teachings that are pertinent
to living in the world today. He had previ
ously read the Bhagavad-Gita and Yoga
Sutra on his own, but the formalism and
structure of a discussion-based graduate
program offered a key to deeper learning,
he says.
“The texts are complex and philosophi
cal,” Little says. “It would have required
an intense practice and austerity to have
read the works on my own and gained as
much insight and understanding of them.
The dialogue that the classroom setting
encourages is far superior to simply
reading alone.”
For Little, the Eastern Classics program
afforded a marriage oiprajna (wisdom)
andsadhana (practice).
Wisdom training comes
through study of scriptures
that are the historical backdrop of the practice. “Just as
scholarship feeds the practice
of yoga, so the practice feeds
the scholarship. To me, just
reading can become very eso
teric if one tries to cognitively
grasp the teachings one needs
to embody, or engage through
psycho-spiritual discipline.
The two modes of understand
ing are cooperative, but not
interchangeable. ”
Little encourages yoga
teachers-in-training to enroll
in Eastern Classics; already,
two Yoga Source instructors,
Wendelin Scott (EC03) and
Lynsey Rubin (ECoa), have
completed the graduate
program.
�{AlumniNotes}
3^
1935
and dance to a caUer. Will any of
the class of 1944 be at our 60th
anniversary?”
“I’m in my goth year,” writes
Melville L. Bisgyer. “My beloved
wife, Pauline, passed away a few
years ago. I now make my home
comfortably in a retirement home
named Signature Pointe. Many of
my children, including the normal,
the grand, and the great, live near
by. I shall never forget St. John’s.
I spent four very happy years there.
I wish good luck and much happi
ness to all my fellow Johnnies.”
1937
“Just a word from the Class of’37Bob Snibbe alive and well-will be
91 in April. Still playing golf and
still publishing small shirt-pocket
handbooks. One on ‘Our Flag,’ the
story of Old Glory... sold in large
quantities to big companies for
sales promotion purposes. I call
Harry Fahrig (Class of ’37) from
time to time. He is very sick and in
a nursing assisted living facility.
His wife, Frannie, was a former
model for Ponds-‘she’s lovely, she
uses Ponds’- ads in the ’30s and
’40s. They live in Jupiter, Fla. Also
call Alan Pike (’37 too). He’s also
in an assisted living facility with
his wife in Deland, Fla. And my
brother Dick, class of’39, lives in
Arlington, Mass. He’s also in an
assisted living facility recuperating
from a stroke. Have fond memories
of days in Crabtown. Football and
lacrosse. B.C. great books.”
1944
John Davis Hill writes that he and
his wife, Dorothy Murdock Hill,
spent the winter in Southern
California attending four Elder
hostel programs sponsored by the
University of Judaism at Camp
Ramah in Ojai and at their Bel Air
campus. “We like to sing folk songs
1947
Changes for Stephen Benedict:
“Three years ago, I pulled up
stakes in New York City after
40 years and moved 125 miles north
to the hamlet of Spencertown in
Columbia County. After prowling
the area, I bought an old farmhouse-type structure, whose earli
est segment dates to about 1750.
It’s said to be the second- or thirdoldest house in the area. The
transition from city life turned out
to be seamless. Time, of which
there’s never enough, is variously
allocated to work on family and
personal archives, the nearby cul
tural center, the local Democratic
Party, and play—the piano, tennis,
and cats. Then there’s always fixery
to be done on my ancient structure.
I do maintain one interest in NYC,
the Theatre Development Fund,
which I helped found 37 years ago.
Watch for the new half-price booth
in Times Square. Drop by if you’re
up this way: 518-392-0487;
stevebenedict@taconic.net.”
1949
Frederick P. Davis sends news
from California: “Since last report
ing from this always sunny and
warm southwest corner of the
‘lower 48,’ we ‘3-Ds’ (Fred, Rita,
and son David) are still holding
the line as ‘Mr. Outside’ and
‘Mrs. Inside’ (the house). David
recovers from infections of both
legs and feet resulting from badly
broken legs of late aooo. But
things are looking up. David, after
over a year at a Riverside City Con
valescent home, should soon come
home. He is now equipped with a
motorized wheelchair, enabling
him to be on his own to go out to
see docs.”
David B. Weinstein has retired
from the practice of medicine and
is living with his wife, Stella, in
Atlanta to be near his daughter and
her family. “Attending senior class
es at Mercer University and learn
ing to play the recorder to keep the
gray cells and fingers limber.”
do’s top was the thrill of a lifetime,
along with riding through a city
rainforest to get there. Anticipat
ing my trip to Alaska in July.”
i960
Peter J. Ruel sends in a book
1955
With a July production of
La Traviata, Harold Bauer will
conclude a 27-year tenure as music
director of New Philharmonic and
DuPage Opera in Chicago’s west
suburban region. His 42 years as a
conductor include the music
directorship of six orchestras in
the U.S. and numerous guest
concerts in this country, Canada,
and Europe. What’s next? More
reading, traveling, painting (oil
and watercolor), golf, composing,
and, of course, some guest con
ducting. He looks forward to the
50th reunion of his class in 2005.
1957
News from Joan Cole: “I am
continuing to enjoy my retirement.
With friends, I attend the Metro
politan Opera and work with the
New York Black Librarians Cau
cus, raising funds for scholarships.
Am also enjoying my vacations-in
September 2003,1 went to Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. Viewing the Christ
the Redeemer statue on Corcova
recommendation: “Thomas Cahill
has written an insightful history of
the ancient Greeks, printed 11/03:
Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why
the Greeks Matter.”
1961
Harrison Sheppard has been a
regular columnist for San
Francisco Attorney Magazine.
the quarterly journal of the Bar
Association of San Francisco.
“The regular title of the column is
‘Law and Justice,’ with a subtitle
relating to the particular column
subject. For the most recent col
umn (Winter 2004), the subtitle is
‘Law and Privacy: The Right To Be
Let Alone.’”
1962
JusTiNA Davis Hayden sends in
good news: Justina and Luci, her
partner of ig years, were married
in San Francisco on February 19.
A magical day! They are living in
San Diego now, having sold their
Startup to Success
(class of 1956) is now
general manager of Word Web Vocabulary, a new
curriculum for grades 5-10. “From a startup last
year we are now in 55 school districts in 16 states
plus Barbados. Word Web is a paperworkbook
system based on root words, prefixes, and suffixes,
all of which are Greek and Latin in origin. Grant Wiggins
{A72) thinks it’s an excellent way to approach vocabulary.”
ASQUALE L. POLILLO
P
{The College -St John’s
College • Spring 2004 }
�{Alumni Notes}
33
Mark Bernstein (A) writes; “Linda
(Bernstein, nee Torcaso, A69) and
I are looking forward to our last
child graduating high school and
going off to college. I’m a judge in
Philadelphia court doing class
actions and about to finish a book
on Pennsylvania evidence. Linda is
also a judge of the Social Security
Administration.”
Courtesy of The Moon, Santa Fe students and hobbes
house in Berkeley. Luci is an artist
whose work from recycled materi
als may be seen at CorrugatedArt.
com. Justina designed and main
tains the web site. She is enrolled
in a certificate program in Finan
cial Planning and is having fun
with investing.
practicing law in Washington,
D.C., and is writing for the local
newspaper in her spare time.
“Am looking forward to the next
reunion of the Class of’65.”
“Niece Megan Drolet, daughter of
Melissa Kaplan (SF72) and Ray
Drolet (SF69) will be coming to
Annapolis this fall, continuing the
Kaplan/Drolet tradition,” writes
1963
Bart L. Kaplan.
Charles B. Watson (A) writes that
Madeline Rui Koster writes:
“I was very much looking forward
to attending the 2003 40th class
reunion, since as a Californian I
have not been back to Annapolis in
40 years. A sudden change in my
teaching assignment (high school)
from all algebra to algebra and
ceramics, in September, led me to
change my plans. I was a potter and
ceramic sculptor for 20 years
before becoming a full-time
teacher in the Bos. I look forward
to another Homecoming. As time
goes on, I value the St. John’s edu
cation more than ever, and greatly
enjoy reading The College.'"
Michael Trusty attended
Homecoming 2003 in Annapolis
and had a great time: “I’m
married, living in New Mexico, and
ride horses with my 12-year-olddaughter.”
1965
Grace Logerfo Bateman is
married, is the mother of four chil
dren (mostly out of college), is
Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Fran
cisco, the inaugural Distinguished
Alumni Award for “unique and
distinguished ministry in the
church and especially pioneering
contributions to liturgical
practice.” The church’s Web site,
www.saintgregorys.org, docu
ments this practice (and theory)
with extensive photos and articles.
Rev. Schell is a 1971 graduate of
General Seminary; his co-rector, a
1970 graduate.
1968
“Finally finished my B.A. in 1999only 30 years late-at Thomas
Edison State College,” writes
Megan Beaumont (A, formerly
Anne Beaumont Reid). “Received
an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology
2001. Nowadays I am an ordained
non-denominational clergy person
and spend my time leading person
al growth workshops, teaching
manifestation and self-forgiveness,
and officiating at marriages,
memorial services, and most
recently at an un-handfasting-a
spiritual ceremony to honor and
complete the severing of ties after
a civil divorce. My husband has
retired, and we are enjoying the
blessings of good health and happy
travel.”
“I’m somehow still in Britian!”
writes Deborah Rodman
Lawther (SF).
The General Theological Seminary
Alumni Association awarded
Donald Schell (SF) and Richard
Fabian, co-rectors of St. Gregory of
{The College.
he was sorry to miss the 35th
reunion of the Class of 1968 last
year, but he enjoyed e-mail and
pictures. “Spring has finally come
and our family looks forward to
visiting our Martha’s Vineyard
home again. Happy to say that we
are all well and enjoying diverse
pursuits. Would come to SJC more
often but we are far away...”
News from Bob Wycoff (A) and
Maya Hasegawa (A), first from
Bob: “Bob’s computer system
support job is going to India and
Bob has enrolled in Berklee College
of Music as a full-time undergradu
ate to pursue a B.A. in music,
starting in September. Four
grandchildren and still counting;
number five is due in August.
See you in October! ” And from
Maya: “Maya is now working as
compliance manager for the City of
Boston’s Department of Neighbor
hood Development. DND builds
affordable housing, finances
rehabs, and helps small businesses.
The satisfaction comes from seeing
formerly vacant lots with houses on
them. Spare time is spent practic
ing tai chi and researching a
Methodist deaconess named
Hattie B. Cooper.”
1970
Isaac Block (SFGI) writes:
1969
High praise for tutor Steve Van
Luchene’s second Tecolote
colloquium for K-12 teachers from
Elizabeth Aiello (SFGI), who
found it “even more gratifying and
professionally stimulating than the
first one. It inspired me to expand
my Great Books class by offering
two more sections. Each section
has 12 students, all enthusiastically
participating in meaningful
dialogue related to meaningful
text. I have been honored as a ‘Los
Alamos Living Treasure’ in recog
nition of my 14 continuous years as
‘the Great Books Instructor.’”
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
“My wife, Mamerza Delos Reyes
Block, has published her book.
The Price ofFreedom: The Story of
a Courageous Manila JournaHst."
Last fall, Theda Braddock Fowler
(A) published her second book.
Wetland Regulation: Case Law,
Interpretation, and Commentary.
After an illustrious career with the
Postal Service and World Bank
(over 30 years and 83 foreign coun
tries), Juan Ianni (A) has decided
that it’s time to hang up his spurs.
classnotes continued on page 36
�{Alumni Profile}
34
Rich and Famous
Ben Bloom, Aq7, Finds Fame, Fortune—and Something Even More Important.
vi Sus3Aw Borden, A87
embers of the
Annapolis class of
1997 may not be
surprised to learn
that classmate
Ben Bloom (A97)
has achieved a degree of celebrity. He was
certainly well known as a student, and his
jump-head-hrst approach to life revealed a
boom-or-bust attitude that leads those who
meet him to believe that he is not destined
for an ordinary life.
Indeed, he is not. Today, seven years
after graduation, he has won a measure of
fame in three categories: Scrabble, poetry,
and table tennis.
Bloom was already a skilled Scrabble
player when he arrived at St. John’s, but
since graduating, he has played in tourna
ments in Italy, Israel (his home for much of
his life), Turkey, Norway, Reno, San Diego,
Tennessee, and Florida. Although his cur
rent rating is 1428, at the height of his play
in March 2003, he was rated 1649 (a rating
over 1600 is considered expert).
Bloom learned of his Scrabble-world
celebrity in 2003 when he was flying to
Reno for the National Scrabble Champi
onships. “I had to fly via O’Hare airport in
Chicago. There were several players there,
wearing their typical Scrabble t-shirts,” he
recalls. “In the airport lounge, I saw a bald
guy in his early 4os-black pants, white
t-shirt, and two red braces with which he
was continually fiddling. I recognized him
as Joel Sherman, the 2002 National Cham
pion and one of the top three players in the
world. I got up the courage to ask him if I
was correct in identifying him. He said,
‘Yes, and you are Ben Bloom.’”
Stefan Fatsis, a Wall Street Journal
reporter and author of Word Freak, a New
York Times bestseller about Scrabble, also
knew who Bloom was before the two were
paired in an expert match in the 2002
he read from his thesis at Books & Books, a
finals in San Diego. Bloom beat him and
prominent Miami bookstore.
walked away from the match with a signed
As for table tennis. Bloom has been prac
copy of his book.
In the world of poetry. Bloom is complet ticing for years. He was an aggressive play
er at St. John’s and shared the Annapolis
ing his final semester at the University of
campus titles in men’s doubles and mixed
Miami, where he received his master’s
doubles in 1996. When he lived in Israel,
degree in poetry in May. His 15 minutes of
he played in the National League for the
poetry fame took place on March 31, when
M
{The College -St. John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
For the poet in Ben Bloom, words have
GREAT MEANING. FoR THE SCRABBLE PLAYER,
they’re just part of the game.
�{Alumni profile}
suggestion: “During my late teens I was
disabled (he has cerebral palsy). After
graduation, he took his game on the road,
still in denial with regards to my CP. I
wanted to fit in with other students and
coming in third at the European Disabled
was ashamed of being different. This feel
Championships in Budapest in 1998 and
winning the silver medal at the World
ing turned into anger and resentment. I
Games for CP athletes in 2001.
wanted nothing to do with other people
Thus accounts for the fame. The fortune
with CP as I felt this would be letting go of
my aspirations, a stupid concept which I
is a different matter. It stems from the con
look back on and thank God I have come so
ditions of Bloom’s birth, which are both
far in the last decade.”
tragic and miraculous. The short version is
Bloom has indeed come far. He is calm
this: Ben was born brain dead. The attend
ing nurses thought he
and relaxed, accepting
was stillborn. His par
and tolerant. He has
grown into a man with a
ents asked the hospital
strong, healthy sense of
staff to do all they
himself. It would be
could so they put him
in an incubator. After
impossible to recount
all that went into that
72 hours, he came to
growth, but Bloom cites
life. The staff said that
a particularly transfor
if he survived a week it
mative experience he
would be a miracle.
had during the World
The price of that
Games for CP athletes.
miracle is cerebral
“While there I felt
palsy, the condition
like never before,” he
that Bloom has lived
says. “I made friends
with-and struggled
with other CP athletes
against-his entire life.
from Russia and France.
In 1999, after a nineI speak French well, so
year legal battle.
-Ben Bloom
it was easy to break the
Bloom settled out of
ice with them. Many
court with the hospi
athletes had more
tal. A profile of Bloom
severe CP than me, and were very hard to
by Sam Orbaum, Web-published in 2000,
understand. We communicated through
sums up his situation: “He is now, in the
other means; the bond that we shared, of
most grotesquely literal sense, a self-made
being equal, made for a wonderful feeling.
millionaire.”
At the end of the Games, we had a party
Bloom’s cerebral palsy makes him hard
to understand, contorts his face, and gives
with Karaoke. All of us moved the same
him a peculiar, dragging walk. But it’s not
way. All of us had the same unclear voice.
just his speech, gait, and appearance that
There was an intense feeling of cama
raderie and equality.”
CP has disfigured. His condition has also
Bloom is now finishing his thesis-a col
affected his sense of self.
lection of 50 poems that reveal much about
Bloom has a history of buoying up his
him and the way his world is shaped by
challenged sense of self with humor. The
cerebral palsy. His poem, “Jane Fonda’s
Orbaum article quoted some of his witti
(pain in the) Neck Workout” describes the
cisms: “Hey, you know what happens when
mechanics of dealing with a stranger’s
I have a few beers?” Bloom asks. “I talk
insults. “Special Olympics” describes a
clear and walk straight.” He describes giv
night out for eight people with CP. In the
ing his own brand of speech therapy to a
crowd: “I make them repeat the alphabet
poem, the group tries to order drinks:
“Two Heinekens, two Carlsbergs, two
after me, with all 26 letters sounding
Guinness and two Everclears./Five min
exactly the same.”
utes trying to communicate, then we settle
Humor, of course, does not heal all
for eight domestic beers.”
wounds, and Bloom has not always known
In “The Extremities Of A Line Are
how to salve them. When he first arrived at
Points,” Bloom describes the obstacles,
St. John’s, several people unwittingly
both interior and exterior, of everyday
found themselves on his bad side by sug
events. The poem reveals Bloom’s writing
gesting he get to know Santa Fe tutor
for all it is: story, insight, therapy, balm,
Robert Sacks, who also has CP. An older
and wiser Bloom recalls why he hated that
''All ofus moved the
same way. All ofus
had the same
unclear voice.
There was an
intensefeeling of
camaraderie and
equality.
{The College -St John’s
College • Spring 2004 }
35
The Extremities Oe
A Line Are Points
-Euclid, Elements., Book i. Definition
3
Standing in line
Motionless
Passing glances from strangers
Maybe three-quarters of a second
longer than normal
Nothing to get upset about.
“Next!”
Four steps to reach the desk
One-two-three-four
People have other things on their
minds
They’re here for a reason
They’re all adults
They’re not going to stare.
“Next!”
They want to rush me
No, it’s not me
Don’t be oversensitive
Do other people have these inner
dialogs?
Am I Socrates or his interlocutor?
“Hi. I'm here to... ”
Said too much
She’s been working all day
No patience for me
No patience for my voice
Fuck it
Can’t stop now.
“For my appointment. ”
Confusion. Disappointment. Disgust.
Pity.
The myriad of facial expressions tell a
familiar story
The patented neck strain won’t be too
far away
Yup, here it comes
In answer to your next question, “I’m
here alone.”
“Is anyone responsiblefor
this... guy?”
Should I look around?
Should I glare at the people behind
me?
No point. One day they’ll read about it.
In a poem.
They can wait.
“Next!”
�{AlumniNotes}
36
et al.), ‘What constitutes scientific
proof?’ Very fun.”
1971
In April, pediatrician Linda
Belgrade Friehling (SF71)
embarked on a trek to Everest Base
Camp to raise funds for Himalayan
Health Care, serving the people of
rural Nepal. In a fund-raising letter
she sent along, she described the
trek and its mission: “We will cover
lao miles on foot and attain an
elevation of 18,500 feet. The funds
raised will support the completion
of a project sponsored by
Himalayan Health Care. Himalayan
Health Care is a small non-govern
mental organization founded
approximately a decade ago by a
Nepalese and an American to
promote better health and life in
remote rural areas of Nepal. With a
dedicated group of volunteers,
including physicians, dentists,
nurses, and other professionals,
this small organization has facilitat
ed impressive improvements in pre
natal care, infant mortality, dental
hygiene, and overall health for over
40,000 people. Learn more by
visiting the Web site: (Himalayanhealthcare.org)...One of the things
that has impressed me most about
Himalayan Health Care, is the
forward-looking approach that
emphasizes educating the Nepalese
team to carry out on a day-to-day
basis vastly improved health prac
tices. In a country that currently
has one doctor to 32,000 people,
I feel this is the only way to make a
substantive difference.” For more
information, e-mail her at:
tlofftrax@aol.com.
From Colorado, Michael
ViCTOROFF (A) writes: “After
nearly five years as medical
director for Aetna, I left to work
as an investigator for the Depart
ment of Toxicology at the Universi
ty of Colorado Medical School.
Officially, I’m a private detective.
Our group has M.D.s and Ph.D.
toxicologists. We investigate
medical claims of inquiry from
environmental chemicals. Sort of
like Erin Brockovich-only we use
science. Much of the most difficult
work is philosophical (Karl Popper
1972
Wesley Sasaki-Uemura (A) writes,
“On December i, 2003, we
finalized the adoption of Melina
Mei (Xin Yi) Sasaki-Uemura. She
was born October of 2002 in
Jiangxi province, China. She has
‘smiling eyes.’”
IleneLee (A) reports: “McKee
(A72) and Ilene’s daughter, Mollie,
now 25, is completing her first year
at Yale Law School after a summer
South American tour that ended
with sailing from Galapagos to
Tahiti on a 37-foot catamaran. Ilene
has a busy play therapy practice in
the San Francisco area, specializing
in autism and consulting with
schools.”
1973
Jose F. Grave de Peralta (A) is
taking a group of art and architec
ture students from the University of
Miami to Florence, Italy, for six
weeks to learn fresco painting and
restoration. Side trips include
Assisi, Rome, and Pompeii to view
fresco sites in those places as well.
1976
Jonathan Mark (A) was a recent
William Malloy (SF) writes that
he took early retirement in Decem
ber 2003 for health reasons. “Now
I have the opportunity to work four
mornings a week holding prema
ture babies and to concentrate on
improving my health. Additionally,
I am a volunteer reporter for KPFT
(Keep People Free, Thinking), the
local Pacifica station in Houston.
Not only can I put up a couple of
alumni who may be passing
through Houston, I am also accept
ing invitations to visit alumni.
Particular consideration will he
given to those invitations that are
accompanied by a prepaid airhne
ticket. Kidding? No, really, I mean
it!”
David Pex (SF) is “working hard as
contributor to Popular Science
magazine and built an off-road
course for Toyota in San Antonio.
From Steven and Melissa Sedlis
(both A): “Our daughter Elizabeth
is a first-year medical student at
Columbia College of Physicians
and Surgeons. Our daughter
Jennifer will graduate in May from
Scripps College, Claremont, Calif.”
1974
From California, Gerard (A) and
Daphne Kapolka write: “Daphne
(nee Greene, A76) retired from the
Navy in July. She is now a senior
lecturer in physics at the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey.
Gerry continues to teach English at
Santa Catalina School in Monterey.
Basia Kapolka (Aoi) is studying
acting in New York City.”
John Rees (A) is working hard as a
tele-neuroradiologist: “I live for my
work and my family. I greatly enjoy
participating in a small seminar
group of old SJC friends!”
{The College.
1975
is not yet completely comfortable
with the “Transgender Club” and
similar organizations constituting
student life today-but he’s trying.
He is feehng very old these days.
A career change for Idell KesselMAN (AGI): “After more than 20
years of teaching college composi
tion, literature, and other related
courses, followed by two years as a
vocational rehabilitation counselor,
I am working as a psychotherapist
at a nonprofit agency in Phoenix
operating under a managed care
system. In July I begin a one-year
residency in Dialectical Behavior
Therapy, a cognitive approach to
helping individuals with Borderline
Personality Disorder. My daughter
Bisa, nearly 25, is completing her
master’s in education this June,
with several years of elementary
teaching already completed. We
live in our separate apartments in
Phoenix, with our own cats and
habits. It helps us to keep our
friendship strong. I’d enjoy hearing
from old friends and tutors:
ideleyz@earthlink.net.”
1977
Brad Davidson (A) still lives in
Annapolis with his wife, Lynne, and
children Teddy and Lucy. He’s been
taking Teddy on college visits and
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
the finance director at Ecos Con
sulting, which implements energy
efficiency programs for electric and
gas utility companies. Write me at
dpcx@qwest.net.”
Carla S. Schick (A) won an
honorable mention in the Barbara
Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award.
The poem, “The End of the
Words,” can be found at www.
wagingpeace.org.
Marlene Strong (A) has news:
“After a year of being a lady of
leisure, which I spent fixing up my
new house and garden in Boise, I’m
starting work at a therapy center,
so I’ll finally get to use my hardearned MET (Marriage and Family
Therapist) license. Life in Idaho is
calmer; Boise is small enough that
you know your neighbors, but large
enough to have plenty of culture,
and the mountains are beautiful.
Any classmates are invited to stop
by if you’re in the neighborhood-if
not, see you for our 30th reunion.”
�{Alumni Notes}
1978
Robert McMahan (SFGI) reports
that he is now full professor at The
College of New Jersey and has given
many recent concerts both as per
former and composer. His wife,
Anne, continues to teach at the
Pennington School, working with
West African drumming. Renais
sance recorder, and Native
American music.
An invitation from Lawrence
Ostrovsky (A); “I see a lot of gray
haired people in the summer who
come up here to visit Alaska. So
I’m sure there must be someone
from the class of ’78. If you find
yourself up this way, please give me
a ring.”
1980
Leanne J. Pembvrn (A) writes:
“After five years of planning and
hard work, Mark and I have com
pleted phase I of home building in
our woods. Next phase will be straw
bale-all help is very welcome for
the bale raising. Contact me via
e-mail: leanne@pemburn.com.”
Tom G. Palmer (A) sends a quick
update: “I was in Iraq in February
under the auspices of the Ministry
of Education and the American
Federation of Teachers for a
conference for educators on civic
education and have been working
to get a lot of important books
translated into Arabic and pub
lished. In addition. I’m helping
Iraqi libertarian friends to set up a
think tank there, for the purposes
of educating people in the princi
ples of classical liberalism and
producing policy studies for the
new Iraqi government on how to
reform the judiciary to secure the
rule of law and the protection of
the rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, how to priva
tize state-owned industries, and so
forth. I’m leaving this Wednesday
for the European meeting of the
Mont Pelerin Society in Hamburg
(Free Trade from the Hanseatic
League to the EU) and from there
to Moscow to give a paper, ‘The
Role of Law and Institutions in
Economic Development’ at a
conference, ‘A Liberal Agenda for
the New Century: A Global
Perspective.’ I hope to be back in
Iraq in May and July to set up a
series of seminars for students,
some of which will involve SJC-like
seminars and discussions, as well as
lectures.
I’ve recently published a few
items, including a monograph,
‘Globalization and Culture:
Homogeneity, Diversity, Identity,
Liberty’ (published by the Liberales
Institut in Berlin for worldwide
distribution through the many
offices of the Friedrich-Naumann
Stiftung) and a paper, ‘Globaliza
tion, Cosmopolitanism, and
Personal Identity in the Italian
journal Etica e Politica. ’ I’ve got
a few other items in the works,
as well.
All in all. I’m keeping busy and
off the streets.”
37
Susan Read (SFGI) writes that her
1986
“Greetings, SJC,” writes Clayton
DeKorne (A). “I live now half time
in Burlington, Vermont, with my
daughters, Cecilia (16) and Helen
(14), and halftime in Brooklyn,
N.Y., with my new wife, Robin
Michals. I work as a full-time free
lance writer with regular assign
ments at The New York Times
Learning Network and a steady
stream of multi-media production
work from a handful of education
media companies. I would love to
hear from old friends and any John
nies interested in the brave new
world of online learning:
cdekorne@verizon.net. ”
son, Harry, is a thriving 8-year-old.
“We have just bought the house of
our dreams. I continue to enjoy
teaching English at Wooster
School.”
1988
Juliet Burch (A) writes from
Boston: “David (Vermette, A85)
and I are still happily impoverished
in Boston. I am apprenticing to be a
film projectionist and he is
researching Franco-American and
Quebec history alongside an edito
rial job. We continue to use our
St. John’s education for good
instead of evil, vigilantly keeping
cocktail party conversations away
from portfolio talk and on track
with suitable topics like ‘what is
color, anyway?’”
About the Tattoos
1982
Geoffrey Henebry (SF) writes:
“Ana and I and our brood of seven
(Patrick, Claudia, Gus, Thomas,
Isabel, Maria, and Tessie) continue
to enjoy the Good Life here in
Lincoln, Neb. My research over the
past five years has been diverse:
from modeling the ranges of native
vertebrate species in Nebraska to
analyzing the consequences of the
collapse of the Soviet Union on the
annual cycle of greenness in
Kazakhstan.”
1983
Theodore Zenzinger (A) just had a
daughter: Sophia Anne Zenzinger,
born in April.
{The College-
to have passed in a flash. Sophia is a fearless, joyful, lively
child, and she infinitely enriches our lives. She doesn’t have
any tattoos yet, but I was able to locate some black clothing in
her size. Our families and friends helped us adjust to parent
hood, but we are especially grateful to my classmate Ken Hom
(A80). Ken has logged thousands of hours in Babylon with us.
If Sophia develops a taste for good music and a knack for pool,
she will owe it all to him. I continue to practice the Japanese
martial art of aikido, in which I currently hold the rank of 4thdegree black belt. Since 1999,1 have been the chief instructor
at Aikido of Northern Virginia. I have about 75 students, any
30 of whom may show up for a given class. You may visit the
dojo’s website at http://www.aikido-nova.org. I’m still a
bureaucrat in the Department of Housing and Urban Develop
ment. For the past two years. I’ve been working as a housing
program policy specialist in the Office of Lender Activities and
Program Compliance. We spank mortgage lenders when
they’ve been bad. People may reach me at
Jim_Sorrentino@hud.gov.”
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�38
{Alumni Profile}
Looking for the “Monster”
Owen Kelley, Agg, Finds a Clue to Why Hurricanes Intensify
BY
Rosemary Harty
Before investigating hurri
omputer models can often
canes, Kelley had entered a
make accurate predictions
doctoral program in compu
of where a hurricane will
tational science immediately
wander. But no one has yet
found an accurate method to after graduating from
predict how intense a hurri
St. John’s. He ended up
cashing
out his credits for a
cane’s damaging winds win hecome.
Grapmaster(A93)
’s degree in physics
pling with this question, Owen Kelley
because he worried that he
asks, “Why does one hurricane become a
“wasn’t smart enough to be a
monster and another one doesn’t?”
As a scientist with George Mason Univer
Ph.D. scientist.” After honing
sity, Kelley is part of a team that works at
his skills at NASA for six years
NASA’s Goddard Space Fhght Center to
and feeling a growing desire to
study satellite data gathered by the Tropical
“ask the big questions,” he
Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The
decided last year to continue
TRMM satelhte is a joint effort between
where he left off with his
NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration
doctoral studies.
Agency, and its data are being analyzed by
When Kelley began his
scientists around the world. For most of the
hurricane research last year,
past six years, Kelley created graphics and
he did not immediately think
software for other researchers. Through this
to look for hot towers. “Erich Stocker, my
work, Kelley met Joanne Simpson and
project manager at NASA, came in my
learned of her pioneering hurricane
office one day and saw me poring over my
research. Back in the 1950s, Simpson
hurricanes pictures, getting nowhere. He
proposed that short-hved “hot towers”
told me to pick one thing to study, and that
sustain a tropical cyclone, allowing it to
made all the difference. I had in the back of
travel a thousand miles in a week. But with
my mind how Joanne Simpson would talk
out computers or satellites, Simpson’s hot
passionately about hot towers, so I looked
tower hypothesis was difficult to prove.
up one of her articles and then taught my
Hot towers are rain clouds that reach at
computer how to find towers. It turns out
least to the top of the troposphere, which is
that the only instrument in space that can
nine miles above the earth and four miles
clearly see hot towers is the radar that’s
higher than the rest of a hurricane. The tow
onboard the TRMM satellite. This radar
ers are called “hot” because heat released by gives us ‘x-ray’ vision. It doesn’t look at just
water condensing allows these towers to rise
the upper surface of a hurricane-it sees into
higher.
the heart of the storm.”
Once Kelley began pondering the myster
ies of hot towers, his training at St. John’sparticularly his fondness for a question that
begins with “what is?”-began to pay off.
“Freshman year, I was horrified when we
started Euchd and my class argued for an
hour about the definition of a point. By the
time I graduated, I appreciated the power of
simple questions. Instead of becoming lost
in the data, I repeatedly asked the simple
question, ‘What is a hot tower?’ Every paper
I found seemed to use a slightly different
definition of hot tower. Eventually, I settled
on a precise definition and my persistence
C
Kelley’s computer models show hot towers
RISING FROM HURRICANES.
{The Colleges;, John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
As A SCIENTIST,
Owen Kelley appreciates
THE POWER OF SIMPLE QUESTIONS.
led me to patterns that other scientists failed
to notice in this same dataset.
“It took my breath away when I first
examined my statistical summary and I saw
that hot towers appear often in the intensify
ing hurricanes, but rarely in the ones that
are not intensifying,” says Kelley. A good
example of an intensifying hurricane with a
hot tower is Hurricane Bonnie in August
1998, as the storm intensified a few days
before striking North Carohna.
Kelley cautions, “We still can’t predict
which hurricanes will become monsters,
but perhaps we are now one step closer to
an answer.” Kelley’s results suggest that
seeing a hot tower near the hurricane’s eye
is a clue that the hurricane is twice as likely
to intensify than it would be otherwise.
In January, Kelley flew to Seattle to
present his findings at the annual meeting
of the American Meteorological Society.
He was not prepared for the media atten
tion that resulted when NASA issued a press
release about his findings on the day that he
presented them. While answering journal
ists’ questions, he had to learn how to
describe his research in a few words. In the
end, more than 80 Web sites, newspapers,
continued on nextpage
�{Alumni Notes}
Shannon May Lavery (A) and her
husband, JOHN (A87), celebrated
the eight-month birthday of daugh
ter Aurora (A2025) in Healdsburg,
Calif., where they recently relocat
ed with their first-born dog, (Vizla)
Lucius. All are well and peaceful.
“Fellow Oenophiles and Tahoebound schussers and ski rats pass
ing through should get in touch.
We are local and down to the
ground. Hookenzababy!”
Kim Paffenroth (A) has published
another book. In Praise of Wisdom:
Literary and Theological Reflec
tions on Faith and Reason (New
York and London: Continuum
International Publishing, 2004). In
it he traces the Biblical image of
wisdom as it unfolds in Dostoevsky,
Shakespeare, Augustine, Goethe,
Pascal, and Melville.
1990
Rebecca Ashe (SF) writes:
“I’m turning 40 this year and going
back to the UK for my high school
class reunion in June. Still happily
married to Steve Simmer with three
gorgeous and interesting daughters
(10, 8, and 4-all avid readers).
My beloved Faraday died at age 13.
Lee Whiting (SF89) and I got him
in Santa Fe. I still run daily and am
training for a half-marathon in May.
Also starting a private practice in
West Springfield. Would love to
hear from classmates again:
Rebecca.ashe@the-spa.com.”
“Greetings to all. I hope you are
well. Zip bang,” writes William
Culley (SF).
James Clinton Pittman (SF) writes
1989
After a year in Thailand, Elizabeth
Powers (A) and her husband
returned to Brooklyn in late 2002.
They gave birth to a daughter,
Madehne Josephine Wagner, in
October of 2003.
that younger son Sam just turned
two. “Hope everyone is well. I
need to write a book-anyone know
how to get political commentary
published when you hate Democ
rats and Republicans alike?”
1991
Brad Stuart (A) and Sara Larson
(Ago) are delighted to announce the
birth of their second daughter,
Phoebe. Brad is a software engineer
for General Dynamics in
Westminster, Md.
RonalieMoss (SFGI, EC95) is still
a teacher at Los Alamos High
School, but she looks forward to
retiring soon. “I have had a reward
ing career, but now I am looking
forward to reading great books
again instead of student papers.”
News from Megan Smith (A):
My husband, David Dougherty
(AGI98), and I welcomed our baby
television stations, and radio stations picked
up the story. His hurricane results appeared
in the media from Texas to Canada, Switzer
land, Colombia, Australia, and Japan.
A European Web site has even posted an
Italian translation of the story.
Perhaps the most gratifying attention
came from Simpson, who sent Kelley an
girl. Harper Claret, into our world
on September 2, 2003. She is a
bright and smiling baby with a full
head of spiky hair, just like her
mother’s. We are still living in
Annapolis, and I am working part
time as an optician and trying to
start a career in freelance ad design
for small businesses. David is a Java
programmer with Anne Arundel
County government. We’d love to
hear from any of our old friends.
My e-mail is peanutmom®
comcast.net and David’s is
dsmithdi@comcast.net.”
1992
From London, Victoria Burgess
(SF) writes: “I wish to thank every
one for their kind wishes following
the death of my father. They mean a
great deal to me. I would love to see
any Johnnies passing through the
London area.”
“After almost eightyears at the
Consortium for Oceanographic
Research and Education (CORE),
I will start a new job in April with
the Office of Education and
Sustainable Development at NOAA’s
headquarters in DC,” writes Sarah
ScHOEDiNGER (A). “While this job
won’t shorten my commute from
Annapolis, I am looking forward to
the new professional opportunities
it presents.”
Michael Zinanti (SF) tells us:
“I am an antenna design engineer
for Centurion Wireless Technologies
and have contributed to three anten
na patents with one more pending.
Susan (formerly Switich, SF93) and
I are raising and home-schooling one
e-mail that pointed out weaknesses in his
research, but closed with the statement:
“An old person feels that his/her life has not
been in vain when we see young people
grabbing the ball and running with it.”
This year, Kelley plans to revise the
material he presented at the conference
and submit it to a scholarly journal. Once
(The College.
39
daughter, Anna. We would love to
hear from any Johnnies passing
through the Denver area.”
1993
“Hello, all!”AMYFlack (A) writes.
“Things in South Dakota are going
well. Ministry is an adventure,
harrowing, wonderful, blissful,
wacky, and so many other adjectives
both good and bad.” E-mail:
thiers55@yahoo.com .
1994
Natalie Arnold and William Blais
(both SF) were married in July 2001
and celebrated with a 30-day cross
country train trip. Currently, they
“five in Pittsburgh and are the proud
owners of a happy house in need of a
little TLC. We are happy to provide
bed and breakfast, good conversa
tion, and a warm welcome to any
Johnnie traveling through Pitts
burgh. We are best reached through
e-mail at bill.blais@pobox.eom.”
Larissa Engelman (A) is currently
living in New York after moving
from Washington, D.C., in 2002.
“Working as marketing manager of
the New York office of Covington &
Burhng. As a side project, am look
ing to raise money for an independ
ent film project and would love to be
connected to others who have expe
rience or contacts in that world. My
hellos to the class. Hope to see you
at our lo-year reunion.”
he finishes his doctoral studies, Kelley is
not sure what the future holds. “The
ultimate goal is supposed to be teaching at
a research university and doing ground
breaking research between classes. I just
want to look at data and see things other
people haven’t seen before. I’m not sure
how to make that happen.” -*■
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Alumni Notes}
40
1995
Joel Ard (A) and his wife Hannah
(A92), announce the birth of their
son, David Frederick Ard, on
September 4, 2003. David made his
first appearance at St. John’s at
Homecoming a week after his birth.
“Remember kids,” writes Chris
Davis (SF), “funk is its own
reward.”
Benjamin “Alex” Ruschell (SF)
has a new baby. George Alexis
Ruschell (8 lbs., 20 in.) was born in
Schweinfurt, Germany, in
December 2003.
Jessica VanDriesen (A) is about to
complete a master’s in education as
part of the New York City Teaching
Fellows. “I have been teaching
math at Wadleigh Secondary School
since 2002. It is a far cry from
explorations of the conic sections or
Minkowskian space-time, but there
are moments. I plan to travel abroad
next year, teaching in an interna
tional school or possibly switching
to ESL. Anyone with suggestions,
please contact me via e-mail:
jvandriesen@hotmail.com.”
Tracy Whitcomb (A) is still in
Vermont and now back in school for
a second bachelor’s degree: in nurs
ing. “I hope everyone else is well! ”
An invitation to adventure from
KiraK. Zielinski (SF). “Anyone
in or passing through Las Vegas,
Nev., I’m now flying the Dam
Helicopter Tours out of a Bell 206
at the Hoover Dam-the tours are
quick, but a ton of fun, so drop by
and fly with me! I just bought a
house and I’ll be here for a year.
Because it’s Vegas, I think I need
to consider modifying my uniform
to sparkly midriff-baring nomex
with rhinestones! My callsign is
Dam Helicopter...too cool...
I’m obviously having a blast with
my new life. Also need to design
more bookshelves to go in the
helicopter...”
business journalism, I moved on to
Moscow. As of March, I have been
here for two years and I’m now writ
ing for a Dutch AIDS charity. I got
aggie Roberts Arnold (A95) writes:
married last summer to Elena
“Late as usual, I am announcing the
Rudykh, a Siberian intellectual
arrival of our son Augustus Bullock
beauty queen. We see ourselves
Roberts (Gus), born on September 16,
moving back to the homeland
2002. Parenthood is a blast! Thanks to Gus
eventually, but in the meantime,
we are frequent visitors to the San Antonio
I hope to see the day when one of
Zoo. (I am expecting the bears to wave to us out of
therecognition
many Marx readings on the
any day now.) We are also frequent visitors to theProgram
McNay isArt
replaced by Bulgakov’s
Museum. As parents we love this enthusiastic rediscovery of
‘Heart of a Dog’ for a modest
the basics: the naming of and conversational focus on ani
injection of reality.”
Rediscovering the Basics
M
mals, shapes, colors, vehicles, body parts, foods, nature (you
name it). I think fondly and frequently of the time I spent on
each campus and wish my contemporaries great happiness
and fulfillment! (And the courage to send in a note!)”
1996
1997
Maya Brennan (SF), formerly
J. Maya Johnson, is in New Jersey:
“I’ve recently moved from Baltimore
to central New Jersey where my
husband. Grandpa of evihobots
.com, found a paying job after his
election-induced unemployment.
I’m working at Princeton University,
compiling and coding data for the
Cultural Policy and the Arts National
Data Archive (CPANDA). Anyone
interested in the cultural pohcy field
will want to check out our free online
data archive atwww.cpanda.org. I’d
love to hear from former classmates,
especially anyone passing through
the central New Jersey to New York
City area. My e-mail address is
mahimsab@yahoo.com. Snail-mail:
501 Raritan Ave., D6,
Highland Park, NJ 08904
Erin N.H. Furby (A) is working as a
massage therapist in Anchorage.
“My husband and I are enjoying our
attempts at balancing middle-class
American fife with the fife of the
mind, and we still love Alaska, even
if it snows five days before April.”
{The College.
Michael Chiantella (A) married
Karen Burgess in Buffalo, N.Y., on
August 2, 2003. “Taffeta Elliott
(SF) gave a reading at the wedding.
Currently almost completed an
LL.M, in Trust and Estate law at
the University of Miami.”
1998
In September 2003, Julie Bayon
(AGI) graduated from Claremont
Graduate University with a Ph.D. in
education. The title of her disserta
tion is “The Neo-Classical Ideal:
Liberal Arts Education for the
Twenty-First Century.” She is
currently assistant professor of
English and chair of General
Education at Washington Bible
College in Lanham, Md.
Jacqueline Camm (A) announces
Shannon Stirman (SF) writes:
“We’re moving from Philadelphia,
where I’ve been studying at Penn,
to San Francisco, where Kelly will
begin working for a new software
company. Henry turned 2 in August
and we’re trying to keep up with
him. I’m finishing up my disserta
tion in psychology and will plan to
start an internship in the fall.
As soon as we figure out exactly
where we’ll be hving, visitors wifi
be welcome!”
“I think the last time I appeared
here, just after graduation, I was
rather optimistic about saving the
world through economics,” writes
David Veazey (A). “Well, since then,
I got my M.A. at Fordham but
stopped just before I had to start on
my dissertation. Over the years I had
become disenchanted with the
inherent inabihty of economics to
solve any meaningful problems.
Then later, after becoming an expert
in maximizing my unemployment
checks and dabbhng in health and
St. John’s College . Spring 2004 }
her marriage to Robert Travis
(a 1998 graduate of Columbia
University) on February 8, 2003, in
the Cathedral Church of St. Luke,
Orlando, Fla. The Rt. Rev. John
Howe, bishop of the Episcopal
Diocese of Central Florida,
presided. Amy (Norman) Morgan
(A96) and her husband Bill provided
music for the ceremony. Writes
Jacquehne: “We moved to
Tennessee in August for Rob to
attend seminary. We also purchased
our first home with the help of
Milk Klim (A02) of Columbia
National Mortgage. If anyone
would like to reach us, or is passing
through Tennessee, please send us
an e-mail: jacquelinecamm@
hotmail.com.”
Method-acting studies for Stephen
Conn (SF) finally hit Hollywood
gold! Look for him this summer in
Troy, he plays the third spear from
the left in that big battle scene
towards the middle. “Brad was a
dream to work with,” Steve adds.
�{Alumni Notes}
Christopher Pagan Nelson (SF)
Grateful for Phlogiston
reports: “Right now. I’m living in
Texas and concentrating on my
turbo-gangster country band. The
drian Lucia (SFoo) writes: “After living in
Foggy Mountain Cop Killin’ Boys.
Philadelphia and Chicago for three years. I’m
College didn’t really prepare me for
pursuing a master’s degree in library and infor
the scads of fame and money I’m
mation science at the University of Illinois,
receiving, but it was cool anyway. I
Familiarity with the theory of phlogiston has
would love to hear what other John
never been so helpful. I plan to flee the Mid
nies are doing, so please e-mail me
west in basically any direction when I finish this program.
Any
at donkeytown@hotmail.com
.
A
Johnnie librarians out there?”
James Petcoff (SFGI) is teaching:
a college administrator for the
University of Chicago’s economics
department, serves as president of
the Chicago chapter of the Society
of Architectural Historians, and is a
member of Chicago’s Caxton Club
(for bibliofiles): “I collect 16thcentury Aristotle texts.”
“I recently left my job as a mental
health counselor in Hyannis, Mass.,
and now work for The May Center
for Child Development at The May
School in Chatham, Mass., teach
ing children with developmental
disabilities. I recently moved to
Wellfleet, Cape Cod, from
Yarmouthport. When I am not
involved in the above, I play with
my jazz, folk, blues rocka-billy band: Skeeter and the Buz
ztones. I would love to communi
cate with fellow Johnnies in the
area.”
1999
Benjamin Closs (A) is serving at
the Marine Corps Air Station in
Miramar, Calif. “I may go overseas
for a while this fall, but Pacific
Beach isn’t bad until then.”
from Philadelphia to Frederick,
Md., a year and a half ago to live
with Vince Baker (AgsJ-yes, that
Vince Baker. We’re now engaged,
we’ve just bought a house and are
planning an October wedding. I’m
working for a biotech company,
while Vince is an editor. We have a
bit of a menagerie with the cats
Apollo & Artemis, and our recently
acquired blue-fronted Amazon par
rot, Pancho, the Bird of Mass
Destruction. We’d love to hear
from anyone in the D.G. metro
area: cinderlou@peoplepc.com and
oldmarley@hotmail.com.”
announce the birth of their son.
Mason, on February 14, 2003.
“We’d love to hear from our former
classmates at ShannonandKerry@
earthlink.net.”
Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A)
are pleased to announce the birth
of their first child, Lucila Adele.
Lucy was born on September 30 in
Los Angeles, where Mike is begin
ning his second year as an attorney
in the tax department of O’Melveny
& Myers. Abby recently finished the
post-baccalaureate program in
classics at UCLA. They’d love to
hear from anyone, especially those
in or passing through Southern
California (asoejoto@cs.com or
323-572-0343).
Nevin Young (A) writes: “I am now
Mauricio Rojas in August. “Also I
am currently teaching in Prince
George’s County. I got my certifica
tion through their Resident
Teacher Program and would be
happy to talk to any seniors or
graduates who are looking into
doing the same.”
“Hey all,” writes Jessica Sprout
Morgenstern (A). “Still busy out
here, loving my job, loving the
weather-sunny Santa Barbara. Feel
free to e-mail anytime...anyone
looking for a fun way to get paid to
learn (and teach) dance (ballroom
and social) give me a call!”
{The College.
Christopher “Casey” Vaughan
(A) is living in St. Augustine, Fla.
“Anyone who wants to come surfing
feel free to contact me at cvaughan@flagler.edu.
2001
Katharine Christopher (SF) and
Billy Davis (SF) were married on
December 20, 2003, in a beautiful
traditional ceremony at the Church
of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe.
Katharine reports: “We were
attended by our five sisters as
bridesmaids, and Jackson FrishMAN (SFoi) and Chris Carlisle
(SFoi) as groomsmen. Nikki
Mazzia (SFoi) sang two lovely
solos, and Juliana Corona
Kirmeyer (SF02) read a Scripture
passage. A number of other John
nies also came to celebrate with us,
as well as family and friends from
all over. It was a wonderful day, as
well as the beginning, God willing,
of a long and joyful marriage.”
2000
Lori Beth Kurtyka (AGI) married
Cindy Lutz (A) writes: “I moved
married in Rocky Mount, N.C., and
now live in Indianola, Miss., which
has been my home since gradua
tion. I will be ordained in May and
we are expecting our first child in
November.”
Shannon Rohde and Kerry
O’Boyle (Both AGI) would like to
Robert Herbst (SF) is employed as
A report from Andrew B. Hill (A):
“I’m getting married sometime in
2004 to a tremendous woman who
did not, sadly, attend St. John’s.
I reside in Fort Worth, Texas.
I recently completed an unsuccess
ful bid for the mayorship of my
lovely city, for which I was reward
ed with a whopping 206 votes, as
well as about 60 hours of Digital
Beta footage, which I intend to
convert into something remotely
saleable. Thus, no matter how
vague my connection to the school
may be, I am following in a
tradition of Maverick Johnnie
filmmakers, or at least I think I
am.”
41
finishing my third year in the
evening division at the George
Washington University Law School,
and am working for a lawyer in the
District of Columbia. (I cannot
understand why anyone would not
want to be a lawyer.) I would be
happy to answer any questions from
Johnnies who want to know about
law school in general, or GW.”
“Greetings from the Mississippi
Delta!” writes Paul Spradley (A).
“This past January 1 got married to
Caroline Taylor of Rocky Mount,
N.C. In the wedding party were
Derek Alexander (A99), David
Bohannon (A99), Adam Dawson
(A03), Alan Hudson (A03), and
George O’Keefe (A03). We were
John ’5 College . Spring 2004 }
What’s Up?
The College wants to hear from
you. Call us, write us, e-mail
us. Let your classmates know
what you’re doing. The next
issue will be published in
September; deadline for the
alumni notes section is July 15.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
Public Relations Office
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�4a
Katrina Costedio (SF) has finally
decided to use her powers for good
and is heading for law school,
although she isn’t sure which one.
“Also shaping the young minds of
California in various volunteer
positions and as a sub. And on the
weekends I work with an adult who
is learning to read. I’m struggling
with the demands of being a good
citizen. Most of the time I still feel
like I’m pretending, but what’s the
difference really?”
Terence Duvall (A) writes: “I just
returned from my first major trip
since graduating college so I
decided it was about time to send
an update. My lomo and I spent six
stupendous weeks in Slovenia
taking pictures of castles by lakes
for my upcoming art exhibit
‘Reflected Castles.’ In Ljubljana I
met a producer who has offered to
put out a split seven-inch of my
{Alumni Notes}
band. Big Brother, and the Sloven
ian underground rock quartet
Sister City. I think I finally under
stand why you can’t spell Slovenia
without the word ‘love.’ And so in
the immortal words of the poet
Jerry Garcia, ‘What a long strange
trip it’s been.’”
Talley Scroggs (A) moved to
Bennington, Vt., after a half year in
Agen, France, where she assisted
in running The French Kitchen at
Gamont, a 1720s inn. Her friend
Louis Kovacs (A), is in the post
baccalaureate program at
Bennington College. Talley works
at North Shire Booksellers and
plans to start an MBA program
next fall.
An intriguing “heads up” from
Peter Speer (A): “You’re the king
of hearts for four years and then
you come out into the real world
and you’re the two of spades. And
there’s no don rags in your new
office, and no one wants to read
your senior essay. But that girl by
the water cooler is awfully cute,
and she blushes when I quote
Dante, and though she’s never
heard of Virgil she swears it sounds
familiar. So all’s well and I’m
going to Vegas. Feel free to contact
me with lucky numbers.”
2002
Margaret Tobias (A) will be
attending graduate school this fall
at the University of Chicago,
enrolling in the Master of Arts in
Humanities program.
2003
“I am enjoying Eastern Classics
and highly recommend the pro
gram,” writes Allison Webster
(SF).4-
Alek Chance (A) and Iva Ziza
(Aoi) had a daughter, Emma
Katherine Chance. Emma was
born on August 10, 2003, in
St. Johnsburry, Vermont.
{Obituaries}
Diana “Danny” Bell
Herbert Brent Stallings
Diana “Danny” Bell, the wife of Santa Fe
tutor emeritus Charles Bell, died March 24
of pancreatic cancer. She was 80.
She was born and raised in Darlington,
Md., trained as a teacher, and after marry
ing Charles Bell in 1949, lived with her
family in Chicago and Annapolis. She
taught first grade in Annapolis until mov
ing to Santa Fe in 1967. Along with her
husband, she was named one of the city’s
“Living Treasures” in 1996 for contribu
tions to the Santa Fe community.
“Everything she did was in proportion
and infused with order, kindness, and
delight,” her family wrote in her newspa
per obituary. “Whether it was a picnic, or
the peaceful sharing of tea, Danny filled all
with joy and the sense of her unconditional
acceptance of our human foibles.”
The family has arranged for two ways for
friends to remember her: contributions
can be made for the publication of Charles
Bell’s poems through the non-profit
Lumen Books (40 Camino Cielo, Santa Fe,
New Mexico 87506) and also to one of
Danny’s charities. La Luz de Santa Fe Fam
ily Shelter, (2325 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe,
NM 87505).
Herbert Brent Stallings, class of 1941, died
January 8, 2004, in Cary, N.C. He was 84.
A native of Baltimore, Stallings played on
the college’s football team (nicknamed the
“gallopinggoose-eggs”) before intercolle
giate sports were dropped. His pastor, the
Rev. William Green, remembers Stallings
bringing his family back to the St. John’s
campus several years ago, videotaping his
old dormitory room, and fondly revisiting
his days at St. John’s. When the college
adopted the New Program in r937, Stallings
had the option of sticking with the old pro
gram or starting in the new and spending an
extra year at the college; he chose the New
Program, Green said.
“He has always said that St. John’s really
formed who he was,” said Rev. Green. “He
really loved talking about the college.”
Stallings went on to serve as a lieutenant
in the Navy during World War IL After the
war, he launched a 30-year career in adver
tising with the Baltimore News-American.
He met his wife, Ruth, on a Chesapeake
Bay Cruise. Married for nearly 60 years,
the couple had two children who live in
North Carolina.
{The College-
St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
“He was a wonderful man who loved
books,” Green said.
Medora Cockey
Medora Cockey (A03) died January 3, 2003,
after a brief illness. She was 23.
Miss Cockey was born in Baltimore and
moved to Salisbury with her family in 1983.
She attended St. John’s College for two
years, then transferred to Warren Wilson
College in Asheville, N.C., to finish her
studies. She was to have graduated with a
fine arts degree in May.
Miss Cockey was a talented artist. She
loved hard physical farm work, and her
favorite summer job in recent years was
working on organic farms in Virginia and
Georgia. Her sister, Mary, is a member of
the Annapolis class of 2004.
Also noted:
Clayton Davis, class of r938, died Feb. 9,
2004.
John Falencki, (A68), died Dec. 30, 2003.
Merrill Turner (SF79) died March 16,
2004.
Charles T. Westcott, class of 1936, died in
July 2002.
�{Student Voices}
43
On Grades: How Can Genuine
Learning be Measured at St. John’s?
BY loHN Peterson, A05
grades? Do any students complain about
y grades were never
their grades? One can respond to a tutor in
something I worried
a don rag because he is stating observations
too much about. In
and offering suggestions, but how does one
middle school I earned
respond to a B on a piece of paper?
As, but in high schoolThe college’s recent self-study, “Liberal
where I didn’t always
Education
in a Community of Learners,”
do homework or attend class-I
maintained
states
that the college wants students to
a consistent B+, or 90 percent
average.
“work for understanding and not for
These grades were meaningless, I thought,
grades,” but acknowledges that students
because the work that the A-kids were
need transcripts, and therefore grades, for
doing to get their grades was out of propor
life after St. John’s. Grades interfere with
tion to a grade’s value. I scoffed at the arti
the college’s goals of fostering genuine
ficial scale of greatness that accompanied
learning and cultivating freedom, they
the grades: “High Honor Roll,” “Honor
distract students, encourage competition,
Roll,” etc. I beheved that I was wiser than
and are “inadequate as means of evaluating
these students, because while they were
working hard to slave for top grades at their a student’s success in liberal learning,” the
report states. Nevertheless, it says, tutors
college choices, I was heading to a place
take the “fair determination of grades very
where grades didn’t matter and where what
seriously.”
would really be measured after four years
The “Grades and Grading Poficies” sec
would be the true worth of an individual.
tion of the student handbook says that the
When I came to St. John’s College, I
college “does require all tutors to award let
found classes to be radically different from
ter grades to their students at the end of
high school, the teachers much more alive,
each semester...and authorizes them to
the students more interested and interest
decide what elements they will take into
ing. There were no tests and no homeconsideration and in what proportion.”
work-at least not in the high school sense
As opposed to the pre-determined system
of busywork from a textbook. Why, then,
of my high school days, this process is mys
were there still grades?
terious and vague, perhaps even arbitrary.
St. John’s is an egalitarian institution
What are these “elements” that a tutor may
that loves truth and rewards hard work not
or may not take into consideration? Class
with good grades, but with understanding,
room participation, attendance, attitude,
good conversation, and good judgment.
papers, and demonstrations all seem like
Could it possibly be true that with all these
candidates. However, different tutors may
riches around them, students here would
be more interested in different things, and
be worried about their grades, look them
this is something that a proportional grad
up every semester, and work for them, even
ing pohcy, in which various assignments
to the detriment of learning itself?
are given certain weight in a total grade,
During my first semester, I don’t think
is designed to alleviate.
grades ever crossed my mind-I was having
It is unhkely that St. John’s will implement
too much fun. I was worried that I did not
any pohcy such as this in the near future.
talk as much as some of my classmates and
One reason is that the more specific we get
that maybe I did not study enough. In my
about grades, the more it will appear that we
don rag, my tutors were nice to me and
care about them, and as a result, we will care
said some helpful things. This was enough
about them more. If tutors needed to discuss
for me.
grades, they would have to think more about
This year, however, I began to think
grade-giving and less about teaching.
about life after St. John’s and checked my
Students would consequently worry more
grades. This raised a series of troubling
about grade-getting than about learning.
questions about grades and the learning
Competition would inevitably result.
environment at St. John’s: How many other
“It’s a weird situation,” acknowledges
students check their grades? Students dis
Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft. “On the one
cuss don rags all the time-what about
M
{The College.
St. John’s College Spring 2004 }
John Peterson
hand we give [grades], and we don’t want
them to be some kind of secret document
that a student can’t look at, but on the other
hand we don’t report them to the student,
and we try to play it down. I don’t think it’s
hypocritical...It’s trying to foster a commu
nity where people are really concerned
about the depth of each individual student’s
self-education-and it really works.”
With all the debate about how much to
talk about grades, by which standards they
are given, and how much they matter to
students as opposed to how much consider
ation tutors have in giving them, my
inclination is to revert to my old high
school attitude. I begin to suspect that the
behavior of the students around me is
geared toward getting better grades.
I wonder if this or that student has better
grades than I, and if so, why. I become
taken with the feeling that we are all here
to go somewhere else, to get our tickets to
graduate school. I begin to resent my fellow
students and to think only of myself. Worst
of all, I stop all learning and introspection,
adopt an air of superiority, and start to
think about my future.
Only at this point do I realize that the
school knows what it is doing: it has foreseen
these problems, and in its grading pohcy has
tried to circumvent them. It recognizes that
grades can be a potential threat to learning,
but that they are necessary. If a Johnnie is
still worried about the arbitrariness of
grades, he only needs to ask himself,
“Do my grades reflect anything real?” and
he will answer, “More than they did in high
school.” That should be enough, and he
should go back to his studies.
�44
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Greetings!
Your Alumni
Association and
the staff of SJC
have heen hard at
work supporting
the network of
Johnnies. I wish I
could share in
one letter all the
projects and possibilities that are emerging
from our shared work, but we only have
room for three this time. Watch this space
for more in the coming issues.
Part 1 - Reconnect
What ever happened to that interesting
woman in my freshman seminar?
WTio are the Johnnies living in my state?
Is there someone from St. John’s practicing
law in my city?
How many people were in my class?
What is Glenda Holladay’s last name now?
Does my favorite waltz partner have an
e-mail address?
How can I be sure the college has my
correct address and phone number?
Soon you can answer these and many other
questions about alumni around the world.
The Alumni Association and the college
joined forces to put the St. John’s College
Alumni Register online. It will be a great
new tool for you to stay in touch with the
rest of the college community. To use the
Register1. Go towww.stjohnscollege.edu.
2. Select alumni.
3. Select Online Register.
4. Apply for access to the Register.
5. Within a week, you will receive an
e-mail with your username and password
that will give you access.
Then you’ll be searching to your heart’s
content. As you use the new Register, we
strongly urge you to:
• Send your feedback about the Register
and the rest of the Web site to Jo Ann
Mattson (A87) joanne.mattson@sjca.edu
or Roxanne Seagraves (SF83)
roxanne.seagraves@mail.sjcsf.edu.
• Update and/or complete your own
information. The Register is only as
good as the information it holds. Please
make it most useful by keeping your own
data up to date!
• Let the college know if you prefer not
to have your information appear in the
Register. You should have received a
postcard asking if you wanted to opt out.
There are also places online that you can
choose not to have your information
appear.
• Use the Register as a tool to stay in
touch with Johnnies from your era, your
campus, your profession, or your locale.
Part 2 - Come Home
Are you going to Homecoming this year?
Please consider making the trip to Santa Fe
in the summer or Annapolis in the fall. You
will have many reasons to be glad you did.
• Seeing old friends and making new
ones.
• Thanking that tutor who opened your
mind to the books (or the books to your
mind).
• Seeing a rejuvenated campus whether
you’re in the East or the West.
• Watching a Santa Fe sunset over the
mountain or an Annapolis sunset over
the creek.
• Sharing the unique conversational
experience of seminar.
• Dancing as if you were ao again.
• Munching on burritos or crab cakes.
• Welcoming new honorary alumni.
• Gongratulating fellow alumni with
Awards of Merit for their remarkable
lives and work.
• Learning about the current state of
student hfe and the Program.
• Exhibiting and/or observing work of
creative and industrious Johnnies who
have books to sign (Annapolis) or art to
show (Santa Fe).
You will be receiving information and
invitations from classmates, the Alumni
Association, and the college. We look
forward to seeing you!
Partg - Reach Out
The Next Steps Action Team of the Alumni
Association and the Career Services offices
on both campuses support new alumni as
{The College .
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
they venture out into the world. If you’re
interested in providing support or in get
ting a boost yourself, consider reaching
out. Among the many opportunities and
services:
Virgil Initiative: Juniors who volunteer
are matched with an alumnus mentor.
The two meet periodically and stay in
touch through senior year and beyond.
The purpose of the relationship is to share
experiences and insights about the transi
tions after St. John’s. Career counseling is
not part of the plan, but mentors may have
helpful suggestions and resources for the
job or educational market as well. (Thanks
to Lee Zlotoff (A74) and Tom Krause
(SFGIoo) for conceiving and launching
this program!)
Networking receptions: Several Alumni
Association chapters host receptions that
bring new alumni and older ones together
to share career and grad school informa
tion. As you might imagine, many other
topics come up for conversation and a
lively time is had by all.
Communities of Interest: Clusters of
alumni have shared interests such as
psychology, dance, quilting, art, academic
research in various fields, law, or educa
tion. Often these Johnnies don’t have ways
to be in touch with each other even when
they know they’re not alone. The Next
Steps Action Team is planning to launch
a network across time and space to get
like-minded alumni connected.
Internships: A generous grant from the
Hodson Trust inspired summer internships
for students on the Annapolis campus.
Recipients have pursued a variety of
activities from arts to sciences to services
to professions. The project has been very
successful, and plans are afoot to begin a
similar program in Santa Fe.
We all have transitions to make as we
leave the college. These programs and
others help make the transition a time for
extended learning about how the great
ideas are the foundation for happy and
productive lives. If you’re interested in
participating in any of these programs,
either as supporter or supported, please
be in touch with Jo Ann or Roxanne.
They’ll help you make the connections.
For the past, present, and future,
Glenda Holladay Eoyang, SF76
�{Alumni Association News}
Chapter Update
With i8 active chapters meeting on a regu
lar basis throughout the country, including
a new chapter in Pittsburgh, St. John’s
alumni have plenty of opportunities for
seminars, social events, and cultural out
ings with other Johnnies. Efforts are also
under way in six new areas to develop
chapters from reading groups or nurture
budding interest in the formation of new
chapters and alumni groups.
In her annual report on chapter activity
to the association board, Carol Freeman
(AGI94), reported on an encouraging year
marked by active chapters planning innova
tive events and emerging interest in areas
yet to establish chapters.
Here are some highlights:
• The Santa Fe chapter is now meeting
bimonthly, and has formed a steering
committee to select topics and plan
meetings.
• The Boston chapter is thrilled to have
read Marcel Proust’s In Search ofLost
Time. This inspiring endeavor (5,000
pages) was a project embraced enthusias
tically by chapter members.
• The Annapolis chapter has decided to
develop a reading list for several months
in a row to attract more of the 500
alumni in the area to seminars.
• Inquiries about starting a chapter or
reading group are being pursued in
Ithaca, N.Y., and the Greater Miami area.
In Miami, Johnnies traveled up to three
hours to attend recent alumni gettogethers in Miami and West Palm
Beach, hosted by Annapolis staff
members Barbara Goyette (A73),
vice president for advancement, and
Jo Ann Mattson (A87), director of
alumni activities.
• Russ Dibble (SF97) and Kira Heater
organized the first seminar, on February
II, for alumni in the Missoula, Montana,
area.
In addition to seminars, Johnnies are
demonstrating their interest in socializing
with other alumni by turning out in large
numbers for crab feasts (Baltimore),
picnics (New York), and an annual
alumni dinner (Greater Puget Sound),
Check the Web
FOR Election
News
The Alumni Association nominations for
alumni representatives to the St. John’s
Board of Visitors and Governors and for
directors-at-large for the Alumni Associa
tion Board for 2005 will be posted on the
college Web site atwww.stjohnscollege.edu.
Select “Alumni” from the left-hand menu
(under the SJC seal), then click on the
Alumni Association homepage. A special
nominations page will appear among the
left-hand menu options
that are now highlighted in
red. Names, photos (when
available) and biographical
information about the
nominees, as well as infor
mation on the election
process, will be available
online on or before
August I, 2004.
45
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, under
graduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program
or New, graduated or not, all alumni have
automatic membership in the St. John’s
College Alumni Association. The Alumni
Association is an independent organization,
with a Board of Directors elected by and from
the alumni body. The Board meets four times
a year, twice on each campus, to plan pro
grams and coordinate the affairs of the Associ
ation. This newsletter within The College mag
azine is sponsored by the Alumni Association
and communicates Alumni Association news
and events of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-OutAction Team Chair Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Web site - www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Brett Heavner (A89) and
Nancy Lindley (A58) at an
Annapolis networking
reception for students and
ALUMNI.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-275-9012
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
AUSTIN
Jennifer Chenoweth
512-482-0747
Bev Angel
512-926-7808
CHICAGO
Amanda Richards
847-705-1143
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Gill Doremus
817-927-2390
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Goldstein
720-746-1496
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEW YORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-949-6811
{The College-
NORTHERN CALIF.
Suzanne Vito
510-527-4309
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
WASHINGTON DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465-7781
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4151
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
413-648-0064
PORTLAND
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NO
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
9-722-671-7608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�{AlumniAssociationNews}
46
“A LOAF OF BREAD,
A GLASS OF WINE, AND ... I AND
ThOU.”
Sn^ng, Swirling, and Seminar at
Stags Leap Wine Cellars
BY Mark Middlebrook, A83
Here with a LoafofBread beneath the
Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and
Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
- FROM Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat^ c. iioo.
Nine centuries later, the sentiments
expressed in Khayyam’s verse echo each
summer in a vine-rich valley watched over
by a rocky palisade known as Stag’s Leap.
Alumni from around Northern Californiaand perhaps an eagerly welcomed visitor
from Santa Fe or Annapolis-rise early on a
sunny Sunday morning to prepare our pic
nic lunches and finish our seminar reading.
And then we’re off to the annual Stag’s
Leap Wine Cellars picnic and seminars,
where we’ll once again be the blessed
beneficiaries of St. John’s alumni Warren
(A52) and Barbara (A55) Winiarski’s
hospitality.
The drive from the San Francisco Bay
area takes about an hour, and many of us
carpool-if only for the pleasure of packing
in extra hours of conversation with fellow
alumni whom we may not have seen since
last year’s pilgrimage. As we head north,
fog often lingers on the Bay and even in the
lower reaches of Napa Valley, but its cool
ness provides a lovely contrast to the
intense valley heat that will come in the
afternoon.
We pass through the town of Napa and
head north on the Silverado Trail, a road
threading up the eastern side of Napa
Valley that’s traveled mostly by winery
hopping tourists and bicyclists. Vines
appear-lots of them-as we speed past the
now-familiar litany of wineries: Luna
(where former tutor Abe Schoener, A82, is
now winemaker), Altamura, White Rock,
Clos du Vai, Chimney Rock. After a few
miles, we see the distinctive notch in the
craggy ridge to the east. That’s the Stag’s
Leap. Just before the road begins to climb
out of the Stags Leap District and the
bicyclists start to down-shift, we pull into
the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars driveway.
To keep track of all the stags in these
parts, you need a scorecard-or maybe a
punctuation handbook. The “Stags Leap
District” (multiple stags) is the name of
the small wine-growing region that sits
just below the notch in the ridge called
Above: Alex Poulsen (SF74) and Daniel
Cohen(SF90)
Left: Former Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
events coordinator Gabriele Ondine and
PICNIC GUEST
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
“Stag’s Leap” (singular possessive stag).
“Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars” (ditto) is the
Winiarskis’ winery and home of our annual
picnic and seminars. “Stags’ Leap Winery”
(plural possessive stags) is an unrelated
winery in the district.
We bypass the tasting room parking lot
and instead take the road that skirts below
the white wine fermentation building and
around a wooded hill to the small lake
tucked behind. There we unload our picnic
baskets and coolers, carry them up to the
lake’s grassy banks, and spread a blanket
on a spot to our Uking-full sun, full shade,
or dappled with some of each. It’s a little
more civilized than Khayyam’s Wilderness,
but with boughs, wine, and books-not to
mention a refreshing lake to jump into-it
will be Paradise enow for us.
Despite the claims of some that our
palates are most discerning in the morn
ing, we defer to the scruples of those who
might find earnest wine tasting at 10 a.m.
a bit unusual, and instead we sally forth on
a vineyard walk and winery tour. We stroll
past FAY-a storied vineyard where Stags
Leap District pioneer Nathan Fay planted
the region’s first Cabernet Sauvignon
grapes in 1961-and then into S.L.V. (Stag’s
Leap Vineyard), whose grapes catapulted
Warren Winiarski to fame when his 1973
S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon won the 1976
Paris tasting. We taste some of the grapes
and wonder at the winemaker’s techne that
�{AlumniAssociationNews}
reveals supple, prize-winning
wines from these juicy but still
tart berries.
From the luxuriant but care
fully-coifed wilderness of
grapevine tendrils, we return to
paved road and make our way to
the civilization of a modern
winery: crusher-destemmer
machines, fermentation tanks,
oak barrels, and bottling lines.
Our tour culminates in the
spectacular caves, which are
home to hundreds of barrels of
aging wine, a bronze bear and
cub nestled among several of
those barrels, a Foucault pen
dulum, a dramatically lit,
chapel-like room designed by
Catalan architect Javier Barba.
An hour of walking, plus the
heady, deep aromas of ferment
ing wine, have eliminated any
remaining scruples, so we make
a beeline for the lake. At a table
nearby, our host begins pulling
corks and pouring tastes.
The diligent among us work
methodically through the full
lineup, sniffing, swirling, and
then either swallowing or spit
ting-depending on one’s
lunchtime drinking plans and
desired degree of lucidity
during the afternoon seminars.
We start with Sauvignon
Blanc, several Chardonnays, and a pair of
Merlots. The simpler wines bear the Hawk
Crest name-Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’
second label-while the grander ones
display the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
name and distinctive “standing stag and
tree” logo. We finish with an impressive
phalanx of Cabernet Sauvignons,
including the FAY Estate, S.L.V. Estate,
and occasionally, if we’ve been very, very
good, a precious taste of the CASK 33
(a blend of particularly excellent lots from
FAY and S.L.V.).
Tasting wine is all well and good, but
drinking wine is better, so we pour a glass
of our favorite and bear it gingerly back to
our chosen picnic spot. There we fling
open picnic baskets, unwrap deli sand
wiches or flip open cardboard carry-out
containers, and begin to enjoy the happy
union of good food, good wine, and good
company. Congenial swapping ensues-of
victuals, opinions about the wines, opin
ions about the seminar readings, stories of
Liz Travis
(SF83)
our lives during the preceding year (many
of them true), stories of our times at
St. John’s (some of them true).
All of this eating, bibbing, and creative
embroidery under the hot summer sun is
arduous work, and some of us reinvigorate
with a jump into the lake. At the stentorian
bellow of the ceremonial conk shell, we
commence the annual chapter meeting.
This short but raucous affair typically com
prises effusive thanks to the Winiarskis
and the hard-working winery staff,
announcements of upcoming events, a
desperate plea by the current chapter
president for a successor, and directions to
the various seminar rooms scattered about
the winery.
Despite the unquestioned zeal of
St. John’s alumni for seminars, the next
{The College.
5£. John’s College Spring 2004 }
47
half hour offers irrefutable proof
of the validity of Newton’s first
law. Every body assembled there,
in its tranquil, well-fed state of
rest, does indeed continue in
that state of rest unless com
pelled to change its state by
powerful forces impressed upon
it. Several of us cajole, plead,
and eventually threaten in order
to get these bodies rolling
towards their seminar rooms.
We typically run five simultane
ous seminars on readings
ranging from Plato to the Lotus
Sutra to Wallace Stevens to a
contemporary political essay,
plus one film.
An hour and a half later, the
seminars disband and we
regroup at the Arcade outside
the caves for a reception with
scrumptious desserts and
cheeses, perhaps a sip of dessert
wine, and coffee. “How was
your seminar?” mingles with
other typical post-seminar chat.
There is more catching up on
the previous year, expressions
of wonder that we’re able to
enjoy a day like this each year,
and the wistful sense that this
year’s day is almost done.
One more slice of cake or
piece of cheese, another round
of grateful thanks to our hosts,
perhaps a stop in the tasting room to buy
a few bottles, and then we’re heading
south on the Silverado Trail, back towards
the Bay Area. The day’s heat is starting to
wane, and sun slanting off the vines
makes the early evening sky glow. 1 roll
down the window, and the air rushing by
seems to sing.
This year’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
picnic and seminars have not yet
been scheduled at the time of this
writing. Please note that reserva
tions are required, and that we some
times must limit attendance in order
not to exceed the winery’s capacity.
See the St. John’s College Alumni
Association of Northern California’s
Web page for more information and
reservations instructions:
http://teamrioja.org/sjcaanc/
�48
{St. John’s Forever}
Initiating the
Young into the
Tribe
‘!i4s well you know there is only one com
mencementspeech. It has been delivered
many times and it has many superficial
variations, but it always says the same
thing. An old man ofthe tribe tells the
young men that they are beautiful and
strong, that the world isfull ofevils, and
that they must go out into the world tofight
its evils and keep the vision ofits highest
good. ”
—Scott Buchanan, Commencement 1952,
he commencement rite
calls for a memorable
speech filled with sage
advice on how to go on
with the business of life.
Scott Buchanan called
commencement “the great rite of initiation
of the young into the tribe.” Some speech
es are memorable; some are not. Some
focus on history, some on urgent current
events. But at St. John’s College the selec
tion of the commencement speaker always
falls to those to whom it is primarily
directed, and throughout the years tutors
have been heavy favorites in the selection
process.
Scofield said in his 1950 speech that a
Tutors Richard Scofield and the Rev.
possible interpretation of the custom of
J. Winfree Smith became commencement
choosing a speaker from within the
traditions themselves. Scofield delivered
the commencement speech four times;
college is that students “think of the
Smith was selected by the graduating class
occasion, in spite of its name, as not only
looking forward. Since the life that lies
five times. Tutor Nancy Buchenauer was
ahead of you. . .is more complicated, more
selected by the students in Santa Fe in
serious, and more precarious than the life
1997, and after transferring to the
you are leaving, you could hardly go
Annapolis faculty, was asked to deliver the
without a backward glance.” dtp
2000 address.
T
{The College.
St. John’s College . Spring 2004 }
Tutor Richard Scofield, shown here in
1950, DELIVERED THE COMMENCEMENT
SPEECH FOUR TIMES.
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Santa Fe
Homecoming: July a-4,2004
classes
are: ’69, ’74, ’79, ’84, ’89, ’94, ’99.
Childcare is available.
Friday, July 2
Picnic on the Placita, 5 p.m.
Reunion class parties
Movie: The Tao ofSteve
Saturday, July 3
Homecoming Seminars, 10 a.m. to noon
Barbecue, 12-2 p.m.
Alumni Art Show opening, 5 p.m.
Banquet, 7 p.m.
Members of the Denver-Boulder chapter
Sunday, July 4
Annapolis
GATHERED FOR A SEMINAR LAST WINTER.
President’s Brunch, 10:30 a.m
Homecoming: October 1-3, 2004
L2I2EEZ1liunni
____
Week i; June 28-July a, 0004
Kierkegaard’s Meditation on Abraham and
Isaac
Led by David Starr
Hegel, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling,
and excerpts from the book of Genesis.
Painting & Reflection
Led by Phil Le Cuyer &
Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80)
On-campus and off-site painting experi
ences, gallery tours, seminars.
Week2: July 5-9, 2004
Plato’s Republic
Led by Eva Brann & David Carl
Revisit one of the seminal texts of Western
political theory.
Don Giovanni & the Operas of Mozart
Led by Peter Pesic & George Stamos
Once again, Don Giovanni is dragged alive
through the gates of Hell.
Call the Office of Alumni and Parent
Activities, 505-984-6103
Registration, 4 to 8
Career Panel, 6:30 p.m.
Homecoming Lecture, 8:15 p.m.
After lecture: Wine and Cheese with the
class of 2005, Rock Party in the Boathouse
Saturday, October a
Seminars, 10 a.m.
Homecoming Picnic, noon
Class Luncheons, 11:45 P ®Afternoon: Autograph Party, Soccer,
Gathering of All Alumni, Dance
performance in memory of Harry Golding
Hors d’oeuvres & wine, 6 p.m.
Homecoming Banquet, 7:30 p.m.
Waltz/Swing Party, to p.m.
Sunday, October 3
President’s Brunch, ii a.m.
* Tentative schedule.
All alumni are welcome. Reunion classes:
’39, ’44, ’49, ’54, ’59, ’64, ’69, ’74, ’79,
’84, ’89, ’94, ’99.
Contact Planit Meetings for special rates at
Annapolis hotels. Space is limited for dis
counted rates; mention St. John’s College
when you call for reservations.
Phone: 301-261-8284; fax: 919-642-0062.
E-mail: kelder@planitmeetings.com.
For more information, call the Alumni
office: 410-626-2531.
{The College -St.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
Back cover: Reality observers in Annapolis
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
Published by the
Communications Office
P.O. Box aSoo
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
D A N IE L H O U C K
( ao 6)
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
Periodicals
Postage Paid
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
An account of the resource
The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
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English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
thecollege2001
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
48
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The College, Spring 2004
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 30, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2004.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Contributor
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Borden, Sus3an (managing editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor)
Wilson, Rebecca
Silver, Joan
Kraus, Pamela
Miller, Basia
Stickney, Carey
Russell, George
Dink, Michael
Engel, Elizabeth
Goyette, Barbara
Byrne, Brigid K.
Maguran, Andra
Peterson, John
Eoyang, Glenda H.
Middlebrook, Mark
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
The College Vol. 30. Issue 2 Spring 2004
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