1
20
5
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S!JOHN'S
26 August 2004
College
FIRST SEMESTER LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2004-2005
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA PB
27 August 2004
Mr. Harvey Flaumenhaft
Dean
St. John's College
"The Silence of the Spartan:
City, Soul, and Study of the
Stars in the Epilogue to
Plato' s Last and Longest
Dialogue"
3 September
Mr. Joshua Kates
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Getting Their Numbers:
Edmund Husser!, Jacob Klein,
and the Intentional History
of Mathematics"
10 September
All-College Seminar
17 September
Ms. Gisela Berns
Tutor
St. John's College
"Towards 'a new birth of
freedom' - Tragedy and
Comedy,l786: Schiller's
Don Carlos and Mozart's
Marriage ofFigaro"
24 September
American String Quartet
With Jonathan Camay, Viola
Concert (Debussy, Brahms,
Danielpour)
1 October
(Homecoming
Weekend)
Mr. Peter Weiss
Class of 1949
" Human Rights from
Antigone to Rosa Parks"
8 October
Long Weekend
No Lecture
15 October
Mr. Henry Higuera
Tutor
St. John's College
" Hegel 's Phenomenology and
the Great Tradition"
22 October
Mr. Peter Pesic
Tutor
St. John 's College
Santa Fe
"Solving the Unsolvable:
Abel 's Proof'
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
ZI404
4w-6z6-zsn
FAX 4I 0-295-6937
www.sjca. edu
�29 October
Professor Joshua Parens
University of Dallas
"Alfarabi, Islam, and
Religious Pluralism"
5 November
(Parents' Weekend)
Mr. Paul Ludwig
Tutor
St, John's College
"History and Existentialism
in the Raj Quartet'
12 November
Professor Harold Edwards
New York University
"The Use of Infinity
in Mathematics"
19 November
Professor Stephanie Nelson
Boston University
"Old Comedy, New Comedy,
and the Problem with Tragedy"
26 November
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
3 December
Mr. Ronald Batik, Piano
Concert
I 0 December
King William Players
I 7 December 9 January
Winter Break
No Lectures
�SECOND SEMESTER LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE 2004-2005
S!JOHN'S
College
14 January 2005
Mr. John Tomarchio
Tutor
St. Jolm's College
"Metaphysical Senses of
Infinity in Thomas Aquinas"
21 January
All College Seminar
"The Dream of a Ridiculous
Man" by Dostoevsky
28 January
The Orlando Consort
Conceit: The Ambassadors European Courts 1475-1500
4 February
Long Weekend
No Lecture
11 February
Mr. Thomas May
Tutor
St. John's College
"Argument Not Less But More
Heroic: Milton's Advent'rous
Song in Paradise Lost'
18 February
(Steiner Lecturer)
Professor Harvey Mansfield
Harvard University
"Manliness"
24 February - 13 March
Spring Break
No Lecture
18 March
Mr. Dylan Casey
Tutor
St. John's College
"Experiment and Probability"
25 March
Mr. Sriram Nambiar
Tutor
St. John 's College
"Size and Shape: Organizing
Principles of Euclid' s
Elements"
1 April
Mr. Christopher Hinterhuber
Piano Concert (Bach, Busoni,
Mozart, Schoenberg, and
Schubert)
8 April
Professor Nelson Lund
George Mason University
(on the judicial power)
Cancelled 4/7/05
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
OFFICE OF
T HE DEAN
P.O. Box 28oo
ANNAPOLIS , MARYLAND
21404
410-626-2511
FAX 410-295-6937
www.sjca. edu
�15 April
Mr. Jacques Duvoisin
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"On Shakespeare's Style:
Sonnet 73"
22 April
Professor Phillip Sloan
University of Notre Dame
(on biophysics)
29 April
King William Players
Antigone
6May
Reality Weekend
No Lecture
13 May
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
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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
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
First Semester Lecture/Concert Schedule 2004-2005 & Second Semester Lecture/Concert Schedule 2004-2005
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004-2005
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2004-2005 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2004-2005
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
Flaumenhaft, Harvey, 1938-
Kates, Joshua
Berns, Gisela N.
American String Quartet
Carnay, Jonathan
Weiss, Peter
Higuera, Henry, 1952-
Pesic, Peter
Parens, Joshua, 1961-
Ludwig, Paul
Edwards, Harold
Nelson, Stephanie
Batik, Ronald
Tomarchio, John
The Orlando Consort
May, Thomas
Mansfield, Harvey
Casey, Dylan
Nambiar, Sriram
Hinterhuber, Christopher
Lund, Nelson
Duvoisin, Jacques
Sloan, Phillip
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
September 17, 2004. Berns, Gisela. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1080" title="Towards "a new birth of freedom"">Towards "a new birth of freedom"</a> (audio)
September 17, 2004. Berns, Gisela. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1081" title="Towards "a new birth of freedom"">Towards "a new birth of freedom"</a> (typescript)
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.
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.
5 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 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
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2005-2006 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2005-2006
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
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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4dc90856929b9dcb6391ce739c3f9bb1
PDF Text
Text
S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E
S P R IN G 2017
VOLUME 42, ISSUE 1
Lincoln
Leading by
Teaching
�OPENING NOTE
A remarkable coincidence occurred
when Chris Nelson first announced
publicly his plans to retire this
spring: it was 25 years to the day that
he was named president of the Annapolis campus. Stumbling upon this
realization, I immediately swapped
my editor’s pen for my detective’s
magnifying glass, searching for clues
to some deeper, hidden meaning.
Alas, to no avail. But the opportunity
led me to explore Chris’s influence as
president. While the coincidental timing of his announcement may remain
a mystery, one thing which can be
said with certainty is that the pages
dedicated to him within this issue of
The College only begin to describe the
impact of his legacy and his devotion
to the St. John’s Program.
In honor of President Nelson, members of the Annapolis community
joined tutors for an afternoon of reading and discussing works by some of
his favorite authors. Among them was
Abraham Lincoln. A fascinating and
complicated figure in American history, tutor George Russell describes
Lincoln as “a man with a true moral
compass.” Lincoln inspires us today
through his eloquent speeches, and
his gift for the written word. He also
inspires by his actions as a leader,
revealing that a moral compass is capable of shifting when flawed notions
give way to enlightened thought.
Gregory Shook, editor
ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 1
�SPRING 2017
VOLUME 42, ISSUE 1
“� incoln appeared on the earth in the right place at the
L
right time to preserve and protect a constitution constructed
to provide against the fortuity of prudence in human affairs.”
—George Russell, tutor
FEATUR E S
P A G E 1 2��
DEPAR TM ENTS
PA G E 1 8
PA G E 2 4
LEADERSHIP IN
FACTIOUS TIMES
PROTECTOR OF
OUR PROGRAM
MODERN
GLADIATOR
In a politically and morally
divided United States,
Abraham Lincoln, our nation’s
16th president, displays
leadership through teaching.
After 26 years, Christopher
Nelson says goodbye to his
role as president of the
Annapolis campus—but not
to his love for the Program.
Ingenuity, empathy, and a
passion for learning lead to
a technological breakthrough
that may save the skulls of
athletes everywhere.
��FROM THE BELL TOWERS
BIBLIOFILE
FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI
4 �
Growing the Graduate Institute
28 �obert Wolf (Class of 1967)
R
envisions a self-reliant rural
America in Building the
Agricultural City.
30 �JCAA Elections: Cast Your Vote!
S
6 Lincoln’s Walk
8 �
Tutors Talk Books:
Krishnan Venkatesh
9 Open to Inquiry
10 Civility on the World Stage
11 �idden Talent:
H
Joan Haratani (SF79)
31 Alumni Leadership Forum
32 �hilanthropy: Ron Fielding (A70)
P
and Warren Spector (A81) pledge
their commitment to St. John’s.
29 �elson Lund (A74) aims to revive
N
the ideas of a major philosophic
critic of the Enlightenment era
in Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of
Political Philosophy.
33 Alumni Notes
38 In Memoriam
� Stickey (A04) takes readers
Sarah
on a poetic journey through life’s
big questions about love, death,
beauty, and desire in Portico.
�Brann (H89), Peter Kalkavage,
Eva
and Eric Salem (A77) offer a
new translation of Plato’s most
popular dialogue, Symposium or
Drinking Party.
ON THE COVER:
Lincoln illustration by
Sébastien Thibault
43 �rofile: Robert Morris (SF04)
P
soars above the competition.
JOHNNIE VOICES
40 �omer in China
H
42 �irst Person: Yosef Trachtenberg (A15)
F
ST. JOHN’S FOREVER
44 �orward Edge of History
F
EIDOS
45 Anyi Guo (A15) photographs the world.
ABOVE:
Chris Nelson with Arcadia,
the campus dog
2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 3
�From the
BELL TOWERS
“� or adults out of college,
F
I don’t know of a more
vital part of that education
in necessary citizenship
than that provided by the
opportunity to participate
in true liberal education as
offered by the St. John’s GI.”
50TH ANNIVERSARY
Growing the Graduate Institute
In the summer of 1967, on the three-year-old St. John’s Santa
Fe campus, the Graduate Institute came to life as the Teachers
Institute. The GI, as we know it during this 50th anniversary,
offers a master of arts in liberal arts on both campuses year-round.
In 1994, Santa Fe established a master of arts in Eastern classics,
including two semesters of Sanskrit or classical Chinese.
“I characterized it this way,” says tutor emeritus
Elliott Zuckerman, one of a handful of tutors
in the GI pilot year: “Bringing inner city high
school teachers” from Baltimore and New Mexico “to the high desert to read Aristotle.” As GI
director that second and third year, Zuckerman
found that, for at least one student, 7,000 feet
wasn’t high enough. “I thought I had prepared
for everything that first night. But the next
morning, a number of students came to me and
said their mattresses were missing.” The mystery
was solved when “one young man claimed to
need to sleep higher than everyone else.”
Zuckerman describes how Richard Weigel,
president and founder of the Santa Fe campus,
and Robert Goldwin, first-year GI director
(from Kenyon College), “invented the institute.”
Politics and Society, designed by tutor Laurence Berns, was the only segment offered that
first summer, with Freud’s Civilization and Its
Discontents heading the list for 35 students in
two seminars.
“We lost money in the early years. We got
scholarships for the students” from the Hoffberger and Cafritz foundations, “covering tuition
and compensating for their summer salaries. But
we forgot to include the overhead. We always
planned to have it in Annapolis but,” in the first
years, as a summer institute only, “Annapolis
wasn’t air conditioned.” Segments were added
and the enrollment quickly doubled. By 1969,
Literature and Poetry, Philosophy and Theology,
and Mathematics and Natural Sciences joined
Politics and Society. “The curriculum was pretty
much the same as now,” he says.
Zuckerman remembers when he and GI student William Yannuzzi (SFGI69)—a high school
teacher who became musical director for the
Baltimore Opera—criticized the previous night’s
opera. “He and I would give an informal and
scathing review to an audience at breakfast. It
was a favorite event.”
“Weigel wanted to start something; he didn’t
know it was the GI. From the first day, it was
a success,” says Sam Kutler (Class of 1954),
retired tutor and dean emeritus. “The Carnegie
Foundation paid me six hundred dollars to formulate a math program. I would have paid that
much to be able to do it. I think it’s been very
successful. It was started for teachers; that
was Bob Goldwin’s influence.” After the initial
years as a summer-only institute in Santa Fe,
“without [tutor] Geoff Comber (H95), I don’t
know what would have happened in Annapolis,”
Kutler says.
“I had been in Santa Fe two or three summers,” says Comber, “and I was so impressed.
I thought we were doing important work and
we should do it here.” He remembers “quite
strong objections,” with some Annapolis faculty
saying: Why should we take on the risk? It
took two years to get it off the ground, and in
1977 Comber operated as Annapolis GI director
from his tutor’s office while he continued to
teach full-time. “People were saying, ‘You can’t
just do the same thing as Santa Fe,’ so I made
up the history segment.” In 1988, the history
segment was approved on both campuses as a
fifth segment.
The vice president, Burch Ault, presented
Comber with potential funding contacts around
the country. “Everyone was impressed that
we grew so fast,” Comber says. In 1980, while
Comber was on sabbatical, Ben Milner took
4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
—David Carl, past Santa Fe associate
dean for Graduate Programs
over the directorship and hired Sharon Hensley
as full-time GI assistant. Over decades, “she
was invaluable. A wonderful person to follow up
on things,” says Comber. “It was going so well
with the five segments, there was no reason to
change anything.”
David Carl, who recently completed his term
as Santa Fe associate dean for Graduate Programs (the title replacing director), knows well
the administrative tasks “constantly going on
behind the scenes, so that when tutors and students sit down at a table to talk about a book,
it’s as if there’s nothing going on but that one
activity.” Carl found it particularly appealing
to work with “adults from amazingly diverse
backgrounds. From firefighters to retired doctors, school teachers to surgeons, international
business men and women to lawyers, bartenders, veterans, and physicists. They are giving
For the past 50 years, the GI has provided an
integral role in the SJC community.
up jobs, moving across the country, asking
enormous sacrifices of their families.”
Part of the value of the Eastern Classics
program, Carl explains, is how it exposes “the
influence of Buddhism on Hume, or Hindu
philosophy on Hegel, or Eastern thought in
general on Nietzsche.” He describes how the
EC program, developed with the help of past
GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh, keeps the
college in touch “with the deep-rooted notion of
experimentation, which inspired the founders of
the New Program.”
Carl stresses the necessity of education in
a true democracy. “For adults out of college, I
don’t know of a more vital part of that educa-
tion in necessary citizenship than that provided
by the opportunity to participate in true liberal
education as offered by the St. John’s GI.”
Tom May, who served his first term as
Annapolis GI director in 1986, reflects on the
challenges of the early year-round program.
May taught half-time, while he and assistant
Hensley shouldered recruitment, alumni relations, budgeting, class assignments, and other
student matters. They supervised high school
visits, the Continuing Education and Fine Arts
Program, and various publications. It was “truly
prodigious labor, with no down time over the
course of the year,” May recalls.
By May’s second directorship in 1995, the
ancillary programs had “migrated to other
offices. The GI was finally fully and solely itself.
In the midst of these years of expansion, the
program remained essentially the same.”
Recalling the GI in the 1970s, tutor David
Starr refers to the Barr-Buchanan vision. “The
concept of the college as a possible model for
educating citizens of all backgrounds was alive
and well in what we thought of as The Teachers
Institute.” A past Santa Fe GI director, Starr
reflects on “the resilience and range of the
program” over the years. He writes of “a shift
in demographics, from teachers funded to
strengthen their competence, toward younger
academics seeking to broaden their scope.” He
explains that “people who specialized prematurely now come here to look into alternative
philosophic, social, and spiritual studies.”
The current GI associate dean in Annapolis,
Emily Langston, announced plans for a 50th
celebration in her Commencement address last
year. A number of events throughout this year
will culminate at Homecoming on each campus.
This anniversary year will highlight “the role of
the GI as an integral part of the SJC community,” Langston says. “There’s a hunger for the
sort of thing we offer at the GI. Someone who’s
eighty and someone who’s twenty-four talk
about a text together. I think the GI is the sort
of thing that Barr and Buchanan were envisioning when they talked about how these books
could speak to anyone.”
—Robin Weiss (SFGI90)
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 5
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
IN ANNAPOLIS
LEFT:
An aerial view
of the St. John’s
campus, circa 1868.
BOTTOM: Lincoln tours
the battlefield after
the Battle of Antietam
in October 1862.
Lincoln’s Walk
Members of the St. John’s community are
aware that dedications have brought two
American presidents to the Annapolis
campus: William Howard Taft took part in
the French Monument ceremony in 1911,
while Dwight Eisenhower, after landing in
a helicopter on back campus, charmed the
faculty in 1959 when the Mellon-Key complex
was dedicated.
Few are aware that several weeks before
his assassination, Abraham Lincoln walked
the width of the campus during a 45-minute
visit to Annapolis. That occurred on February 2, 1865, when Lincoln was headed for
the deep water wharf on the grounds of the
Naval Academy. From there he sailed to what
became known as the Hampton Roads Peace
Conference in Virginia, leading to the end of
the Civil War.
By then, St. John’s had been transformed
into U.S. General Hospital Division 2. Tents
for wounded and ill federal forces were
pitched on back campus. At the Naval Academy, midshipmen and professors had been
moved to Newport, Rhode Island, and that
campus was serving as a large supply depot
and hospital facility for Division 1.
Details of Lincoln’s visit, which also suggest
what St. John’s College’s environment was like
during those wartime years, are revealed in
a history written by Rockford E. Toews and
published by the Maryland State Archives:
“Lincoln in Annapolis February 1865.”
Traveling by train from Washington, Lincoln
arrived at 1 p.m. at the Annapolis & Elk Ridge
Railroad, located at the corner of Calvert and
West streets, from where Lincoln set off by
foot for the Naval Academy wharf about half
a mile away. Toews noted that the traffic was
too heavy for him to go by carriage while the
streets were unpaved and almost certainly
muddy. He thinks that the most likely route
Lincoln followed may have been along the
route of the railroad extension laid out in 1861.
A map accompanying the article shows the
route Lincoln is believed to have taken, based
upon research by the Annapolis Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the group that funded the
booklet. Lincoln’s path is shown in a red line.
“� o quiet and unobtrusive
S
was his arrival and
departure from the ancient
city that scarcely a score
knew of it until after the
steamboat sailed.”
After leaving the rail station, it is thought
that Lincoln walked over the Bloomsbury
Square area on what was then known as Tabernacle Street—today’s College Avenue. He
would have walked down Tabernacle, passing
Prince George and King George streets on his
right, and into the Naval Academy through a
gate at the end of College Avenue. St. John’s
would have been at his left. He would have
seen the Paca-Carroll House, Humphreys Hall,
McDowell Hall, Pinkney, Chase Stone, all built
by 1865, and, of course, the then flourishing
Liberty Tree.
6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Lincoln’s walk took him close to the State
House, where the Maryland Senate was
considering ratification of the Thirteenth
Amendment, ending slavery. No account of his
visit from the Annapolis paper survives, but
a Baltimore American correspondent, who
signed his name “Mac,” wrote:
“[H] Excellency, the President of the
United States, arrived in Annapolis, entirely
unannounced, and without any ostentatious
ceremony whatever, but, like the Democratic
Republican that he is, he quietly proceeded to
the Naval Academy, where he embarked on
the steamer Thomas Collyer and proceeded, I
suppose, to City Point. He was accompanied
only by a servant. So quiet and unobtrusive
was his arrival and departure from the
ancient city that scarcely a score knew of
it until after the steamboat sailed. Had it
become known that he was present in the
Naval Academy’s Hospital, he would have had
a gratifying and pleasing reception from the
wounded and sick inmates of the institution.
Many of the members of the Legislature
expressed great regret at not having the
pleasure of seeing the Chief Magistrate.”
The red line on the
map illustrates the
route Lincoln is
believed to have taken
weeks before his
assassination.
News accounts differ on the number who
accompanied Lincoln. The Crutch, published
weekly by Hospital 1, reported:
“President Lincoln arrived here on Thursday by special train from Washington. No one
was aware of this distinguished arrival until
it was heralded by the Hospital Band, playing
patriotic airs of welcome as he passed from
the wharf to the boat.”
After boarding the Thomas Collyer, which
Toews described as a “fast side-wheel”
steamer, he departed from the mouth of the
Severn River into the Chesapeake Bay, leaving
Maryland for Virginia. The following day, on
February 4, after an overnight trip, he steamed
back to Annapolis to catch a 7:30 a.m. train.
Back in Washington two hours later, Lincoln
was never able to return to Annapolis.
—Rebecca Wilson (H83)
The College
is published by St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM.
thecollegemagazine@
sjc.edu
Known office of
publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
Periodicals postage
paid at Annapolis, MD.
Postmaster: Send
address changes to
The College Magazine,
Communications Office,
St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue,
Annapolis, MD 21401.
Editor
Gregory Shook
gregory.shook@sjc.edu
Contributors
Anna Perleberg Andersen
(SF02)
Samantha Ardoin (SF16)
Carol Carpenter
Martha Franks (SF78)
Jonathan Llovet (A17)
Paula Novash
Tim Pratt
George Russell
Aisha Shahbaz (A19)
Yosef Trachtenberg (A15)
Robin Weiss (SFGI90)
Andrew Wice
Rebecca Wilson (H83)
Design
Skelton Design
Contributing Designer
Jennifer Behrens
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 7
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
TUTORS TALK BOOKS
“Tutors Talk Books” is a new series on the St. John’s College
website that features interviews with tutors discussing a
favorite subject: books. The following is an edited excerpt from
the debut interview in which Samantha Ardoin (SF16) chats
with longtime Santa Fe tutor Krishnan Venkatesh about his
appreciation for early Buddhist texts—and Frodo. Visit sjc.edu to
read the complete interview and learn more about Venkatesh.
Have you been working on any
writing projects?
A book of essays on the Discourses of the
Buddha, and on Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I
think they are fairly unique because I’m trying
to approach them as a literate, thoughtful
human being first, and not as, say, a Buddhist
or a Tolkien scholar—which I’m not anyway.
The essays have been posted on my blog
(kappatsupatchi.wordpress.com).
What inspired you to write on the
Discourses of the Buddha?
I’ve been thinking about the Discourses for
over twenty years, studying them in the [St.
John’s Eastern Classics program] as well as by
myself—but I’ve never made time to sit down
and articulate those thoughts. I have also
practiced various forms of meditation, including
mindfulness meditation, and have always been
struck by the depth of psychological insight
in these early Buddhist texts. I’ve learned a
lot about myself through studying them, and
they have given me some necessary tools for
understanding my own experience. Sometime
last year I found myself spontaneously writing
down reflections on the passages that moved
me, and here I am.
In what ways have the Discourses
affected your life?
The Discourses have affected me deeply in
many ways. Among them: greater awareness
of body and motion as well as of my emotions,
the ability to sit still and watch feelings as they
change from moment to moment, a greater
awareness of change as it happens, and a
generally calmer state of mind. I have become
better at handling stress, but also more aware
Early Buddhist texts and Tolkien novels provide
tools for critical thinking.
8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
of other people’s feelings than I was before.
Being by nature a dreamy person easily given
to reverie and getting lost in my own thoughts,
I had a lot of work to do in these respects, and
the Discourses have been invaluable guides.
What prompted you to start writing
critically about Lord of the Rings, and
what have been some highlights of this
process of going deep into such a story?
I’m not a big Tolkien fan and also not a big
reader of fantasy fiction, but prompted by
conversations with (tutor) Richard McCombs
I started to reflect more on whether it was
a great book or not, and if so, why. Over the
course of reading it slowly with a wonderful
community seminar, I began to form a genuine
admiration for Tolkien’s genius as a writer.
He has his weak points, but on the whole the
man can write. I found out that [in] all the
crucial moments in the book he is laconic and
suggestive, and some of the characters are
richly enigmatic: Gollum, Sam, Frodo, Eowyn.
Best of all was finding out for myself that
the Lord of the Rings is not a book meant for
children, but speaks deeply to “mature” people
who have experienced struggle. Frodo is 50
when he starts his quest. It ends up being about
what Jung calls “enantiodromia”—the “turn”
halfway in life to seek completion by developing
our incomplete halves.
Was there a particular book, poem, or
film that, in your formative years, inspired
a healthy dose of skepticism?
In my intellectually formative years, ages 14
to 16, I was a voracious reader. Reading itself
tends to loosen up inherited and congealed
opinions, because one has to take seriously
other worlds than one’s own, and other
authorities than the people around us. In
school we had a lot of history: lots of detailed
study of European wars, the fight for universal
suffrage, and the industrial revolution. I didn’t
appreciate it at the time, but I think it went in
deep—so much so that I am always shocked at
how ignorant many Americans are of subjects
like labor history. Ancient history was also
important for me—and I remember the thrill
of learning to read Caesar, Suetonius, and
Tacitus critically. I didn’t have much of a social
life. I remember reading Sartre and Camus
very passionately; I still have a file folder
full of notes from that period! And I studied
The Discourses have
affected me deeply in
many ways. Among them:
greater awareness of body
and motion as well as of
my emotions.
Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov—the fathers of
modern drama—every weekend by myself for
two years. All of that changed me. I never felt
I belonged to my time and place. The seventies
and eighties mostly passed me by…
How are you involved in the St. John’s
Film Institute?
I was one of the founder-developers, along
with (tutor) David Carl. I taught both summers
with (tutor) David McDonald. I believe strongly
that in our period we can’t consider ourselves
liberally educated if we don’t have a developed
critical relationship to audio-visual media,
especially the moving photographic image.
Apparently in 1936 Scott Buchanan thought
so too, because in the blueprint for this college
he called for a four-year great books program
like ours and a fifth year called the St. John’s
College Institute for Cinematics.
What are some essential films that
Johnnies should watch and discuss?
The Passion of Joan of Arc, Tokyo Story, Early
Spring, Bicycle Thieves, Nights of Cabiria,
Andrei Rublev, Mirror, Rules of the Game—to
give you a few to start with.
Venkatesh’s blog, The Old Pearl Bed, layers
reflections on Tolkien with Tolstoy, on Chekhov
with Buddhism, and many other unexpected
connections abound. One of Venkatesh’s essays
on the Discourses was recently published in
Tricycle, a popular Buddhist magazine.
STUDY GROUP
Open to Inquiry
While the study of great books is central to
a St. John’s education, authors outside the
Western canon recently got some attention
thanks to efforts spurred by junior Emily
Krause (A18). Inspired by a preceptorial on
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, led by
tutor Rebecca Goldner (AGI02), Krause and
her classmate Nathan Dignazio (A18) formed
a study group on modern writers and issues
surrounding traditionally marginalized communities. Focusing on such authors as Warsan
Shire, Audre Lorde, and Sojourner Truth, the
study group takes aim at political and social
questions that are not usually explored in
other classes in the Program.
During this spring semester, the group met
bi-weekly for lunchtime seminars, focusing on
short readings that are taken from literary,
historical, and philosophical works. Average
attendance was about the same as a tutorial—
large enough to have significant momentum,
but also small enough that it was intimate and
conducive to sincere and productive inquiry.
The group’s readings included “Conversations about home (at a deportation centre),”
Kenyan-born Somali poet Warsan Shire’s poem
about a refugee’s troubled relationship with
her home and the alienation that vexes her
relationship to herself, her new surroundings,
and her origins; “The Master’s Tools Will Never
Dismantle the Master’s House,” an address by
Audre Lorde critiquing the lack of representation of black and lesbian women at conferences
on feminist writing; and “Ain’t I a Woman?”
a speech by African American abolitionist
Sojourner Truth, who brings forward inconsistencies between professed and actual attitudes
towards women, and calls for equality of rights,
regardless of one’s intellect or race.
For the group’s fourth meeting, it returned
to its origin by reading the introduction of
The Second Sex, in which Beauvoir discusses
in Hegelian terms how woman is Other to
man and describes the relation between
woman and man that arises because of this
antithesis. She encapsulates the tension
pointedly, saying, “Woman’s drama lies in this
conflict between the fundamental claim of
every subject, which always posits itself as
essential, and the demands of a situation that
constitutes her as inessential.”
Krause and Dignazio hope that by looking
at perspectives of those whose lives and
experiences are vastly different than their
own, they can better understand the social
and political forces that are at work among us
in the world now. “Something is lost when we
don’t take into account the differences among
people,” Krause says. Goldner adds that the
study group shows something central to the
college, that the conversations that we have
in the classroom spill out and continue after
class (and from time to time find their way
back into class). “And hopefully,” Dignazio
says, “[the seminars] provide some wisdom
about the human experience.”
—Jonathan Llovet (A17)
ROSE S. PELHAM (A20)
ONLINE SERIES
The study group shows
something central to
the college, that the
conversations that we have
in the classroom spill out
and continue after class
(and from time to time find
their way back into class).
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 9
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
C O N V E R S AT I O N
Civility on the
World Stage
comfort zones,” Mullen said. Several members
of the public asked questions about Trump,
immigration, and media coverage of Russia’s
purported role in the presidential election.
And when a woman asked if Democratic Sen.
Bernie Sanders, who lost the primary to Hillary
Clinton, could have won the general election,
Mullen leaned back on a lesson he learned early
on when dealing with the press: Don’t comment
on hypotheticals.
It was a strategy that suited Mullen well in
his conversations with Brokaw over the years.
The men had a longstanding professional
relationship, one that was based largely on trust
and respect. “I trusted him, he trusted me, and
we could do real business together,” Brokaw said
during a gathering before the event. “I needed
to know some things, and he knew things that
he didn’t want to tell me, and I respected that.
But that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
—Tim Pratt
TOP RIGHT:
Michael B. Mukasey, the 81st
Attorney General of the United States Judge,
opened the 2017 Dean’s Lecture Series.
BELOW:
TV journalist Tom Brokaw and former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike
Mullen spoke at an event on February 19.
NEED FOR FREE SPEECH
To a capacity crowd in Santa Fe’s Great Hall,
the 81st Attorney General of the United States
Judge Michael B. Mukasey argued passionately
against forces of political correctness and the
“concrete pressures” that these forces can exert
on speech. Mukasey’s talk opened the 2017
Dean’s Lecture Series, which hosted Supreme
Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor last spring.
Concerned that America has become a nation
whose people live in narratives rather than
facts, Mukasey, who was appointed by the
George W. Bush administration and served
from 2007 to 2009, bemoaned trends in which
“personal taste and preference have started to
impinge upon how people view reality.” He also
touched on human rights, judicial activism, and
the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, which
he was careful to define as a political ideology
and distinct from the religion of Islam. Mukasey
concluded his short talk by encouraging attendees to “hold fast,” to uphold high standards of
free speech as well as the U.S. Constitution.
In the lively question period that followed, audience members pressed Mukasey on a number
of issues, including the need for criminal justice
reform, anxieties about the current presidency,
and threats from the Supreme Court decision commonly known as Citizens United. The
Citizens United decision restricted government
from limiting the rights of corporations, labor
unions, and associations to make unlimited,
independent political expenditures. Despite a
number of differing opinions from the audience,
the discourse remained civil and Mukasey held
fast to his beliefs while also retaining a sense
of humor. When a student began his question
with, “I’m a freshman,” Mukasey laughed and
said: “Me too.”
TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY
“� he thing I love to do
T
more than anything in
life … the thing that
gives me the greatest joy
is playing the drums.”
Mukasey’s lecture is available on the SJC Digital
Archives at digitalarchives.sjc.edu.
—Joan Haratani (SF79)
CAROL CARPENTER
The Francis Scott Key Auditorium erupted into
applause as veteran TV journalist Tom Brokaw
and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Adm. Mike Mullen took the stage. Dubbed
“A Conversation with Brokaw and Mullen,” the
event held on February 19 featured a discussion between the renowned newsman and highranking military official on topics ranging from
the 2016 presidential election to America’s relationship with Russia, China, and North Korea
to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
The pair also spoke about the Trump administration and problems with the ways people
get their news. Brokaw urged those in the audience to check the veracity of stories found on
the internet. Social media has led to the easy
sharing of fake news stories, knee-jerk reactions, and heated, polarizing opinions, he said.
“You have to put as much effort into where you
get your news over a long period of time as you
do into buying a flat-screen television,” Brokaw
said. “You just can’t take it blindly off the internet because it’s there and it seems to be done
in a very sophisticated manner.”
Brokaw and Mullen later turned the conversation to issues surrounding immigration,
racism, and exposure to different cultures and
political beliefs. “We have to get out of our
H I D D E N TA L E N T
She’s Got the Beat
When Joan Haratani (SF79), visited the St.
John’s College campus in Annapolis last fall,
she made sure to visit the “rock room” in the
basement of Mellon Hall. The small, concrete
room was filled with amplifiers, guitars, a
piano, and drums. But the room had seen
better days. Graffiti was splayed on one of
the walls; stained, worn out furniture abutted
another. Equipment, some of it broken, some
of it covered in dust, cluttered the space. So
Haratani, who serves on the college’s Board
of Visitors and Governors, decided to do
something about it: She bought a new Yamaha
drum kit for the room and donated it to the
college. The donation spurred plans to spruce
up the room, an effort now under way. The only
stipulation? Haratani gets first dibs on playing
the kit when she visits campus.
While Haratani has a long and distinguished
law career—she now works for the firm Morgan
Lewis in San Francisco—she also is an avid
drummer. It’s a skill she is continuing to hone.
“The thing I love to do more than anything in
life … the thing that gives me the greatest joy
is playing the drums,” she says.
Although Haratani has always been musically inclined, she didn’t begin to play the
drums until about three years ago. She was a
violinist growing up. At the same time, she had
an admiration for musician Karen Carpenter,
not only for her “gorgeous voice,” but for her
ability to play the drums while she sang. “I
wanted to be Karen Carpenter,” Haratani says.
When she arrived at the St. John’s Santa Fe
campus in the mid-1970s, Haratani enjoyed the
two years of music theory classes she took. She
also listened to music while she studied, saying
it helped her focus on her work. Haratani went
on to law school at University of California at
Davis. Since then, her law career has spanned
more than three decades. Her practice includes
state and federal law, including the Alien Tort
Statute, California’s Unfair Competition Law,
pharmaceutical and medical device liability
doctrines, and national mortgage foreclosure
issues. In her free time, Haratani enjoys ice
climbing and other outdoor activities. But a
few years ago, while Haratani was taking voice
lessons, she had an opportunity to begin taking
drum lessons and jumped at the chance.
Haratani quickly realized regular practice
was the key to improvement. She took lessons
online and in person, and began attending
camps with drummers from all over the world.
Rudiments. Paradiddles. Stick control.
Haratani practices as often as she can. “I’m a
lawyer—that’s not easy—but I think drumming
is way harder because it’s so slow to get good,”
Haratani says.
She eventually began playing in a band with
her coworkers, many of whom had lengthy
musical backgrounds. The band won a competition last summer and will be performing again
for a charity in June, raising money for legal aid
for domestic violence victims. “I’m a big sucker
for helping people,” Haratani says. Performing
with a band also has helped Haratani improve
her drumming skills. “There is no faster way to
get good than to play live as a band,” she says.
When Haratani travels she makes efforts
to find places to practice. That’s what brought
her to the rock room in Mellon Hall last fall.
She was in town for the BVG meeting when
she learned of the room, saw the condition
of the existing drum kit—it had been pieced
together—and decided to do something about
it. She hopes Johnnies take advantage of the
new kit and the practice space. “There’s nothing like playing in a space that’s nice,” Haratani
says. “It makes you up your game.”
Music is an important part of life as a
Johnnie, with classes, singing and instrumental
opportunities abound. Those opportunities
create a more well-rounded educational experience, Haratani says. “I think music heals the
soul, I really do.”
—Tim Pratt
—Samantha Ardoin (SF16)
10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 11
�12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
IN
FACTIOUS
TIMES:
LEADERSHIP
LEFT:
Lincoln's "Gettysburg Portrait" by Alexander Gardner, taken on November 8, 1863, two weeks before the Gettysburg Address, with photo of James Campbell, born in slavery, c.1936-38, Library of Congress
TUTOR VIEW: LINCOLN
LEADING
BY
TEACHING
by George Russell
The paradox of Abraham Lincoln’s appearance in the
United States’ sectional conflict becomes manifest if
one considers a passage written by James Madison in
Federalist No. 10. In that paper, Madison, apologizing
for the Constitution that he had authored, cautions
his reader to resist the impractical expectation that
in the clash of the interests that naturally spring up in
the republic, prudent and “enlightened statesmen” will
appear to resolve those conflicts. He explains that the
Constitution is a contrivance of sorts which will control
the effects of factions by blunting the worst tendencies
of majorities. In doing so, the Constitution will obviate
the need for the prudence of an “enlightened statesman”
to solve conflicts of interest as they arise and escalate.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 13
�TUTOR VIEW
M
adison, however, lived long
enough to see the precursor of
the sectional crisis and secession, the nullification crisis
of 1832, precipitated by John
Calhoun.1 He lived long enough
to see that factious men were
to arise in the republic who
ranked their interests above
the good of constitutional rule;
factious men who sought a
“union” in which the parts, the
states, superseded the whole,
the union of states. As those
men rejected constitutional
rule, they undermined the
implicit remedies of the Madisonian constitution, at
the same time as they speciously obfuscated what it
meant to be an American citizen.2 It was into that
turmoil that, Providence providing, the enlightened
statesman, Abraham Lincoln, entered.
Lincoln’s leadership displays itself in that wellknown political scene in which two crises intersect,
the moral crisis of possible slavery expansion and
the political crisis of secession. In the context of
those crises, Lincoln agrees with Madison that
Lincoln teaches that
government of the people
is government by majorities,
properly restrained, not
government of minorities
over majorities.
factious men are the great danger to the republic.
To counteract those factious men, Lincoln, from
the time of his earliest speeches, takes on the role
of a teacher. Indeed, leading by teaching, Lincoln,
both before he became president and during his
presidency, did his utmost to instruct the American
citizen on what it means to be an American.
14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Three major tenets emerge as central in Lincoln’s understanding of what it means to be an
American. First, one must be devoted to rule by
law. This tenet, he sets out in that early and precocious speech, Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum,
Springfield, Illinois. Second, according to Lincoln,
the true American believes in universal freedom
and a basic equality with respect to that freedom.
The principles of the founders as they expressed
them in the Declaration of Independence were
meant to be principles of the nation going forward.
Third and last, the true American believes that the
United States is a perpetual union of states.
Lincoln’s own exemplary submission to the law
is most easily discernable in his handling of the
two great factions of the sectional crisis, namely,
the radical Southern planters who claimed rights
to be able to move their property in human beings
everywhere in the Union, and the abolitionists,
who wanted to abolish the institution immediately. Lincoln maintained against both sides that
the law had to be respected against the factious
impulses of each. While he was in agreement with
the abolitionists that slavery was wrong, Lincoln
argued against the abolitionists that the institution
enjoyed legal protection in the states in which it
existed. As the institution enjoyed the sanction of
law, it had to be respected in those states. Against
the Southern planters, Lincoln cited as precedent
the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, in which the
institution was prohibited in those territories. In
his view, the same legal spirit that protects the
institution of slavery also limits slavery to where it
exists. Particularly in the factious times in which he
lived, Lincoln believed that adherence and submission to the law was the most needful thing for the
health of the republic.
In regard to the second tenet, that the true
American believes in universal freedom, especially
regardless of race, Lincoln’s view was mightily
contested by Southerners—and not only radicals.
As evidence of that contest, here citations from
one speech must suffice, the so-called “Cornerstone
Speech” of Alexander H. Stephens, an erstwhile
“Union man” from Georgia. In a speech that he
delivers on March 21, 1861, Stephens asserts the
following regarding the principles of the Declaration of Independence: “The prevailing ideas
entertained by Jefferson and most of the leading
statesmen at the time of the formation of the old
Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature, and that
it was wrong in principle, socially,
morally, and politically…[T]he general opinion of the men of that day
was that, somehow or other in the
order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass
away…Those ideas, however, were
fundamentally wrong. They rested
upon the assumption of the equality of races…This was an error…
Our new government is founded
upon exactly the opposite idea; its
foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth,
that the negro is not equal to the
white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his
natural and normal condition.”
In opposing those views and
other similar views, Lincoln never
seems very interested in such
statements as philosophical or
abstract statements. Rather he
contents himself with pointing out
and instructing his hearers in the
American way. In teaching that the
true American is an egalitarian, he
asserts the precise way in which he
understands all men to be equal; at
the same time, he likens the situation of the enslaved people to that
of the revolutionary era Americans.
Here I cite from two speeches:
First, from the Kansas-Nebraska
Act speech, at Peoria, Illinois, we
have a statement which repeats in
slightly different versions throughout Lincoln’s speeches. “…I hold
that…there is not reason in the
world why the negro is not entitled
to all the natural rights enumerated
in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that
he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I
agree with Judge [Stephen] Douglas he is not my
equal in many respects…But in the right to eat the
bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his
own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of any living man.”
Arguing in favor of universal equality, equality in
respect of property-engendering labor, Lincoln
rejects Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” doctrine
Madison termed Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification, the claim
that federal law could be “nullified” within a given state,
“preposterous and anarchical.”
1�
To be sure, the states in rebellion drew up a constitution.
However, they made sure that they explicitly asserted the
sovereignty of the individual states as supreme over the
central government. In effect, they did not ultimately submit
to the constitution and the government set up therein. They
rejected that sort of constitutional rule.
2�
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 15
�TUTOR VIEW
that slavery in the territories should not be a concern of American citizens outside the territories.
Lincoln maintains that the question of slavery was
the concern of every citizen. Every American citizen
should be concerned to keep slavery, the expropriation of labor and its fruits, on the road to extinction.
Second, from his debate with Douglas in Alton,
Illinois: “It is the eternal struggle between these
two principles—right and wrong—throughout the
world. They are the principles that have stood face
to face from the beginning of time; and will ever
Lincoln was a man with a
true moral compass. Whatever
he thought about the legality
of enslavement and the
necessity of upholding the
law, he knew and over time
persistently maintained that
in itself it was wrong.
continue to struggle. The one is the common right
of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.
It is the same that says, ‘You work and toil and
earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape
it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who
seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and
live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of
men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is
the same tyrannical principle.”
Whereas Stephens understands the founders to
be misguided in their adherence to the principles of
the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln maintains
that these are the ideas and principles for the sake
of which Americans shed their blood and gave their
lives; these principles are the founders’ legacy to
the republic for all times. He sets forth the view
that the founders “meant to set up a standard
16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
maxim for free society, which should be familiar to
all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly
attained, constantly approximated, and thereby
constantly spreading and deepening its influence,
and augmenting the happiness and value of life to
all people of all colors everywhere.” The assertion
that “‘all men are created equal’ was placed in the
Declaration…for future use. Its authors meant it to
be…a stumbling block to those who in after times
might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.” The principles, then, were
not merely to be held but to be lived by. To repeat,
the true American believes in universal freedom:
that is what Lincoln taught.
The third tenet of Lincoln’s Americanism is the
belief in the perpetuity of the union of the states
in the United States. What that amounts to, as is
known, is that there is no right of secession possessed by the citizens of the states. Lincoln saw the
secessionist view of the 19th century as a rejection
of the principle of majority rule. Lincoln agreed with
Madison that restraints needed to be imposed on
majorities in order to protect rights of minorities;
however, he also believed that once those restraints
were in place, the minority party must follow the
lead of the majority or dissolution of popular government ensues on the basis of minority secession.
Lincoln teaches that government of the people is
government by majorities, properly restrained, not
government of minorities over majorities.
There are those who might question Lincoln’s
qualifications as a teacher of what it means to be
an American. Lincoln was a man who had faults,
and because of his general candor, visible faults.
His views were at times what we would call today
“racist” views. For example, he acknowledged the
social inferiority of black people as a fact, and said
that he was not inclined to raise their status, or
change that state of affairs. Again and again, in
dealing with black Americans, he catered to the
feelings and prejudices of his white constituents
rather than treat the blacks equitably. Repeatedly,
he maintained that enslavement in the Southern states was legally sanctioned and protected
although he believed and taught that the enslavement of human beings is both wrong by nature and
un-American. In his speculations about emancipation, Lincoln for a long time favored the deportation of black Americans from the country. Charges
such as these continue to be leveled by some who
reflect on Lincoln’s career.
However, in the face of his faults and defects,
Lincoln was a man with a true moral compass.
Whatever he thought about the legality of enslavement and the necessity of upholding the law, he
knew and over time persistently maintained that in
itself it was wrong. Whatever he observed about
the social equality of blacks and whites, he knew
and repeatedly argued that politically, blacks and
whites were all fundamentally equal—that is, that
they all had rightful claims on the fruits of their
own respective labor. And Lincoln, in accord with
that true moral compass, knew that, as he put it
once when referring to Douglas, a man “may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong;” Lincoln
could and did change his mind.
If we come back to the matter of Lincoln’s attitude toward the black American, we can say the
following: Twice Lincoln gave personal audiences
to Frederick Douglass at the White House, once
in the summer of 1863 to hear Douglass’s complaint about his (Lincoln’s) tardy response to the
way in which the Confederates were treating captured black soldiers; and again a year later, when
Lincoln wanted Douglass’s opinion on the lack of
movement by the enslaved people who had been
legally freed. Lincoln came to see that these
United States were the true home of the latest
posterity of those Africans forcibly transported
here as long ago as 250 years. However tardily,
he came to see that the Americans of African
descent deserved to fight for their freedom. And
thereafter, he saw, too, that the darker-skinned
soldiers fighting to preserve the country founded
on freedom and equality did not deserve deportation to some foreign land. Rather, they deserved
citizenship in that homeland where through them
and in them a new freedom was being born. It
was in changing his mind in the ways that he did
that Lincoln really indicts those who clung so
tenaciously to what they knew to be wrong. At
the same time, in doing so, he exhibited, as he so
often did in his speeches, the kind of nobility that
his most ardent opponents wanted to claim for
themselves but could not.
In those exemplary ways discussed here, Lincoln
did all that he could to preserve Madison’s constitutional rule by trying to teach his fellow citizens
what it means to be an American. Paradoxically,
he appeared on the earth in the right place at the
right time to preserve and protect a constitution
constructed to provide against the fortuity of
prudence in human affairs.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 17
�LEADERSHIP
Protector of
Our Program
Annapolis President
Chris Nelson (SF70)
Leaves a Mighty Legacy
By Tim Pratt
When Chris Nelson was a child, he often found
himself engaged in battle. Tomato plant stakes
from the family garden were used as swords.
Trashcan lids served as shields. The rug in
the living room was the river Skamandros as
Nelson and his siblings re-enacted the Trojan
War from the Iliad, bouncing on furniture and
avoiding the water below. “I slew countless
Trojans, over and over,” Nelson says with a
smile. “My siblings were very accommodating.”
DEMETRIOS FOTOS
While as a 12-year-old Nelson immersed
himself in the Iliad and Euclid’s Elements,
his journey with the great books of Western
civilization was just beginning.
18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 19
�LEADERSHIP
It was a trek that took him to St. John’s College
as a student in the 1960s, to Chicago for a lengthy
law career, and eventually back to his alma mater to
serve as president. During that time, Nelson became
a champion for the liberal arts, played a prominent
role in higher education at the national level, and
oversaw vast improvements at the college. But now,
Nelson is preparing to step down as leader of the
place that has been a part of his life since childhood.
He will retire in June after 26 years as Annapolis
president. “Chris is kind of the rock on which the
college has operated for over a quarter of a century,”
says Mike Peters, who served as president of the St.
John’s Santa Fe campus from 2005 through January
2016. “He leaves a pretty amazing legacy.”
TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY
The Early Years
Nelson is an outspoken
advocate of the liberal arts.
Nelson’s connection to St. John’s came as a “birthright,” tutor and former Dean Michael Dink said during a recent Saturday Seminar event in Annapolis
held in Nelson’s honor. Nelson’s father graduated
from St. John’s in 1947—a decade after Stringfellow
Barr and Scott Buchanan founded the college’s great
books curriculum—and was a long-serving member
and chair of St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Although Nelson’s
father didn’t talk a lot about
St. John’s at home, Nelson
says his childhood was permeated with elements of
the Program, from refighting the Trojan War with
his siblings to redrawing
the diagrams from Euclid’s
Elements, with and without
drafting instruments.
In high school, Nelson grew
tired of the lectures given by
his teachers, who would tell
students “what the answer
was and what to think,” he
says. He knew that if he
attended St. John’s, he would
be able to explore topics for
himself. Nelson arrived in
Annapolis in 1966. He never applied anywhere else. “I
was one of those people who come to St. John’s with
the attitude that the opening question only needs
to be ‘Ready, set, go.’ The desire to try to make the
books we were reading our own, and to take them in
and accept or reject the things in them as judgments
we were making for ourselves, was just thrilling.”
20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Nelson spent part of his time in Annapolis, where
he was an accomplished athlete and active in student government, before transferring to the Santa Fe
campus and graduating in 1970. College board chair
Ron Fielding (A70)—one of Nelson’s classmates, a fellow intramural sports captain, and officer in student
government—says he saw flashes of Nelson’s potential when they were students. “The leadership aspect
is without question,” Fielding says. “He was a natural
leader of the athletics teams and … of the polity.”
Following Nelson’s graduation, it was off to law
school at the University of Utah, where he founded
and directed the university’s student legal services
program. He graduated in 1973.
Nelson practiced law for 18 years in Chicago and
was chairman of his law firm when he was tapped
to become president of St. John’s in 1991. He had
served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors since 1986.
A Natural Leader
When Nelson returned to campus as president in
the summer of 1991, he faced a budget deficit and
aging facilities. Nelson immediately got to work,
coming up with a list of projects and working with
former Vice President of Development Jeff Bishop
and Treasurer Bud Billups to raise funds, make “prudent” cuts and balance the budget, he says. “Those
guys saved this college,” says Bishop’s wife, Sue.
In the two-plus decades since then, new dormitories
and other structures have been erected; every building on campus has been renovated; even the grounds
have improved. The four-year graduation rate, which
was 36 percent when Nelson arrived, has nearly
doubled. Enrollment applications also have increased
in recent years following a slight downturn after the
economic crisis of 2008—a crisis that affected enrollment at liberal arts colleges all over the country.
But some things, like the St. John’s Program, have
remained largely the same, with students now reading many of the same works as their predecessors.
That is one of the things Nelson takes most pride in
as he looks back on his career. “I think it’s protecting as much as I could the community of learning at
the college,” Nelson says. “I’d say that has been most
important to me.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been changes. Nelson is excited about the recent focuses on biology
and quantum mechanics in senior lab. A new quantum mechanics lab was recently completed in the
basement of Mellon Hall. Nelson says he has tried
to give faculty and staff the autonomy they need
to be successful. At the same time, he says he was
sure to question and discuss the recommendations
and decisions being made. “Everybody on the faculty has ideas about how to improve the work of the
academic program in the classroom,” Nelson says.
“I’ve wanted them to feel that they could continue
to work on the Program. I’ve wanted to provide as
much freedom from constraint as I could.”
Others share a similar view of Nelson’s management style. Dink, who served as dean from 20052010, said in his Saturday Seminar comments that
Nelson was friendly and supportive during his term.
Deans are drawn from the faculty for five-year terms,
which means they often come with no prior administrative experience. “But Chris well understood the
virtue, indeed the necessity of this practice, and did
everything in his power both to assist with the learning curve and to respect and support the authority of the dean,” says Dink. Leo Pickens (A78), who
served for years as athletic director before working
as alumni director and now director of Leadership
Annual Gifts, describes Nelson as “a great listener.”
“His door has always been open,” says Pickens. “He’s
very approachable, he’s extremely fair-minded … and
I think it became very clear early on that he was
dedicated to the college.”
“� t was clear when we met and has only
I
been reinforced during our time working
together that Chris’s affection for the
college is deep and fierce and abiding.
He has been a St. John’s force of nature.”
—Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt
The Man
Like many others who have known Nelson over
the years, Pickens has stories to tell. He attended
St. John’s with Nelson’s younger brother, Ted, and
recalls hearing about Chris’s intramural sports
awards and team championships when he was a student. “I had not met Chris, but had only heard tales
of his athletic prowess,” Pickens says with a laugh.
Having witnessed Nelson’s skills on the badminton
court when he returned as president in 1991, Pickens
took note of Nelson’s resilience and coolness under
pressure. “Those kinds of qualities he demonstrated
as an athlete, even under the most difficult of circumstances … are qualities he also demonstrated as
a president here.”
Pickens got to see more of that determination
on a cross-country bike ride he took with Nelson,
Bishop, former Santa Fe Vice President for Development Jeff Morgan, and Bob Gray in 1993. Sue
Bishop saw it, too, as she drove the support van.
She and Pickens fondly recall Nelson “flying” down
steep mountain roads, a smile on his face. And while
the group had agreed not to talk about college business on the trip, Nelson would read Gilgamesh out
loud during rest stops as his colleagues relaxed in
the shade. “He demonstrated on that ride just how
strong of a human he is,” says Pickens. Through
it all, Nelson has maintained his love of the great
books, often quoting passages from works he has
read over the years. And he often invites students,
faculty, and staff to his home for special occasions.
Some who spoke of Nelson recalled lengthy conversations over a glass of wine, or of Nelson’s love
for chopping wood, or of the pleasure he gets from
working in the garden. There were stories of Nelson, while still a student, presiding over a hearing
for fellow Johnnies who were involved in a series of
food fights. And there were stories of Nelson going
out of his way to help faculty, staff, and students,
leading study groups, and teaching classes. Nelson’s
dedication to the college stands out, says Peters. “I
think Chris bleeds Johnnie black and orange,” says
Peters. “He is going to be a hard act to follow, but
he has smoothed the path for those folks who are
coming after him.”
Above: Leo Pickens,
Jeff Morgan, Bob Gray,
Chris Nelson, and Jeff
Bishop wearing bicycling
outfits, medals and
wreathes, and holding a
photo of Albert Einstein
on a bicycle, outside of
McDowell Hall in 1993.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 21
�LEADERSHIP
“� e want to have people who
W
can think for themselves rather
than being ... useful tools for
someone else’s purposes. So
that’s asking each individual to
take responsibility for the public
good. Each of us has a leadership
responsibility in that respect.”
A National Voice
Nelson has served as an ambassador for the college, traveling around the country, giving talks—he
estimates he has given more than 1,000 since he
took office—on issues like government regulation
in higher education. He has met with lawmakers,
donors, and others; the National Association of
Independent Colleges and Universities on February 1 announced Nelson as chairman of its board of
directors. And two years ago he received the Association’s highest honor, the Henry Paley Award for his
“unfailing service toward the students and faculty of
independent colleges and universities.”
Nelson is well-known as a proponent of the liberal
arts. A liberal arts education creates more thoughtful,
well-rounded people, he says. “We want to have people
who can think for themselves rather than being driven
to, or useful tools for, someone else’s purposes,” he
says. “So that’s asking each individual to take responsibility for the public good. Each of us has a leadership
responsibility in that respect. To get there, we need
to cultivate the arts of intellect and imagination, and
that’s exactly what we do at St. John’s College.”
Nelson’s 26 years of work toward reaching that
goal are commendable, Fielding says. An American
Council on Education survey found the average term
of a college president is less than 10 years. “There’s
22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
something comforting about having a leader who
doesn’t aspire to do anything other than making
this current institution better,” Fielding says. “That
is uncommon, whether it is a politician in a political
office or a college president. It’s very special.”
Senior Alina Myer, who served as president of the
student Delegate Council in 2016, says the college
is lucky to have someone as dedicated to the liberal
arts as Nelson. “It’s kind of an incredible thing to
have such accessibility to someone who has worked
tirelessly and on such a large scale to ensure that
people understand the value of what we do here at St.
John’s,” says Myer. “He is the first person who speaks
to us as Johnnies at convocation, and for my class he
will be the last, as our commencement speaker. He is
emblematic of our St. John’s experience.”
The Future
After Nelson retires, he plans to travel, visit family,
and catch up on some reading. “There’s a book in
there somewhere too,” he says. He hopes to relax a
bit after a career which included an 18-month stint as
president of the Santa Fe campus and often found him
working seven days a week. But Nelson won’t be completely absent from campus. He has been appointed a
member of the teaching faculty and says he will make
himself available to lead seminars, preceptorials, or
anything else asked of him. “For the sake of intellectual engagement, it will be good to spend some time
with the students,” says Nelson. “I get a great deal
of satisfaction out of the study groups I have now
when I’m not teaching a regular class, which I used to
do, and I can’t imagine not having that intellectual
vibrancy in my life going forward.”
Left: Nelson on
back campus, with
College Creek in the
background.
DEMETRIOS FOTOS
DEMETRIOS FOTOS
—Chris Nelson
A toast from Eva Brann (H89),
tutor and former dean, in honor of
Chris Nelson, at Homecoming 2016:
I’ve heard it said that a proper toast begins by
making people laugh. I’m feeling a little more
like crying than laughing myself. And moreover,
those glorious six years when I worked with
Chris to make this college of ours stay itself and
be what it was meant to be, weren’t as productive of funny stories as happy solutions. Yet I do
remember an incident which, when I told it to my
fellow deans at other schools, aroused laughter—
incredulous laughter. So I’ll tell it here.
Some of you may remember Miss Beate von
Oppen, a fellow tutor, my friend, and next-door
neighbor. She always collected more books than
she had places for. So I persuaded her to get yet
another bookcase. We picked up one of those
assemble-it-yourself cheapies, and, of course, no
picture in the instruction booklet matched reality,
and no word in it was in our human vocabulary. I
was dean then, and when in major trouble, such
as over-budgeting by thousands, I looked for salvation in one direction: to our president. So what
did I do? I phoned Chris at home, and within half
an hour he and Joyce were at the door, and within
another half hour the rickety thing stood erect and
ready. This, I’m here to tell you, was not the relation I used to hear about at deanish get-togethers.
What was normal was open warfare, uneasy
peace, all the way down to cowed submission.
The thing about Chris, an unusual thing, is that
he knows how to govern. There is not a smidgen
of pretentiousness in him, which means that he
meets ready respect for his decisions. There isn’t
even a ghost of power assertion, which means that
authority accrues to him naturally. There is no taste
in him at all for cliques, which means he’s everyone’s president. There isn’t even a little bubble
of hot air in him, which means that when he says
something is so, it’s because he’s costed it out,
or remembered it correctly, or really thought about
it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if after dinner he
gently lets me know what facts I’ve got wrong.
Chris Nelson and
Eva Brann overlook
the campus, as they
did when Chris first
became president.
When I spoke of the years I was dean as glorious,
I meant it. We were known as “the four B’s and
the C”: our beloved Jeff Bishop and fondly remembered Bud Billups and me, the eternally amateurish
dean. And then Chris, who made it possible for us
so-called administrators to live up to the meaning
of the word, which is “to minister to” those in our
charge. Or better put, to be fulfilled by our offices
in Aristotle’s sense of happiness, the soul at work
in behalf of a good thing: the Program, the folks
busy here in its service, and the students who’ll
soon be our “nurslings,” alumni in Latin.
I’ll end with a vision I’ve held in my imagination
for a long time. Very near the beginning of his
presidency, Chris and I were standing on the quad
looking down from the top of the stairs onto our
irreplaceable bronze steal – the one that promises
to make free adults of children by means of books
and laboratories – and out across the back campus.
Chris heaved a deep sigh and said words to this
effect: “Here is where I want to spend my life.” And
so he has, and we cannot thank him enough for it.
So please raise your glasses in a toast to our
incomparable president, our Chris.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 23
�BY
PA
UL
A
NO
VA
SH
GL MO
AD D
ER
IA N
TO
R
LEADERSHIP
Michelle Urban (SF08) is convinced there
is major value in having to figure things out.
“When I was at St. John’s writing a paper, I
usually wouldn’t know how to prove what
I wanted to,” Urban says. “But then it would
come together—and succeeding at something
you have struggled with is a great feeling.” It
is a philosophy that translates well to Urban’s
current situation as an entrepreneur running
a tech startup. As CEO of Albuquerque-based
Pressure Analysis Company (PAC), which designs and manufactures wireless technology
to track head injuries in athletes, Urban says
that her biggest challenge is inexperience.
“We’re creating an innovative product in an
emerging field,” she says. “Every day there’s
something new we need to learn how to do.”
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 25
�A
mid increasing concerns about
sports-related head injuries
–
particularly those that affect
younger players – the company’s
idea is timely. According to
a 2016 article published on Sports Illustrated’s
website, si.com, the rate of youth concussions rose
500 percent between 2010 and 2014.
Although high school-age athletes are most
likely to suffer concussions and the highest
percentage of injuries occur playing football,
Urban says the problem spans a wide range
of ages and sports. “There are complexities
at different levels. Younger players have not
been hit over and over yet, so having cumu-
lative data can be helpful for parents and
physicians,” she says. “And coaches of older
players need to be able to see exactly where
they’ve been hit and how hard, so they know
if someone needs to be pulled out of a game
and examined.”
Urban and her partners have developed
The Duke City Gladiators put Urban’s SmackCap technology to the test.
a tool to help. Called the SmackCap, it
resembles the slightly slouchy skullcap that
is popular with hipsters and other fashionminded individuals. But inside, SmackCap
is an array of pressure sensors, connected
in a spiderweb pattern, that can track every
impact to a player’s head in real time and
send the data to a wireless device such as
a cellphone or iPad. Besides showing if and
how badly a player may be injured over time,
SmackCap technology also has potential to
change the techniques coaches recommend.
“For instance, if a kid is getting hit repeatedly
in the same spot, the coach might notice that
he’s leading with his head,” says Urban.
Urban grew up in Santa Fe and was homeschooled. Although her first job during high
school was as part of the St. John’s campus
Buildings and Grounds crew, she did not
initially consider applying there. But she
says she loved the curriculum and skills she
learned as a Johnnie—and they were a com-
plement to her graduate studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM). “In business
school I was the one who was always asking
questions and analyzing during group projects and discussions,” she says. “I think some
people found it annoying, but I was used to
thinking deeply and critically.”
It was at UNM that Urban became interested in entrepreneurship. After earning
her MBA she did contract work for the New
Mexico economic development department,
and while creating resources for businesses
she realized she had skills she wanted to
leverage. “I was writing website content on
advice about how to start a business, and
I thought, I know all of that,” Urban says.
She wanted to do something that contributes
good to people’s lives, and became aware of
the problem of head injuries in sports. “It’s an
issue that for a long time was shoved under a
rug,” she says. “It seemed logical that having
technology to track even smaller level hits,
and provide a history of all hits taken, would
be valuable to physicians and researchers as
well as parents.”
Urban met her partners in PAC at a networking event. Together she and Lori Upham,
who handles business activities, and Scott
Sibbett, a UNM research professor who created the SmackCap technology, are engaged
in a hands-on, collaborative effort.
“When we built our first prototypes, Lori
handled the fabric, Scott the electronics and
laptop software, and I assembled the sensor array,” Urban says. A pilot partnership
with the Duke City Gladiators, a professional
indoor football team based in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, had players wearing SmackCaps during their practices and games and
allowed the PAC team to conduct field tests
and collect data.
At the 2016 South by Southwest (SXSW)
technology conference held in Austin, Texas,
Urban participated in a gathering of women
entrepreneurs who were pitching to investors; with fewer than 3 percent of tech companies run by women, she is one of an elite
AY
D
Y ’S ING ED
ER RE TH NE
�EV HE E E
“ T M W N O.”
O W AR D
S E E O
N OL T
T OW
H
cadre. “It was a great
opportunity—the first
time we were able to present about the company outside of New Mexico,” she says.
SmackCap is available for preorder with the target of making the
product available to consumers in 2018;
Urban and her partners are excited about
the future of the company’s idea. “Things are
moving so fast—we’re marketing, talking to
investors, dealing with intellectual property
issues, and expanding our team. I’m not sure
how it’s all going to work, but I’m sure we’ll
be able to deal with it.”
KEVIN LANGE
LEADERSHIP
Michelle Urban (SF08) protects athletes’ heads by using hers.
26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 27
�BIBLIOFILE
ROBERT WOLF
(CLASS OF 1967)
Building the
Agricultural City
S
ince moving to the small town of Decorah,
Iowa, in 1991, former Chicago Tribune
columnist Robert Wolf has been concerned
with the decline of rural America. The upper Midwest’s Driftless bioregion, of which
Decorah is part, once easily fed its inhabitants with its
agriculture and fishing; now, despite much of the area’s
being farmland, it must import most of its food and
other manufactured goods. “I began to think,” writes
Wolf, “about how such a region could escape
the trauma of another national depression,
and realized only a region that was self-reliant and relatively self-sufficient could do this.”
How, then, to create such a region? The
solution, Wolf believes, lies in the concept
of “the agricultural city,” coined by Chicago
architect Joe Lambke. In Lambke’s vision,
rather than viewing themselves as a series of
towns or villages separated by fields, several
rural communities would join together to
form one “city” with multiple nodes of population. Cooperating rather than competing
would allow the inhabitants of an agricultural
city to develop a self-supporting economy less
dependent on centralized corporate interests.
Wolf first put forth these ideas in a
six-part editorial for Iowa Public Radio in
1994, “Developing Regional, Rural Economies”; the piece won the Sigma Delta Chi
Award and Bronze Medal from the Society
of Professional Journalists for Best Radio
Editorial, and was reprinted in the Des
Moines Register. Now he has expanded this
work into a book, Building the Agricultural
City (Ruskin Press, 2016), whose publication costs were raised on the crowdfunding
website IndieGoGo. Crowdfunding itself is
an example of the democratic, grassroots
actions that Wolf feels “democratize our
economy” and help decentralization.
Building the Agricultural City outlines
several practical steps towards building a self-sufficient regional economy: “a
community development bank, numerous
worker-owned cooperatives, and one or two
closed-loop agricultural systems to provide
fresh [fruit] and vegetables year round. Each
municipality would have a publicly owned
utility powered by renewable sources.” Each
of these tools has been successfully implemented by communities around the world.
Writers, artists, and
musicians are vital forces
to “[foster] a regional
consciousness, by offering
dying rural towns an
alternative to bitterness
and passive acceptance
of a System that works
against them.”
28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Locally sourced food, trendy on upscale urban
menus, might seem easy to achieve for the agricultural
city; unfortunately, most American farmland is owned
by corporations who ship crops out of the region in
which they are grown. Wolf believes small farmers can
maximize their local impact by turning to “closedloop” agricultural systems, “in which the waste from
one part of the system [becomes] the nutrient for
another”—e.g., Chicago’s The Plant raises tilapia, and
removes their waste from the water to use as fertilizer
for edible plants. The clean water is then recirculated
into the fish tanks. Ironically, Wolf finds examples of
such projects only in cities.
Another urban innovation that Wolf recommends in
a rural context is that of the community development
bank. The first of these in the U.S. was founded in
1973 by four black friends in the South Shore area of
Chicago, which was losing capital as whites moved out
of the neighborhood. Its investors included “nonprofits,
churches, banks, insurance companies, community
organizations, and individuals,” and the bank “invested
in minority-owned businesses and financed apartment
renovation that created affordable housing.” Placing community before profit, banks like ShoreBank,
Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, and the Bank of North
Dakota, help keep small economies strong.
These economies can be further strengthened, Wolf
argues, by the creation of worker-owned cooperatives,
modeled on European examples. The Emilia Romagna
region of Italy, for instance, has approximately 8,100
cooperatives, in which businesses producing the same
product collaborate rather than compete—and it is this
power of collaboration that allows them to compete at
a global level and enjoy a high quality of life.
One last piece of the puzzle, Wolf writes in an
epilogue, is the necessary re-emergence of regional
arts and literature, “almost instinctively understood to
be the best means available for developing regionalist
sensibility.” Writers, artists, and musicians are vital
forces to “[foster] a regional consciousness, by offering
dying rural towns an alternative to bitterness and passive acceptance of a System that works against them.”
In this way, the humanities can add their persuasive
power to advances in science and technology, Wolf
hopes, in order to build “a cooperative society in which
meaningful, remunerative work is available to all…a
culture rooted in the land and created with tools that
enable a people to live harmoniously with the land.”
—Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
Rousseau’s Rejuvenation
of Political Philosophy:
A New Introduction
By Nelson Lund (A74)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
How does one revive the ideas of a major philosophic
critic of the Enlightenment era, a figure both widely
misunderstood and widely influential? Nelson Lund’s
new book, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political
Philosophy, aims to do just that by introducing
readers to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thoughtful
political wisdom. In reading Rousseau authentically,
“as Rousseau read Plato,” Lund, a professor at George
Portico
By Sarah Stickney (A04)
Emrys Press, 2016
The 26 poems collected in Sarah Stickney’s new book
of poetry, Portico, are inspired, in part, by her love
for the Italian city of Bologna. With an artist’s eye
and a passionate heart, she observes the beauty and
wonder found in life’s everyday moments—young men
on Vespas buzzing in the streets, steam rising from
a bowl of pasta, cedar trees bending in the breeze—
and she takes the reader along for a soulful ride. In
“Song” Stickney writes, “From under a carved arch /
this morning Bologna brought me a woman / whose
Plato Symposium or Drinking Party:
Translation with Introduction,
Glossary, Essay, and Appendices
By Eva Brann (H89), Peter Kalkavage,
and Eric Salem (A77)
Focus Philosophical Library, 2017
A two-year labor of love, this new edition of Plato’s
most popular dialogue, Symposium or Drinking Party,
marks the fourth Plato translation by this trio of St.
John’s tutors. While grasping the mechanics of the
ancient Greek language requires a certain aptitude,
the translators delve deeply to explore the tone
and nuance of the original text, thus enhancing the
Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, helps
shed light on what Rousseau can do for mainstream
political issues, including feminism, religion in secular
society, and the behavior of the American constitutional
government. Rousseau meditated on fundamental
human issues such as the soul’s nature and the nexus
between our more primitive origins and civilization’s
achievements. Even so, the political reflections of
those meditations have not been taken seriously. Lund
endeavors to show readers that Rousseau, like his
muse Plato, is a not simply a dogmatist, and that we
ought to refrain from hastily attributing substantive
conclusions to these great authors.
—Aisha Shahbaz (A19)
hair-loss and stiff perm met / at the skeleton of a leaf
and a branch of dried coral.” The poems, several of
which first appeared under different titles in journals,
weave in and out of time and echo certain themes:
desire and loss, comfort and longing, the familiar
and the uncharted. Throughout the book there is a
subtle, universal reminder that our own shared human
experience is fleeting and meant to be embraced.
reading experience. As with the trio’s previous Plato
translations, the end result is faithful to the original
Greek vocabulary and syntax, and artfully transmits
Plato’s humor, drama, and artistry. In addition, the
trio pays careful attention when providing English
translations of the Greek rhymes, ensuring that the
text is pleasing when also read aloud. The volume is
sure to satisfy Plato scholars; however, it is friendly
to newcomers, too, offering a number of aids—an
introduction that sets the scene and introduces the
main characters; an interpretive essay; a select
bibliography of both classic and contemporary works;
and two illustrated appendices—to help readers
navigate this translation.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 29
�For & About
ALUMNI
PIRAEUS 2017
SAVE THE DATE!
Annapolis: September 8-10
Santa Fe: September 15-17
At Homecoming, new memories and
deepened friendships emerge, as the past
and present come together. Share your
love for St. John’s College by celebrating
Homecoming 2017 with the special people
in your life—family, friends, and the SJC
campus community. Registration opens on
June 2. Visit sjc.edu/homecoming to register
and view the full schedule of events.
Highlights from the weekend in both
Annapolis and Santa Fe include:
Seminars: A wide variety of seminars are
offered for all alumni. Reunite with fellow
alumni around the seminar table and
engage in great conversations.
All-College Graduate Institute 50th
Anniversary Celebration: In honor of
the 50th anniversary of the Graduate
Institute, the college community is invited
to a reception to celebrate the history of
the Graduate Institute and GI alumni.
CAST YOUR
VOTE
in the 2017 Alumni
Association Election:
May 15-June 2
This June, the SJC Alumni Association
will elect a new president, six at-large
members of the Alumni Association Board
of Directors, and one alumni-elected
member of the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors. Alumni will also consider
an amendment to the by-laws to address
recent changes in the organization of the
Alumni Relations Office.
Pub Trivia: Form a team with your fellow
alumni to test your mettle while enjoying
some pub style fare and drinks. In addition
to bragging rights, prizes will be conferred
to the winners.
Alumni and Student Networking
Luncheon: Whether you are well into
your career or searching for a new one,
our networking luncheon has something
for everyone. Share your career guidance
with curious students and/or network with
fellow alumni over lunch. Meet our career
counselors, and learn about resources that
are available to students and alumni.
All SJC alumni are encouraged to
participate in these elections. Early voting
by fax, mail, or online ballot will open
on May 15 and continue through June 2.
The election will be held during the 2017
Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) on June
4 at the Santa Fe campus. (See next page
for ALF details.)
Accommodations
Alumni are
encouraged to
book their accommodations early.
On-campus housing
is not available in
Annapolis or Santa
Fe, though alumni
receive special SJC
rates at the hotels
listed below. Be sure
to contact hotels directly for specific rate
information; please note that there is a
home Navy football game schedule during
Homecoming weekend in Annapolis.
Annapolis: SJC rates offered at Historic
Inns of Annapolis, O’Callaghan Hotel, and
the Westin.
Santa Fe: SJC rates offered at Sage Inn,
Hotel Santa Fe, and Drury Inn on the Plaza.
Contact
alumni@sjc.edu | 410-972-4518
At Piraeus, St. John’s College welcomes
alumni back to the seminar table. Held on
both campuses June 8-11, Piraeus’ tutorled seminars provide an opportunity to
relive the rigorous classroom experience
over the course of a leisurely weekend.
Named for the port city that served Athens,
Piraeus brings alumni from all career
paths and geographical areas back to
their educational roots. Said Thucydides
of ancient Piraeus, “From all the lands,
everything enters.” In that spirit, we invite
you to bring your voice back to the seminar
table and share in the reflection, discussion,
and community that Piraeus offers. Upcoming Piraeus offerings include:
In Annapolis:
The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, led
by Zena Hitz (A95) and Eric Salem (A77)
In Santa Fe:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by
James Joyce, led by Grant Franks (A77)
and Maggie McGuinness
Selected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, led
by Michael Wolfe (SF94)
Tuition: $655 (includes five seminars,
opening and closing receptions, breakfasts
and lunches, and Saturday night social
gathering). Recent alumni from the
classes of 2007-2016 may receive a
discounted rate of $475. On-campus
Housing: $180 for three nights, June 8, 9,
and 10. Housing available on June 7 and
11 for an additional $60 per night. Dinner
in the dining hall is included.
• Diversifying regional chapter events and attracting
new participants
• St. John’s admissions efforts, staffing college fairs,
and the Adopt-a-School program
Online and paper ballots must be
received by June 2, 2017.
Online:
http:/
/community.stjohnscollege.edu
For an online ballot, log in and select
the link under Notice of Elections and
Annual Meeting.
30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Alumni Association Mission
To strive for the continued excellence of our
college and fellow alumni by celebrating our
distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared
support and benefit, and fostering a culture
of intellect, generosity, and service.
For more information and to register
online, visit http://community.stjohns
college.edu/piraeus or call 505-984-6114.
training will be provided, including sessions on:
By Mail or Fax:
Request a Paper Ballot
Contact Sarah Palacios, director of
Alumni Relations, at 505-984-6121
or sarah.palacios@sjc.edu.
• An overview of the Career Services strategic plan
for the upcoming year
HOW TO VOTE
In Person:
Alumni Leadership Forum 2017
The Association’s Annual Meeting will
be held during ALF weekend on Sunday,
June 4, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on the
Santa Fe campus.
Two offerings in Annapolis—The Aeneid
by Virgil, led by Tom May and David
Townsend, and Persuasion by Jane Austen,
led by Eva Brann (H89) and Erica Beall
(A07)—are already fully subscribed. To
place your name on the waiting list,
please contact the Alumni Office at
alumni@sjc.edu or 505-984-6114.
This three-day program gives the college’s most active
volunteers a forum to come together, share successes and
challenges, and learn best practices from one another. It also
provides an intimate opportunity to hear from the presidents
and college leadership on the evolving strategic plan for
St. John’s, and to learn more about ways in which you can
be of significant service in these efforts. In-depth
• The capital campaign, peer-to-peer giving efforts,
and building a culture of philanthropy
In appreciation for your service to the college, the
Alumni Leadership Forum is offered at no cost.
To register and view information, visit sjc.edu/alf.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 31
�PHILANTHROPY
ALUMNI NOTES
Gifts to Inspire
1952
Ron Fielding (A70) and
Warren Spector (A81)
Seed the Ground for
a New Century of a
Flourishing St. John’s
St. John’s experienced history in the making last fall when Ron Fielding (A70) and
Warren Spector (A81) each pledged $25
million gifts to the college. The twin gifts
are each the largest individual gifts ever
donated to St. John’s. “This commitment is
our rallying cry to fellow board members,
alumni, and friends at the dawn of our
capital campaign,” Fielding said. “It’s a
signal of confidence in the college’s direction and a call to action. While $50 million
is an important foundation for the future
of St. John’s College, it is only the beginning. We are calling on fellow supporters
of the Program to come forward, and we
hope to inspire gifts both large and small.”
The gift was announced November 5 at
the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors meeting in Annapolis, where Fielding
and Spector expressed enthusiasm for the
college’s recent progress toward financial
sustainability through fiscal prudence,
strategic management of the endowment,
and attention to student revenues and philanthropy. The two said that the board and
alumni must now step forward to protect
the institution for generations to come and
acknowledged the sacrifices that have been
made by staff and tutors.
“Belt-tightening has been painful,” Spector said. “But the commitment of staff and
faculty has given supporters of the college
the confidence that we are dealing with our
challenges. Now it’s the job of the board,
alumni, and friends to take the next steps
in ensuring the integrity of the Program.
It’s an exciting moment: for me, this means
giving future generations the opportunity
to grapple with problems of great complexity, of viewing problems through the long
Pierre Grimes (A) published two
articles in 2016, “The Philosophy
of the Self” and “The Betrayal of
Philosophy: Rediscovering the
Self in Plato’s Parmenides, in
Philosophical Practice: Journal of
the APPA (American Philosophical
Practitioners Association).
1955
Helge Leeuwenburgh, husband of
Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh (A),
died on January 10 after a long
illness. During the 1980s, Carolyn
and Helge arranged St. John’s
tours to Europe and China.
“St. John’s is unlike any
other college in the world,
and its Program is a
precious, singular gem.”
—Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt
lens of human history, and of understanding that seemingly new problems are
actually part of an ancient continuum. The
Program gave me comfort in addressing
challenges and finding answers where no
research was yet available. What could be
more valuable than that?”
Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt
thanked Fielding and Spector for their
extraordinary leadership, adding, “Our
task now is to live up to their faith in the
administration and faculty—to continue
to make the hard choices that allow us to
focus on what is really important here: our
students and their success.”
True to St. John’s history and values,
Fielding’s and Spector’s support will
primarily be directed toward strengthening the Program and ensuring that all
students with a desire to attend can afford
to do so. Both gifts will be made as cash
and not estate gifts. The largest share will
be designated for the college’s endowment,
where it will provide ongoing support
32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Ron Fielding and Warren Spector
for academics, financial aid, and career
services. A smaller share will go towards
the Annual Fund, thereby ensuring that
donors’ gifts in the coming years will be
protected as long-term investments in the
Program.
Fielding’s and Spector’s philanthropy
has already galvanized additional support.
“Others are now working with us to match
areas of need with their giving priorities,”
Roosevelt said. “It’s so important, and so
inspiring to see people stepping forward.
St. John’s is unlike any other college in
the world, and its Program is a precious,
singular gem. It must be preserved for the
unique students who come to us, and preserved by those who came before them.”
Annapolis President Chris Nelson
(SF70) noted that the gifts acknowledge
the importance of securing the future of
the college for the sake of our country and
many generations of students to come. “St.
John’s has a long history of alumni and
friends stepping forward to safeguard the
college’s distinctive and highly regarded
program of study,” Nelson said. “These two
gifts are extraordinary in their size and in
the message they send about our future.
I dare say that Spector and Fielding have
seeded the ground for a fourth century of a
flourishing St. John’s College.”
1968
Mary (Howard) Callaway published
“Medieval Reception of the
Prophets” in The Oxford Handbook
of the Prophets, ed. Carolyn Sharp,
pp. 423-441. She still teaches a
course in ancient literature to
honors students at Fordham,
around a big table furnished with
Clore chairs. Homer and Virgil,
she says, seem more pertinent
every year.
John Farmer (A) recently closed his
family practice after 37 years. He
is currently treating patients with
heroin addiction.
Thomas G. Keens (SF) gave the
Margaret Pfrommer Memorial
Lecture on long-term mechanical
ventilation at the annual meeting
of the American College of Chest
Physicians, held on October 25 in
Los Angeles. This prestigious lectureship is given to a person anywhere in the world who has made
pioneering contributions to home
mechanical ventilation. Keens and
his interdisciplinary team have
discharged more than 600 children
on mechanical-assisted ventilation
in the home, allowing them to live
outside the hospital, attend school,
and reintegrate with their families. Keens is a professor of pediatrics, physiology, and biophysics at
the Keck School of Medicine of the
University of Southern California,
and the Division of Pediatric Pul-
Emily Langston, associate dean for the graduate program in Annapolis, Dale Mortimer (A75),
and Grant Mortimer (A17) take a tour of Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge.
monology and Sleep Medicine at
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Bart Lee (A) recently published
The Long Road from Mount Moriah
to Mount Moriah: A Meditation on
Kindness, Killing and the Voice of
God, available on Amazon.
Last summer, while at his cottage
on Lake Okoboji, Iowa, Rick
Wicks (SF) developed breathing
problems after spending time
planting prairie flowers and
grasses. He returned home to
Sweden, where he is thankful for
the excellent medical care and
universal medical insurance.
Fortunately, atrial ablation (plus
a daily cocktail of medicines) has
his heart now pumping slowly,
steadily, and strongly.
1969
Joseph Baratta (A) wrote an editorial to the Italian journal, The
Federalist Debate, entitled “The
Response of Federalists to the
Trump Election.”
1972
Melissa Kaplan Drolet (SF) writes
that she and the late Raymond
Drolet’s (SF69) daughter Megan
Josephine Drolet (SF08) is engaged
to be married to Earl Joseph
Jordan. Megan received a master’s
degree in social service from
Bryn Mawr College in 2014 and
is working as a social worker at
The People’s Emergency Center in
Philadelphia. Megan’s aunt Sharon
Kaplan Wallis (Class of 1964) and
her uncle Bart Kaplan (Class of
1965) are expected to attend the
wedding.
1976
Class co-chairs Bridget Houston
Hyde (SF), Christopher Graver (SF),
and Christian Burks (SF) report
that the Santa Fe Class of 1976
came together to celebrate their
40th reunion. Members became
reacquainted nine months earlier
by e-mail, on a private Facebook
group, and by videoconferences. Of
the 145 graduates, many reconnections were established, and more
than 30 showed up in Santa Fe for
official and unofficial, registered
and unregistered “reunioning.”
1975
Dale Mortimer (A75) welcomes St.
John’s tutors to visit the Mortimer
family in Vancouver, Wash., where
they can enjoy the magnificence of
the Pacific Northwest.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 33
�ALUMNI NOTES
1984
David Simpson (SF)
recently won an Emmy
for Editing on Life Itself,
the biopic documentary
about Roger Ebert. Other
recent editing credits
include Abacus: Too
Small to Jail, which will
be in selected theaters
in May and will air on
Frontline in September,
David Simpson (SF84) and a colleague
and Maya Angelou: And
pose with their Emmys.
Still I Rise, which premiered on the PBS series
American Masters in February. Last year saw the release
of Hard Earned, a series on getting by in America, which
Simpson co-directed and edited, and which aired on
Al Jazeera America. When he can escape from the edit room,
the father of two looks for chances to travel and be in nature.
1977
Marlene Benjamin’s (SF) new book,
The Catastrophic Self: Essays in
Philosophy, Memoir and Medical
Trauma, was published by InterDisciplinary Press in 2016.
1982
Peter Griggs’s (A) novel No Pink
Concept is now an ebook. He has
also finished a second, currently
unpublished novel, Paisley Jubilee,
about a middle-aged man with
diabetes and his life in the mental
health system. He welcomes suggestions for a publisher.
1984
Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s (SF) new
book, Geontologies: A Requiem to
Late Liberalism,was published by
Duke University Press in 2016.
Monika V. Schiavo (A) recently
joined The Potomack Company,
an auction gallery based in
Alexandria, Va., as the director
of books and manuscripts and
manager of consignor relations
and systems. She invites Johnnies
to contact her to help determine
the value of the company’s
rare books, maps, autographs,
34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
antiques, and collectibles. Or just
call to chat. She is still married
to John Schiavo (A82) and still
the mother of Hellena (SF11) and
Anthony.
1985
Lora Keenan (SF) writes, “After
twenty years
working as a
lawyer for the
Oregon appellate courts,
I recently
launched my
own business
as a writing consultant and freelance attorney. As the ‘brief doctor,’
I offer writing improvement
seminars and coaching, appellate
advice, and complex legal drafting
in the litigation context. I live in
southwest Portland (not the cool
Portlandia part), surrounded by
fir trees. I recently visited Palm
Springs with Maya (Bajema)
Butterfield (SF), Judy Houck (SF),
Caryn Hunt (SF), Mary-Irene Kinsley
(SF), and Terri Luckett (SF). We all
still dance like glorious maniacs.”
L. Jagi Lamplighter (A) is writing a
young adult fantasy series titled
The Unexpected Enlightenment of
Rachel Griffen, which takes place
in a magic school that is based, in
part, on St. John’s. The story idea
and overarching plot were made
up by Mark Whipple (A96); John C.
Wright (A84) and Bill Burns (A94)
also helped with the project.
1988
Síofra Rucker (SF) moved six
years ago from San Diego back
to Louisville, Ky., with her two
daughters. She is the director
of Advancement at St. Francis
School, a progressive independent
PK-12 school, where she herself
attended. Rucker oversees the
school’s fundraising, marketing,
and communications. Her youngest is now in eighth grade there,
and her eldest is an alumnus.
1990
Elaine Reiss Perea (SF) was
recently named director of the
College and Career Readiness
Bureau for New Mexico’s Public
Education Department. In this
position, she oversees Career
Technical Education and Accelerated Learning programs (such
as dual credit and advanced
placement). “We have several
innovative programs to encourage student engagement and are
making a push for more student
internships. Although a tight fiscal
environment can make challenging the day-to-day work of
managing costs, the policy work is
rewarding, and I’m grateful for a
dedicated and effective staff.”
Julie Rehmeyer (SF) has a book
coming out in May, Through the
Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s
Odyssey into an Illness Science
Doesn’t Understand. It chronicles
her experience with chronic
fatigue syndrome and describes
the science, politics, and history
of poorly understood diseases.
She’s currently living in Santa
Fe in a straw bale house that she
built herself.
1993
Christopher D. Denny’s (A) new
book, A Generous Symphony:
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Literary
Revelations, was published by
Fortress Press in 2016.
Chris Dunlap (A) works in sales
and marketing for San Francisco’s Arion Press, whose catalog
includes several books on the
1996
1991
After two years of hard work
building a free app designed
to help homeowners manage
their homes and everything in
them, Shubber Ali’s (SF) startup
company Centriq won the firstever Platinum “Game Changer”
award from the National Association of Home Builders in January.
Kemmer Anderson (AGI) published
Palamedes: The Lost Muse of
Justice, a cycle of poems begun
after discovering the rhetoric
of Palamedes while reading
Phaedrus at Annapolis in 1991.
1992
Thomas Cogdell (SF) and his wife
Amy look forward to celebrating
the 500th anniversary of the
Protestant Reformation on
October 31 in Wittenberg,
Germany.
Alice Mangum Perry (SFGI) misses
her fellow Johnnies in Santa
Fe. Having returned to the East
Coast, she’s been an editor, writer,
proofreader, and “word-nerd-forhire” for books, magazines, newsletters, websites, and blogsites.
She keeps busy and appreciates
having a flexible schedule.
St. John’s Program. Arion Press
continues the tradition of fine
presswork, hand-binding, and
artful typesetting rejuvenated by
William Morris and the Arts and
Crafts movement. The company
fabricates its own metal type
through its on-site sister business,
M&H Type—the last remaining commercial type foundry
in America. Anthony Bourdain
featured Arion Press in his series
Raw Craft, available on YouTube.
1996
Stephen Conn (SF) writes, “For
Johnnies interested in working as
an extra in films, the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area is booming.
This year alone I’ve been in scenes
with Paul Rudd, Jeff Bridges,
and Jessica Chastain. Just go to
the New Mexico Actors & Extras
Forum on Facebook and look for
listings that fit your description.
It’s a fun way to make some extra
money and learn the mechanics of
big-time filmmaking.”
be offered through Western State
Colorado University’s Honors
Program, for which she also serves
as director.
2001
Congratulations to Talley Kovacs
(A01), an associate with the
Baltimore area law firm PK Law,
on being named one of the Daily
Record’s Leading Women.
Luke Mitcheson (SF) and his wife
Daphne are overjoyed to announce
the birth of their first child Henry
Michael. Little Henry arrived on
November 14, and he’s been filling
the Mitcheson home with wonder
and excitement ever since.
1999
Michael Barth (AGI) and Elizabeth Norwood (AGI10) founded
and recently launched the Bhutan Fund. Barth notes that the
Bhutan Fund is the first private equity fund for the country of
Bhutan, and the only one in the world that applies the country’s core principles of Gross National Happiness to its investment criteria and investment monitoring framework. According
to Barth, the Bhutan Fund will establish a committed pool of
capital for growth equity investments in areas that capitalize
on Bhutan’s natural, sustainable competitive advantages which
include abundant clean power resources; a well educated, English-speaking workforce; unique culture; pristine environment;
stable political climate; and firm emphasis on strengthening
the private sector. The Fund’s pipeline has more than 15 deals
covering over $200 million, with opportunities for co-investment
and debt finance. Barth and Norwood believe it has the potential to set an ethical example for other markets.
“Hello from Pittsburgh to all
Annapolis and Santa Fe former
classmates!” writes Maureen
Gallagher (SF), who is currently a
visiting assistant professor in the
English Department at Duquesne
University. “Teaching a full course
load of composition, literature,
and research literacy skills, all
while raising two young daughters Molly (4) and Jane (1) with
my husband, Laurence Ales, is
keeping me busy indeed.”
2000
Kelsey L. Bennett (SF) is the
recipient of a two-year National
Endowment for the Humanities
Enduring Questions grant. The
grant supports the development of
a new university honors course to
investigate several among many
questions she first confronted
during her time at St. John’s. The
guiding question of the course is:
What is Art For? The course will
2002
James Marshall Crotty (SFGI) is
the director of communications for
U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE).
2003
Johanna Omelia (SFGI) is delighted
to report that Come Fly With Us
Magazine is celebrating its third
anniversary this spring. The
publication is now read in 128
countries, across every ocean and
across every continent.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 35
�ALUMNI NOTES
2005
Jared Ortiz (AGI) and Rhonda
(Franklin) Ortiz (A04) are awaiting
their fourth child in March 2017.
Jared teaches Catholic theology at Hope College in Holland,
Mich., and recently published
his first book, You Made Us for
Yourself: Creation in St. Augustine’s
Confessions (Fortress, 2016). He
is also the executive director and
co-founder of the Saint Benedict
Institute for Catholic Thought,
Culture, and Evangelization
(www.saintbenedictinstitute.org).
Rhonda writes fiction and does
freelance graphic design work.
2006
Michael Bales (SF) recently started
at the Mitre Corporation as a
senior data scientist, a nonprofit
that runs federal research centers.
He is also finishing his master’s
in government analytics at Johns
Hopkins University.
Alumni interested in
careers in data and
public service may
contact him at mike.
bales@gmail.com.
2016 was a good year
for Jacqueline KennedyDvorak (AGI). She and
her husband had a baby
in April, he got a new job
in November, and she got
a new job in December.
In January she saw great friends,
Melody (AGI07) and Everett Reed
(AGI07), and their three children.
She looks forward to seeing them
again, as well as Camille Stallings
(AGI07) in May.
Sarah Rera (A) was named to the
2016 New York Super Lawyers
Upstate list. She is an attorney,
and recently became a shareholder, with the law firm Gross
Shuman Brizdle & Gilfillan, P.C.
She is admitted to practice in New
York State and Federal Courts, as
well as before the U.S. Supreme
Court and Bankruptcy Court,
Western District of New York.
Russell Max Simon (SFGI) recently
wrote and directed his first feature
film, titled #humbled, about an
idealistic young theatre director who leads her vagabond cast
and crew through the pitfalls of
a fledgling indie theatre production. The “play within the film”
is a modern-day adaptation of
Aristophanes’s The Frogs, which
Simon read while at the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe. He writes,
“The film explores relationships,
egos, and competing perspectives
on the true meaning of art and
mediocrity. You can get updates on
the film by going to 7kfilms.com/
humbled and signing up for the
newsletter there, or liking the 7k
Films Facebook page: facebook.
com/7kfilms.”
For the past five years, Susan
Swier (AGI) lived in Taiwan and
visited more than 80 cat cafes. Her
new book, published in Taiwan in
both Chinese and English under
2006
Caelan MacTavish Huntress (SF)
has returned to Portland, Ore.,
after living for three years in Costa Rica,
where he and his wife Johanna homeschooled their three children— two sons
and a daughter. Huntress took his wife’s
last name, noting that the Huntress Clan
ruled the Isle of Mann as a matriarchy for
300 years, and their male descendants
have had mostly daughters for five generations. The couple’s
youngest child Taos was born in Costa Rica in an unassisted
water birth. They made their living in the jungle with his
website design business, which was recently absorbed into
the consulting agency Stellar Platforms. This branding and
strategy firm works with authors, coaches, and teachers on
their digital marketing, and packages their teachings into a
curriculum that can be sold as a course on their website. He is
also active in the local Parkour community, teaching and training in the new sport that has its philosophical underpinnings
in Stoic philosophy. This connection is revealed in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is the Way, which Huntress suggests
every Johnnie should read. You can follow his adventures at
http://caelanhuntress.com.
notes the timing with the election
was only coincidental.
the title Come in and See the Cats,
introduces 62 of them. The book
is available on www.kinokuniya.
com and is only searchable by the
Chinese title, 這裡有貓, 歡迎光臨.
Swier works as a freelance writer
and recently moved to Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.
2007
Lucas Smith (SF) and his wife
Miriam had their first baby,
Verity Linnéa Sihn-Sze Smith,
born May 13. The provenance of
their daughter’s middle name is
from Linnaeus. In early 2017 he
immigrated to Canada, though he
36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Michael Wu (SF) recently completed an appointment in the
Obama administration, leading
renewable energy and energy
resilience efforts for the U.S.
Air Force. He is now starting an
energy consulting company and
beginning work on a book on the
history of energy in warfare.
2008
In August, Tammie Kahnhauser
(A) accepted a job as a software
engineer at Uber. She is currently
working on tracing tools that will
help other engineers make their
code more efficient.
Nate Okhuysen (A) has been
promoted to the rank of captain
in the U.S. Air Force. Okhuysen graduated from his Judge
Advocate Staff Officer Course in
September of 2016 and currently
serves as chief of Administrative
Investigations for the 86th Airlift
Wing’s legal office at Ramstein Air
Base, Germany. He loves the work
but misses the robust seminar
schedule of the Boston Alumni
Chapter.
children, Meir (2) and Adele, (two
months).
2014
2011
2009
2012
Kyle Lebell (SF) (pictured right) is
completing her final year of rabbinical school and will be ordained
at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic
Studies in May 2018. She and
her husband Sam, who is also
studying to be a rabbi, have two
Chloé Annick Ginsburg (SF)
writes, “When I was studying at St. John’s College never
in my wildest dreams did I think
that a Great Books Program could
ever prepare me for a Hollywood
creative life. When I moved back
to Los Angeles, I pursued accounting in a law firm, but I found that
Ryan Burnett (AGI) shares the following: “Seminar at St.
John’s College has gravity. This comes from the genius of the
writer, the skill of the tutor and the openness of the student.
What we feel is a spirit of shared urgency to get things right.
It is no surprise, then, that my new-found career in water
conservation in California reminds me of my alma mater. Both
St. John’s and my career share the need to get to the heart of
essential things. Clearly,
state-wide drought and
a set of Great Books are
different. However, what
they share is a life-giving
focus on what matters
most. That tenor guides
me every day and has
helped me focus studies,
earn certifications and
Ryan Burnett (AGI14) with his wife
gain a footing on a body
Kate and son Teddy.
of knowledge as big as
you can imagine.”
Virginia Harness (A) left her corporate gig in Los Angeles for a life in
public service as the architectural
historian for the South Carolina
State Historic Preservation Office
in April 2016. She is enjoying a
return to life with four seasons
and a traffic-free commute.
In January Brittany French
(SF) received her master’s
degree in philosophy from
Simon Fraser University
in Vancouver, Canada,
where she is also a teaching
assistant. She plans to study
medicine somewhere in the
U.S. starting this summer.
Nicholas H. Loya (A15) visited the cloisters under renovation at Canterbury
Cathedral while touring with Sidharth Shah (A). Presumably, Anselm saw a
similar scene.
life was not fulfilling enough. So
I reevaluated and discovered my
true passion: costume design. I
then enrolled in a Theatre Conservatory last year where I have had
opportunities to costume design
AFI short films and school plays.
The biggest news I have is that
I was nominated for my costume
designs by the Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts for Waiting for
Lefty by Clifford Odets. Little did I
know that a liberal arts education
would be the perfect education to
prepare me for such a task. I was
able to analyze the script in such
detail that I think only a liberal
arts major could possibly do. With
these tools I was able to translate
the author’s intent and words into
physical embodiment through
the costumes. I have always been
interested in history, literature,
and fashion, but St. John’s honed
my interests and led me to a
rewarding profession.”
2014
Micaela MacDougall (A) thanks
everyone who donated to her fundraiser to attend the University
of St Andrews in Scotland. She
graduated in November 2016 with
a master’s in theology, imagination, and the arts. Now back in
Annapolis, she is planning her
next steps.
Do you have news to share
with The College? Send your
note, along with your name,
class year, and photo(s), to
thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 37
�IN MEMORIAM
Leroy Edward Hoffberger
Office of Personnel Management,
and several conservation
organizations.
Most of Dobert’s clients
worked with him for years and
often decades. And many of
those same clients became dear
friends. He won more than 50
CINE Golden Eagle Awards as
well as numerous other video
and film recognitions. Today his
films are viewed and used in
national parks throughout the
U.S. and have become part of the
nation’s environmental legacy.
He is survived by his wife,
Claire Guimond Dobert; brother,
Peter; daughter, Sabrina; sons,
Pascal and Alexander; and
numerous grandchildren.
Stefan Sebastian Dobert
Class of 1962
October 22, 2016
Stefan Sebastian Dobert
(1938-2016), photographer,
documentary film maker, and
video producer, died peacefully
at his Maryland home. He
was 78 years old. Born in
Geneva, Switzerland, Dobert
spent his formative years in
Bethesda, Maryland. After St.
The Shining Youth/Shining Walls
mosaics at the American Visionary Art
Museum bears Hoffberger’s name.
John’s, Dobert enlisted in the
U.S. Army. While stationed
in Germany he discovered
his passion for filming and
photography. After completing
his military service, he returned
to Germany to work for Screen
Gems at Studio Hamburg.
There, he met his first wife,
Urte Petersen, the mother of his
three children.
For a decade Dobert produced
and directed more than 50
38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
award-winning films on a
variety of subjects for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
and for the Federal Aviation
Administration. In 1976, he
started his own film production
company, Stefan Dobert
Productions, Inc. He became
renowned in the industry for
his well-researched and scripted
nature films, educating and
informing the public about
numerous environmental issues.
Over the years, he traveled
the Americas with his second
wife and production partner
Claire, meeting, interviewing,
and filming such subjects as
the Annual Spring Waterfowl
Population Survey, the National
Wildlife Refuge Systems, the
Federal Duck Stamp Program,
all for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. In addition, he produced
numerous stories for the U.S.
Information Agency, the U.S.
November 24, 2016
August 27, 2016
DAN MEYERS
A strong believer in helping his fellow man, Leroy
“Roy” Edward Hoffberger (1925-2016), former
member of the Board of Visitors and Governors
of St. John’s College, may be best known for his
philanthropic activities. The Baltimore lawyer and
businessman served as president and chairman
of the Hoffberger Brothers Fund (renamed the
Hoffberger Foundation in 1963 and known today
as the Hoffberger Family Philanthropies). The
foundation—one of Maryland’s largest philanthropic
funds and one of Baltimore’s greatest benefactors—
supports hospitals, health care services, Jewish
scholarships, artists and various cultural
institutions, and medical research, especially in the
areas of Alzheimer’s and aging. Hoffberger was also
one of the earliest leaders in the effort to create the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A great supporter of the arts, Hoffberger was an
avid art collector and a co-founder of the American
Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. He also
endowed the LeRoy E. Hoffberger Graduate School
of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of
Art. On the cover of his 2014 memoir Measure of a
Life, Hoffberger wrote, “What we leave behind is
far more important than how far we get ahead.” He
is survived by his wife, Paula; his two sons, Jack
and Douglas; his two stepdaughters, Athena Alban
Hoffberger and Belina Rafy; his brother, Stanley;
and three grandchildren.
Annapolis campus for 18 years.
“I first met her when I came
as a newly appointed tutor to
St. John’s College, in 1979,”
writes Tom May. “… Jan was
the soul of graciousness and
discretion, dealing routinely
with all manner of student and
faculty concerns. Her ability
to listen, her wonderful smile
and genuine laugh, and her
readiness to be helpful are all
lasting impressions I fondly
remember and cherish.” She is
survived by her husband of 64
years, Julian Easterday, Jr., her
son, Julian “Ralph” Easterday
III, and her beloved grandson,
Tyler.
Janice Easterday
August 3, 2016
Board member
After a one-year battle with
cancer, Curran G. Engel (19632016) died on Thanksgiving
Day. Soon after graduating
from St. John’s in 1986, Engel
began his career in the motion
picture industry. He worked
on hundreds of productions,
including independent and
studio films, commercials,
documentary, corporate image
films, and music videos. His
Janice “Jan” Easterday (19342016) passed away after a short
battle with lung cancer at the
Hospice of the Chesapeake
with her loving husband,
Julian, by her side. Many
from the St. John’s community
will remember Easterday
through her work as secretary
to the assistant dean on the
Curran Engel (SF86)
screen credits include The
Sculptress, Heartwood, The Net,
and James and the Giant Peach,
among others. Engel frequently
served as a guest lecturer on
film industry topics and was a
member of the faculty at The
Academy of Art University in
San Francisco, where he taught
courses in producing, production
management, and creating
demo reels. In his final months,
despite his physical pain,
he returned to St. John’s for
Homecoming in Santa Fe, where
he celebrated a 30-year reunion
with friends. He is survived by
his wife, Annalisa Chamberlain
Engel; his sons; and brother
Brandon Engel (SF91).
Thomas Rea
Class of 1951
February 7, 2016
Thomas Herald Rea’s (19292016) groundbreaking
discoveries in the field of
dermatology led to treatments
that allowed patients with
Hansen’s disease, better known
as leprosy, to live without
stigma. Rea and his University
of Southern California colleague
Robert Modlin identified the
exact role played by the immune
system in Hansen’s disease
symptoms; their research paved
the way for new treatments
that rendered the disease
non-contagious and allowed
patients to live normal lives.
Rea served as head of the USC’s
dermatology division between
1981 and 1996, and kept
working at the Hansen’s disease
clinic at Los Angeles CountyUSC Medical Center in Boyle
Heights until a few months
before he died. The clinic was
renamed for Rea in 2015.
After St. John’s, Rea attended
Oberlin College and medical
school at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. He
completed his dermatology
residency at University Hospital
in Ann Arbor. Rea worked in
the Medical Corps of the U.S.
Army in Korea and in the
dermatology department at New
York University, where he first
began treating Hansen’s disease
patients. He had an appreciation
for books, film, classical music,
and Japanese art. Rea is
survived by his wife of 51 years,
Mary; his sons, Andrew and
Steven; and four grandchildren.
Also Deceased:
Paul C. Cochran, Class of 1963
October 14, 2016
Virginia A. McConnell, AGI84
August 21, 2016
Jesse Faulkner Sherman, A06
January 27, 2015
Robert Alexander, Class of 1942
August 23, 2016
Christian “CJ” Dallett, SF88
February 23, 2017
Veronica Nicholas, Class of 1963
November 29, 2016
David F. Simpson, A97
August 28, 2016
Burton Armstrong, Class of 1943
January 4, 2017
John S. DesJardins,
Class of 1947
November 7, 2016
Jacob C. Perring, SF06
October 29, 2016
George F. Smith, Class of 1947
October 19, 2016
Devin J. Ayers, EC05
January 26, 2017
Donald A. Phillips, Class of 1955
Carol J. Dockham, SF76 August 24, 2016
Margaret J. Bair, AGI13 September 8, 2016
Paul A. Sachs, Class of 1941
September 25, 2016
Margaret Jean Mattson, AGI90
November 18, 2016
June 21, 2016
John W. Burke, A79
Michael A. Smith, A87
August 28, 2016
Mary Storm, Class of 1962
November 29, 2016
February 5, 2017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 39
�JOHNNIE VOICES
HOMER IN CHINA
By Martha Franks (SF78)
C
hinese high school is a warrior culture. The students in my
classes in Beijing were engaged
in constant battle, which became
clear when I took them slowly
through Homer’s Iliad. The Greek society
sung by Homer is based on competition for
excellence in battle, which was rewarded by
glory, honor, and prizes. My Chinese students, fighting their way through the literal
and figurative tests of a competitive high
school, understood that down to their bones.
Everyone attending Bei Da Fu Zhong, the
high school where I taught for two years from
2012-2014, were high achievers, having fought
to excel all their lives. They spent enormous
time and money on test preparation. I disliked
their preoccupation with tests, so I never gave
them any, which mystified them. As far as they
knew, doing well on tests was the only point of
school. How could they win glory if they did not
take tests?
My argument—that a person might genuinely
be interested in learning—seemed to them a
quaint, if charming, frivolity. They could not
afford to indulge in it.
I pushed the argument anyway; it was part
of my job. Dalton Academy was geared toward
students who intended to go to the United
States for college. It was also an experimental program that tried to get away from a
deadening focus on tests, in order to encourage
creativity in students.
We plunged into both tasks on the first day
of class. Beginnings are always challenging,
and starting a discussion class was especially
difficult for these kids. After years in the classroom, their voices had only been raised when
they were sure of the answer.
“Was Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek
armies, a good king?” I asked. Silence. I wrote
the question on the whiteboard. “What do you
think? Was Agamemnon a good king?” More
silence. People looked down and fiddled with
pens. The silence became so uncomfortable
that one student, Janie, restively broke it.
“No,” she said with an angry air, as if it
made her mad that she had been driven to
speak. “He should not have take away prizes
from best warrior Achilles and humiliate him.
That is stupid. Good king isn’t stupid.”
We had started. It took time and lots of
encouragement, but discussion has an almost
physical momentum, especially among competitive people. Each expressed opinion calls forth
an equal and opposite opinion. I asked Janie a
few questions: “Why do you think Agamemnon
did such a stupid thing? What might worry him
about Achilles?”
Sam reacted with the opposite opinion to
hers: “Good king should control powerful warrior or his authority is attack. Agamemnon is
smart. Think Achilles problem.”
Anne agreed. “Achilles acting like child
weakens. Good king must be strong.”
(My students understood English very well, but
when it came to speaking it, they often ignored
the parts they found strange, unnecessary, or
confusing, such as articles, plurals, and tenses.)
Seeing Sam’s and Anne’s disagreement
as a challenge to her, Janie turned on them
combatively, saying with scorn that Agamemnon could have found a less stupid and greedy
way to control Achilles if he was afraid of him.
Sam swelled a little. Other voices came quickly
forward to soothe the waters. Chinese students
dislike disharmony in the classroom, and will
try to heal it.
In the classes that followed, we spent some
time with Achilles sitting in his tent, trying to
decide which is the best life, short but glorious or long but obscure. I asked my students,
“What do you think is the best life?”
A pause, and then someone, nearly whispering, ventured: “The best life has lots of money.”
There were suppressed giggles.
“Okay, good,” I said. “Suppose you have lots
of money. What do you do with money?”
“Buy things,” someone else said boldly, and
got a laugh.
“All right. Obviously, you don’t want money
itself, you want the things money can buy.
What things?” I wanted to know.
Lots of ideas poured out at that: “Clothes,
jewels, travel, a big house….”
“Why do you want these things?” I asked.
They thought that was a ridiculous question.
There was no why about wanting things. You
just wanted them.
Tom joked: “I want because my friends don’t
have!”
“So,” I replied, “you want your friends to envy
you, or to be impressed by you?” They looked
at me with an “of course!” expression, which
was tinged with a little surprised embarrassment—I gathered that people rarely said that
aloud. “Why do you want that?” I pressed.
“I feel proud,” Tom answered, after a moment.
“You want glory and honor, like a Greek warrior?” He agreed, relieved that we were talking
about the book again. Yes, he was like a Greek
warrior that way.
Allen jumped into the silence and announced: “I want to be rock star.”
“Why do you want that?” I asked.
He grinned, sure he had figured out the
answer: “Glory and honor!”
“We spent some time with
Achilles sitting in his tent,
trying to decide which is the
best life, short but glorious
or long but obscure.”
“Really?” I teased him back. “You don’t actually like music? It’s just a way to get money,
glory, and honor?” Allen’s music was a byword
around the campus. He played in a band every
extra moment he had. He admitted that he
loved music for its own sake.
I asked: “If you had to choose between
money and music, which would you choose?”
This question seemed to hit a sore place.
Faces turned downwards. Perhaps it named
something that many of them hid within. They
might like music, or art, or anything, but they
had obligations to their families. All of them
were only children, their family’s best hope for
wealth.
“I won’t choose,” said Allen, bravely. “I want
both.” The circle lightened, and I thought they
would applaud.
Class ended and students stood up, chattering
excitedly in Chinese. I took this as a good sign.
As the book and the semester progressed,
there were a variety of reactions to how we
were reading and talking. A few wrote the
whole thing off as an easy credit because there
were no tests and no one was forced to join the
conversation. I believe they had spent so much
of their lives looking at school as a source of
glory, honor, and prizes—separate from the
private personal places where their real interests lay—that they did not know how to treat it
otherwise.
Lots of students, though, loved what went
on in our class, even though they still thought
it a charming luxury that they could not afford
to indulge in very much. If an SAT loomed,
work for my class was likely to be the first
thing shorted. And yet the figure of Achilles
became vivid in their minds. Living in their
own warrior educational culture, they felt how
angry he was when the glory, honor, and prizes
he had worked for were taken from him. They
understood, too, why his reaction to that was
to wonder whether these things had ever been
worth his life.
Homer’s answer to that question is not obvious, but perhaps it has to do with the scene at
the end, one of the greatest moments in Western literature. King Priam of Troy comes into
the Greek camp by night, alone, to beg Achilles
to give him his son Hector’s corpse for burial.
Achilles and Priam, Greek and Trojan, victor
and vanquished, magnificent and broken, have
both lost people they loved. And they know they
will die soon. Achilles shares this mortal sorrow with the king of the enemy city. As one of
my students put it, in a lovely English sentence:
“Achilles and Priam weep together, in the dark,
in the quiet of Achilles’ tent, with the army
sleeping around them.”
My Chinese students and I concluded that
Achilles’ lasting glory was not won on the
battlefield. His greatest glory is that he grew
great enough to feel for all human loss and
sorrow, even those of his enemy. Possibly Confucius meant something like this when he put
the quality of “ren (仁),” or “humaneness,” at
the center of his answer to the question of what
is the best life. If so—and it will be the job of
people like my students, with learning in both
traditions, to decide—then the insight is neither
Eastern nor Western, but belongs to us all.
Martha Franks (second row, fourth from the left) with students from her high school in China.
40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 41
�FIRST PERSON
ALUMNI PROFILE
VIEW FROM THE TOP
GUIDED BY INTUITION AND REASON
By Andrew Wice
By Yosef Trachtenberg (A15)
“Every rule has an exception, Mr.
Trachtenberg,” Mr. May whispered to
me as I mounted the stage to receive
my diploma. As my Freshman Language
tutor, he argued with patience and humor
against my insistence for unequivocal rules
of translation. This was my main approach
to life—everything had to be logical,
definite, and precise.
In many ways, that class set the tone
for my time at St. John’s. What began
concerning translation spread to my
ethical beliefs. I wanted there to be
definite, logical, and universal ethical
rules so I wouldn’t need to rely on my
intuitions. I didn’t understand them, so
I didn’t trust them. Many philosophers
we read attempted to provide a rigorous
ethical system, but none were convincing. I
concluded I must (for now) base my ethics
on the particulars of each situation, guided
by my intuition and reason.
Even as I was becoming disenchanted
with logical rules for life, St. John’s
was sharpening my logic. If my ideas
weren’t logically sound, they would likely
be challenged (they were often challenged
even when they were logically sound, but on
other grounds). I became skilled at spotting
flaws in arguments, and my standards for
accepting something as true increased
significantly. If anything, I took this too far.
I would find a flaw and use it to dismiss the
entire argument. But a flaw doesn’t mean
the conclusion is false or the argument
contains nothing useful, so I learned to find
value in arguments despite their flaws.
Beyond logical skills, conversations at St.
John’s (both in and out of class) improved
my ability to communicate. I learned when
to interrupt and when to listen, how to deal
with lecturing, and how to disagree without
alienating. Of course, knowing what I should
“I learned to find
value in arguments
despite their flaws.”
do doesn’t mean I always succeed at doing it.
This next change seems trivial, but may
turn out to be the longest lasting effect of
my education. Before St. John’s, I hadn’t
sung (outside the shower) for 15 years.
Freshman Chorus required me to sing, while
giving me a comforting crowd to lose myself
in. I came to love singing; I still sing our
chorus songs. In addition to the pleasure
their beauty brings me, singing these songs
recall the community I found at St John’s.
I hadn’t expected to experience a
sense of community. During high school, I
withdrew from people and learned how to
be happy alone. I expected to live the rest
of my life with only superficial connections.
At St. John’s, I met people who shared
my interests, who I could have engaging
conversations with, and who could inform
42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
and challenge my thinking. Moreover, I
came to respect their intellectual and moral
character. For the first time, I saw potential
for friendships based not just on utility or
pleasure, but on a shared desire to figure
out how the world works, what a good life is,
and how to live it.
Not everything at St. John’s was new.
Sometimes, I found words for ideas I already
lived by. In Epictetus’s Discourses, the
statements “At first, distance yourself from
what is stronger than you” and “It is not the
things themselves that disturb people but
their judgments about those things” perfectly
described my choices during my withdrawal.
I found a name for what I had become.
Reading and discussing Stoic philosophy
also showed me the potential for moving
beyond Stoicism. While it helped me
approach the world with equanimity, I found
Stoicism’s limits. As a Stoic, maintaining my
equanimity requires keeping a part of me
isolated from people. I still want to act in a
level-headed way, but I now think it possible
to experience the strong emotions that
arise from wholehearted connection with
other people without letting them cloud my
judgment. I believe such a life is nobler than
a Stoic one, and while I’m just beginning to
explore its possibilities, I would never have
considered it before my time at St. John’s.
St. John’s enriched my life beyond
measure by helping me break through many
barriers I created for myself. It softened my
rigid worldview, led me to like people again,
and left me with a deep love of singing.
Infrared technology provides valuable data for wine growers.
Robert Morris (SF04)
Soars above the Competition
In the world of
agribusiness, the
use of commercial
drones has become
increasingly popular
among farmers
seeking aerial
imagery of their land.
Robert Morris (SF04),
CEO of San Francisco Bay-area company
TerrAvion, which produces the highest
volume of aerial imagery for agriculture in
the nation, is bucking that trend.
The company has reached the pinnacle of
the industry by using airplanes instead of
drones. By applying first principles to the
economics of the aerial imagery industry,
Morris realized that properly employed
airplanes would be far more efficient than
drones. Flying at a higher altitude, staying
in the air longer, and stringing together
multiple flight paths are accumulative
advantages which drone-based services
cannot match. “Dynamics that favor high
volume and customer density in imagery
production mean that we can keep offering
a better product for less cost per unit—just
like computer chips or network links have
been doing for decades,” Morris says. “Soon,
this will allow us to give tools to farmers for
a few bucks that were not even available to
the highest generals for billions (of dollars) a
decade ago.”
TerrAvion uses the latest innovations in
information technologies to electronically
deliver detailed maps of farmland with
overnight data analysis. That analysis can
be rapidly used to optimize irrigation, see
disease before it spreads, or maximize
the return on investment of fertilizers and
herbicides. The company allows agribusiness
to “farm more land more efficiently, more
sustainably, more profitably, and more
comfortably,” Morris says, which agricultural
companies have been quick to adopt.
After graduating from St. John’s, Morris
served as an officer in the U.S. Army, leading
a drone platoon in Afghanistan. He was
properly skeptical of the so-called “disruptive”
drone technology, and remained stoic when
drone-based aerial imagery companies took
an early lead. TerrAvion’s use of planes
was first able to gain traction among wine
growers on the California coast. “TerrAvion
started operating in vineyards because their
early adopters were especially receptive to our
service,” Morris says. “Vineyards intentionally
stress the vines to create flavor and sugar
in the grapes—this gives off a really clear
signal in the infrared to monitor from the air
and also means grape growers are farming a
valuable crop at the edge of control—making
the stress data especially valuable.”
Today, the company’s success has crested
the tipping point. The economy of scale means
that TerrAvion has been able to expand at an
exponential rate into the nation’s agricultural
heartland. “The majority of our acreage
is now east of the Rockies, mostly in corn
and soy,” Morris says. “Growers of traded
commodities are really focused on efficiency
of production and scale, so they are also
growing at the absolute limit of what plant
science allows. We actually expect Nebraska
to be our best market next year because the
irrigation practices and crop mix make it
super-receptive to what we’re doing.”
In Silicon Valley’s hyperbolic scramble for
the next paradigm shift—a concept now often
called the next “disruptive technology”—
Morris believes that innovators with a
foundation in the classics possess a deeper
insight and a broader overview. “Is the
automobile, or telephone, or internet-based
retailer more disruptive than geometry,
optics, or Christianity?” says Amariah Fuller
(SF11), one of several Johnnies working
at TerrAvion. “The type of collaborative
inquiry we undertake at St. John’s is the
best preparation for vague vagaries of the
business world. … Getting to the root of what
someone is talking about in a collaborative
way is where Johnnies shine,” Fuller says.
“The most intimidating business concepts
fall to pieces when you ask a few simple
questions.” In the coming years, Morris
expects to “continue to hire more Johnnies as
we grow, since they are so adaptable and can
work so effectively across disciplines. …We
want the ones that love action.”
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 43
�EIDOS
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GREENFIELD LIBRARY / COURTESY OF HENRY HIGUERA
S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R
FORWARD
EDGE OF
HISTORY
The year was 1959. Dwight D. Eisenhower
was our country’s president. And St. John’s
College was expanding. On May 22, Eisenhower paid a special visit to St. John’s to
dedicate three new buildings on campus: Mellon Hall, McKeldin Planetarium, and Francis
Scott Key Auditorium. Before a crowd that
included 25 descendants of Francis Scott Key,
Eisenhower delivered remarks tinged with his
trademark humor and wit—and admiration for
the Program.
“The colleges of civilization remind us that the
affairs of the human community are continuous and indivisible,” Eisenhower said in his
speech. “Your own Great Books program,
organized around the masters of thought for
thirty centuries, convincingly demonstrates
the interdependence of human activities.
President Eisenhower, left, and St. John’s
President Richard Weigle stroll past the
McKeldin Planetarium.
Today is merely the forward edge of history.
From Homer to Einstein, through politics to
philosophy and physics, the past instructs the
present, ever revealing the continuity of the
human adventure.”
After touching on the U.S.’s position in world
affairs, Eisenhower concluded with comments
on the importance of “the educated citizen”
that a St. John’s education produces. “It cannot be too often repeated that there is urgent
need for the citizen to grasp the relationship
between his own actions and attitudes and
those of the nation of which he is a participating member.”
One of Anyi Guo’s (A15) greatest gifts
as a photographer is her ability to make
an instant connection with her subjects.
Whether focusing her lens on St. John’s
students and tutors engaged in conversation,
hot air balloons drifting across a Turkish sky,
or art lovers taking in the British Museum,
Guo captures the spirit of her subject with
an artist’s eye and a click of her camera.
While a student at St. John’s, Guo’s photography skills were in high demand. Using an
actual film camera (the Olympus mju II and
Kodak Portra 400 film is her favorite combo),
she provided photos for student publications
as well as The College magazine, covering everything from Croquet to basketball
games to Freshman Chorus to lunchtime
reading groups. Guo now works for a finance
firm in London, where she has embraced
European culture and new experiences—and
continues to follow her bliss. “I’ve learned
a lot about the world since my move,” says
Guo. “I’ve learned to have a dry sense of
humor from Brits, to speak with gestures
from the three Italians that I live with, to
greet continental Europeans with cheek
kisses, and to make authentic Indian food.”
View more of Guo’s photography at anyiguo.com.
44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
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The College Vol 42, Issue 1 Spring 2017
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Shook, Gregory (editor)
Venkatesh, Krishnan
Haratani, Joan
Wolf, Robert
Lund, Nelson
Stickey, Sarah
Brann, Eva
Kalkavage, Peter
Salem, Eric
Russell, George
Franks, Martha
The College
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Janet Durholz
Consulting Editors:
Eva Brann,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Editor's Note
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.
Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St.
John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404.
Although there are currently no subscription fees, volun·
tary contributions toward production costs are gratefully
received.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is pub·
lished by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Spar·
row, Dean. Published thrice yearly, usually in autumn, winter
and summer.
Volume XXXIIl
AUTUMN 1981
Number 1
©1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Superimposed on Thomas Jefferson's "Rough draft" of the Declaration of Independence (composed between June 11 and 28, 1776) upon
a Mathew B. Brady photograph of President Abraham Lincoln with
General George B. McClellan, October 4, 1862. This latter photograph
was taken at McClellan's headquarters near Sharpsburg, Maryland, about
two and one· half weeks after the Battle of Antietam.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�~HESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTUMN81
3
Inventing the Past Henry V. jaffa
20
Four Poems Laurence Josephs
22
The World of Physics and the
"Natural" World jacob Klein
35
"Sexism" is Meaningless Michael Levin
41
Going to See the Leaves Linda Collins
46
One Day in the Life of the New
York Times and Pravda in the
World: Which is more informative?
Lev Navrozov
62
The Incompleteness Theory David Guaspari
72
Philosophy and Spirituality in
Plotinus Bruce Venable
81
OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
The Permanent Part of the College Eva T. H. Brann
84
FIRST READINGS
Sidney Hook, Philosophy and Public Policy,
review by Nelson Lund
V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, review
by Adam Wasserman.
1
�Abraham Lincoln, photograph by Mathew B. Brady,
probably taken in February 1860. From the Collections
of the Library of Congress.
2
AUTUMN 1981
�Inventing the Past
Garry Wills's Inventing America and the Pathology of
Ideological Scholarship
Harry V. Jaffa
And this too is denied even to God, to make that which has been not to have been.
Thomas Aquinas
Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a book that should never
have been' published, certainly not in its present
form. Its errors are so egregious that any intelligent graduate student-or undergraduate student-checking many
of its assertions against their alleged sources, would have
demanded, at the least, considerable revision.
It has been widely hailed as a great contribution to our
understanding of the American political tradition. There
have been "rave" reviews in the New York Times Book
Review, the New York Review of Books, the Saturday Review, the New Republic, the American Spectator, and National Review, to mention but a few of many. It has been
praised by S\lCh glittering eminences of the academy, and
of the historical profession, as David Brion Davis, Edmund
Morgan, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. These are men who
can, if they wish, split a hair at fifty paces. In this instance,
their critical faculties seem to have gone into a narcotic
G
ARRY WILLS'S
Henry Salvatori Research Professor of Political Philosophy at Clare·
mont Men's College and Claremont Graduate School, Harry V. Jaffa
has recently published The Conditions of Freedom (The John Hopkins
University Press 1975) and How to Think about the American Revolution
(Carolina Academic Press 1978) He is editor of, and contributor to, the
forthcoming Statesmanship: Essays in Honor or Sir Winston Spencer
Churchill (Carolina Academic Press 1981).
THE ST.JOHNSREVJEW
trance, proving the truth of the aphorism that ideology is
the opiate of the intellectuals. Among the reviewers hitherto, only Professor Kenneth Lynn, writing in Commentary, October, 1978, has seen Wills's book for what it is.
"Inventing America," he writes, udoes not help us to un~
derstand Thomas Jefferson, but its totally unearned acclaim tells us a good deal about modern intellectuals and
their terrible need for radical myths." The myth promoted by Inventing America "is that the Declaration is
not grounded in Lockean individualism, as we have been
accustomed to think, but is a communitarian manifesto
derived from the common-sense philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. .. " By this myth, says Lynn, Wills
would have "transmogrified" a ~~new nation, conceived in
liberty ... into a new nation, conceived in communality,"
and thus have supplied "the history of the Republic with
as pink a dawn as possible."
I think that Professor Lynn is correct as far as he goes.
But he does not go far enough. Inventing America was received with virtually the same enthusiasm on the Right as
on the Left. The reviews in National Review and the
American Spectator were both written by current editors
of National Review, surely the most authoritative of conservative journals* (Ronald Reagan's message to the
*See Postscript
3
�Twentieth Anniversary banquet declared he had read
every issue from cover to cover.) But the current editors,
we must note, are apostolic successors to Wills himself,
who wrote for the journal for a number of years. His account of his days as an NR staffer may be found in
Confessions of a Conservative, published shortly after Inventing America. The title of the book is not meant in
irony. Wills thinks of himself as a Conservative still, and
somehow traces all his serious ideas to St. Augustine. At
the deepest level of Wills's being, there is indeed a kind of
Lutheran hatred (and Luther was an Augustinian Monk)
of classical rationalism. Lynn calls Wills "the leftist
(formerly rightist) writer." Yet there is more inner consistency between the two "Willses" than Lynn perceives.
That is because there is more inner consistency between
the Right and the Left than is commonly supposed.
where Inventing America "comes
from," to employ a popular neologism, one must read
an essay Wills published in 1964, entitled "The Convenient State." It was originally published in a volume
edited by the late Frank Meyer (an NR editor, and Wills's
close friend), called What is Conservatism? Later, it achieved
neo-canonical status, by. its inclusion in an anthology of
American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century,
edited by NR's Editor of Editors, William F. Buckley, Jr.
(It is only fair to add that an essay of mine, "On the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty," was included in the
same volume. My essay, however, represented Conservative heresy; Wills's Conservative orthodoxy.) Frank Meyer
and I exchanged dialectical blows in the pages of NR in
1965, after Meyer published an article attacking Abraham
Lincoln as the enemy of American constitutionalism and
American freedom. (Meyer's own best known book is called
In Defense of Freedom.) Meyer in 1965 and Wills in 1964,
follow exactly the same line: Calhoun is their hero and
their authority, Lincoln the villain of American history. As
we shall see, both of them, in the decisive sense, follow a
pattern of thought which seems to have been worked out
for them by Willmoore Kendall. Kendall was a professor of
political science at Yale when Wills was a graduate student in classics there. For Wills, as for Meyer and Kendall,
there is no contradiction, nor even any paradox, in identifying the cause of constitutionalism and freedom with the
defense of chattel slavery. For all three, the defense of
freedom turns, in the decisive case, into the defense of
the freedom of_ slaveowners.
The main thesis of Wills's 1964 essay was that something called "rationalism" is the root of all political evil.
This attack on "reason" has been the stock-in-trade of
Conservatism since Rousseau's attack on the Enlightenment was fortified by Burke's polemics against the French
Revolution. Most present-day Conservatives would be
horrified to learn that they are disciples of Rousseau, yet
such is surely the case. For it was Rousseau who, in going
all the way back to the "state of nature" discovered that
T
4
O UNDERSTAND
man by nature was free, but not rational. The celebration
of freedom, divorced from reason, has a theoretical foundation in Rousseau which is nowhere else to be found.
The Rousseauan denigration of reason, and the elevation
of sentiment to take its place, is the core of nineteenth
century romanticism, both in its Left phases (e.g. anarchism, syndicalism, socialism, communism), and in its
Right phases (e.g. monarchism, clericalism, feudalism,
slavery). Romantic nationalism has been equally a phenomenon of the Right and of the Left. "Rationalism,"
Wills declared as a man of the Right, "leads to a sterile
paradox, to an ideal freedom that is a denial of freedom."
What such a remark means can be inferred only from the
use to which it is put. Here it clearly refers to the question
of slavery, and to the Civil War. Concerning slavery, heremarks, somewhat vaguely, "One cannot simply ask whether
a thing is just." Certainly, to ask whether slavery was just
was never sufficient, but it was always necessary. One
cannot distinguish a greater from a lesser evil, unless one
can distinguish evil from good. Wills concedes that "the
abolition of slavery [may have] been just," but insists nevertheless that the only politically relevant question was
"whether it [was] constitutional." For "what is meant by
constitutional government" Wills turns to that statesman
of the Old South, the spiritual Father of the Confederacy,
John C. Calhoun. According to Calhoun, we are told, constitutional gov·ernment means Hthe government in which
all the free forms of society-or as many as possible-retain their life and 'concur' in a political area of peaceful
cooperation and compromise." We can now better understand Wills's polemic against "rationalism," since among
the "free forms" which, by the foregoing statement,
ought to be retained, was the institution of chattel slavery.
It was not the slaves whose concurrence Calhoun's constitutional doctrine required, but only those who had an
interest in preserving, protecting, and defending slavery.
Calhoun provided the slaveholders a constitutional mechanism, in the supposed rights of nullification and secession, to veto any national (or federal) legislation that they
regarded as hostile to the interests of slavery. Calhoun's
constitutionalism, based upon supposed rights of the
states, was originally forged in the fires of the nullification
controversy, between 1828 and 1839. Later it was elaborated in two books, the Disquisition on Government, and
the Discourse on the Constitution. Calhoun's main dialectical adversary in 1830 was no one less than the Father of
the Constitution, James Madison, although his principal
political adversary was President Andrew Jackson, backed
in the Senate by Daniel Webster. It was as the heir of
Madison, Jackson, Webster (and others) that Lincoln compounded his constitutional doctrine. Lincoln's genius
proved itself less by its originality than by the ability to reduce a complex matter to its essentials, and to express
those essentials in profound and memorable prose. The
essence of a constitutional regime, according to Lincoln,
was that it was based upon the consent of the governed.
And the consent of the governed was required, because
AUTUMN 1981
�"all men are created equal." In 1964, Wills rejected Lincolnian constitutionalism because (like the Declaration) it
was rational. In 1978, he rejects it because it is based upon
an allegedly mistaken understanding of the Declaration.
In Inventing America, he will undercut what Lincoln has
made of the Declaration, by unleashing a barrage of fanciful scholarship designed to transform the Declaration's
lucid doctrine of self-evident truths into esoteric eighteenth century mysteries.
Wills's 1964 essay follows the conventional path of Confederate apologists since the Civil War (and Wills is a native of Atlanta). He tries to make it appear that, on the one
hand, Lincoln's war was an abolitionist crusade and, on
the other, that the South was defending, not slavery, but
constitutionalism. Nothing could be further from the
truth. As we shall presently see, however, Inventing America is less a book about Thomas jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, than it is a book against Abraham
Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address.
make the record straight, as against the
1964 Garry Wills and his preceptors of the Right, as
to what purposes were in conflict, that led to the Civil
War, or the War for the Union. (It was not a War between
the States.) First of all, there was no disagreement between Abraham Lincoln and the followers of John C. Calhoun that slavery was a lawful institution in some fifteen
of the States. Moreover, it was agreed that where slavery
was lawful, it was under the exclusive control of the
States, and that the federal government had no jurisdiction over it. In his inaugural address, Lincoln quoted from
a statement he had made many times before, in which he
said that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where
it exists." He said that he believed that he had "no lawful
right to do so," and added that he "had no inclination to
do so." Lincoln's anti-slavery policy was comprehended
completely by his avowed purpose to have excluded slavery, by federal law, from the national territories, where it
had not already established itself. It is true that Lincoln
believed, as, indeed, his pro-slavery antagonists believed,
that slavery as an institution in the United States was
highly volatile, and that if its expansion were prevented,
its contraction would set in. And, it was further believed-on both sides-that if contraction once set in,
slavery would be, in Lincoln's words, "in course of ulti~
mate extinction."
Lincoln believed that, in the understanding of the
Founding Fathers, slavery was an evil. It was an evil condemned by the principles of the Declaration, which Lincoln called "the father of all moral principle among us." It
was an evil to which certain constitutional guarantees
were given, in the political arrangements of the Founding,
because at the time there did not appear to be any alternative arrangements which would not have been disruptive
L
ET US HERE
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
of the Union. Yet the Fathers showed their opposition to
its perpetuation in various ways: by the limit placed upon
the foreign slave tra-de, and by the prohibition upon slavery in the Northwest Territory, among others. They had
left the institution of slavery where, to repeat, "the public
mind might rest in the belief that it was in course of ultimate extinction." Such a belief, Lincoln held, was absolutely necessary, if the slavery question were not to agitate
the public mind, and threaten the perpetuity of the Union.
Yet the expectations of the Fathers had been upset: by
the invention of the cotton gin, by the progress of the factory system, by the enormous expansion of the cotton
economy, and with the latter, the expansion of the demand for slave labor. These changes culminated, in time,
in the most sinister change of all: that change in at least a
part of the public mind which, from regarding slavery as
at best a necessary evil, now began to look upon it as a positive good. With this, slavery sought expansion into new
lands: into the lands acquired from France in 1803 (the
Louisiana Purchase), and into the lands acquired from
Mexico as a result of the war that ended in 1848. To prevent this expansion of slavery, the Republican Party was
formed in 1854, and, in 1860, elected Abraham Lincoln to
be sixteenth President of the United States.
The great ante-bellum political question, the one that
dwarfed and absorbed all others, was the question of
whether slavery should be permitted in the territories of
the United States, while they were territories, and before
they became states. The dialectics of this dispute became
as complicated as any thirteenth century theological controversy. Yet in the end the legal and political questions
resolved themselves into moral questions, and the moral
questions into a question of both the meaning and the
authority of the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution itself was ambiguous-if not actually self-contradictory-as to whether Negro slaves were human persons
or chattels. In fact, the Constitution refers to slaves
(which are never explicitly mentioned before the Thirteenth Amendment) only as persons, even in the fugitive
slave clause. But by implication, it also refers to them as
chattels, since they were so regarded by the laws of the
states that the fugitive slave clause recognized. But the
logic of the idea of a chattel excludes that of personality,
while that of a person excludes that of chatteldom. The
Fifth Amendment of the Constitution forbade the United
States to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
except by due process of law. Did this forbid the United
States to deprive any citizen of a slave state of his Negro
chattel, when he entered the territory of Kansas? Or did it
forbid the United States to deprive any Negro person of
his liberty, when he entered that same territory? Since the
language of the Constitution was equally consistent with
two mutually exclusive interpretations, there was no way
to resolve the meaning of the Constitution, from the language of the Constitution alone. For Lincoln the question
was resolved by the Declaration of Independence, by the
proposition that all men are created equal. The right of
5
�persons to own property under the Constitution as under
any substance. Rather was he "the great artist of America's
the laws of nature and of nature's God," was derivative
romantic period." By his "democratic-oracular tone" he
from their right, as human beings, to life and to liberty.
Such an understanding of the Declaration alone gave life
and meaning to the Constitution. Wills, in "The Conve·
nient State," repudiates the Declaration. In Inventing
America, he denies that it has any such meaning as Lincoln found in it. In the course of denying that meaning,
he denies some of the most undeniable facts of American
history.
invested the Declaration with a meaning that the Gettysburg Address canonized, but which has nothing in com·
mon with the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in
1776!
The Civil War was not, however, fought because of any
merely abstract moral judgment concerning the ethics of
treating human beings as chattels. It was fought because
eleven states of the Union "seceded," meaning that they
repudiated and took arms against the Constitution and
the laws of the United States. They did so because they
refused to accept the lawful election of a President who
believed that slavery ought to be excluded by law from
United States territories. (The President, by himself, had
no authority to accomplish that exclusion. Nor was there
a majority in Congress to pass such a law, before the representatives of the "seceding" states left Washington.)
Slavery was, in fact, abolished as a result of the Civil War.
This abolition was accomplished, in part, by the Emancipation Proclamation. It was consummated by the Thir-
11
*
*
*
in the free states of the antebellum United States, for public opinion to acquiesce
in the proposition that slavery was in itself neither good
nor evil, and that it was best to leave to the people of a territory the decision whether they should permit slavery as
one of their domestic institutions. This was the famous
doctrine of "popular sovereignty," advanced by Lincoln's
redoubtable opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas's
doctrine was both appealing and plausible, since it seemed
to rest upon and embody the very kernel of the idea of
popular self-government, that "the people shall be judge."
Here is how Lincoln-dealt with it. The following is from
Lincoln's Peoria speech, of October 1854:
I
T WAS NOT POSSIBLE,
The doctrine of self-government is right-absolutely and eternally right-but it has no just application as here attempted.
Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he
is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if
the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction
of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another
man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism. If
the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me
that "all men are created equal;" and that there can be no
moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another. [All emphasis is Lincoln's.]
I have quoted so much of classic Lincolniana here, to
bring before the reader an example of that reasoning that
Garry Wills dismisses and ridicules. For Lincoln, of
course, the article of his "ancient faith" was such, not be-
cause it was inherited, but because it was true. Inventing
America was written for no other reason than to obfuscate
and deny what Lincoln here affirmed. The Declaration,
Wills writes, "is written in the lost language of the Englightenment." "It is dark with unexamined lights." It embodies "the dry intellectual formulae of the eighteenth
century" which according to Wills "were traced in fine
acids of doubt, leaving them difficult to decipher across
the intervals of time and fashion." Wills does not think
that Lincoln-like Calhoun-was a political thinker of
6
teenth Amendment. The former was a war measure, aimed
at the property of the enemies of the United States, in
arms against the United States. But we cannot forget that
the destruction of property by the Proclamation had a
double effect, due to the peculiarity of the "peculiar institution" at which it was directed. By the laws governing
this institution, certain human beings were legally defined
as chattels. Interestingly, the root meanings of both "peculiar" and of "chattel" refer to "cattle." But some eightysix thousand of these human beings who had hitherto
been regarded by law as no more than cattle, enlisted and
fought in the Union armies, many of them sealing with
their blood their right to that freedom that the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed to be the universal
birthright of mankind. Nevertheless, the Civil War was
not, we repeat, an abolitionist crusade. It was a war to preserve the Union, to prove that there could not be a successful appeal, as Lincoln said, from ballots to bullets.
Emancipation and abolition became, in the course of the
war, and because of the war, indispensable constitutional
means to a constitutional end. Let us never forget this just
but tragic consummation of our history: that men who
had been called cattle proved their manhood in arms, and
provided indispensable help to save a Union which thereby
became theirs. They also vindicated the Declaration ofln·
dependence, by proving that human laws which rest upon
a denial of the laws of nature cannot long endure. The
Union endured, but only by repudiating that denial and
becoming a different Union. The original Union-or nation-embodied the Original Sin of human slavery. With·
out "a new birth of freedom" it must needs have perished
from the earth. It is this understanding of the Declaration
of Independence, in the light of what "fourscore and seven
years" had revealed as to its meaning, that is immortalized
by the Gettysburg Address, but that Inventing America
maliciously attacks.
AUTUMN 1981
�in 1964 that in a constitutional
regime "the free forms of society ... 'concur' in ...
peaceful cooperation and compromise," he was
using Calhounian Confederate code language, implying
the rightfulness and constitutionality of "secession." Con·
versely, he was implying the wrongfulness and unconstitutionality of Lincoln's executive action to preserve the
Constitution and the Union. But what was this vaunted
''right of secession"? Lincoln called it an "ingenious
sophism" according to which "any State of the Union
may, consistently with the national Constitution, and
therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the
Union without the consent of the Union or of any other
State." [Lincoln's emphasis.] But, Lincoln asked, if one
can reject the constitutional decision of a constitutional
majority, whenever one dislikes that decision, how can
there be any free government at all? Unanimity is impossible. Government that is both constitutional and popular
also becomes impossible, if the principle of "secession" is
once granted. With what right, Lincoln asked, can the
seceders deny the right of secession against themselves, if
a discontented minority should arise amongst them?
In 1848 Henry David Thoreau published his essay, "Civil
Disobedience." At the same time, Thoreau called for the
secession of Massachusetts from the Union. He adopted
the pattern of abolitionists generally, who declared that
there should be "No Union with slaveholders." Thus
Thoreau invoked an alleged right of secession against slavery, as Calhoun's followers would invoke it for the sake of
slavery. But Thoreau brushed aside any such notion as
that of the "concurrent majority" in Calhoun's sense.
Thoreau saw quite clearly that the argument of a minority
veto upon majority action, in any matter of interest that
could be called one of conscience, did not admit of any
stopping point, short of the minority of one. Thoreau declared frankly that, although he preferred "that government ... which governs least," he would not be satisfied
except with that government "which governs not at all."
Thoreau believed in the withering away of the state quite
W
HEN WILLS WROTE
as much as Karl Marx, and saw the best regime as an anar-
chist regime, also quite as much as Marx. But Lincoln, in
1861, showed by unrefutable logic that Calhoun's premises
led to Thoreau's conclusions. In short, despotism leads to
anarchy, as surely as anarchy leads to despotism. The
Garry Wills of 1964 defended despotism. In the later sixties and early seventies, Garry Wills joined those who
were protesting and demonstrating in behalf of their
Thoreauvian consciences, in behalf of those causes
which, in the name of conscience, would arrest the process of constitutional government. But the earlier Wills
and the later Wills are like two segments of the same circle. Each leads into the other: like anarchy and despotism.
I
*
*
*
differs from the later one, as John
C. Calhoun differs from Henry David Thoreau, so also
do the two "Willses" differ as George Fitzhugh and Karl
F THE EARLIER WILLS
THE ST.JOHNSREVIEW
Marx. Fitzhugh (1806-1881), after the death of Calhoun
in 1850, became the leading publicist and intellectual protagonist of the thesis that slavery was a positive good. Of
all the pro-slavery writers, none roused the anger of Abraham Lincoln more than he did. Yet Lincoln viewed Fitzhugh's argument with a certain grim satisfaction, since it
arrived at the conclusion that Lincoln always insisted followed from the pro-slavery premises: namely, that if slavery was a positive good for black men, then it must also be
good for white men. Calhoun had already argued that, in
the burgeoning conflict in the industrial North, between
capital and labor, the South, with its stability rooted in
chattel slavery, would be the force making for equilibrium
between the two great factions. Fitzhugh went a step farther: only by the enslavement of the white work force,
could the North achieve that equilibrium. By way of contrast, Lincoln declared, in March, 1860, "I am glad to
know there is a system of labor where the laborer can
strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system
prevailed all over the world."
It is a matter of the highest moment for students of the
political scene today, to understand that what is now called
Conservatism, and what is now called Liberalism (although
neither is properly so called), have their common ground
in the rejection of the principles of the American Founding, above all in the rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. On both sides, there is a peculiar
hatred of Abraham Lincoln, because of the renewed vitality
he gave to the authority of the Declaration, in and through
the Gettysburg Address. The Liberalism of today-or,
more properly the Radical Liberalism of today-stems
largely from the Abolitionism of the ante-bellum North
(not to mention its successor in the Reconstruction era).
And the abolitionist critique of Northern free society, and
the critique by Fitzhugh and his pro-slavery coadjutors of
that same free society, were not only virtually identical,
but were hardly distinguishable from the Marxist critique
of capitalism.
Anyone today reading the pro-slavery literature of the
ante-bellum South, must be struck by the constant reference to Northern workers as ''wage slaves." Indeed, if
someone reading these tracts did not know where they
came from, and when, he might reasonably suppose that
they were written by Marxists of a later period, or even by
Bolsheviks. The general argument against Northern capitalism-which as we noted was shared with the Abolitionists-ran as follows. The "free workers" depended upon
the owners for their livelihood. But the owners employed
them only when they could make a profit from their labor.
There was no provision for the workers during the slack
periods of business; but neither was there provision for
them when they were too young, too old, too sick, too feeble, or too handicapped to be profitably employed. In
these respects, Fitzhugh (and all the other defenders of
slavery) argued, slavery, with its traditions of paternalism
and patriarchalism, with its ethics of responsibility for
masters no less than of obedience for slaves, was morally
7
�as well as economically superior. Thus Fitzhugh, at the
end of Cannibals All! (1857) addresses the Abolitionists as
follows. (In today's parlance, a Conservative addressing a
Radical Liberal, or Garry Wills, vintage 1964, addressing
Garry Wills, vintage 1978):
As we are a Brother Socialist, we have a right to prescribe for
the patient; and our Consulting Brethren, Messrs. Garrison,
Greeley, and others, should duly consider the value of our
opinion. Extremes meet-and we and the leading abolitionists
differ but a hairbreadth. We ... prescribe more of government;
they insist on No-Government. Yet their social institutions
would make excellently conducted Southern sugar and cotton farms, with a head to govern them. Add a Virginia overseer to Mr. Greeley's Phalansteries, and Mr. Greeley and we
would have little to quarrel about.
Extremes do indeed meet. "Phalansteries" were the Fourierist anticipation of the later and better known "communes" and "soviets." Nearly a century before Hayek's
Road to Serfdom, Fitzhugh saw with perfect clarity the inner identity of the slave system and a socialist system.
We noted earlier the denigration of reason, and the
elevation of sentiment, that characterized the radical
thought~equally of the Left and the Right-of the nineteenth century. Capitalism, Marx declared, reduces all
human relations to "the naked cash nexus." It is this
~~nakedness," this reducton of man to a "commodity"
which ((alienates" him, and leaves him feeling alone in a
world without meaning. It is Marxism's promise to restore
"community" (where all men will be "comrades"), that is
the source of that magnetism to which we have adverted.
No promise of wealth to mere "individuals" by a market
economy can possibly compete for long with this secularization of Christian eschatology. But Marx's communist
moral vision is itself adapted from the moral vision of the
ancien regime that we find in Edmund Burke. From the
standpoint of historical dialectics, it is true that the bourgeois regime is "progressive" compared with its predecessor_ That is because, in stripping away ''illusions," it
prepared the way for the revolution of the proletariat. Intrinsically, however, the ancien regime is more humanly
desirable, even to Marx, because these self-same illusions
made man at home in his world. Men are not as ''alien-
as if Conservatism is wedded to the
free market economy. But that is true only on the
surface. Garry Wills deserted Conservatism rather
than embrace the free market. Others embraced the free
market, rather than submit themselves to the authoritarianism of the Left. But Conservatives who embrace the
free market, not as Abraham Lincoln did, because it implements the moral principles of the Declaration of Inde-
T
ODAY IT SEEMS
pendence, but because it is "value free," are building their
politics on that same "House Divided" as the ante-bellum
Union. For a free market economy committed to nothing
but "consumer sovereignty" does not differ essentially
from a "popular sovereignty" that is free to choose slavery. Those who look backward to slavery, and those who
look forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat, will
always have the better of an argument founded upon
"ethical neutrality." Critics of Marxism in our time,
notably the patrons of the free market economy, constantly marvel at the survival of Marxism as an intellectual
force (notably in the minds of college professors of the
liberal arts). They marvel at the apparent immunity of
Marxism to the disastrous fate of every single one of
Marx's predictions, based upon his analysis of the dynamics of capitalism. And this, moreover, despite his
claim of "scientific" status for his analysis, and his staking
of his claim to that status upon the verification of these
same predictions. But the magnetic core of Marxism, the
source of the power of its attraction, consists not in its
economic analysis, or its economic claims, but in its moral
analysis, and in its moral claims. What follows is a representative passage from the Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put
an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his "natural superiors."
8
ated" under feudalism as they are under capitalism. For in
the ancien regime there is the illusion that, in being governed by his "natural superiors" the superiors and inferiors
are joined together in ucommunity," an organic relation-
ship in which the whole gives independent meaning to
each of its human parts. In the meaning that the proletarian whole gives to the lives of each of the comrades, it
resembles the feudal order. This is why R. H. Tawneyhimself a socialist-could remark, with profound insight,
that "the last of the Schoolmen was Karl Marx." Both feudalism and communism see themselves as bonded into a
community, which is denied to man in "the lonely crowd"
of the de-humanized bourgeois-capitalistic order.
Burke's romantic imagination dignified the morality of inequality, of the ancien regime.
Here, in truth, is the inspiration of Marx's moral
imagination. What follows are excerpts from the Reflections on the Revolution in France:
H
ERE IS HOW
It is now sixteen or seventeen years, since I saw the Queen of
France, then the Dauphiness ... and surely never lighted on
this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful
vision ...
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men . .. I thought
ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards
to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and
calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever . ..
All the pleasing illusions . .. are to be dissolved by this conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of
AUTUMN 1981
�life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furn·
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another,
ished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the
heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to
cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature . .. are to be
example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence
but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by
when built.
exploded ...
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a
woman ...
In another famous line, Burke also spoke of that "digni·
fied obedience, that subordination of the heart, which
kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom." Here was the very spiritual charter or gospel of
the Confederacy, in building a polity upon chattel slavery.
For make no mistake, it was this spiritual justification of
the ancien regime that became the ideology of the Holy
Alliance, and that served the cause of American slavery,
when it came across.the seas. For the "exalted freedom"
of the slaves was compared, to its disadvantage, with the
debased freedom of the "wage slaves" of the bourgeois
order. How these "superadded ideas" appeared to the
leader of the American Revolution, may be inferred from
what Washington wrote in 1783:
The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy ages
of ignorance and superstition; but at an epoch when the
rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly
defined, than at any other period.
Everyone knows that Karl Marx called revealed religion
"the opiate of the people." But Marx's critique of Chris·
tianity, the very foundation of his system, also had its lum·
inous antecedent in Burke. Here is what Burke wrote, in
the Reflections, before Marx was born:
The body of the people ... must respect that property of
which they cannot partake. They must labor to obtain what
by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they
must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of
eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them,
deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation.
To convert Burkean Conservatism into Revolutionary
Communism, all that was necessary was to declare that
the disproportion between labor's endeavor and labor's
success was the Hsurplus value" appropriated by the owning classes. To make the proletariat revolutionary, it was
necessary to deprive them of that meretricious consola·
tion in the "final proportions of eternal justice." Marx did
not state more clearly than Burke the utility of revealed
religion for maintaining a regime of unmerited privilege.
here to compare the proto-Marxism of
Burke, and the Marxism of Marx, with Abraham Lin·
coln. Here is how Lincoln teaches respect for private
property:
I
T IS DESIRABLE
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
Concerning the priority of labor to capital, Lincoln was as
emphatic as Marx:
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only
the fruit of labor; and could not exist if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the
higher consideration. (Nevertheless] Capital has its rights,
which are as worthy of protection as any other rights . ..
What the rights of Capital are, is seen in the following:
That men who are industrious and sober and honest in the
pursuit of their own interests should after a while accumulate
capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in peace,
and . .. to use it to save themselves actual labor, and hire
other people to labor for them is right.
The common ground of Burke and Marx is the idea that
morality-whether illusory or real-is ineluctably grounded
in stratified and invincible class distinctions. For Burke,
this stratification follows the arbitrary lines of the feudal
regime. It requires, in the name of the myths of such a re·
gime, an unequal distribution of the rewards of life, along
the lines of class and caste. Yet the proletarian society of
the future-the classless society of Marx-is nothing but
a mirror image of that very same feudalism. For it is as
arbitrary in its commitment to an equal distribution of the
rewards of life, as the other is to an unequal distribution.
For arbitrary equality-that is to say, giving equal rewards
to unequal persons-is as unjust as unequal rewards to
equal persons. Both are equally unjust, for the same
reasons. The regime of the American Founding, however
imperfect the implementation of its principles, is in its
principles the perfectly just middle way between these
two extemes. As a regime of equal rights, it recognizes the
justice of unequal rewards. There is, said James Madison,
"a diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights
of property originate." "The protection of these faculties,"
he added, "is the first object of government." Because of
this equal protection of unequal faculties, wealth accumu·
lates and social classes become distinguishable. But neither
accumulations of wealth, nor social classes, are fixed in
any immutable pattern. As Lincoln declared, on one of
many similar occasons,
There is no permanent class of hired laborers among us.
Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer
of yesterday labors on his own account today, and will hire
others to labor for him tomorrow.
And again:
The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself . .. is that progress that human nature
is entitled to [and} is that improvement in condition that is in-
9
�tended to be secured by those institutions under which we
live ...
It is this moral vindication of the "bourgeois" regime, as
the regime which is truly in accord with human nature,
that makes Abraham Lincoln, and his interpretation of
the Declaration of Independece, that "hard nut" that the
tyrannies of both Right and Left must crack, to establish
their sway and domination. It explains the extraordinary
efforts in Inventing America, of that symbol of the union
of Left and Right: Garry Wills.
I
NVENTING AMERICA begins in this way:
Americans like, at intervals, to play this dirty trick upon themselves: Pollsters are sent out to canvass men and women on
certain doctrines and to shame them when these are declared
-as usually happens-unacceptable. Shortly after, the results
are published: Americans have, once again, failed to subscribe
to some phrase or other from the Declaration of Independence. The late political scientist Willmoore Kendall called
this game ''discovering America.'' He meant to remind us that
running men out of town on a rail is at least as much an American tradition as declaring unalienable rights.
But Wills is not accurate even in this reference to Kendall.
The game Wills calls "discovering America" is called by
Kendall "Sam Stouffer discovers America," and may be
found described in pages 80 and 81 of The Conservative
Affirmation. It is Kendall's commentary on a book by
Stouffer published in the early fifties under the title of
Civil Liberties, Communism, and Conformity. It is one of
the "classic" liberal attacks on the reactionary public opinion of the so-called McCarthy era; and one should bear in
mind that Kendall was one of McCarthy's staunchest defenders. Hence Kendall's testimony is unusual, in this
context, for a guru of the Left to take as his authority!
Here is how Kendall actually described Stouffer's book:
Mr. Stouffer and his team of researchers asked a representative sample of Americans a number of questions calculated to
find out whether they would permit (a) a Communist, or (b)
an atheist, to (I) speak in their local community, or (2) teach
in their local high school, or (3) be represented, by means of a
book he had written, in their local public library. And consider: some two-thirds of the sample answered "Nothing
doing" right straight down the line . .. nor was there any evidence that they would have been much disturbed to learn
that the Supreme Court says that the Fourteenth Amend-
ment says they can't do anything legally to (e.g.) prevent the
Communist from speaking.
In the poll conducted by Stouffer there is, we see, literally
nothing about the Declaration of Independence. What
Kendall observes the American people saying "Nothing
doing" to-at the period in question-is what the Warren
Court (not the Declaration) was saying in interpreting the
First and Fourteenth Amendments. And on this point I
10
think the American people (thus polled) were right, and
the Court wrong. In 1964 I myself published an essay "On
the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty" in which I
argued that precisely on the ground of the principles of
the Declaration, Communists and Nazis had no just claim
to the constitutional privileges of the First Amendment.
Moreover, I know of no such polls or studies, that Wills asserts exist, in which Americans have "failed to subscribe
to some phrase or other from the Declaration oflndependence."
In any event, it is not phrases that count, but ideas or
principles. These must be stated in terms intelligible to
the respondent. Perhaps the best known slogan of the
American Revolution was "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny." In accordance with it, the Declaration
denounced the King "For imposing taxes on us without
our Consent." The premise underlying these judgments is
that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Does Wills
think that Americans today do not agree with these judgments or their underlying premise? The Declaration says
that the just powers of government are derived from the
consent of the governed. Suppose a pollster, asking
whether the respondent thinks that any government that
governed him, might do so justly without his consent.
Does Wills believe that Americans today would answer
differently from those in 1776? Does he think that they
think that any government might justly levy taxes upon
them-or on anyone else-without the consent, given by
their elected representatives, of the ones taxed?
But perhaps Wills thinks that the arch mystery of the
Declaration is the great proposition, upon which Lincoln
so concentrated attention in the Gettysburg Address, that
all men are created equal. Certainly many are today puzzled by this doctrine. This is not, I think, because of its intrinsic difficulty, but because publicists like Wills have for
so long told them that it is a mere vague abstraction. But
let us re-phrase the proposition, in some of its applications. Suppose, in conducting a poll, one asked whether
the respondents thought it reasonable to divide all human
beings (men and women) into the superior and the inferior, the latter to be ruled by the former, and without their
consent? Or, to put the same queston slightly differently,
suppose one asked whether those· who made the laws
should live under them, or whether the government might
reasonably and justly exempt itself from the laws it made
for others. (One example might be whether the lawmakers
might exempt themselves from the payment of taxes; another might be whether the punishments for either civil
damage or criminal offenses might be different for those
in office, as compared with those out of office.) How
many today would reject Lincoln's simple maxim-interpreting the proposition that all men are created equalthat no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent?
All the foregoing questions a.re based upon that simplified Lockeanism that Jefferson thought was to be found
AUTUMN 1981
�in the American mind, no less than in the common sense
of the subject. One need not have ever heard of the
names of Hume or Hutcheson or Reid or Stewart-indeed
one need not have heard of John Locke-to know that the
power to tax is the power to destroy, and to draw all the
long series of inferences that follow from it. Wills wants to
turn the Declaration into an esoteric mystery, by convincing us that we do not know things that we know perfectly
welL He would have us think that eighteenth century
beliefs are necessarily different from twentieth century
beliefs, and that the veil between them can be pierced only by the magic of the cultural (or professorial) elite. This
is the priestcraft of our contemporary Dark Age.
I would like to make one
further comment on Kendall's assertion, endorsed by
Wills, that
T
O END THIS DISCUSSION,
the true American tradition is less that of our Fourth of July
orations and our constitutional law textbooks, with their
cluck-clucking over the so-called preferred freedoms, than,
quite simply, that of riding someone out of town on a rail.
Note that even here Kendall says something different
from what Wills represents him as saying. Kendall does
not mention unalienable rights. The closest he comes to it
is when he mentions Fourth of July orations. "Preferred
freedoms" refers almost certainly to the constitutional
doctrines of Mr. Justice Black, not to those of Thomas Jefferson, or of any other of the Founding Fathers. Yet Kendall here is in fact being squeamish, something certainly
unusual for KendalL Riding someone out of town on a rail
is a quasi-euphemism for lynching. Someone-perhaps a
specialist in Burlamaqui or Hutcheson-might not know
that riding on a rail was usually preceded by tarring and
feathering. And tarring frequently resulted in second (and
sometimes third) degree burns. Since the tar covered the
whole body, the minimum result was usually pneumonia.
Not many more survived a tarring and feathering than
survived a hanging. But it was a more protracted process,
and accompanied by terrible suffering. In the thirty-third
chapter of Huckleberry Finn we bid our farewell to the
Duke and the King. These bunco artists have by now forfeited all of our-and Huck's-sympathy, by betraying
Jim back into slavery. In their last appearance Huck sees
them being whooped along by the townsmen they had
cheated. Huck says he knew it was the Duke and the
King,
though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like
nothing in the world that was human . ..
Although he had loathed them before, and hates them
now, he says that
It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful
cruel to one another.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
When Kendall or Wills tells us that lynching is as much an
American tradition as declaring that there are unalienable, or natural human rights, they are telling us no more
than that evil is as deeply engrained in the American tradition as good. This is a difficult proposition to contest. All
that I would contend is that the principles of the Declaration, which embody the principles of the rule oflaw, stand
in direct opposition to lynching, which is the denial or repudiation of lawfulness. And by a disposition of Providence, as poetical as it is historical, Abraham Lincoln's
first great speech-his Lyceum Address of 1838-was a
denunciation of the growing and dangerous habit of lawlessness, which he observed to be abroad in the land then.
In that speech, Lincoln warned that lynch law and free
government were enemies of each other, and that one
could not long survive in the presence of the other. Lynch
law, we repeat, was but one expression of the repudiation
of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was another.
Slavery and lynch law went together. Kendall's (and
Wills's) tacit patronage of lynch law is but another aspect
of their tacit patronage of slavery.
According to Wills, Abraham Lincoln was "a great artist
of America's romantic period." This, however, is not in-
tended as a compliment. Rather is it intended as an a
priori explanation of how Lincoln was able to substitute a
fallacious myth of our origins as a nation for the truth
about those origins. Lincoln's artistry, he says, fit the antiscientific, biblical mood of mid-century, so that the "biblically shrouded" figure of "Fourscore and seven years . .. "
presumably evoked acceptance, as "eighty-seven" might
not. And Wills is not tender with Lincoln's character, in
regard to this alleged deception about the date of the
founding of the nation. "Useful falsehoods," he writes,
"are dangerous things, often costing us down the road."
The Gettysburg Address, beginning with its magisterial
invocation of the year 1776 as the point of our origin as a
nation, is a "falsehood," and even a "dangerous" one.
Wills has summoned up a strict standard of truthfulness,
by which he, no less than Abraham Lincoln, must then be
judged.
Wills's entire work, as we shall see, actually stands or
falls by this claim that 1776 is not, and cannot be regarded
as, the birth date of the nation. Lincoln, he says, "obviously gave some thought" to his "Fourscore and seven."
Indeed he did.
I pointed out, more
than a score of years ago, that the beginning of the Gettysburg Address marked as well the end of the long debate with Stephen A. Douglas. For Douglas had declared
that we existed as a nation only by virtue of the Constitution. Notwithstanding the fact that, in other respects,
Douglas was a Jacksonian Unionist, in this he echoes
Southern-and Calhounian-doctrine. It was axiomatic
for Jefferson Davis-and for all who voted for secession in
the winter and spring of 1860-1861-that the United
I
N CRISIS OF THE HOUSE DNIDED
11
�States could be regarded as a single nation, solely by virtue
of the Constitution. Each state, it was held, became part
of the Union or nation by virtue of the process of ratification. The ordinances of secession were regarded as-and
in some cases were actually called~acts of de-ratification.
And there can be no doubt that, were the Union or nation
created solely by the process by which the Constitution of
1787 was ratified, then it could lawfully have been uncreated by the same process. Willmoore Kendall, whom
Wills is obviously following, repeats this Confederate
dogma, saying that there was a "bakers dozen" of new nations resulting from the Declaration of Independence. By
this interpretation, in the Declaration of Independence
the thirteen colonies were not only declaring their independence of Great Britain, they were declaring their independence of each other.
Wills thinks that Lincoln would have had some ground
for treating 1777 as the year of birth of the nation, since in
that year the Articles of Confederation were adopted. But
best of all, as a proposed birth date, he thinks, is 1789, the
year in which the Constitution came into operation. For
this date, he says, Lincoln should have written "Four
score minus six years ago ... " With this ill-placed facetiousness Wills shows himself completely oblivious of the
great ante-bellum debate. He seems unconscious of the
existence of the masterful brief, legal, historical, and
philosophical, that Lincoln presented, notably in his inaugural address, and still more copiously, after Sumter, in
his message to Congress, in special session, July 4, 1861.
Lincoln's argument, as to the nature and origin of the
Union, is presented with Euclidean precision and classic
beauty. It is surpassed by nothing in Demosthenes, Cicero, or Burke.
Wills writes as if Lincoln had suddenly invented the notion that the nation had been born in 1776 as he com·
posed the Gettysburg Address, and that he relied upon
the mesmerizing influence of his vowels and consonants
(e.g. "by mere ripple and interplay of liquids") to secure
his deception. But Lincoln's audience in 1863 and thereafter, unlike Wills, knew very well that the Gettysburg Ad·
dress was but a moment in a dialectical process that had
been going on for more than a generation. Neither Lin·
coin nor the nation ever imagined that he was appealing
to their sentiment, apart from an argument, laid in fact
and reason. It would have been perfectly honorable for
Wills to have taken up the weapons of controversy against
Lincoln's side, as statemen and scholars have done since
the days of Calhoun, jefferson Davis, and Alexander
Stephens. But mere malicious sneering has no place in
such a debate.
Wills tells us, with easy assurance, that "there are some
fairly self-evident objections to that mode of calculating,"
viz., the mode expressed by "Four score and seven years
ago ... " What are these objections?
All thirteen colonies [writes Wills] subscribed to the Declaration with instructions to their delegates that this was not to
12
imply formation of a single nation. If anything, july 4, 1776,
produced twelve new nations (with a thirteenth coming in on
July 15)-conceived in liberty perhaps, but more dedicated to
the proposition that the colonies they severed from the
mother country were equal to each other than that their in-
habitants were equal. [Italics by Wills.]
We note that Wills does not say that the delegates were
not instructed to form a single nation. He says that they
were instructed not to form (or imply formation of) a single
nation. If Wills had said that the instructions for indepen·
dence were in some cases ambiguous, as to whether the
thirteen colonies were to form a single union, state, or na~
tion, he would have asserted what would certainly have
been plausible. But in positively asserting an unambiguous intention not to form a single nation, he is asserting
something for which there is not a shred of evidence.
Not many readers will take the trouble to look up the
colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continental
Congress, in the spring of 1776. Like most reviewers, they
will assume that someone with a prestigious professorship
at a major university, with a doctorate from Yale (all
things advertised on the dust jacket), will of course have
read documents carefully, and reported them faithfully.
Errors like Wills's, launched with such authority, spread
like plague germs in an epidemic. And although it takes
few words to put such errors in circulation, it takes painstaking effort, and detailed analysis, effectively to contradict them.
Turning now to the instructions, we note that they do
not contain the word "nation" at all. The word "union" is
its nearest equivalent. (We note also that in Lincoln's political vocabulary, the words "union" and "nation" were
virtually synonymous.) In the instructions, the word "confederation" is also used in a sense, at least quasi~synony~
mous with "union."
The important question we must ask, in examining the
language of the instructions for independence, is whether
the colonies were, in making a single and common declaration of independence, implying or assuming or declaring
that they did so as members of a common government.
And further, we would want to know whether they implied or stated that they expected their association in and
through the Congress to become a permanent one. An affirmative answer to these two questions is all that would
be needed to sustain Lincoln's thesis with respect to the
"Four score and seven years." Wills, we repeat, by assert~
ing that in july of 1776 thirteen nations or states came
into existence by virtue of the Declaration, asserts that
the thirteen were not merely declaring their independence of Great Britain, but their independence of each
other.
Rhode Island, by its General Assembly, on May 4, 1776,
instructed its delegates
to join with the delegates of the other United Colonies in
Congress . .. to consult and advise . .. upon the most proper
AUTUMN 1981
�measures for promoting and confirming the strictest union
and confederation . ..
such further compact and confederation . .. as shall be judged
necessary for securing the liberties of America . ..
Virginia's instructions-May 15th-called simply for such
measures as might be thought proper and necessary
Most extraordinary of all is the instruction of the House
of Representatives of New Hampshire. For in this case,
the instruction for independence and the instruction for
union, given separately in the other cases, were here com~
bined into one. New Hampshire instructed its (single)
delegate
for forming foreign alliances, and a confederation of the
colonies.
Here "confederation" is synonymous with "union and
confederation" in the Rhode Island instructions.
in reading these documents,
that we are witnessing a transformation in the use
and application of certain key terms. The word
"confederation," like the words "federal" or "confederal,"
was an old bottle into which new wine was being poured.
The American Revolution, and the American Founding,
produced a form of government unprecedented in the history of the world. In later years, James Madison called the
government of the United States a "nondescript," because there was still no word that properly expressed what
it actually was. In 1787, in the Federalist, Madison called
the government of the new Constitution, "partly national,
partly federal," although by the traditional understanding
of "federal" and ''national" such an expression would
have been a self-contradiction. As the late Martin Diamond
has pointed out, the expression "federal government"
would have been a solecism, prior to the emergence of the
American form of government. What had hitherto been
regarded as federal, could not properly be regarded as a
government, and what had hitherto been regarded as government, could not properly admit any distinct or separate sovereignty in any of its parts. In these instructions
we see an early application of "confederation" in a sense
consistent with what was later understood clearly in the
expression "federal government." It would be a mistake to
assume that the later meaning was clearly present to the
minds ofthe men of 1776. Yet it would be an equally great
mistake to fail to perceive, in 1776, the genesis of the later
meaning. Lincoln, one should remember, said that the nation had been born in 1776, he did not say it had already
matured.
W
E SHOULD BE AWARE,
Connecticut, on June 14, 1776, instructed its delegates
in Congress to
.
move and promote, as fast as may be convenient, a regular
and permanent plan of union and confederation of the
Colonies ...
New Jersey, on June 21st, called for
entering into a confederation for union and common
defense .. .
Maryland, on June 28th, in authorizing independence,
also authorized
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to join with the other colonies in declaring the thirteen
United Colonies a free and independent state . ..
Concerning what might justly be called the burgeoning
national consciousness, consider the language with which
the Georgia Colonial Congress addressed its delegates in
the Continental Congress, in April of 1776. They exhorted their representatives that they
always keep in view the general utility, remembering that the
great and righteous cause in which we are engaged is not provincial, but continental. We therefore, gentlemen, shall rely
upon your patriotism, abilities, firmness, and integrity, to propose, join, and concur in all such meaSures as you shall think
calculated for the common good, and to oppose all such asappear destructive.
We see the coordination of "patriotism" with the "com~
mon good," and that this good is said to be "continental"
and not "provincial." Can anyone, reading these words,
think that in 1776 Georgia (any more than New Hampshire) was engaged in declaring its independence from its
sister colonies?
what could lie behind Wills's assertion
about these colonial instructions. It is certainly true
that the full implications of single statehood, or
union, or nationhood, were not visible in 1776. And it is
true that all of the colonies, while endorsing union in vary:
ing terms, nonetheless did so with reservation. For example, while calling for the formation of the "strictest
union," Rhode Island required that the greatest care be
taken
L
ET US ASK
to secure to this colony . .. its present established form, and all
powers of government, so far as it related to its internal police
and conduct of our own affairs, civil and religious.
Virginia, in like manner, asked that
the power of forming government for, and the regulating of
the internal concerns of, each colony, be left to the respective
Colonial Legislatures.
Pennsylvania required that there be reserved
to the people of this colony the sole and exclusive right of
regulating the internal government and police of the same.
13
�And New Hampshire, the same New Hampshire which
thought that the United Colonies should declare themselves a single "free and independent state," nonetheless
required that,
the regulation of our internal police be under the direction of
our own Assembly.
Could there be any clearer demonstration, than these
words by which New Hampshire reserved its right of internal or local government, that such reservations did not
constitute obstacles, in the minds of those making the reservations, to national unity?
These reservations of local or state autonomy represent,
in generic form, the great principle of American federalism. They reappeared, the year following the Declaration,
in the Articles of Confederation, in Article II, which reads
as follows.
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress
assembled.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution contains a
similar reservation of the "internal concerns" to the juris-
diction of the governments of the states-and to the people of the states-as is found in those colonial instructions
of the spring of 1776. It reads:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively,
o~
to the people.
The notable difference between these two articles is the
presence of the words Hsovereignty" and "expressly" in
the former. But John Quincy Adams, among others,
thought that the spirit of the Declaration (and of the instructions authorizing the Declaration) was stronger in
the Constitution than in the Articles. The Tenth Amendment, by not referring to the powers delegated as being
"expressly" delegated, opened the door to the great contest, begun by Hamilton and Jefferson, between liberalor broad-construction, and strict-or narrow-construction, a contest which continues until this very day. But
the ambiguity in the Constitution which permits two
schools of constitutional interpretation is not different
from the ambiguity in the original instructions for forming a union. If that ambiguity is regarded as militating
against the formation of a national union, then we are no
more a nation today than we were on July 4, 1776.
*
*
*
denies any credibility to
Lincoln's characterization, in the Gettysburg Address, of july 4, 1776, as the birth date of the nation. We have seen that his alleged grounds for this denial,
the colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continen-
W
14
lLLS, WE HAVE NOTED,
tal Congress in the spring of 1776, do not bear out what
he says about them. But Edmund Morgan, writing in The
New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978, in a generally
favorable notice of Inventing America, has pointed to a
very good test of single statehood in the Declaration itself.
For the Declaration reads, near the end, as follows:
That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free
and Independent States . .. and that as Free and Independent
States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and do all other Acts
and Things which Independent States may of right do.
"Which of these free and independent states," asks Morgan, "undertook to do the acts and things Jefferson specified as characteristic of a state?"
It was Congress [Morgan continues] that levied war through
the Continental Army; it was Congress that concluded peace
through its appointed commissioners; and it was Congress
that contracted the alliance with France. Congress may not
have established commerce, but in the Association it had disestablished it, and in a resolution of the preceding April 6, it
had opened American ports to all the world except England.
In denying that there was "one nation" or anything like
it, resulting from the Declaration of Independence, Wills
makes the extraordinary assertion that the Declaration is
not a legal document of any kind. He calls it and the Gettysburg Address mere "war propaganda with no legal
force."
Now the Gettysburg Address was an occasional address
of the President of the United States. Its force, as such,
was moral rather than legal. Its chief feature, however,
was to reaffirm the principles of the Declaration, and to
reaffirm them in conjunction with another Presidential
act, namely, the Emancipation Proclamation. The latter
of course was a legal act, although its permanent force depended upon the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. The purpose of the Gettysburg Address was to help
to generate the political forces which would lead the nation from the Emancipation Proclamation-whose legal
effect was limited to what could be inferred from the war
powers of the Commander-in-Chief-to that permanent
abolition of chattel slavery that could only be accomplished by an amendment to the Constitution. It is that
fulfillment of the promise of equal human rights by the
Declaration, in the Thirteenth Amendment, that constitutes the "new birth of freedom" wished for by the Address. If Wills regards this as mere "war propaganda" then
he can have little regard for the abolition of slavery as an
event in American history.
To assert, as Wills does, that the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, is simply amazing. It is
among the more stupendous reasons why we think that
Inventing America should have been shipped back to its
author in manuscript. Evidently Wills-and the readers of
his manuscript-have never held in their hands the StatAUTUMN 1981
�utes at Large of the United States, the Revised Statutes of
the United States, or the United States Code. The 1970
edition of the United States Code, which is before me as I
write, classifies the Declaration among the "Organic Laws
of the United States." Of these, the Declaration of Independence is the first. Second is the Articles of Confederation. Third is the Ordinance of 1787: The Northwest
Territorial Government. Fourth is the Constitution of the
United States and Amendments.
Let us recall that Wills preferred both the Articles and
the Constitution to the Declaration, as marking the beginning of American statehood or nationhood. But the Articles declares, in its preamble, that it was done "in the
second year of the Independence of America." Moreover,
the Constitution, in the form in which it left the Convention, over the signature of George Washington, dates
Itself
in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States
of America the Twelfth.
Both these notable documents-which Wills thinks Lincoln should have preferred to the Declaration-themselves
refer to the Declaration as the originating document of
the United States.
This dating of the union, at the end of Article VII of the
Constitution, has moreover a particular legal application.
Article VI reads, in its first paragraph, that
our State, and of that of the United States," they wrote,
the first of the "best guides" to this end was
the Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental act of
union of these States.
We see then that the Declaration was not regarded by Jefferson and Madison, as it is by Wills (and Kendall), as an
act whose sole effect was to separate thirteen colonies
from Great Britain. It was an act whereby the separation
from Great Britain was simultaneously accompanied by
union with each other. It was the accomplishment of
union that makes it the primitive organic law of the
United States. This is why all acts of the United States are
dated from the Declaration.
But the Declaration is more even than an organic law.
Its statement of principles remains that statement of the
principles of natural right and of natural law which is the
ground for asserting that the government of the United
States (and of each of the States) represents law and right,
and not mere force without law or right.
In 1844, for example, in a great speech in the House of
Representatives, john Quincy Adams declared that the
assertion of principles in the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the proposition that "we hold
these truths to be self-evident ... " constituted the "moral
foundation of the North American Revolution." It was, he
said, "the only foundation upon which the North American Revolution could be justified from the charge of
treason and rebellion."
All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before
the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the
United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
From the foregoing, it is clear that there was a "United
States under the Confederation" before there was a
"United States under this Constitution." The fact that
the United States in its subsequent form (that of "a more
perfect Union") acknowledges the debts of the earlier
United States, shows that it remains the same moral person. But Article XII of the Articles of Confederation
accepts responsibility for the debts contracted by the
Congress before the adoption of the Articles, just as the
Constitution accepts the debts of the government of the
Confederation. In short, the United States is continuously
the United States, is continuously the same collective
identity, the same moral agent, from the moment that it
became independent, viz., since july 4, 1776.
In what sense then is the Declaration of Independence
a law of the United States; or, rather, in what sense is it
the first of the organic laws of the United States? The
United States Code does not say. In 1825, however,
Thomas jefferson and james Madison, both members of
the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, together prepared a list of books and documents to serve as
authorities for the instruction to be offered by the faculty
of law. On "the distinctive principles of government of
1HE ST.JOHNSREVIEW
But Wills hates the very idea that the United States was
born out of a dedication to liberty and justice. For him,
the belief that our political arrangements are in some particular sense in accordance with universal principles of
natural right, breeds only a sense of self-righteousness,
and makes us a danger to ourselves and to others. As an
example of the latter, he cites john F. Kennedy's alleged
willingness "to throw Communist devils out of Russia,
China, Cuba, or Vietnam." As an example of the former,
he cites "the House Un-American Activities Committee!"
In 1823, jefferson, writing to Madison on August 30th,
referred to a meeting that had taken place the previous
month as an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its
birthday. When Jefferson thus referred to july 4th as the
nation's birthday, Abraham Lincoln was fourteen years
old. By this time, such references to the Glorious Fourth
were traditional and customary. No one seemed to doubt
then that the principles that accompanied our beginnings
were as luminous as they were true. It was some years
later that men began to discover the "positive good" of
slavery, and to mutter that the so called self-evident truths
might after all be self-evident lies. Then was the foundation laid for Garry Will's discovery that the Declaration
was, after all, written in "the lost language of the
Enlightenment."
*
*
*
15
�ILLS CONTENDS that the major influence upon
Jefferson, and upon the writing of the Declaration, was not John Locke, but Francis Hutcheson.
Hutcheson was a Scottish philosopher, who wrote a generation or so after Locke. The dates of his books, as given
by Wills, are from 1725 to 1755. Locke died in 1704. Indeed, the principal explicit thesis of Inventing America is
that the Declaration is an Hutchesonian and not a
Lockean document. Wills's principal antagonist, within
these lists of controversy, is Carl Becker.. Becker's The
Declaration of Independence, published in 1922, has long
been regarded as a classic. And in certain respects, its authority-as Wills notes-has gone unchallenged. We
would note that Becker was himself an historicist and a
relativist, and as such took no more seriously than Wills
the Declaration's assertion (in Lincoln's words) "of an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." However,
Wills cites one noted scholar after another, who has cited
Becker, assimilated Becker, built on Becker. "The secret
of this universal acclaim," writes Wills,
W
lies in the inability of any later student to challenge Becker's
basic thesis-that Jefferson found in John Locke "the ideas
which he put into the Declaration." [Wills's italics]
According to Wills, the thesis of a "Lockean orthodoxy ... coloring all men's thought in the middle of the
eighteenth century" is one which has not been challenged
by "any later student." That is to say, it has not been challenged by a single student prior to Wills.
Wills's bold cliallenge to Beckerian-and all later-orthodoxy, concerning the Lockean orthodoxy of the Amer·
ican Founding, comes to a climax in Chapter 18. This
chapter is prefaced by a paragraph from an influential
pamphlet essay by James Wilson, first published in 1774.
This passage from Wilson, says Wills, was used by Becker
"to establish the orthodox Lockean nature of Jefferson's
Declaration." Here it is, as it appears in Inventing America.
All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to
any authority over another without his consent: all lawful
government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: such consent was given with a view to ensure and to
increase the happiness of the governed, above what they
could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The consequence is, that the happiness of the society is
the first law of every government. [Wilson's italics.]
Next, we will repeat what Wills says about this passage
from Wilson's essay, and what he says about Becker's use
of it. We give this paragraph from page 250 of Inventing
America exactly as it appears there. If the reader finds the
paragraph confusing, he must ask the apology of Wills.
For Wills has the muddling and confusing habit of using
no footnotes, but incorporating all his reference notes in
parentheses within his text. As we shall presently see,
however, Wills does not only not use footnotes, he does
not know how to read them. Becker, says Wills,
16
calls the Wilson quote "a summary of Locke" (Declaration,
108), part of America's common heritage of ideas. But if the
idea was so common, why did Wilson give a particular source
for it, and only one? Here is his own footnote to the passage
(in his Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament of 1774): "The right to
sovereignty is that of commanding finally-but in order to
procure real felicity; for if this is not obtained, sovereignty
ceases to be a legitimate authority, 2 Burl., 32, 33." He is
quoting in summary Burlamaqui's Principes du droit politique,
1, v, 1; 6( ~Principes du droit nature!, 1, x, 2). Now Burlamaqui
was a disciple of Hutcheson's philosophy of moral sense
(Nature!, 2, iii, 1) and therefore he differed from Locke on
concepts of right (ibid., 1, v, 10) and property (1, iv, 8), of the
social contract (1, iv, 9) and the state of nature (2, iv, ll). If
Wilson meant to voice a Lockean view of government, as
Becker assumed, he clumsily chose the wrong source.
The unsuspecting reader, confronted by this witches'
brew of scholarship, is apt to think that Carl Becker must
certainly have been clumsy, and not James Wilson. And it
would certainly seem as if a whole generation-or
more-of scholars had followed Becker, "like sheep,
through the gates of error." It takes two or three readings
of this paragraph before one can accustom one's eyes to
the forest of parentheses, and then slowly begin to distinguish the sentences within. This, however, is what can be
seen at last. Wilson has quoted something in a footnote.
At the end of the quotation, and within the quotation
marks, he has given a source for that quotation. Wills calls
the quotation "a summary" of a certain chapter in a book
of Burlamaqui, which parallels another chapter in another
book of Burlamaqui. Having read with some care both
chapters in both books, I would call the quotation a paraphrase rather than a summary. But that is not important.
What is important is that Wilson does not present the
paraphrase or summary of Burlamaqui as a source for
what he himself has written. Wills's assertion 'that the passage from Burlamaqui is the "particular source" and the
"only" source for Wilson's alleged "summary of Locke" is
simply untrue. It is easier to see this if one has Wilson's essay before one, and if one sees the footnote separated
from the text at the bottom of the page. Let us suppose,
for example, that after saying that "all lawful government
is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it"
Wilson had appended this footnote: "Our authority is his
consent, Sh., 2 Hen. 6, 4, I, 316." Would this have meant
that Wilson had declared that the source of the idea expressed in the text was the second part of Shakespeare's
Henry VI? Would it have meant more than that Wilson
had found a felicitous expression of his thought in Shakespeare, and that such an expression lent a certain cogency
or weight to what Wilson had said?
Wills's assertion that this note gives the "only" source
of Wilson's thought, is all the more absurd because Wilson's essay has forty-eight separate footnotes. Some cite
Blackstone, some cite Bolingbroke, but the majority refer
to decisions of British courts, and opinions of British
AUTUMN 1981
�judges. As Becker rightly observes, the main point of Wilson's entire essay is to show the close approximation of
the principles of British constitutionalism to the principles of natural law. All of Wilson's footnotes are designed
to confirm his judgments, not to give sources for his ideas.
To repeat: the quotation in the footnote is a paraphrase of
Burlamaqui. The reference to Burlamaqui is simply to
give the source in Burlamaqui of the passages thus paraphrased. The reference then is to the source of the footnote, not to the source of the text. All that buckshot spray
of alleged differences between Burlamaqui and Hutcheson, on the one hand, and Locke on the other, is simply
pretentious nonsense. Wilson has throughout spoken in
his own name, not in that of either Locke or Burlamaqui.
That he has in the main followed Locke, as Becker says, is
not to be doubted on the basis of any evidence supplied
by Wills.
*
I
*
*
N HIS ANXIETY to re-write the intellectual history of the
American Founding, Wills goes to lengths of hyperbole
and exaggeration which are inconsistent with serious
scholarship. He says, for example, that there is "no demonstrable verbal echo of the Treatise [Locke's Second
Treatise of Government] in all of Jefferson's vast body of
writings." Against the many writers who have said that
the Declaration repeats not only arguments, but even the
phraseology of the Second Treatise, Wills airily asserts that
"no precise verbal parallels have been adduced."
Wills, however, thinks that verbal parallels to the Declaration abound in Hutcheson. Here, for example, is a passage from Hutcheson, adduced by Wills as an example of
the proximity of Hutcheson to the jefferson of the
Declaration:
Nor is it justifiable in a people to have recourse for any lighter
causes to violence and civil wars against their rulers, while the
public interests are tolerably secured and consulted. But
when it is evident that the public liberty and safety is not tol-
erably secured, and that more mischiefs, and these of a more
lasting kind, are like to arise from the continuance of any plan
of civil power than are to be feared from the violent efforts for
an alteration of it, then it becomes lawful, nay honorable, to
make such efforts and change the plan of government.
Here is the passage in the Declaration it is compared with:
Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are
more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed.
But here is what Locke, in the Second Treatise (para. 230)
had written:
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
For till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of
the Rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the
greater part, the People, who are more disposed to suffer,
than right themselves by Resistance, are not apt to stir.
Who cannot see that the words of Locke are much closer
to the words of jefferson than those of Hutcheson? The
phrases "disposed to suffer" and "right themselves" may
or may not be echoes, but they are key phrases, and they
are identical in Locke and Jefferson.
Here is another example of Hutcheson, provided by
Wills:
A good subject ought to bear patiently many injuries done
only to himself, rather than take arms against a prince in the
main good and useful to the state, provided the danger extends only to himself. But when the common rights of humanity are trampled upon, and what at first attempted
against one is made precedent against all the rest, then as the
governor is plainly perfidious to his trust, he has forfeited all
the power committed to him.
Here is the parallel passage in the Declaration. This is
from the Declaration in the draft originally reported, as
distinguished from that finally adopted:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a
distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government .. .
And here is Locke, in the parallel passage in the Second
Treatise.
But if a long train of abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all
tending the same way, make the design visible to the people,
and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see,
whither they are going; 'tis not to be wonder'd, that they
should then rouze theniselves, and endeavor to put the rule
into such hands, which may secure to them the ends fOr
which Government was first erected . ..
Once .again, we have, not echoes, but identical phrases
in jefferson and Locke. The "long train of abuses" has
been the phrase most cited by generations of
scholars-although Wills stubbornly denies that they have
ever "adduced" such parallels. Even more to the point, is
the key word "design," which occurs in both Locke and
jefferson, and which is peculiarly vital to the Declaration's
argument.
Edmund Morgan, in the review to which we have already referred, says flatly that the resemblances of Jefferson's language to Locke are closer than anything Wills has
found in any Scottish philosopher. But even more to the
point-and we will let Morgan make this point for us-is
that in the parallels between Hutcheson and Jefferson
cited by Wills, "the distance from Locke's political principles is not noticeable, indeed it is non-existent." Yet so insistent is Wills upon this very distance of jefferson from
Locke, that he asserts that: "There is no indication )effer-
17
�son read the Second Treatise carefully or with profit. Indeed, there is no direct proof he ever read it at all (though
I assume he did at some point.)" Wills is aware that Jefferson recommended the book to others but thinks that, like
many a professor puffing himself to students, "There
would be nothing dishonest about his general recommendation of the Treatise, made to others while he lacked any
close acquaintance with the text. .. " Yet in 1790, writing
to an intimate friend, Jefferson pronounced "Locke's little
book on government" to be "perfect as far as it goes."
Forty-five years later, near the end of his life, Jefferson
collaborated with Madison-as we have already noted-in
drawing up a list of books and documents for the faculty
of law at the University of Virginia. Again-and for the
last time-he turned to Locke, as he sought by university
education to preserve the principles of the Revolution. In
a resolution, prepared for, and adopted by the Board of
Visitors, it was affirmed to be
the opinion of this Board that as to the general principles of
liberty and the rights of man, in nature and in society, the
doctrines of Locke, in his "Essay concerning the true original
extent and end of civil government," [the full title of the Sec-
ond Treatise] and of Sidney in his "Discourses on government," may be considered as those generally approved by our
fellow citizens of this, and the United States ...
From this recommendation of Locke and Sidney for "general principles" Jefferson went on, as we have already
seen, to recommend the Declaration for the "distinctive
principles" of American government. The pairing of Locke
and Sidney was, as Wills notes, a traditional Whig custom.
I do not see how this detracts from the importance of
Locke. Wills says that the famous letter to Henry Lee is
the only place in which Jefferson ever links Locke and the
Declaration. In this resolution however, Locke and the
Declaration are again linked, and linked in the most authoritative manner. Coming at the end of Jefferson's life,
this resolution has a peculiar and final authority.
Among the many absurdities of Wills's work is that
Adam Smith, as a "moral sense" philosopher, becomes a
"communitarian." Thus the spiritual father of capitalism-or the system of natural freedom, as he called
it-becomes part of the anti-individualism which prepared the way for Marx and today's Left. Had Wills read
that notable book linking the Theory of Moral Sentiments
with The Wealth of Nations, Joseph Cropsey's Polity and
Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam
Smith, he would not have committed such an egregious
error. For he would have learned from Cropsey that the
Scottish school were emenders of Locke, rather than negators or opponents. All their thought moves within a circle previously defined by Locke, and before Locke, by
Hobbes. Indeed, the quotation from Burlamaqui, relating
the purposes of civil society to sovereignty, points back
from Locke towards Hobbes, rather than forward toward
the Scottish school.
18
An important book may still be written about Hutcheson, and the school he represents, and their influence
upon the American Founding Fathers. No responsible
scholar has ever claimed that the Declaration of Independence is purely (or merely) a Lockean document. The substitution of "pursuit of happiness" for "property" in the
famous enumeration of rights is a sufficient obstacle to
such a simplistic view. So is the appeal to the "dictates of
prudence." The ultimate authority for the meaning of the
intellectual virtue of prudence is Aristotle. For it was Aristotle who separated philosophic wisdom from practical
wisdom, sophia from phronesis, sapientia from prudentia.
T
a great deal in the Declaration that points backwards from Locke, towards the
ancients. In that famous letter to Henry Lee in 1825,
Jefferson wrote of the Declaration:
HERE IS ACCORDINGLY
All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of
the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed
essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle,
Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.
Wills attempts to brush this aside and to ridicule the reference to Aristotle, because elsewhere Jefferson depreciates
him. But Jefferson makes clear in the Lee letter that in
drafting the Declaration he was the agent of the Congress, and of the American people. What he wrote was not
intended as a personal statement, but "as an expression of
the American mind." That Jefferson listed two ancientsAristotle and Cicero-before two moderns-Locke and
Sidney-was not casual or accidental. Patrick Henry's
famous apostrophe began by noting that "Caesar had his
Brutus." The Senate, the Capitol, and many other symbols from the Founding period remind us of the power of
the example of ancient Rome, and of ancient freedom.
Perhaps Rome was more looked to than Greece. But Cicero himself looked to Athens to discover the principles of
Rome's greatness. Cicero was an "academic skeptic,"
who, although he wrote both a "Republic" and a "Laws,"
came closer in many respects to Aristotle than to Plato.
Wills ends his Prologue, his apology for writing his
book, with an appeal to the authority of Douglass Adair.
He cites an essay by Adair published in 1946, in which
Adair said, among other things, that
An exact knowledge of Jefferson's ideas . .. is still lacking ... We know relatively little about his ideas in the context
of the total civilization of which he was a part . ..
This, Wills thinks, authorizes his flat rejection of the
Lockeanism of orthodox scholarship. Certainly, Adair was
himself something of a rebel against orthodox scholarship.
He was also the author of what has often been referred to
as the most influential unpublished dissertation of our
time. Adair was restrained more by modesty and perfecAUTUMN 1981
�tionism, than by fear of the orthodox. Adair-who died in
1968-was my colleague and my friend, and a copy of his
1943 dissertation is before me. It is entitled The Intellec·
tual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. Its exceedingly
bold hypothesis is: that the most important source of Jef.
fersonian ideas on the connection between virtue, free~
dom, agrarianism, and republicanism, was to be found in
the Sixth Book of Aristotle's Politics. Adair's argument,
although brilliantly set forth, is not altogether persuasive.
But it adds plausibility to the notion of an Aristotelian in·
fluence on the Declaration-particularly since Jefferson
mentions that influence himself. When the Declaration
speaks of the people, instituting new government, such as
"to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness," he is appealing to a tradition of more than
two thousand years. For safety and happiness are the
alpha and omega of political life, according to a tradition
originating with Aristotle. Political life, Aristotle had writ.
ten, originates in the desire for life, that is, for self-preser.
vation. But it moves on a scale of dignity, from mere life,
to the good life. And the name for the good life is happi·
ness.
In his straining to credit everything Jeffersonian to
Hutcheson, Wills makes much of the fact that Hutcheson
coined the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." He is sure that this is what caused Jefferson to
write "pursuit of happiness" instead of property" or
~<estate," in the famous enumeration. He tells us confidently that from the teachings of the Scottish school
"public happiness" is "measurable'' and "is, indeed, the
test and justification of any government." That public
happiness is the test and justification of any government
is also the teaching of both the Nicomachean Ethics and
of the Politics. Such public happiness would not, how·
ever, be measurable in any mathematical sense. Happi·
ness, according to Aristotle, is the summum bonum. As
such it cannot be counted among good things, since it
11
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
represents the presence of all good things, in the propor·
lions that make them beneficial to their possessor. For ex·
ample, you cannot be made happier by becoming richer,
if you already have all the wealth that you can use well.
But where does Jefferson ever speak of measuring happi·
ness, in the mathematical or geometrical manner that
Wills imputes to Hutcheson? It bears repeating, that in
sketching the literary sources of the Declaration-or,
rather, of the American mind that the Declaration ex·
pressed-Jefferson names Aristotle first of all. Then, after
naming Cicero, he mentions Locke. But the name of
Francis Hutcheson, in connection with the Declaration of
Independence, is never mentioned at all.
POSTSCRIPT
The two reviewers in question were M. J. Sobran, for NR, and
Richard Brookhiser for the American Spectator. In a later article
in NR, "Saving the Declaration," (December 22, 1978) Mr. Sobran
wrote as follows.
The Declaration is a republican document, based squarely on
Locke's theory . .. Which brings me to a personally embarrassing
point. In his recent book, Inventing America, Garry Wills persuaded
me (NR, July 7), that the Declaration can be understood without
reference to Locke. He denied, in fact, that there are any distinct
echoes of Locke, either in the Declaration or in Jefferson's writings
generally. But a careful reading of the Second Treatise makes overwhelmingly clear that Wills is wrong. In diction, terms, turns of
phrase, structure, and of course destination, the resemblance is so
close that it is hard to feel that the Declaration is anything but a sustained allusion to Locke. [Emphasis by Mr. Sobran.]
The reader will, of course, have perceived that in our opinion
the Declaration is in fact much more than an allusion to Locke.
Without that allusion, however, nothing of substance in the Declaration comes to sight. I am pleased to be able to record that Mr.
Brookhiser has authorized me to declare his association with Mr.
Sobran's revised judgment of Inventing America. This is a most
hopeful sign, that for better reasons than mere success, the Right
may become the Center of American politics.
19
�Four Poems
Laurence Josephs
ELM TREE
LATE WINTER PoEM
My elm is dead. Its bark
Peels off in shrugs, aghast
Bendings. Though some birds
Still bud there like leaves,
They sing through its bones
Resentfully, and none will nest.
For Frederick Caldwell II
A fairground edge-of-town,
A wreck stripped for the next
Stop, it shows only absence
Down to the last pennant
Where before the summer sky
Gorgeously intervened.
There has been some snow, I see,
Enough just to receive
The traced pawprints
Of small animals, to and from
The birdfeeder
Where they have mined
A first course of fallen
Seeds left by the birds.
Next spring will hear it
Shrieking in the chain-saw's
Mad embrace, as if
Gargantuan insects
Rubbed mutant wings, until,
Mire in the chimney
And released, all sickness
Burned away, its pale insubstant
Ghost against a pewter sky
Once more will branch
In air, blooming high over the house.
Up early I catch a cold
World almost a part
Of the moon, as if
It had dropped from that
Somehow and hardened.
Let me open the door! 0 let
Me open the window and lean out
Into this mask of silent air!
Has nothing really human
Happened here since last night
Before the snow began to come down?
In the road are tire-tracks:
Tracks of snow pushed aszde
To look like sculptured wavesThe wake of someone rushing past my house
As I slept and dreamed.
Professor of English at Skidmore College, Laurence Josephs has published three collections of poems, Cold Water Morning (Skidmore College 1964), The Skidmore Poems (Skidmore College 1975) and Six Elegies
(The Greenfield Review Press 1972).
20
AUTUMN 1981
�THE PoRCH
UNFINISHED SELF-PORTRAIT AND SEASCAPE
(Late August Mternoon)
Seeing in the glass their life
Losing color- as you saw that last,
Sad summer- painters will make us
Their mirror. Now I am your mirror,
Father, today looking your sickness
Back into your eyes; knowing
Nothing to disguise it in paint or words.
The breeze is transparent
Ribbons coming untied between the trees.
Far back, tin-voiced
Hawks parade the air, not flying,
But afloat, cruciform, at leisure
Just lower than the cloud.
Somewhere closed in all this
I am lying-a book interrupted
By a forgotten bookmark
Beneath which the page is a slightly
Differing color: a pale
Stripe no one could ever have painted;
Almost a whisper of color, unnameableAnd I hear your voice, unrolling too,
Like the ribboned breeze:
~ou are saying that summers were always
Ltke thts; always, always the same
As this: that there was even the same
Thunder waiting somewhere near the tall
Glasses of tea the ice had made
Weep through the tea -colored glass
And run down the sides like tears.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
On the easel where an unfinished
Seascape began to grow from canvas,
I see reflected the start
Of a world losing itself in your skill
That was not skillful enough.
Now it will never flow, that ocean,
Though in my eyes its sketchy tide
Stops, starts, subsides; changing
No course as we knew it could not
When you put aside the last brush.
Horizons show beginning
Is the end; endings begin.
And even God, I think, knew this
Ceding the sea nothing but depth
And that restlessness
From which life came crawling up
On a shore unwilling,
As it always is, to support life.
21
�The World of Physics
and The "Natural" World
Jacob Klein
I
It can scarcely be denied that at the present time physics
and philosophy, two sciences of recognized durability,
each handed down in a continuous tradition, are estranged
from one another; they oppose one another more or less
uncomprehendingly. By the nineteenth century a real and
hence effective mutual understanding between philosophers and physicists concerning the methods, presuppositions, and the meaning of physical research had already
become basically impossible; this remained true even
when both parties, with great goodwill and great earnestness, tried to reach a clear understanding of these issues.
When, in the second half of the last century, physicists
themselves adopted certain basic philosophical positions,
the Neo-Kantian or Machian, for instance, this scarcely affected their genuine scientific work. They did their work
independently of any philosophical question; they conquered more and more territory and were not distracted
from their course by difficulties appearing from time to
time in the interpretation of the formal mathematical apparatus (as in the case of Maxwell's Theory) or in regard to
the validity of ultimate physical principles (as in the case
of the second law of thermodynamics).
In this respect the situation has now changed in an essential way. To be sure, mathematical physics, in conformity with the basic attitude it has never abandoned, is still
content today with what can be established experimentally
and can be given an exact mathematical formulation; it refuses to follow philosophy into the region of what is neither experimentally nor mathematically confirmable and
hence is almost always controversial. Nonetheless, physics
now sees itself faced by questions in its own fundamental
work which have always been taken to fall within the domain of philosophy. In its own right physics raises questions about space and time, causality and substance,
about the limits of possible knowledge and the epistemic
sense of scientific statements and experimental results.
Consequently, it now considers turning to "philosophy"
as a reliable and valid court of appeal, if not for solutions
to these questions, then at least for advice or for new
points of view. The unsatisfactory relation between mathematical physics and philosophy has consequently become
more acute than it usually was in the 19th century. The
particular philosophical tendencies involved are a secondary matter. More importantly, it is clear that no agreement
about the meaning of the most fundamental concepts
which both physics and philosophy employ can be achieved,
e.g., the meaning of the concepts Space," "Time,"
11
('Causal Law,'' ''Experience,'' ''Intuition.''
texts.
Sometimes it seems as if two languages were being spoken, languages that sound the same and yet are totally different. Physicists and philosophers assess this situation
differently only insofar as the physicists are inclined-not
always, certainly, but for the most part-to regard the language of philosophy as unscientific, while the philosophers
-not always, to be sure, but frequently enough-suspect
themselves of something like bad conscience in such debates, simply because they think they are incapable of getting to the bottom of the physical concepts amidst the
formalistic thicket of differential equations, tensor calculus,
or group-theory. This bad conscience is understandable.
For, no matter how philosophy expresses itself philosophi-
22
AUTUMN 1981
Delivered as a lecture to the Physikalische Institut of the University of
Marburg on February 3, 1932, this paper is the only completed work
which one of Jacob Klein's literary executors, David R. Lachterman,
found among his papers after his death in 1978. The first half, roughly
of the paper is in typescript, the second in manuscript with marginal ad:
ditions, not always easily fitted into the text. The transcriber and translator, David R. Lachterman, has completed several elliptical references to
�cally, no matter what "standpoint" it might adopt, it cannot possibly pass by the problem of the World. And does
not physics, most of all, have to do with the world around
us? Don't the formulae of physics give an answer to the
question of the "true world," however "truth" might here
be understood? Even when philosophy believes it cannot
accept the answer physics gives, even when it regards it as
basically unsuccessful, it still has to reckon with it in some
fashion, even if only to refute it. Above all philosophy
must try to understand this answer. Even if philosophy
concerns itself exclusively with things falling within that
other hemisphere of science, the so-called "Geisteswissenschaften," it should never forget, even for an instant,
that mathematical physics is at the foundation of our
mental and spiritual life, that we see the world and ourselves in this world at first quite ingenuously as mathematical physics has taught us to see it, that the direction, the
very manner of our questioning is fixed in advance by
mathematical physics, and that even a critical attitude towards mathematical physics does not free us from its dominion. The idea of science intrinsic to mathematical
physics determines the basic fact of our contemporary
life, namely, our "scientific consciousness."
Mathematical physics and philosophy are nowadays
split apart and at odds with one another; they depend on
one another, even while time and again they are forced to
acknowledge their mutual incomprehension. What is to
be done in this situation? We must first of all try to find a
common ground, a basis of shared questions, such that
our questions are not in danger of missing their target
from the start. Is there any common ground? Where
should we try to find it? If we cannot glimpse it anywhere
in the present, then we have to consider whether we can
find it in the past.
Let us remember that there was an age that did not
know this hard and fast division between philosophy and
physics. Let us recall the title of Newton's work: Philosophiae natura/is principia mathematica. For Galileo the
true philosophy coincides with the true science of the
structure of this world. Likewise, Descrates' entire physics
is contained in his Principia philosophiae. The philosophia
naturalis of the seventeenth century is scientia naturalis,
science pure and simple, the heir to the legacy of medieval
and ancient science. The seventeenth century claimed
that the foundations it gave to this scientia were identical
with the foundations of all human knowing. Leibniz was
the first to open a gap between physics and metaphysics,
between the sciences of nature and of philosophy; however, Leibniz himself also exhibited their essential unity
in an especially impressive way. In the middle of the eighteenth century the paths of the new science of nature and
the new philosophy parted, even though their common
origin could never be forgotten. Furthermore, the contemporary tense division just noted between physics and
philosophy has its roots in precisely this history of the two
disciplines, a history which leads them from an original
unity to an increasing mutual estrangement.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Accordingly, we must try to gain purchase on that common ground by going back to the initial situation, the situation of science in the seventeenth century; from this we
might possibly gain a measure of enlightenment concerning present-day difficulties, even if we simply come to understand the nature of these difficulties better. We should
not forget that all of the basic concepts of contemporary
science were given their now·authoritative stamp in the
seventeenth century. This holds especially true of the
basic concepts of physics, at least of "classical" physics, to
speak in the idiom of modern-day physics. However great
the changes modern-day physics is about to make, or has
already made in its foundations, no one will deny that it
stands squarely on the shoulders of classical physics and,
thus, of seventeenth century physics.
Reflection on the historical foundations of physics is
not an utterly wayward and irrelevant beginning, since
physics itself, even in its most recent phase, has been
forced again and again to look back to the past in order to
recognize the limited character of many of its basic concepts. Thus, the designation "classical physics," used to
refer to the physics of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries, arises from the debate between
quantum mechanics and relativity-theory and the basic
concepts of Galilean and Newtonian mechanics. In their
own day, the debates between the mechanistic and the
energistic conceptions within physics led to the historical
investigations of Mach and Duhem. What we have to do,
in my judgment, is make this turn to historical origins
even more radical. Not only is this demanded by the issue
itself, it is most intimately connected with the basic presuppositions of our knowledge of the world.
II
Let us begin by picturing the general situation of science in the seventeenth century: A new science, desirous
above all of being a science of Nature and moreover a
"natural" science, opposed an already extant science. The
conceptual edifice of this new science was built up in continuous debate with the traditional and dominant science
of the Scholastics. The new concepts were worked out
and fortified in combat with the concepts of the old science. As has been emphasized time and again, the founders of this new science, men like Galileo, Slevin, Kepler,
Descartes, were moved by an original impulse quite alien
to the erudite science of the Scholastics. Their scientific
interests were inspired by problems of practical mechanics and practical optics, by problems of architecture,
machine construction, painting, and the newly-discovered
art of optical instruments. An open and unprejudiced eye
for the things of this world took the place of sterile booklearning.1 However, it is no less true that the conceptual
interpretation of these new insights was linked in every
case with the old, traditional concepts. The claim to communicate true science, true knowledge, necessarily took
23
�its bearings from the firmly-established edifice of traditional science. At all events, such a claim presupposes the
fact of "science"; it also presupposes the most general
foundations of the theoretical attitude which the Greeks
displayed and bequeathed to later centuries. The battle
between the new and the old science was fought on the
ground and in the name of the one, uniquely true science.
One or the other had to triumph; they could not subsist
side by side. This explains the great bitterness of the battle which lived on in the memory of succeeding generations, a bitterness immediately evident even today in the
difficulty we have when we try to distance ourselves from
the interpretation the victors -gave both of the battle and
of the enemy they vanquished.
_
What especially characterizes this battle is not only the
common goal marked out by those most general presuppositions, viz., the one, unique science, but, over and above
this, a definite uniformity of the weapons with which the
battle was fought. However different their viewpoints,
however antithetical the contents designated by their
concepts might be, the antagonists are very largely in accord as to the way in which these contents are to be interpreted, the way in which the concepts intend what is
meant by them whenever they are employed, in short, the
conceptual framework or intentionality [Begrifflichkeit] in
which their antithetical opinions are expressed. This accord has all too often been overlooked. The only issue is:
Which of them handled these weapons more suitably,
which of them filled in the conceptuality common to both
with contents genuinely in harmony with it? No doubt,
the outcome gives the victory to the new science. When it
mocks at the physics of the Scholastics, the physics of
"substantial forms/' the new science is striking primarily
at the unquestioning attitude of the old science, the Scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an
attitude which made this old science unable to detect the
tension between the contents of its concepts and the use it
made of these. Such an unquestioning understanding of
oneself always exhibits a failure to comprehend one's own
presuppositions and thus a failure really to grasp what one
pretends to know. This is the danger to which science is
always exposed; this is the danger to which Scholastic science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries succumbed
as no other science had done before.
To penetrate to the foundations of the new science
and, in this way, to the foundations of mathematical physics, we have to keep this general situation of science in the
seventeenth century constantly in mind. It determines in
the most basic way the horizon of this new science, as well
as its methods, its general structure. It determines, above
all, the intentionality of its concepts as such.
There is a long-standing controversy over how the experiential bases of physics fit together with its specific
conceptuality. The very possibility of distinguishing "experimental" from "theoretical physics," a distinction
which surely rests on nothing more than a didactic, or
technical, division of labor, illustrates the problem. The
24
reciprocity of experiment and theory, of observation and
hypothesis, the relation of universal constants to the
mathematical formalism-all of these issues point again
and again to the two antithetical tendencies pervading
modern physical science and giving it its characteristic
stamp. This controversy, familiar to us from the nineteenth century, fundamentally concerns the preeminence
of one or the other of these two tendencies. Nowadays,
depending on the side one takes, one speaks of Empiricism or Apriorism; physicists themselves customarily side
with the so-called empiricists and confuse apriorism with
a kind of capriciously speculative philosophy. The good
name of Kant has been made to bear the burden of furnishing ever-new fuel for this controversy. I am not going
to take sides in this controversy. The controversy itself
first grows from the soil of the new science and must be
clarified by turning back to its origins in the seventeenth
century. What is primarily at stake is an understanding of
the particular intentionality, the particular character of
the concepts with whose aid the mathematical physics
which arose in the seventeenth century erected the new
and immense theoretical structure of human experience
over the next two centuries.
This intentionality is that of contemporary Scholasticism. The Scholastics believed that by using it they were
faithfully administering the legacy of knowledge handed
down to them by tradition. They believed that they were
reproducing ancient doctrine, especially ancient cosmology, in exactly the same way as it was understood and
taught by the Greeks, that is, by Aristotle. They identified
their own concepts with those of the ancients. The new
science, moreover, followed them in this matter. It, too,
interpreted ancient cosmology along the lines of contemporary scholastic science. It was, however, certainly not
content with this. Rather, it called upon the things themselves in order to rebuke the untenable doctrines of this
Scholastic science, with its seemingly unquestioning certitude. In doing so, it exposed the incongruity between
Scholastic intentionality and the contents the traditional
concepts were intended to refer to. Furthermore, it went
back to the sources of Greek science, neglected by Scholastic science; these sources, too, were interpreted in
terms of the intentionality it shared with Scholastic science. And this interpretation of the legacy of ancient
teachings, involving a characteristic modification of every
ancient concept, is the basis of the whole concept-formation of the new science.
As a result, the special character of these new concepts
can be brought to light in one of two ways. First, we can
contrast the Scholastic science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with genuine Aristotelianism. If we do
so, a direct path leads from the lengthy and little-read
compendia of Cremonini,Z Francesco Piccolomini,3 Buonamico,4 Zabarella, 5 Toletus,6 Benedictus Pereirus/ Alessandro Piccolomini,8 etc., and, above all, of Suarez, as well
as from the humanistically-influenced interpretation of
Aristotle (e.g., in Faber Stapulensis and Petrus Ramus),
AU!1JMN 1981
�back to the Nominalism of fourteenth century. As
Duhem has shown, initiatives leading to the modern sci·
ence of Nature are present everywhere in fourteenth cen·
tury Nominalism. Secondly, we can confront Aristotle
himself as well as the other sources of Greek science, most
importantly Plato, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Apol·
Ianius, Pappus, and Diophantus, with the interpretation
given them by Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Fermat, Vieta,
et al. In what follows I want to discuss only this second
path, selecting just a few characteristic examples. None·
theless, before I begin I must make a more general remark.
Since the pioneering works of Hultsch and Tannery on
the history of ancient mathematics, the relation between
ancient and modern mathematics has increasingly be·
come the focus of historical investigation as well as the
theme of reflection in the philosophy of history. Two general lines of interpretation can be distinguished here.
One-the prevailing view-sees in the history of science a
continuous forward progress interrupted, at most, by periods of stagnation. On this view, forward progress takes
place with "logical necessity";' accordingly, writing the
history of a mathematical theorem or of a physical principle basically means analyzing its logic 10 The usual presentations, especially of the history of mathematics, picture a
rectilinear course; all of its accidents and irregularities disappear behind the logical straightness of the whole path.
The second interpretation emphasizes that the different stages along this path are incomparable. For example,
it sees in Greek mathematics a science totally distinct from
modern mathematics. It denies that a continuous development from the one to the other took place at all. Both
interpretations, however, start from the present-day condition of science. The first measures ancient by the standard of modern science and pursues the individual threads
leading back from the valid theorems of contemporary science to the anticipatory steps taken towards them in antiquity. Time and again it sees contemporary science in
ancient science; it seeks in ancient science only the seeds
of now-mature fruits. The second interpretation strives to
bring into relief, not what is common, but what divides
ancient and modern science. It, too, however, interprets
the otherness of ancient mathematics, for example, in
terms of the results of contemporary science. Consequently, it recognizes only a counter-image of itself in ancient science, a counter-image which still stands on its
own conceptual level.
Both interpretations fail to do justice to the true state of
the case. There can be no doubt that the science of the
seventeenth century represents a direct continuation of
ancient science. On the other hand, neither can we deny
their differences, differences not only in maturity, but,
above all, in their basic initiatives, in their whole disposition (habitus). The difficulty is precisely to avoid interpreting their differences and their affinity one-sidedly in
terms of the new science. The new science itself did exactly that, in order to prove that its own procedure was
the only correct one. The contemporary tendency to subTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
stitute admiration or tolerance of ancient cosmology for
condemnation contributes little to our understanding of
that cosmology. The issues at stake cannot be divorced
from the specific conceptual framework within which
they are interpreted. Conversely, these issues cannot even
be seen within a conceptual framework unsuited to them;
at best, they can only be imperfectly described. The best
example comes from modern physics itself: the discussion
of modern physical theories is ensnared in great difficulties when physicists and non-physicists alike try to ignore
the mathematical apparatus of physics and present the results of research in a "commonsense" manner!
We need to approach ancient science on a basis appropriate to it, a basis provided by that science itself. Only on
this basis can we measure the transformation ancient science underwent in the seventeenth century. A transformation unique and unparalleled in the history of man!
Our modern ''scientific consciousness" first arose as a re-
sult of this transformation. This modern consciousness is
to be understood not simply as a linear continuation of ancient h<UT~I'~> but as the result of a fundamental conceptual shift which took place in the modern era, a shift we
can nowadays scarcely grasp.
I want to try to grasp the nature of this conceptual shift
more precisely, that is, to determine more precisely the
character of the new concepts in contrast with the old.
III
The unambiguous and explicit preference for quantitative over qualitative determinations in the new science
sets it distinctively apart from the old. There cannot be
any difference of opinion on this point. How often have
those lines from Galileo's II Saggiatore (1623) been cited,
that pilosophy is written in mathematical language in the
great open book of the Universe! To be able to read it one
has first to understand this language, one has to know the
script, the letters in which it is written. These letters are
((triangles, circles, and other geometrical Figures"; without their aid we cannot understand even a single word of
that language. II In the second chapter of Kepler's Mysterium cosmographicum this idea finds its most pointed formulation:
God wanted quantity to make its appearance in reality before
anything else, so that the relation between the curved and the
straight might exist (Quantitatem Deus . .. ante omnia existere
voluit, ut esset curvi ad rectum comparatio.) Hence, He first
selected the curved and the straight in order to spread a
reflection of the splendor of the divine creator over the world
(ad adumbrandam in mundo divinitatem Conditoris); for this
purpose the 'quantities' were necessary, namely, figure (fig~
ura), number (numerus) and extension (amplituda or extensio).
For this reason He created the body which embraces all these
determinations. 12
25
�These words point immediately back to Nicholas of Cusa,
whom Kepler explicitly mentions, and anticipate Descartes'
later theory. However, they are also directly connected
with the whole Platonic-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic
tradition and, above all, with Plato's own Timaeus. This
tradition had always remained alive. For example, in
Roger Bacon's Opus Maius (1266-68) we can find statements such as these: "Mathematics is the gateway and
key to all other sciences." "Anyone who does not know it
cannot understand either the other sciences or the things
of this world" (Qui ignorat earn, non potest scire caeteras
scientias nee res huius mundi.) HLogic, too, depends on
mathematics. Nothing of great significance in the other
sciences can be understood without mathematics." (Nihil
in eis potest sciri magnificum sine mathematica.)" What
distinguishes Kepler's and Galileo's words from such statements in the earlier Platonic tradition? There clearly must
be a distinction here, one that shows itself in the quite different influence, that is, the entirely different role played
by mathematics in ancient and modern science. Is the distinction merely that Kepler and Galileo spoke from a firsthand, living experience of things, while the earlier authors
were attached only to traditional texts? Or, did the two
traditions understand something different by "quantity,"
by "mathematical science?"
To answer this question, I have chosen examples relevant to the foundation of analytical geometry and algebra.
Both analytical geometry and algebra stand in the closest
relation to one another from the outset, although algebra
asserted its primacy within this relation. Both belong to
the foundations of mathematical physics. Vieta took the
decisive step in the realm of algebra, basing himself both
indirectly and immediately on Diophantus. Fermat and
Descartes, who, as is well-known, count as the founders of
analytical geometry, rely directly on Diophantus and
Apollonius, as well as on Pappus. In both cases, then, we
can confront the old and the new concepts by paying attention to the way Diophantus and Apollonius were received and construed. In both cases, what is at issue is
nothing less than the creation of a formal mathematical
language, without which mathematical physics is inconceivable. I shall begin by considering Apollonius' relation
to Fermat and Descartes.
IV
A. Two works by Apollonius particularly captured the
interest of sixteenth and seventeenth century mathematicians: (I) the first four books of his Treatise on Conic Sections, available in the original Greek since the fifteenth
century and since 1566 in the first usable Latin translation
made by Fredericus Commandinus; (2) his "Plane Loci"
in two books. Only fragments of the latter are preserved in
the Mathematical Collection of Pappus, the Latin translation of which-also by Commandinus-appeared in 1588.
These works-along with those of Diophantus, Archi-
26
medes, and Euclid-are among the basic books of seventeenth century mathematical science. Fermat, for example,
undertook to reconstruct the "Plane Loci" on the basis of
the fragments in Pappus and in the light of the Conic Sections. In an introduction added later, the Isagoge ad locos
pianos et solidos, and an appendix, Fermat sketched the
basic features of analytical geometry. Among other things,
he shows that every equation of the first and second degree in two unknowns can be coordinated with a plane
geometrical locus, that is, a straight~line or a curve, if one
represents the two unknowns as (orthogonal) coordinates,
as we would say today. Among the infinitely many possible curves of this kind are the circle, the parabola, the
ellipse, and the hyperbola, that is, the conic sections Apollonius treats in his major work. Independently of Fermat,
Descartes, by solving a locus-problem posed by Pappus
which goes back to Apollonius, arrived at the definitive
conception of this procedure now familiar to us from ana-
lytical geometry. In doing so, Descartes took up again a
line of thought that had occupied him in his youth. Nonetheless, since the studies of Moritz Cantor, Fermat has
rightly been considered the genuine founder of analytical
geometry, since his Isagoge had certainly already been
written when Descartes' Geometrie appeared (1637). Strikingly, neither Fermat nor Descartes unleashed one of
those struggles over priority so common in the seventeenth century. Fermat made Descartes acquainted with
his own works in analytical geometry after the Geometrie
had appeared; nonetheless, neither of them placed any
value on claiming priority for himself. This is all the more
astonishing since they did embroil the entire Republic of
Letters in the most unpleasant disputes over much flimsier points, as Gaston Milhaud has emphasized.l4 The
only explanation must be that neither Descartes nor Fermat believed he had advanced beyond Apollonius on any
essential points. What we take to be the enormous achievement of Descartes and Fermat they themselves believed
they had learned in essence from Apollonius or Pappus.
Fermat finds fault with Apollonius only because he did
not present matters "generally enough" (non satis generaliter).15 He says very cautiously that his general procedure
for constructing geometrical loci "was perhaps not known
to Apollonius" (ab Apollonio fortasse ignorabatur). 1 And
'
Descartes is quite convinced that the Ancients-he expressly names Pappus along with Diophantus-deliberately erased the traces of their true knowledge out of a
kind of perverted cunning (perniciosa quadam astutia) and
divulged to us, not their own art, but only a few of their resultsP I want to examine this matter more closely.
When Apollonius considers a conic-section, e.g., the ellipse in Book I, Theorem 13 of the Treatise on Conic Sections,18 he begins by passing a plane through the axis of a
cone and then lets the cone be intersected by another
plane in such a way that the desired figure, an ellipse in
this case, emerges on the surface of the cone; the line of
intersection of these two planes forms the diameter of the
ellipse (see Fig. 1).
AUTUMN 1981
�A
day we call the parameter of the ellipse and in Apollonius
is called bpO{a, because it is perpendicular to the diameter
and hence is "straight.") If, now, a perpendicular to ED is
drawn at M, and Pis connected with D, then the segment
PD cuts the perpendicular from M at point X, which determines segment MX. The segments EM and FM thus
stand in a ratio that can be exactly determined geometrically and this holds true of any point F on the ellipse. In
other words, this ratio is characteristic of ~he entire ellipse
and, consequently, of any ellipse as such. Apollonius calls
the segments EM and FM, respectively, ~ &7roTEJ'VOJ'€v~
(the line "cut off' by the diameter of the chord) and ~
TE7a"fl'{vw• xaT~'YI'€v~ (hl ri)v &&J'ETPov) the line "drawn
down" to the diameter in a determinate way (that is, not
in an arbitrary, but in an "ordered" way)-in Latin translation, abscissa and ordinatim applicata, or for short, ordinata.l9 Apollonius uses these segments, the Habscissa" and
the "ordinate/' in every individual case, in order to define
Figure 1
An auxiliary line is drawn from the vertex A which meets
the plane of the base of the cone at point K; AK is parallel
to the diameter ED. From an arbitrary point F on the ellipse a straight line FM is drawn to the diameter in a determinate manner, namely, in such a way that the chord
FF' is bisected by point M. Consequently, FF' becomesas we say today-a conjugate chord to the diameter ED.
(Compare Figure 2.)
F
MF
l.
=
EM-MX
Figure 2
It is then proved that the square on FM equals the rectangle made up of EM and a segment MX (in modern notation: FM2 ~ EM•MX), where the segment MX is defined
as follows: on a perpendicular line dropped to E the segment EP is drawn, which stands in the same ratio to the
diameter ED as the rectangle BK, CK to the square on
AK (in modern notation: EP:ED ~BK·CK:AK 2 ). (Compare Fig. 1). The straight-line EP corresponds to what toTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the general properties, the basic "planimetric properties,"
characteristic of different conic-sections.
What distinguishes these segments from our "co-ordinates" employed for the first time by Fermat and Descartes? First of all, the axes to which they are referred,
viz., in the present instance, the diameter ED and the tangent to the conic atE, "do not constitute a system of lines
on their own, but like other auxiliary geometrical lines
make their appearance only in connection with the conic
section; they are brought into existence by the theorem to
be proved in each instance."20 This procedure, which for
the Greeks themselves belonged to "Analysis," has been
called "geometrical algebra." This expression, first used
by Zeuthen21 and now widely current, is quite felicitous
insofar as it hints at both the affinity as well as the difference between the Greek and the modern procedure.
The term, however, does not indicate that the procedure
can only be carried out on different conceptual levels in
these two different cases. In each case Apollonius has in
view the particular ellipse, which is cut out on the surface
of a particular cone by two particular intersecting lines.
The representation in the drawing gives a true 'image'
[Abbild] of this cone, these intersecting lines and this ellipse. There are infinitely many possible cones, sections,
and ellipses. The procedure specified is applicable to all of
them-its generality consists in this-but to this generality of procedure there does not correspond the generality
of the object. There is no "general object" for the drawing
ing to represent in a merely symbolic way [symbolisch ].
There are infinitely many possible, more or less good, images of the one ellipse represented here. And there are, in
turn, infinitely many such ellipses which can be exhibited
or 4 'imaged." The characteristic of the f.U:t.O'Yip.&nxa, math-
ematical objects in the Greek sense, is precisely that they
can be grasped by the senses only in images, while they
themselves, in their unalterable constitution, are accessi-
ble only to the discursive intellect; however, there are infinitely many of these objects. 22 What the phrase "there
are" is supposed to mean here, how the mode of being of
27
�mathematical objects is to be understood, is one of the
great disputes in Greek philosophy. No one disputes,
however, that mathematical science as such has to do
with these "pure" figures or formations [Gebilde] whose
nature is accessible to the intellect alone. The lines drawn
in any particular diagram and their ratios belong to this
"pure" ellipse which is exhibited by them. To be sure, in
the case of every individual ellipse-thanks to the generality of the procedure-such "abscissas" and "ordinates"
can always be singled out, but each time line-segments belonging to the particular ellipse in question are intended.
This is not due to the imperfection of Greek mathematics,
its defective means of presentation, or its inadequate
capacity for generalization, but is rather entailed by the
specific intentionality of Greek science. Its concepts in
each instance intend the individual objects themselves;
they are-to speak in Scholastic language-intentiones
primae ["first intentions"]-that is, concepts which refer
immediately to individual objects. This is in harmony
with the means of presentation which Greek science employs. The lines drawn in the figure exhibit the object,
they "image" it. Consequently, the mode of presentation
of Greek mathematics-with a single exception which we
shall come to later-is never merely representative [stellvertretend], never symbolic, but is always the presentation
of an image [abbildlich], and in this way first-intentional.
For this reason, the designation "geometrical algebra,"
which perhaps takes its bearings too much from the exceptional case we shall discuss later, does not really do
justice to the facts of the case.
In contrast to analysis in our own sense, Greek analysis
does not merely have a different style of presentation, but
embodies a fundamentally different relation between the
style of presentation and what is presented. What, in fact,
do the lines which Descartes and Fermat employ as abscissas and ordinates signify? What do the curves which
they draw mean? In the second part of his Discourse on
Method, Descartes gives us exhaustive information on this
point-" In these curves he intends to exhibit only relations or proportions (nihil aliud quam relationes sive proportiones~4 and to do so in the greatest possible generality
(et quidem maxime genera/iter sumptas). 25 The exhibition
of these relations in line-segments is only the simplest and
clearest illustration for the senses and the imagination, so
long as it is a matter of a single relation. In order to survey
many such relations together and to be able to keep them
conveniently in memory, they have to be simultaneously
represented [representiert] by appropriate signs of ciphers,
namely, by letters. Illustration by lines and representation
by letters are thus merely two modes of the very same
symbolic style of presentation. Lines and letters both are
here simply the most suitable bearers of the general relations and proportions being considered; they are merely
"les sujets qui serviraient a m'en rendre la connaissance
plus aisee. "26 The ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes
(as we employ them today, using the method worked out
by Descartes and Fermat) (Fig. 3)
28
Figure 3
is thus no longer an image of the "pure" ellipse, the Ellipse-Itself. The coordinate-axes drawn are no longer images
of a pair of straight lines applicable to the "pure" ellipse,
but merely symbolize the generally possible use of such a
pair. The abscissa and the ordinate of a point when actually drawn no longer exhibit particular line-segments in
the manner of images, but "illustrate" the general procedure of Apollonius; in other words they stand immediately
only for the general concepts of "abscissa" and ('ordinate"
resulting from that procedure and not for the line-segments directly intended by these concepts in each individual instance. Accordingly, the modern concepts of "abscissa" and ''ordinate" are intentiones securidae [''second
intentions"], concepts which refer directly to other concepts, to intentiones primae, and only indirectly to objects.
In the language of mathematics this means: They are concepts of the "Variable n." For this reason the abscissa and
ordinate axes can be detached from the realm of objects.
All the curves investigated with their help are from now
on nothing but symbolic exhibitions of various possible
relations, or of the different "functional" relations, between two (or more) variables.
All this, however, is only one side of the matter (the side
emphasized principally by the Neo-Kantians and viewed
by them as the only essential aspect). It is no less essential
that these symbolic curves were understood as the images
of the curves exhibited by the Ancients. For example, the
ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes was regarded as
the very same ellipse treated by Apollonius. Precisely this
assumption led Fermat and Descartes to believe that they
were not proceeding any differently than Apollonius had.
Although, in fact, there has been a shift in conceptual-levels, Fermat thinks that he has simply interpreted many of
Apollonius' theorems more generally (generalius), 27 that
his procedure merely opened up a "general path" to the
construction of geometrical loci (generalis ad locos via)" in
exactly the sense in which Apollonius says that Book One
of his Conic Sections treats things more generally or uniAUTUMN 1981
�versally ("a86)..ov p,&AAov~ 9 than his predecessors had
done. (And not even this is certain for Fermat, if we reflect on his word fortasse ["perhaps"].) What Fermat and
Descartes call "generalization" is in reality a complex conceptual process ascending from intentio prima to intentio
secunda while, at the same time, identifying these. Only in
this way can we understand what Descartes means when
he characterizes his analytical procedure as a unification
of the geometrical analysis of the Ancients with algebra.
This unification is brought about through a symbolic in·
terpretation and exhibiton of geometrical forms, on the
one hand, and of arithmetical ratios, on the other. Both
kinds of "quantities" are viewed together with regard to
their common 1 "general" quantitative character and ex~
hibited in this generality. Consequently, the modern analytical procedure has to do immediately only with "general
quantities." However, these "general quantities," on the
whole, can only be sensibly exhibited because their generality at the same time is understood as variability, that is,
because these magnitudes are thought of from the start as
"alterable." (And, indeed, this holds true as much of the
magnitudes posited as 'constant' as it does of genuine
variables.) The <(being" of "general magnitudes" consists
here only in their peculiar ability to take on all, or all admissible, values one after the other. This is exactly what
gives all of them the capacity to replace particular line-seg·
ments or particular numerical values. Their symbolic exhibition corresponds to what Kant understands by a
schema. Kant says:
This representation of a universal procedure of imagination
in providing an image for a concept [i.e., assigning to a first intention the image belonging to it], I entitle the schema of this
concept. 30
The schema can be directly transformed into an image
[Abbild], if the segments and ratios of segments, of which
it consists, assume numerically determinate lengths and
values. The possibility of identifying prima and secunda
intentio is, therefore, based on this, that the schema is or·
dinarily understood as a schema already transformed into
an image. Schematic imageability [Abbildlichkeit] is thus
the element which allows us to illustrate the generalization of Arithmetic into Algebra, or, in other words, to
"unite" geometry and algebra.
Only in this way can we come to understand that Des·
cartes' concept of extensio identifies the extendedness of
extension with extension itself. Our present-day concept
of space can be traced directly back to this. Present-day
Mathematics and Physics designate as "Euclidean Space"
the domain of symbolic exhibition by means of line-segments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system,
a relational system [Bezugssystem], as we say nowadays.
"Euclidean Space" is by no means the domain of the fig·
ures and structures studied by Euclid and the rest of
Greek mathematics. It is rather only the symbolic illustration of the general character of the extendedness of those
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
structures. Once this symbolic domain is identified with
corporeal extension itself, it enters into Newtonian physics as "absolute space." At the present time it is being criticized by Relativity Theory, which has been steered by
the question of "In variance" into trying to break through
these symbolic bounds, while continuing to use this very
symbolism.
B. The founding of analytical geometry by Descartes
and Fermat is also conditioned by the immediately preceding development of algebra and the language of algebraic formulae. Vieta, as I have said, provided the decisive
impetus here. I want to consider now, as a further example of this conceptual shift, Vieta's relation to traditional
algebra.
The science of algebra, in the form in which Vieta encountered it in the sixteenth century, namely, in the form
of a doctrine of equations, was received in the West from
the thirteenth century on as an Arabic science. This Arabic science was, in all probability, nourished essentially by
two Ancient sources. We can identify one of these straightaway, viz., the Arithmetic of Diophantus; the other can
only be indirectly inferred. (Tannery believed that he
could recognize it in a lost work by a contemporary of Diophantus, sc., Anatolius.) In any case, Diophantus is by far
the most important source, as the very name "Algebra" indicates: the word ''Algebra" (a 'nomen barbaricum/ as
Descartes says) is in Arabic nothing more than the first
half of a formulaic expression for the basic rule for solving
equations that Diophantus sets out at the beginning of
Book I of his Arithmetica.l 1
The doctrine of equations had made great progress in
the West, before people began, in the second half of the
sixteenth century, to take up Diophantus' work itself.
Modern algebra and modern formalism grew out of
Vieta's direct occupation with Diophantus; later writers
merely elaborated and refined his work. Here, then, in
Vieta's reception of Diophantus, we encounter one of
those nodal-points of development, a point where the new
science arose from the confrontation of two distinct conceptual planes.
The surviving six books of Diophantus' Arithmetic*
teach how to solve problems of reckoning which today are
familiar to us as determinate and indeterminate equations
of the 1st and 2nd degree. Diophantus, in giving these solutions, uses, in addition to other signs, a series of abbreviations for the unknowns and their powers. In every case it
is only a matter of a simple abbreviation; this is above all
the case with the sign for the unknown, which is nothing
other than an abbreviation of the word &p,Op,6<. Heath has
conclusively explained this point. Diophantus' "epochal
*[Readers of the Review may be interested to know that the "lost" books
of Diophantus' Arithmetica have now been discovered in an Arabic
translation. See J. Sesiano, The Arabic Text of Books IV to VII of Diophantus' 'ApdJp.rtnx& . .. edited, with translation and commentary (Ph.D.
Diss., Brown Univ. 1975).]
29
�invention" (to use Hultsch's phrase)32 consists in his having introduced this sign into the logistical procedure of solution, that is, he reckons or calculates with the unknown.
Apart from the unknown or unknowns and their powers
he admits only formations that correspond to rational
numbers, i.e.~ to integers and fractions. In modern termi·
nology, only numerical coefficients appear. What does an
equation look like in Diophantus? Let us look at a very
simple example which I shall write in its simplest form:
That is, lxptfJp.ol OUo p.ov&OES rPt'i:~ '[(JO'i Elalv 1.wv&cn brrci.
Or, in English, "Two numbers [lxP<OI'ot] and three units
are equal to seven units." The sign s is a ligature for
&p,OI'6s; the sign IV! (or tt=J is an abbreviation for l'ov&s or
l'ov&!i<S (the plural is also written 1'"). The corresponding
equation in Vieta, which for the sake of simplicity I shall
write in modern form, since this does not basically deviate
from his, is: 2x + 3 ~ 7. Is this merely a technically more
convenient form of writing? Do the two equations say entirely the same thing, if we disregard the mode of writing?
To answer this question we have to look a little more
closely at the Greek manner of writing. (It is of no importance here whether Diophantus wrote in exactly this way;
the extant manuscripts reproduce what is essential.) What
is particularly surprising is the addition of the sign for
l'ovali<S. Scholars have tried to explain this as intended to
discriminate with sufficient clarity the numerical signs
which specify the number [Anzah~ of dptOI'o(, i.e., the
number of the unknowns (thus, in our case, the sign /3),
from the signs for the purely numerical magnitudes (in
our case the sign)'). If the sign M did not stand between /3
and)', then the expression could be read: 2 C,p,OI'o( and 3
C,p,OI'o( together make 7. Regardless of the fact that in a
great many instances confusion is not possible at all, this
interpretation fails to recognize the fundamental importance of the monad, or the monads, for Greek arithmetic.
Hence, it also misjudges the Greek concept of dptOI'ot,
the Greek "number-" concept in general. 'Apt01'6s does
not mean "Zahl," [number in general) but 11 Anzahl/' viz.,
a definite number of definite things: 'II'Els &pt01'6s nvos
ian. ("Every number is a number of something." 33 ) In
daily life we frequently have to do with numbers of visible
and tangible objects, each of which is in each case just
one. However, the very possibility of counting, where we
utter the same words again and again, viz., "two,"
~<three," "four," etc., while referring to different things at
different times, points to objects of a quite different sort,
namely, to incorporeal, "pure," ones, to "pure" monads.
The Greek science of arithmetic is occupied with these
monads. For this reason the well-known definition of
&pdJp.Os in Euclid runs as follows: ro €x p.ovciOwv
av'Yx•ii'Evov 'll't./i/Oos (Euclid 7, Def. 2), "a multitude composed of monads, of unities." What it means that there are
such monads, the question of the mode of being of these
30
pure monads, is the great issue in Greek philosophy, as I
have already mentioned. Indeed, the case of the monad is
one of the ultimate issues which divide Plato from Aristotle. It is not a matter of controversy, however, that only
these pure monads as such can be the object of scientific
arithmetic. According as one interprets the mode of being
of these pure monads there can or cannot exist a scientific
doctrine of reckoning, a logistic, alongside arithmetic, the
doctrine of pure numbers and pure numerical relations.
Diophantine arithmetic is in this sense a scientific logistic
and stands to arithmetic in much the way the metrics of
Heron of Alexandria stand to theoretical geometry. 34 It focuses upon the field of pure monads. Every single number
which it treats is a number of such monads. Its mode of
writing is accommodated to this fact. Even the unknown,
the dptOwfs which has to be reckoned, is a definite
number of monads, although still unknown at first and
"indeterminate" in this sense alone. All the signs used by
this logistic refer immediately to the enumerated objects
in question here.
How does the new science interpret this situation? In
his work "In artem analyticen Isagoge" published in 1591
Vieta introduces the fundamental distinction between a
''logistica numerosa" and a "logistica speciosa." The former is a doctrine of numerical equations; the second re-
places numerical values with general "symbols," as Vieta
himself says, that is, with letters. (We can, in this context,
disregard the fact that Vieta, in accordance with his "Law
of Homogeneity," has these symbols apparently refer to
geometrical formations.) Logistica speciosa gives Vieta the
capacity, not only of writing an expression such as
ax+ b ~ c (in a much more detailed form, with which we
are not concerned here)-initiatives in this direction can
be found prior to Vieta-but also of calculating with this
expression. With this step, he becomes the first creator of
the algebraic formula.
How are we to understand this step from 2x to ax, from
the numerical coefficient (the term "coefficient" stems
from Vieta himself) to the literal coefficient? Could Diophantus have taken basically the same step? The answer
to this depends directly on how we interpret the numerical sign "2." For Vieta the replacement of "2" by "a" is
possible because the concept of "two" no longer refers, as
it did for Diophantus, directly to an object, viz., to two
pure monads, but in itself already has a umore general"
character. "Two" no longer means in Vieta "two definite
things," but the general concept of twoness in general. In
other words, in Vieta the concept of two has the character
of an intentio secunda. It no longer means or intends a determinate number of things, but the general number-character of this one number, while the symbol "a" represents
the general numerical character of each and every number. In this sense the sign "a" represents "more" than the
sign "2." The symbolic relation between the sign and what
it designates is, however, the same in both cases. The replacement of "2" by "a" is in fact only "logically required
here." However, in this case as wel1, this
uz" is identified
AUTUMN 1981
�with the sign employed by Diophantus-and this is the
decisive thing. The concept of two ness is at the same time
understood as referring to two entities. (Modern set theory
first tries to separate these two constituents, to clarify
what "at the same time" means.) In any case, Vieta, as the
result of this identification, understands Diophantus' logistic as a logistica numerosa which "logically" presupposes the "more general" logistica speciosa. Thus, Vieta
says in paragraph 14 of his Isagoge that Diophantus practiced the art of solving equations most cleverly. He continues: "Earn vera tanquam per numeros non etiam per species,
quibus tamen usus est, institutam exhibuit." ("However,
he exhibited it [this art] as if it were based on numbers and
not also on species [that is, the literal-signs,] although he
nonetheless made use of these species.")35 Diophantus
kept silent about the latter, in Vieta's opinion, only so as
to make his acuity and his skill shine more brightly, since
the numerical solution-procedure is indeed much more
difficult than the convenient literal-reckoning. The relation between Fermat and Apollonius finds its exact counterpart here: Vieta sees in literal-reckoning only a more
convenient, because more general, path to the solution of
the problems posed. He can do this because he interprets
the numbers with which Diophantus dealt from a higher
conceptual level, because, in other words, he identifies
the concept of number with the number itself, in short he
understands Anzahl [counting-number] as Zahl [number
in general]. Our contemporary concept of number [Zahlbegriffj has its roots in this interpretation of the Ancient
c,p,ep.6s.
We can now understand how important it is that
Bachet, who in 1621 (hence, after Vieta) published the
first usable edition and Latin translation of Diophantus,
abandons the current rendering of the sign for the p.ovas.
"Who," he says, "does not immediately think of six units
when he hears the number 6 named?" ("Ecquis enim cum
audit numerum sex non statim cogitat sex unitates?") "Why
is it also necessary to say 'six units,' when it is enough to
1
say 'six'?" ("Quid ergo necesse est sex unitates dicere, cum
sufficiat dicere, sex?'')l 6 This discrepancy-felt to be selfevident-between cogitare (thinking) and dicere (saying
and also writing) expresses the general shift in the meaning of the concept from intentio prima to intentio secunda,
together with their simultaneous identification. Consequently, there is no longer anything to prevent Vieta's
logistica speciosa from becoming a part of geometrical
analysis; this is exactly what Fermat and Descartes explicitly did. The unification of these two disciplines is basically complete in Vieta' s ars analytica. Modern analysis is,
therefore, not a direct combination of Ancient geometrical analysis with the Ancient theory of equations, but the
unification of both on the basis of a transformed intentionality. The same shift in meaning can be established in
a whole series of concepts. For instance, the mathematical term OVvafus, 'power' in ancient mathematics, means
only the square of a magnitude, while we speak as well of
the third, the fourth power, etc. We do not encounter this
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
relation in the mathematical domain alone. It also holds
between the modern concept of 'method' and the Greek
term p.€8ooos, between our 'theory' and Greek B<wPia. In
two cases, those of substance and causality, this shift in
meaning was of the greatest importance for the construction of the new science. I cannot discuss these now. I
want simply to remark that the relation here is more complicated, inasmuch as these concepts-like all concepts
belonging to 1rpwr~ qn"Aoao<ria, the Ancient ontological
fundamental-science-themselves already have the character of intentiones secundae; this is why the new science
considered itself the sole legitimate heir of ancient philosophy, why, in other words, mathematical physics can in a
certain sense replace ancient ontology for us. I want now,
by way of conclusion, to turn to the exception I mentioned earlier and thereby compare one of the bases of ancient cosmology with the fundaments of the modern
study of nature.
C. I said that what is peculiar to the conceptual intention of ancient science-and especially of Greek mathematics-is that its concepts refer immediately to definite
objects. This obviously does not hold true of the 5th book
of Euclid's Elements which goes back to Plato's friend
Eudoxus. This book contains the so-called general theory
of proportions, that is, it treats ratios and proportions of
p.ey€8~, magnitudes in general. Accordingly, it does not
treat the ratios of particular magnitudes, geometrical
forms for instance, or numbers or bodily masses or time-
segments, but ratios "in themselves," the wholly undetermined bearers of which are symbolized [symbolisch . .. versinnbildlicht] by straight lines. The fifth book of Euclid, in
fact, contains a "geometrical algebra." The exceptional
character of this branch of Greek mathematics brings it
into immediate proximity to Greek ontology. It is not surprising, therefore, that it had an exemplary, although diverse, significance for both Plato and Aristotle.
This xcxOO>..ov 7rPcx'YJ.UXTEia,31 this scientia generaliS or
universalis, took on an even greater importance for the
new science, if that is possible. A direct path leads from
the fifth Book of Euclid and the late Platonic dialogues,
through the preface of Proclus' Commentary on Book
One of Euclid, and the Latin translation of that work by
Barozzi in 1560, to Kepler's astronomical researches, to
Descartes' and Wallis' mathesis universalis, to Leibniz's
universal characteristic and finally to modern symbolic
logics, on the one hand, and, on the other, to Galileo's mechanical investigations and to the conception of natural
laws in general. (The latter connection has not been sufficiently emphasized up to now.) The close relation between
the general theory of proportions and the new science is
established from the start by their kindred conceptual
basis.
What is important, however, is the very different ways
in which ancient cosmology and seventeenth century
physics made use of the concept of proportion. I want to
31
�try to define this difference by using the example of seventeenth century interpretations of Plato's Timaeus. In
that dialogue, the mathematician, the "Pythagorean" Timaeus, gives a genetic presentation of the construction of
the world. (In this context, and only in this, can we disregard the fact that this presentation does not claim to be a
valid €7na7'1/p:q, a true science, but claims only to give an
Elxws !LiiOos, an image approximating the truth as closely
as possible.)l 8 A chaotic state of the world-matter precedes
the origin of the world: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth are in
disharmonious and disordered motion, they pass freely
into one another, they are at first nothing but 7fA~!L!LEAws
xed drrixrws xtvoVp,€vcx.39 The divine demiurge brings
them from this condition of dis-order into the condition of
order, of nXtts-: Els r&~w . .. if'YCX'YfV Ex rfjs lna~t&s. 40 How
does he bring about this condition of order? By producing
a self-maintaining equilibrium among the world-materials,
so that their restless passage into one another yields to
well-balanced rest, turns into ~<Jx{rx. 'Avrx>-.o-y{rx, proportion, is best suited for this purpose, in the first place, because it knits together a firm connection, a firm bond, a
liE<JjLos,' 1 among the world-materials, a bond which proves
to be unbreakable throughout almost all internal changes
in these materials, that is, throughout the overwhelming
majority of possible permutations of the elements within
this proportion; secondly, because the proportion is a
bond which, among all possible bonds, is itself most of all
bound to what it binds together, that is, it binds itself
most intimately with what is bound together so as to form
a unitary whole: atnOv n xal: nl ~vvOoVp..EVa ~n p.&Aurra
€'v 7fotfi.42 Proportion has both of these features by virtue
of its incorporeality. Thus, its incorporeality, by virtue of
which it institutes wholeness and brings about order,
makes it akin to what we call "soul," >fvx~- Indeed, it is difficult to say whether the Timaeus allows us to draw any
distinction at all between >fvx~ and d.vrx>-.o-yfrx. All of the
world-materials together from now on form a structured
whole, because their quantity, the size of their respective
bulk (cf. rxptOjLGJv o-yxwv-3lc), remains in a fixed ratio
throughout all changes or at least comes very close to this
fixed ratio: as Fire is to Air, so Air to Water, and as Air is to
Water, so Water to Earth. Just as a single, living, "besouled"
organism maintains itself as a whole throughout the constant changes of its bodily materials, so, too, the entire visible world maintains itself, thanks to this proportion
among its materials, as this one, perfect whole (t'v OX.ov
TEAEov).43 And that means: as this living whole. It is only
through this proportion that a "world" arises at all, that is,
an ordered condition of the world-materials, which we call
that it continues to produce itself anew, renews itself
again and again as what it already is within the texture of
the world-order. Thereby it helps this world-order, this
Ta~ts, to be continuously maintained. The being of every
natural thing, therefore, is determined by the world-order
as such, the Td.~ts of the world, the >fvx~ Tov xo<JjLOV [soul
of the world) and, finally, by the d.vrx>-.o-y{rx. Td~ts is thus
the basic concept of ancient cosmology, not only Plato's,
but also Aristotle's, in the version transmitted to the
Christian centuries 45 But Ta~ts, order, essentially means
in every case a definite order, an ordering according to a
definite point of view, in conformity with which each individual thing is assigned its place, its location, its n57fos.
Order always means well-ordering. For this reason ancient
cosmology, as topology, is not possible without the question of this ultimate ordering point of view, without the
question of d-yrxOov, the Good. And ancient cosmology
reaches its fulfillment in the doctrine of the different
T61fot [places). This doctrine also investigates the ratios
and proportions in which the celestial bodies appear arranged in their spheres.
How did the new science receive this ancient doctrine
of nx~ts and rxvrx>-.o-y{rx, of ordo and proportio? In his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo takes his
bearings continuously from the two basic books of traditional cosmology, Aristotle's De caelo and Plato's Timaeus;
in battling against Aristotle he relies again and again on
Plato. The entire construction of Galileo' s dialogue is in a
certain sense determined by the construction of the Timaeus. Like the Timaeus, Galileo, too, bases all further
cosmological explanations on the thesis that the world has
an order. Its parts are coordinated in the most perfect
manner ("con sommo e perfettissimo ordine tra di lora dispaste.") In this way the best distribution ("l'ottima distribuzione e collocazione") of the heavenly bodies, the stars
and the planets arises. However, what is important here is
how Galileo understands the Platonic principle that the
divine demiurge brought the world-material from disorder
to order. He thinks that Plato meant the following: each of
the different planets has a different orbital velocity within
the present order of the world. In order to reach these
velocities, they must, from the instant of their creation,
have passed through all the grades of lesser velocity. The
creator let them fall close to the mid-point of the world in
rectilinear motion, so that the uniform acceleration
pecu~
liar to falling-motion (free fall) could bring them gradually
to their present velocity, at the moment when they reached
the place assigned to them. Only then did He set them rotating, so that they proceeded from the non-uniform recti-
a cosmos. K6aJLoS thus means a self-maintaining condition
linear motion to the henceforth uniform circular motion
of m'~" (order). This condition is the basis of life, life that
maintains itself, produces itself time and again. For life
alone creates itself ad infinitum. Hence the world, precisely as an ordered world, is a self-sufficing animal, a tWov
rxvmpxn. 44 Its own being, as well as the being of its parts,
in which they persist until today. Non-uniform rectilinear
motion along the vertical corresponds, for Galileo, to the
state of disorder, rxmUrx, of which Plato speaks, while uni-
is cpVat.s, that is, Hnatural" being. The natural being of
every entity existing "by nature" is determined by the fact
32
form circular motion, that is, motion along the horizontal
line (for "horizontal" originally means the direction of the
circle of the horizon) corresponds to the present state of
order. With this interpretation, Galileo intends above all
AUTUMN 1981
�to defend the Platonic principle against Aristotle's criti-
new science, it is a "law." Accordingly, the new science in
cisms in De caelo.46
terprets ""'~"' ordo, as law, and construes the order of the
world as the lawfulness of the world. The shift in the meaning of the concept of ordo has its concrete basis here in
the possibility of transferring proportion from the ratios
among the quantities of the relevant elementary-bodies,
or from the ratios of their correlative positions, to the state
of motion of these bodies. This shift, however, eliminates
the order of the elementary-bodies, their r&~"' in the
sense of well-ordering. For the lawfulness of their motion,
the regular sequence of their states of motion, can be constructed only on the basis of their complete equality in
rank, their lack of ordering in the strict sense, that is, their
complete indifference to the place they occupy. The new
science now understands just this lawfulness in the course
of motion, in the temporal sequence of states of motion,
as the order of the world. The order of things moves up
one story higher, so to speak, when the temporal dimension is added. At the same time, however, the disorder of
the elementary-bodies, on which the lawfulness of the
It is not crucial here that Galileo's interpretation finds
no support in Plato's text What is significant is the direction in which he looks for the distinction between order
and disorder: not in the ratio or absence of ratio among
the quantities of the basic materials, not in the correlative
positions of the celestial bodies (although these do appear,
in accordance with the construction of the Timaeus, as
the genuine theme of his inquiry), but in the differences
in the states of motion as such. The bodies themselves are
not subject to comparison (comparatio, as Cicero in his
translation of the Timaeus says for proportion as well), only
a mode of being of these bodies, namely, their motion.
The application of proportion in Galileo's mechanical
works is also consonant with this. The connection with
the Greeks' general theory of proportions is immediate
here, thanks to the direct reception of Euclid and Archimedes, as well as indirectly, by way of a qualitative doctrine of geometrical ratios stemming from the 14th century
Nominalist school.47 What we today call Galileo's laws of
free-fall are intended by Galileo himself as EudoxianEuclidean proportions. In the Discorsi (Third day, Second
Book, Theorem II, Proportio II) a proportion is derived
with Euclidean means which we today would write as:
Both types of magnitude (S and T) are symbolized by
straight lines, in accordance with Book Five of Euclid.
The decisive difference from the cosmological proportion
in the Timaeus is that time becomes one of the elements
of the proportion. What I have said about Galileo also
holds true of Kepler, whose lifework, in his own opinion,
consists in the restoration of the Platonic doctrine of
order and proportion. The relation between the square of
the periods of the planets and the cubes of the great axes
of their orbits, familiar to us as Kepler's Third Law, is once
again conceived as a Euclidean proportion, of the form
ti:ti=d:ri,
or, as it has to be written to conform with Kepler's own
wording in Book One of the Harmonice mundi:
11
world is based, is now understood as Drder." Let us hear
Descartes: In chapter 46 of the Third Part of his Principia
he sets out the basic assumptions of his physics. In the
next chapter Descartes refers to his earlier attempt to
derive the present state of the world by assuming an original chaos. He says: "Even if, perhaps, this very same order
of things, which we encounter now (idem ille ordo qui iam
est in rebus) can be derived from chaos with the help of
laws of nature (ex chao per leges naturae deduci potest),
something I once undertook to show [sc. in Le Monde],
nonetheless I now assume that all the elementary parts of
matter were originally completely equivalent to one
another both in their magnitude and their motion ... because chaotic confusion (confusio) seems to be less fitting
to the highest perfection of God, the creator of things,
than proportion or order (proportio vel ordo) and also can
be less distinctly known by us, and because no proportion
and no order is simpler and more accessible to knowledge
than the one which consists in universal equality." It was
only later, through the work of Boltzmann and then of
Planck, that this "hypothesis of elementary disorder," as it
was called, was made explicit in statistical terms. Its importance for physics is clear from the fact that Planck called
the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics the
"Principle of Elementary Disorder."48
The world of mathematical physics built upon this presupposition, the world of natural processes occurring in
accordance with law, determines the concept of nature in
Taken together with the other two proportions which we
today call Kepler's First and Second Laws, it determines
the cosmic order in which we live. In these Galilean and
Keplerian proportions the concept of law, of the lex naturae, becomes visible for the first time. (Although neither
Galileo nor Kepler uses this word as a technical term; it is
first given a fixed sense by Descartes.)
The relation of the new to the old intentionality here
becomes immediately comprehensible. For Greek cosmol-
concept of nX~L>; T&~t.s is now understood as lex, that is, as
ogy, &va'Ao"({a is the expression of rtx~~~, of order; for the
order over time. The ascent from prima intentio to secunda
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
the new science generally. "Nature" means for it a system
of laws, means-to speak with Kant-"the conformity to
law of appearances in space and time." All the concepts in
this formula (as I have tried to show for "space" and "law")
can only be understood by contrast with the corresponding concepts of ancient science. Above all, the concept of
conformity to law signifies a modification of the ancient
33
�intentio is initiated here by the insertion of the time-dimension.49
How, then, does the new science, on the basis of its intentionality, interpret ancient cosmology? How does it interpret the "natural" world of the Ancients, the world of
r&hs? It interprets it as the qualitative world in contrast to
the "true" world, in contrast to the quantitative world. It
understands the "naturalness" of this qualitative world in
terms of the "naturalness" of the ''true," "lawful" world.
Eddington, in the introduction to his recent book, speaks
in a characteristic way of these two worlds: "There are duplicates of every object about me-two tables, two chairs,
two pens." The one table, the commonplace table, has extension, color, it does not fall apart under me, I can use it
for writing. The other table is the "scientific" table. "It
consists," Eddington says, "mostly of emptiness. Sparsely
scattered,in that emptiness are numerous electrical charges
rushing about with great speed."SO
Translated by David R. Lachterman
1. Leo Olschki has forcefully emphasized this point in his important
work Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, I-III
(Heidelberg 1919-1927).
2. Disputatio de coelo, 1613.
3. Librorum ad scientiam de natura attinentium pars prima, 1596.
4. De motu, 1591.
5. De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, 1589.
6. Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis de physica auscultatione, 1574.
7. De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus,
1562.
8. De certitudine mathematicarum, 1547.
9. Compare, e.g., Leon Brunschvicq, Les €tapes de la philosophie mathimatique, Paris 1912, 105.
10. See Pierre Duhem, La thiorie physique, son objet et sa structure,
Paris 1906, 444 [English translation, The Aim and Structure of Physical
Theory, trans. P. P. Wiener, Princeton 1954.}
11. Galileo Galilei, Opere, Edizione nazionale, 6, 232.
12. Kepler, Opera, ed. Frisch, I, 122 f.
13. Pars IV, Dist. 1, Cap. I & II.
14. Descartes savant, Paris 1921, 124-148.
15. Oeuvres de Fermat (ed. Tannery and Henry), I, 91.
16. Oeuvres de Fermat, 99.
17. Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rule IV, Oeuvres, ed. Adam & Tan·
nery, X, 376.
18. Opera, ed. Heiberg, I, 48 ff.
34
19. See also Apollonius, ed. Heiberg, I, 6, DeF. 4. (The term "abscissa"
was first used in the 18th century; cf. Tropfke, Geschichte der ElementarMathematik (2nd ed., Leipzig 1921-24), VI, 116 f.)
20. Moritz Cantor, Vorlesungen tiber Geschichte der Mathematik (3rd.
ed., Leipzig 1907), I, 337.
21. Zeuthen [The author may have had in mind H. G, Zeuthen, Geschichte der Mathematik in Altertum und Mittelalter (Copenhagen 1896),
ch. IV: "Die geometrische Algebra," 44-53. Translator's Note.]
22. See Plato, Republic VI, 510 D-E and Aristotle, Metaphysics, #6,
987bl5 ff.
23. Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam & Tannery, VI, 19-20.
24. Oeuvres de Descartes, 551 (Latin text).
25. Oeuvres de Descartes.
26. Oeuvres de Descartes, 20.
27. Oeuvres de Fermat, 93.
28. Oeuvres de Fermat.
29. Ed. Heiberg, I, 4.
30. Critique of Pure Reason, B 179.
31. [The full Arabic phrase is "al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah." For a contemporary discussion of the meanings of "jabr" and "muqabalah" see G. A.
Saliba, "The Meaning of al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah," Centaurus 17 (1972),
189-204. Translator's Note.]
32. F. Hultsch, Article: "Diophant," in: Pauly Wissowa Realenzyklopii.die,
Paragraph 9.
33. Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria,
ed. M. Hayduck, 85.5-6. See also Aristotle, Physics IV 4, 224a2 ff.
34. Compare Heron, Metrica {ed. Sch6ne), I, 6 ff.
35. [Vieta's Isagoge has been translated by]. Winfree Smith as an appendix to Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). The passage cited occurs on page 345.
Translator's Note.]
36. 1621-edition, 4.
37. See, for Aristotle, Metaphysics 6 1, 1026a23-27; K4, l061b17 ff; M2,
1077a9-12; M3, 1077bl7-20; Posterior Analytics A5, 74al7-25; A24,
85a38-bl. Compare also Marinus on Apollonius [i.e. the mention of a
now-lost "General Treatise" (xa86Aou 7rPa'YJ.tO'Tda) in Euclidis Opera,
ed. Heiberg-Menge, VI, 234 Translator's Note.]
38. Timaeus 29D
39. Timaeus 30A
40. Timaeus
41. Timaeus 31C
42. Timaeus
43. Timaeus 33A-B
44. Timaeus 33D; 37D
45. See Aristotle, Metaphysics M3, 1078a36-b6 and compare the title of
Ptolemy's work: h ativm~n (sc. TWv E 1rAavw~-tfvwv The Ordering-Together of the Five Planets.) For this title, see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Astronomie."
46. r2, 300b 16 11.
47. Compare P. Duhem. [The author most probably had in mind
Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci (Paris 1905-1913)-Translator's Note.]
48. Max Planck, Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes, Leipzig 1909.
49. M. Planck, Das Weltbild der Physik (Leipzig 1931, 2d. ed.).
50. Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, New York
1929, ix-x.
AUTUMN 1981
�"Sexism" is Meaningless
Michael Levin
W
HEN MY WIFE AND I PLAY TWENTY QUESTIONS,
and my wife must guess a woman, she will often
ask "Is this woman famous for whom she married?" Many would label her or her question "sexist." Indeed, few words have figured as prominently as "sexism"
in contemporary public discourse. Such currency would
ordinarily suggest that this epithet means something, but
in the present instance this impression is mistaken.
Beyond carrying a negativ·e expressive force, like "Grrrr"
11
or "Goddammit," Sexism" is empty. 1
What "sexism" is supposed to mean is clea~ enough.
"Dr. Smith has a roving eye, and his attractive wife is a notorious flirt" is called "sexist" because it implies that interest in the opposite sex is worse in married women than in
married men, and that appearance matters more for
that will serve my son will not serve my daughter. I base
these convictions on a belief in a difference between men
and women. Call these convictions "sexist" if you wish,
but please tell me what precisely is wrong, unreasonable,
or even controversial about them. The discomfort of
women in milieus demanding aggression has been confirmed by experience countless times. If noticing this is
sexism, there is nothing wrong with it. "Sexism" cannot
be used to label the factual judgement that the sexes dif.
fer in certain specific ways and at the same time retain its
automatic pejorative force.
Unfortunately, words are not always used as they should
be. "Exploit" means "to use another without his
consent," but contractual wages are nevertheless de-
is a man's book" is "sex-
nounced in some quarters as "exploitative." The point of
such tendentious misusage is, of course, to get your inter~
ist" because it implies that men more than women enjoy
adventure stories. My wife is a sexist because she believes
that fame often comes to women from their liaisons with
men, and-more egregious-she isn't indignant about it.
"Sexism," then, is typically used to describe either the
view that there are general, innate psychological differences between the sexes, or that gender is in and of itself
important.' Since the first view is simply a factual belief
supported by a vast body of evidence, and the second
view, however objectionable, is held by almost no-one,
neither view is worth attacking. But one thing is clear:
locutor to call wage labor "exploitation" and then to let
the negative connotations of that word impel him to denounce wage labor itself. If you succeed, you have boxed
him into a substantive moral position by word magic.
Once recognized, this trap is easy to elude. Anyone who
approves of wage labor ought to say: "I'll call wage labor
'exploitation,' if you insist on using words that way. But I
see nothing wrong with what you call 'exploitation'." The
same maneuver avoids the feminist's provocation. If, as it
often is, "sexism" is deployed simply to descredit belief in
gender differences, anyone who accepts these differences
those whose active vacabulary includes "sexism" (femi-
can treat "sexism" as a neutral name for this belief. With a
nists, for short) take it to describe something that is both
objectionable and widely held, and hence worth-in fact
requiring-regular and vehement attack.
This relentless tagging of "sexism" on to what it does
not fit suggests, to put it charitably, that feminists are confused about what their subject is and about what they
want to say about it. The word Sexism" simply encapsulates and obscures this confusion.
Take the view that there are innate gender differences.
I doubt that my daughter will become a quarterback. I expect her to develop habits different than those of my son
-and I hope so as well, because I believe that the habits
little gumption he can preface his conversations with feminists with this caveat, and continue to judge his belief on
its factual merits.
Sometimes the trick of illicitly transferring an epithet is
managed by constantly stressing some similarity between
its central cases and vaguely peripheral ones. A polemicist
may seduce his audience into calling wage labor "slavery"
by focusing on what wage labor does share with slavery.
(Both may involve working up a sweat.) To transfer an epithet to new cases ad libitum is harder, the clearer and more
stable its central cases are; easier, the fewer its antecedently
clear cases. At the limit of this process are neologisms, like
"sexism," which come into the world with only negative
connotations and nearly unlimited denotative potential.
"Exploitation" derives its force from the recognizable
badness of its central cases; abusing it consists in exporting it too far from these cases. One might suppose that
women than for men.
"Kon~Tiki
11
Professor of Philosophy at The City College of New York, Michael
Levin has recently published Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem
(Oxford University Press 1979). He has contributed to Measure, Commentary, Newsweek, and numerous philosophical journals.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
35
�"sexism" has acquired its force similarly, by describing
something obviously bad. This would imply that "sexism"
does have some legitimate meaning, however much that
legitimate meaning has been abused.
Not every word, however, functions like "exploitation":
some have only the force of disapprobation. Consider the
communist practice of endlessly reviling enemies as
"bourgeois" and 1'revanchist." These words have lost a11
mooring in the descriptive uses they once had. Nonetheless, their repetition induces confusion and guilt in the
victims of public hate sessions simply because they convey so much hate.
Words used as vehicles for anger will acquire negative
force, whatever the source of the anger. Neologisms like
"sexism," trailing clouds of rage at their birth, are of this
sort. The very ugliness of "sexism" itself supports this account of its genesis, for it you want to endow a word with
a negative force, it is helpful to make the word itself repellent. Calling housework "shitwork," and using the grating
sound "sexism" for those rare cases to which ''misogyny"
might have applied, plays on the human tendency to attribute the qualities of words to things, and, by the animosity implicit in flaunting ugliness, communicates the
rancor behind the word. (Orwell noted that avoidable ugliness is a sure sign of political cant.) Calling my belief in
gender differences "sexist" invites me to perceive my belief as ugly because its name is ugly and comes prepackaged with ugly emotions.
that men and women differ
''sexist" makes for sheer confusion, what of using
"sexist" to describe the idea that gender is intrinsically
important? Obnoxious as this idea may be, it is virtually
without adherents. Suttee and purdah are not features of
Western culture. Despite the frequency and vigor with
which feminists publicly identify their enemy as the doctrine that IDen are inherently superior," 3 its followers
could hold a public meeting in a telephone booth.
That the feminists' enemy here is merely nominal becomes clear with the reflection that "better" means nothing at all apart from some specification of abilities or relevant context. Mr. A cannot simply be better than Miss B.
Of course, we do speak of one person being morally better
than another, and by this we do perhaps intend a judgement of overall value. The feminist's point can hardly be,
however, that women are morally as good as men. Not
only does no one deny this, feminists themselves are constantly deploring the ''stereotype" that woman's "role" is
to civilize the naturally amoral and anarchic impulses of
the male.
"Better," then, must mean "better at this or that particular task," and men are so obviously better at some things
than women that this "doctrine," rather than being the
object of scorn, should pass unchallenged. If "sexism," for
example, means the idea that men can hurl projectiles farther than women, it once again becomes impossible to un-
I
F CALLING THE BELIEF
11
36
derstand why "sexism" is used with such heat. Is "sexism"
the view that men surpass women at some highly valued
activity, like abstract reasoning, while women are better at
other activities like child-rearing-which, outside feminist
circles, are valued as highly as anything men do? If so,
then the view in question once again becomes a factual
hypothesis, indeed a hypothesis which is rather obvious to
the unaided and scientifically aided eye. In any case, we
are back to interpreting "sexism" as a name for a group of
factual beliefs and, as I have already stressed, calling a factual hypothesis by an invidious name is sheer confusion.
The readiness of feminists to attack what no one defends- "men are better than women" -may be explained
by the observation that traits can be significant in two different ways. A trait can be important in itself: intelligence,
for example, is necessary for a variety of tasks and is valued in its own right. This is why employers may permissibly hire the brightest applicants, and why most people
enjoy witty companions.
But many traits not significant in themselves are closely
associated with some which are. People may and do heed
such derivatively significant traits because they confirm
the presence of what actually matters. Illiteracy is not intrinsically bad, but it usually implies deeper incompetence. We permit an employer to ignore illiterates who
want to be laser technicians because an illiterate is unlikely to know much about lasers. Similarly, strength is
what counts for being a fireman, but size and weight are
sufficiently reliable signs of strength to serve as proxies in
deciding who gets to be a fireman. Since we can be pretty
sure of the results beforehand, it is a waste of time to let a
5 foot, 100-pounder try to drag a 120 pound weight up a
flight of stairs.
Values and institutions commonly deplored as "sexist"
because they appear to appeal to the intrinsic importance
of gender really rest on the idea that gender is highly correlated with traits whose significance is not at issue. Take
two examples. Those opposed to drafting women do not
argue that women are women, but that women are less aggressive and less tolerant of the stress of combat than
men. (They also understand that an army is meant to defend its country, not to serve as an equal opportunity employer or a crucible for social experiments.) The pivotal
objection to conscripting women has nothing to do with
any inherent "inferiority" of femaleness, everything to do
with the ability of women to fight.
Take even the "double standard" which judges female
promiscuity more harshly than male. Despite appear·
ances, this difference in attitude is not based on the belief
that there is something intrinsically worse about female
promiscuity. Even the unanalyzed "gut" double standard
that most people still feel rests on a belief about the different psychologies of the sexes. Most people believe that
men can divorce their sexual feelings from their emotional
commitments more easily than women, and hence can
more easily satisfy their sexual appetites without risking
rejection and unhappiness. People thus believe, or sense,
AUTIJMN 1981
�that there is more likely to be something wrong with a promiscuous woman than a promiscuous man. We expectand I know of no statistical or impressionistic evidence
against this-that willingness to have sex with many partners is more likely to be associated with compulsivity and
other personality disorders in women than men. It is this
belief, however inarticulate, that underlies the double
standard, and even feminists must agree that if it is true
the double standard is more than caprice.
I believe that a dispassionate overview would confirm
what these two examples illustrate: almost all views labelled "sexist" because implying the intrinsic importance
of gender amount to factual beliefs about the sexes.4
T
of dubious relevance so certain to be raised at this point that it must be heard. It
runs that judging people on the basis of what is usually true is unfair to the unusual. What of that unusually
strong midget who could pass the fireman's test? What if
there is a female tougher than most Marines who, because
women ar~arred from combat, will never get a chance to
win the Medal of Honor? It must be replied, first, that expectations must be based on what is generally, even if not
universally, true. A sure way to fail to get what you want is
to base your plans on expectation of the exceptional. If
ninety percent of the apples in an orchard are green, it is
sheer irrationality to expect the next apple you pick to be
red. Second, legally mandated discrimination on the basis
of derivatively significant traits is relatively rare. All that
most people want is the legal right to use their own discretion. What is wrong with much "anti-discrimination" legislation is that it forbids attending to what may prove
relevant. (The whole matter is exacerbated in this country
by the alacrity with which the federal government has
overruled local jurisdiction on such matters.) Third, and
most important, it is perniciously utopian to demand that
exceptional cases have a right to be recognized. It is not
unfair, although it is perhaps unfortunate, that a potential
female Audie Murphy goes unrecognized. No one promised her she would be appreciated, no agreement has been
breached if she is not. Nobody promised you at birth that
you would enter the field best suited to your talents, but
this hardly violates some mythical right to self-actualization.
HERE IS A COMPLAINT
B
the impatient feminist might be keen to remind me that there is a middle ground. "Sexism,"
she might say, is prejudice against women and their
abilities. According to her, prejudice is a much subtler
matter than dislike of a morally irrelevant trait like gender
or race: it is the irrational retention of unflattering beliefs
about those who have the trait. A racial bigot need not believe that Negroes are "inferior" to whites: his bigotry
consists in believing on patently insufficient grounds that
Y NOW
Negroes are lazier than
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
~bites.
Prejudice, moreover, in-
valves self-deception. A bigot may believe he has an open
mind-even though he loses his temper whenever anyone
tries to change it. Finally, prejudicial underestimation typically serves unhealthy needs: it bolsters feelings of worth
by representing the Other as inferior, or forestalls guilt by
projecting illicit desires onto the Other. Perhaps, then,
"sexism" should be taken to mean the belief, held with
irrational tenacity, that on the whole men and women differ significantly.
The trouble with this new gambit is that anyone who
claims much of past and current society to be "sexist" in
this new sense must deny that there is good evidence that
men differ significantly from women, and maintain that
people would not change their minds if presented with a
disproof of sex differences. This is not an easy position to
hold.
The most ardent feminist must admit that all the available evidence favors difference. Women differ physically
from men, and act differently. Anyone who has had anything to do with little children observes that these behavioral differences appear before "socialization" takes
hold. Every little boy notices that his little girl friends'
homework is neater than his own, and that they are not so
willing as he is to fight over points of honor. Everyone
sees that fathers are usually sterner than mothers. Anyone
familiar with the artistic and literary classics of other cultures finds that they represent men and women just about
as ours do.
The feminist may deplore these facts, and she may
believe that an environmentalist hypothesis will someday
explain them, but she cannot deny them. Even she must
admit that belief in male/female difference is perfectly
reasonable. People think of the typical physicist as male
simply because almost all physicists have been male. "Liberated" movies and novels which ostentatiously present
female detectives, etc. are so jarring precisely because
their self-conscious implausibility destroys the suspension
of disbelief. My wife asks her question because many
women have derived fame from the fame of their husbands or lovers. To pretend this is not so is to refuse to
face facts and to handicap oneself at such practical tasks
as winning at twenty questions.
Even if the apparent differences between men and
women are the result of conditioning-a hypothesis that
can only be invoked after the innateness hypothesis has
been refuted and some other hypothesis, however ad hoc,
must be invoked-classifying traits as "masculine" and
"feminine" is too well founded to be called prejudice.
Even if there is a shortage of brilliant female composers
because a conspiracy barred women from conservatories,
it is not "sexist prejudice" to expect the next Mozart to be
male.
For all its contribution to modern science, the work of
Copernicus managed to convince the learned world of a
great falsehood: that things are usually not what they
seem. Descartes was only the first of many thinkers who,
shaken by the discovery that the sun's motion is merely
37
�apparent, resolved to regard his senses as liars until
proven truthful, his ordinary beliefs guilty until proven
innocent.
In fact, the instance of Copernicus and the others
stressed by such champions of scientific revolution as
Kuhn and Feyerabend are rare and anomalous. Most
things do turn out, under critical scrutiny, to be as they
seem. Bread really nourishes, water does extinguish fire,
appeasement encourages bullies, and on and on. What
science tells us is why and how these things are so, not
that they are illusions.
I stress this because the falsehood that most scientific
discoveries undo common sense is, I suspect, one of the
main supports of the currently rampant scepticism about
sex differences. Because common experience points over·
whelmingly to important intrinsic differences between
the sexes, it is inferred that the job of science, in this case
social science, is to explain these differences away. What
the history of science should lead one to expect is that, on
the contrary, deeper inquiry will explain the gender differ·
ences revealed by ordinary experience.
But the acid test of the "prejudice" theory is whether
society would abandon belief in gender differences in the
face of evidence to the contrary. This question must be
carefully distinguished from several others. Since the
belief at issue concerns general tendencies, ignoring ex·
ceptions is not prejudice. One can consistently believe
that men are better at mathematics than women while ad·
miring the work of Emmy Noether. Furthermore, a belief
may be important without being irrationally fixed, and
serve a need which is profound but healthy. A belief may
thus be painful to surrender without being a prejudice.
For instance, a man finds it important that his wife's per·
sonality complement rather than copy his own. He meets
enough duplicates of himself in the impersonal world of
work to want something else at home. The suggestion
that the complementarity he prizes is an artifact will natu·
rally disturb him. 5 But this does not mean that his belief
channels guilt or fortifies a weak ego, or that he is wrong
to demand convincing arguments before he accepts the
suggestion.
Nor is the irritation felt by many men at the (alleged) in·
flux of women into "non-traditional" fields evidence that
belief in sex differences is held with prejudicial tenacity.
This outrage is directed against coercion, not against a
challenge to faith. It is provoked by the pressure-group
agitation, lawsuits, and doctrinaire federal fiats that force
women on them. Changes that no one would mind or take
much note of had they occurred through necessity or
social evolution (like the influx of women into factories
during World War II, or the replacement of men by wo·
men as telephone operators earlier in this century) are bit·
terly resented when imposed by ideologues.
Feminists might want to cite, as proof of "sexist prejudice," those famous experiments in which graders gave
the same test a higher grade when told that the testee was
"Norman" than when told the testee was "Norma." (I will
38
not here go into the serious issues that can be taken with
the design and replicability of these experiments, or the
ways in which they have been reported.) Even this evidence is equivocal. If a professor has found over many
years that females write inferior philosophy examinations,
it is reasonable for him to anticipate that the next female
philosophy examination will be inferior. His expectation
will, of course, influence his perception, but this influence amounts to prejudice only if there is no "feedback
loop" by which a run of good female tests can correct his
expectation. A baseball scout used to minor-league incompetence can reasonably attribute a B-league shutout to
atrocious hitting rather than good pitching. His attitude
toward the winning pitcher is prejudice only if he continues to denigrate the pitcher's fastball after it has been
clocked at 97 mph. To return to those grading experiments-there is, however, no evidence that teachers persist in anticipating poorer Norma performances after a
string of good Norma tests. (It is in any case worth remembering in this connection that the tests which provide the
chief quantitative evidence for differences in male/female
aptitudes are standardized and computer graded.)
The performance of women in the military hardly challenges the belief that women cannot do some jobs that
men can, since women have been accommodated by lowered standards. Barriers on obstacle courses, for example,
have literally been lowered so females can get over them.
It is an open secret that universities have compromised
their standards to accomodate "affirmative action" and
live in dread of lawsuits filed by females denied tenure. As
a result, it is impossible to gauge the performance of
women against the standards of scholarship men have had
to meet. Such assessment is made especially difficult by
the great number of academic women who specialize in
"women's studies" and cognate made-up subjects in other
disciplines, subjects in which expertise is the ability to
perpetuate the anger that created them. Throughout
1979 the New York Times chronicled the troubles of the
First Women's Bank, floundering despite a Federal law
mandating assistance to firms with a "substantial"
number of female managers. This law makes it impossible
to tell if women can do as well as men in the realm of
finance.
The closer one looks the harder it becomes to evaluate
the acid test. There is no way of saying how men might
react to evidence against sex differences, because there
isn't any such evidence. The anthropological uevidence" is
fanciful or worse.6 The most recent psychological and
neurological research supports the view that women are
more verbal than men, men more at home with spatial abstractions, and so on.? Indeed, these studies are so decisive
that feminists have lately started to shift the focus of the
debate by trying to minimize rather than, as in the 1960's,
denying gender differences. For instance, Drs. Macoby
and Jacklin insist that of the thousands of variables they
studied, men and women differ "only" in four: verbal ability, spatial visualization, mathematical ability, and aggresAliTUMN 1981
�siveness. This is like saying that the difference between
me and Pavarotti is insignificant because he and I differ
"only" with respect to girth and the ability to sing.
Others who are at least willing to face the scientific
facts 8 stress that intra-gender variations far exceed the difference between gender means: e.g. men average about 6"
taller than women, but the tallest man is about 4' taller
than the shortest man. This is so, but it hardly shows that
inter-gender differences are trivial. Even though Wilt
Chamberlain is much, much bigger than I am, I remain
much bigger than most women.
There is, then, not a shred of support for the view that
the ordinary attitudes of ordinary people toward the sexes
are prejudice, and hence more reason to doubt that "sexism" is the name of anything in heaven or earth.
B
EFORE ADOPTING A STUDIED incomprehension toward those who find "sexism" richly informative, let
us recur to our reflections about words as vehicles
for negative emotions. One can make a kind of sense of
Hsexism" in three stages. First, take "sexism" as the fern·
inist uses it to refer to the conviction that men and
Nomen differ. Second, take her to believe that many people subscribe to this conviction and are in this sense "sexists." Third, to explain why "sexism" is a term of abuse,
attribute to the feminist rage at the existence of these differences and people's acknowledgement of them. The
feminist's usage now becomes quite coherent: "sexism"
denotes a fact of nature while expressing outrage at this
fact and its universal recognition.
If this is the real meaning of "sexism," it is a very mis·
chievous word. Its negative charge invites us not to believe-to insist that it is bad to believe-what can be
shown to be so. Insofar as "sexism" refers to sex differ·
ences themselves, "sexism" invites a negative response to
a fact of nature, a response as inappropriate as annoyance
at the law of gravity.
Only two obstacles impede attributing this array of beliefs and resentments to the feminist. (1) She herself is unlikely to agree that this is what she means by "sexism,"
and would probably repudiate it angrily. (2) Rage at the
workings of D?ture is a peculiar and perverse emotion;
such alientation is rare and should not be imputed to anyone without good grounds.
As for (I), people often deceive themselves about what
they are doing with words and about the feelings that lie
behind the ready use of a phrase. Such blind willingness
to let language do the work of thought is a hallmark of
ideological rhetoric. There is no other way to explain, for
example, the evident sincerity of politicians who call the
forced transfer of income "compassion."
As for (2), it is not hard to understand this particular
form of alienation. Modern society rationalizes tasks,
thereby making them less expressive. Male and female impulses remain to be expressed, but it is no longer easy to
tell by inspection what is a "male" activity and what is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"female." Warming a TV dinner is not especially nurturant, nor does riding a bus to work satisfy the urge to
dominate. Western industrial society tends to separate
people from a sense of their own gender and hence their
own identity.' Combine this phenomenon with the radical
egalitarianism and environmentalism of the last half-century,
and widespread gender confusion becomes inevitable 10
A woman who is ill at ease with her essential identity,
who has lost the sense of the values peculiar to her sex
and to herself as a member of her sex, cannot very well admit this to herself. No ego can support such self-hate,
such loss of meaning. But the emotion is there, and the
ego must do something with it. Freud first identified the
process by which the psyche resolves such tensions: the
ego can recognize an unacceptable emotion by projecting
it onto someone else. By calling her self-hate the hatred of
others, and confirming the attribution by endlessly reviling
her imaginary enemies, the feminist can transform a sense
of worthlessness into a sense of moral superiority.
Taking this to be the real function of "sexism" explains
more than how usexism" has acquired such emotional
freight while failing to attach itself to a recognizable object. It connects as well with the larger distrust of human
sexuality that is becoming increasingly evident in the soidisant "women's movement," a distrust fully compatible
with its ritual paeans to sexual activity and to abortion as a
right coequal with free speech. In addressing the fear that
further obliteration of sex roles in the interest of "nonsexist"
childrearing will increase the incidence of homosexuality,
Letty Pogrebin writes "Homophobia, not homosexuality,
is the disease of our times/' and uour fear of lesbianism
for ourselves and our daughters may really be fear of selfhood and freedom." 11
Res ipsa loquitur.
F "SEXISM" IS SO CONFUSED, why worry about it? Since
words that mark no salient fact or distinction usually
fall into disuse, it would seem that "sexism" is destined
to go the way of the names of the humours. Unfortunately,
the situation is complicated by the immense power of
"sexism" to intimidate. No one knows what the label
means, but everyone-especially politicians-knows he is
in for trouble if the label is pinned on him. People have
learned to avoid at all costs doing or saying anything that
attracts it. Feminists have thus perfected a tool for stigmatizing beliefs that they do not like but which they cannot
discredit on rational grounds. The self-evident beliefs
most people hold about human nature have been called
"sexist" so often and so angrily that continuing to hold
them now carries a heavy price. People would rather surrender them than endure the anger and internalized misgivings that holding them provokes. Feminists are not
likely to surrender lightly so apt a tool as "sexism."
A parable and a precedent may serve to suggest the
I
39
�harm done by the persistence of "sexism" in public discourse.
L Suppose an influential group of people began referring to the belief that automobiles should move in
traffic lanes as "stupidism" (or "traffickism"), a word
they always used with rage. They denounced as "stupidist" anyone who thought that if traffic were not
uniform, driving would be too dangerous. Anyone
who requested clarification about why all vehicular
institutions to date were "stupidist" was met with redoubled anger. Through repetition, "stupidism"
would doubtless come to be regarded as more than a
device for expressing rage at the way traffic works.
Eventually, ordinary people-and especially politicians-would start to worry about being called "stupidists." To avoid the imputation of stupidism, they
would, doubtless, begin to agree that traffic should
follow no fixed lanes. They would agree that to say
or even think otherwise was stupidist prejudice. Proponents of "automobile liberation" who gained control of highway policy would denounce the desire to
test the tenets of automobile liberation as the profoundest form of stupidism of all.
I leave to the reader's imagination what a day on the
road would be like.
2. In Nazi Germany, the theory of relativity was called
"Jewish physics." This meant nothing except,
perhaps, the uninteresting fact that the theory of
relativity was invented by a Jew. Enough people
used this phrase, however, and used it vituperatively
enough until-unbelievably, it seems to us-German scientists actually began to disregard the theory
of relativity on the grounds that it was Jewish
physics.
So don't be puzzled when I say words like "sexism" and
"Jewish physics" can mean nothing at all, yet do immense
harm by creating aversion to reasonable beliefs. Happily,
this conditioning can be resisted. My wife usually wins at
twenty questions_IZ
1. The 1980 Report of the President's Advisory Committee for Women
uses "sexism" freely but without explanation. The word occurs most frequently in the subsections ominously headed "Federal Initiatives."
2. The suffix "ism" suggests, often falsely, belief in a doctrine. Socialism is indeed belief in the virtues of a command economy, but "capitalism" -i.e. the practice of anyone who distinguishes what is his from
what is someone else's-typically involves no beliefs at all about economic organization. So here: "sexism" sounds like a doctrine, and "sexists" its followers. Typically, however, practices labelled "sexist" -such
as the use of the generic pronoun "he" -involve no beliefs at all about
the sexes or anything else on the part of those who follow them. Calling
your opponent an "ist" is a good tactic, since most people are sceptical
40
of worldviews and you can thus create an unearned initial distrust for
what you want to attack. I suspect that feminists avoid the word "misogyny" because it carries no connotations of system.
3. See e.g. Iris Mitgang in Commentary, March 1981, 2.
4. Judith Finn made a comparable point simply and well when testifying
before the Senate in connection with the claim that "sexism" and "sex
discrimination" are responsible for pay differences between men and
women:
"Since pay differences are almost completely caused by differences
in jobs rather than the failure to obtain equal pay for equal work,
understanding the earnings gap requires an explanation of the
reasons why women, on the average, hold lower-paying jobs than
men. Women have different job-related attributes and different
amounts of these attributes than men." [Testimony before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 21, 1981;
(my emphasis)]
5. See Bruno Bettleheim, "Notes on the Sexual Revolution," in Surviving New York 1979.
6. For the anthropological material on male dominance, see Steven
Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, 2nd ed., London 1977. Martin
Whyte has lately offered the Semang (HRAF, AN7) as a matriarchy in
The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies, Princeton 1978. Goldberg replies in " 'Exceptions' to the Universality of Male Dominance,"
to appear.
7. Even avowed feminists concede important psychological differences:
see e.g. E. Macoby and C. Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences,
Stanfmd 1974.
8. Not all scientists are. The Newsweek of May 18, 1981, carried that
magazine's millionth cover story on "the sexes," which concludes, after
much divagation and vague talk about man's ability to "transcend his
genes," that the latest research demonstrates gender differences built in
by hormones. The editors, perhaps trying to defuse the issue, quote the
geneticist Richard Lewontin to the effect that the whole question is
"garbage from old barroom debates," as if that renders the question
meaningless. Egalitarian fundamentalists are also fond of citing silly
nineteenth century phrenological theories, as if that undercuts modern
research.
9. Edward Levine and his associates have explored this topic in a series
of papers in the Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines (1966,
1971, 1972, 1974), Adolescent Psychiatry (1977) and The American Journal
of Psychiatry (1977).
l 0. This hypothesis predicts parallel if not similar effects among men,
and such effects are appearing. For instance, homosexuality among
black males is increasing sharply, just as urbanization, welfare, AFDC,
and other boons of modern life destroy the black family.
11. Growing Up Free, New York 1980.
12. In an essay entitled "Research on IQ, Race and Delinquency" (in
Taboos in Criminology, ed. E. Sagarin, London 1980, 37-66), Robert
Gordon has occasion to ponder the word "racism" as it is used nowadays of scientists like Arthur Jensen. He concludes that this epithet does
no work whatever: "Clearly, if a scientist reports or hypothesizes ... a
non-trivial difference, perhaps genetic in origin, between racial groups .. .
we have added nothing to the content of discourse by describing him in
addition as a 'racist.' Employed in this way, the term is simply redun·
dant. ... But 'racist' is used in a second sense .... In this sense, use of
the term 'racist' conveys something in addition to the first sense that is
not easily communicated by other means, something plainly unscientific
and gratuitously invidious." Just replace "racism" by "sexism" here and
you have in a nutshell what I have taken many pains to say. The point
itself is obvious to Gordon, to me, and I daresay to anyone who reflects
on the issue for a single moment. Unfortunately, explaining the obvious
involves lessons more complicated than what the lesson is intended to
convey.
AUTUMN 1981
�Going To See The Leaves
Linda Collins
to go to Vermont to see the
leaves, and to invite their son and his wife to go with
them. They could stay, she said, in a really nice inn,
and go for walks, and on Saturday, if it was warm, they
could find a meadow to picnic in with a view of the moun-
I
T WAS MRS. CHILD'S IDEA,
tains.
She had suggested the plan rather tentatively: there
would be a lot of driving, and it would be sure to be quite
expensive, putting up all four. Besides, she was hesitant
about making outright proposals. She preferred to agree
to the suggestions made by others.
HAnd on Sunday," she said, "there is a concert we
might want to go to. And start home from there."
But Thomas agreed at once. He said, "Yes, let's."
Elizabeth felt that he had agreed too quickly, there was
no chance now for her to explain why it was a good idea,
no chance for them to talk about Luke and his wife,
Sarah. Thomas said, "Yes, let's," in a voice that sounded
as though he was putting his newspaper up before his
face. Yes, they should go, Elizabeth needed something.
Elizabeth did want something. It had been at one time
Thomas who used to say, "Let's take Lukie out West." He
had suggested a trip to Kenya, to the Serengeti. One of
his partners had gone there and advised him to go soon
while the animals were still thriving and before Luke was
too old to want to travel with his parents. Thomas's partner
had said it would be the experience of a lifetime. But Elizabeth hadn't wanted to go and so they had stayed home
and gone to the seaside for a week when Luke came home
from camp. But recently Elizabeth thought about places
to go, where, she didn't quite know, while Thomas now
wanted to stay at home in the evening and on long weekends, as well as on his month's vacation.
Thomas did not know what made him agree so quickly
to Elizabeth's suggestion. Still, the proposal struck him as
one that would accomplish something that should be accomplished, touched his underlying understanding of
things, for even to himself his "Yes, let's" sounded too
quickly after his wife's, "Dear?"
HOMAS DROVE, although Luke had offered to drive.
After New Haven, they started north. A blue light,
soft and even, spread from one part of the sky to the
other. It was hot.
Thomas drove, looking straight ahead. Sarah sat behind
Elizabeth, looking out the window. Her hair blew across
T
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
her mouth. She pushed it away with the back of her hand.
Luke turned this way and that, trying to find space for his
long legs. His mother saw his profile and the full, sculptured curve of his lips. He ran his big fingers through his
blond hair which sprang up again after his fingers had
passed.
Elizabeth said: "We used to sing on drives."
Luke began: "Oh, the cow kicked Nelly in the belly in
the barn."
Sarah: "But the doctor said t'wouldn't do her any harm."
The two young people sang out with their loud strong
voices. They heard themselves. Their voices shook their
chests and vibrated in their throats. Sarah tried to outsing
Luke, she sent her voice from her diaphragm, a soldier in
her cause. Luke heard the challenge but would have none
of it. He had no doubt he could wrestle her to the ground,
pin her, outsing her, but she would not accept this. Thomas
sang with them, then fell silent. Elizabeth hummed.
They passed a clump of low red bushes on the grassy
divider. Elizabeth said she hoped they had not come too
early, that the leaves would have reached the height of
their color.
They drove past the domes and cylinders of Hartford.
There were many cars on the highway with out-of-state
plates.
"I wonder how many of these cars are going to see the
leaves," said Elizabeth. She had a strong response to the
idea of people being brought together; the periodicity of
things moved her, and the discovery of community in unexpected places.
Sarah opened her camera case. She loaded three cameras.
"There," she said.
"Black and white?" said Elizabeth, looking over her
shoulder. "For the leaves? Why black and white?"
"She takes a dim view of color," said Luke.
"Oh, Luke," said Sarah. "I want to try to do something
with the leaves. With the light. I don't want just to gawk
at the color."
"You know, in Japan, people swarm to the hillsides to
see the leaves," said Elizabeth, while to herself she said
that Sarah was not being rude to her, only eager about her
work.
Linda Collins's stories have appeared in The Hudson Review and other
magazines.
41
�"Well, so do we. That's just what we're doing, isn't it?
How is it different?" Luke pressed Sarah and his mother
both.
"Nobody calls them 'leafies' in japan," said Sarah.
"How do you know?" asked Luke. "How do you know
there aren't just as many scoffers in japan as here?''
"Peering out from behind screens and saying 'See the
reafies' to one another." Sarah took up Luke's scenmio
with a certain excitement. She tried to adorn it, expand it,
but Luke let it go, turned to the window, and Sarah's
voice trailed off.
Thomas said nothing. He was the driver. He was the
person behind the wheel, taking his wife where she
wanted to go, ferrying the young people. It brought a sort
of peace to him. He had, when he was young, harbored
the idea of some outcome for himself. It had been unclear
to him what it would be, but that it would be, had seemed
unquestionable. For most of his life, he had taken courage
from the thought that a task awaited him. Thomas was still
strong, still smooth muscled and fit. Recently, the thought
had come to him that perhaps the rest of his life would be
no different from the way things were now, that he would
not be called upon. Recently, he had found he could no
longer contemplate his wife in an erotic fashion. Nothing
was said about this. He meant to speak about it, but it
seemed unspeakable. He could not raise the subject. He
was not sure whether the reason was that he feared to
hurt her or that he hesitated to embarrass himself. Sometimes he wished for old age when the issue would be, he
thought, dead.
Soon they would pass Deerfield, where Thomas had
spent his years from thirteen to seventeen. As the little
school buildings came into view, Elizabeth, as she always
did, turned her head to look at them across the fields.
They seemed far away and very small. There Thomas had
played ice hockey and read Ethan Frome. In the early
morning, in all seasons, thick white fog had sat in the low
places in the valley. In spring, limp yellow strings had blossomed on the birch trees. When his parents came to visit,
they took him out to lunch in Greenfield. His father asked
him how things were going. His mother told him what his
cousins and aunts were doing. He felt very small, very
young. It seemed at each visit that he and his parents
were growing farther apart. He no longer cried when they
left. He knew it was untenable to love them.
"How come you didn't send Luke to Deerfield?" asked
Sarah.
"Thomas hated Deerfield. They snapped towels at
him." Elizabeth was always outraged that his parents had
sent him off so young and tender.
But I didn't hate it, Thomas was thinking. That he had
been lonely as a child had seemed only ordinary. He had
merely waited for the end of childhood.
In school, he had walked from building to building. He
had seen, as the morning fog lifted, the color of the leaves,
which had grown stronger during the night. No child remarked to another on the color or observed aloud that the
42
trees, which had been green when school started, were
now orange, or red. The children noticed the leaves but
said nothing.
In the autumn, he had run cross-country; in winter, he
wrestled. He grew, he felt himself to be merely the container of his strength. Who could tell how much stronger
he might become? Running through tunnels of copper
leaves, he thought of nothing but persisting. In winter
afternoons in the wrestling room, he heard the thunder of
the basketball team overhead. In january, the daylight was
gone by the time he got to the gym. Under yellow lightbulbs in their metal cages, he lifted weights and practiced
his moves. On Saturday, all honed and pure, he struggled
with another youth. His veins swelled. He scarcely saw his
opponent. It,was all in terms of something else. If I win
this match, then ... what? His thoughts carried him far,
but something lay beyond them. There was something
more than the trophy to be gained.
In the rear-view mirror Thomas caught his son's glance.
Father and son seldom spoke to one another, but each
sometimes intercepted the other's gaze. Now Thomas
swung out into the passing lane and pressed the accelerator to the floor, causing Elizabeth to sway forward against
her seat belt, and the maps to slide along the top of the
dashboard. Exhaust fumes entered the car as he passed
first one trailer truck, then another, and pulled back into
his lane.
"Thomas, my goodness," said Elizabeth.
As they crossed into Vermont, the color in the trees
intensified.
"Oh, look," said Elizabeth, as they left the Connecticut
Valley and started up into the orange hills, "this really is
the peak. We came at the right time."
I
N THE MORNING, Thomas and Luke got up first. They
met in the hall, testing the locks of the doors they were
closing upon their wives who had not yet risen. Sunlight blazed at a little window at the end of the hall.
Thomas waited for Luke to reach him. He felt a shy excitement which he was scornful of, but nonetheless he
wondered what he could offer Luke that might please
him. Luke approached, bending a little under the low ceiling of the hallway, and together they went down the uneven, carpeted stairs to the dining room.
In the morning light, between butterings and bites and
swallows, Thomas examined his son. He felt able to look
at Luke in a way he could not in his wife's presence. He
was anxious to make his observations acutely and quickly,
before Elizabeth should appear. Luke's skin was fresh, he
looked rested, but what Thomas had thought he had detected yesterday was true, his hair was beginning to
recede. Thomas reached up to touch his own hairline, but
he blurred the gesture by stroking his head where the hair
was still thick.
How old is Luke? he thought. Is he twenty-five or
AUTUMN 1981
�already twenty-six?· Thomas hoped he was only twentyfive.
Luke held his fork with the tines down and pressed a
neatly cut, five-layered mound of pancake into the maple
syrup which had pooled at the outer edge of his plate.
When the syrup had all disappeared into the pancake, he
leaned over his plate and brought the forkful to his
mouth. It was winking with syrup. When he had finished,
he drank the last of his milk, tilting the glass, and then
turned to his coffee.
"Good?" said Thomas. "Did you enjoy your breakfast?"
"Listen, Daddy," said Luke. "I know that you are worried about me. And Mommy is, too. I know that. But
don't. Or do. I know you can't help it. I will be all right."
The morning sun moved in the sky just enough to brilliantly strike the water glasses and the restaurant silver on
the table, flinging blades of light on the walls. The table
cloth was too white to look at. For that moment Thomas
felt that Luke was the father and he was the son. He
wanted to say something to Luke that would be true. At
the £arne time he wanted to say something that would
make him be the father again. He raised his eyes from the
quivering light and saw that Elizabeth and Sarah were
standing in the doorway of the dining room.
~~There you arel" said Elizabeth.
Thomas and Luke stood up. Elizabeth wore a white cardigan over a blouse with little lavender dots, and a blue
denim skirt. She was wearing pink lipstick. Her "There
you are!" had sounded so loud in the dining room that she
was surprised. She crossed quickly from the dim hall to
the bright square of sunlight where Thomas and Luke
were standing, letting herself smile only when she had
reached them. Sarah followed. She wore an olive shirt
with many pockets. When she moved her head, her long
straight hair parted in places, and Luke could see the little
turquoise earrings his parents had given her. She seldom
wore jewelry and he was glad she had put them on.
"How lucky we are!" said Elizabeth and smoothed her
skirt under her as she bent to sit down on the chair
Thomas was holding. "What a beautiful day it is!"
Luke winced at the eagerness and timidity with which
his mother, dressed like a child, had crossed the room.
Both his mother and father had blue eyes. To Luke, it
seemed that they both peered at him as if to see what was
inside his head. Their look seemed to try to exact something from him, some agreement; for instance, as now,
that it was indeed a beautiful day, and since all were
agreed on that, all of one mind, some further harmony
was bound to follow. The mild questioning look of his
mother and father peering at him made him say: "Let's
get this show on the road," but when he realized that his
mother and Sarah had not even ordered yet, he sat back,
abashed.
Thomas ordered Granola for Sarah and muffins for
Elizabeth. While they ate, the men drank more coffee,
and together they agreed on a plan for the day.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
FTER LUNCH, it took a while to get comfortable.
They shook the crumbs off the two blankets and
·spread them out again to rest on, but they had picnicked in a mown field and the ground was stubbly. Finally, they moved the blankets to the far edge of the field
under the trees where the grass was soft. Thomas was reluctant to leave the car so far out of sight, but Luke said
he wanted to take a nap and Sarah had her tripod and
filters ready and was eager to get to work. For a while, as
they carried the blankets across the field, sending up
showers of crickets with each step, it seemed they were
making too much fuss. Elizabeth tried not to seem to be
arranging things. She knew there could be a reaction
against her for being too managing, too motherly, but she
was willing, right now, to risk it. What had they driven all
this way for, if not for this? Nonetheless, as they walked,
she hung back, not to be first. Thomas took the lead, and
Luke walked with him. The sun shone through the rims
of their ears. Sarah noticed this and said to Elizabeth:
''The sun is shining through their ears." Elizabeth was offended that this young woman should speak so familiarly
about her son's ears, her husband's.
"I think Luke might go back to school next semester,"
said Sarah in a soft voice. Elizabeth knew she was anxious
lest Luke hear them talking about him.
When the blankets were smoothed out, Luke stretched
himself out on the plaid one and folded his arms over his
chest.
"Night," he said from under closed eyes.
Sarah looked at him, the length of him on the blanket,
occupying it fully.
''I'm going to take some wide-angle shots," she said,
with a lift of her chin, and she picked up her tripod and
bag and stalked off down the field.
And so, wheh Elizabeth and Thomas lay down on their
blanket, having carefully made room for one another, the
family was together, mother, father, and son.
After a bit, Luke opened his eyes and turned his head
towards his mother. She was lying on her back with her
eyes closed. The afternoon sun struck her full in the face.
A lavender vein moved stepwise across her eyelid. The lid
was rose-colored; the edge of the lid looked moist and it
trembled slightly. Her yellow-gray hair lay in flattened
coils under the weight of her head. Above her upper lip
fine hairs shone in the light, and from the red cave of her
nostril long yellow hairs emerged. Luke touched his own
nostril and felt the stiff hairs that stuck out of his nose. He
raised himself on one elbow and looked beyond his
mother. His father lay beside her. Briefly, he saw them
both up close, enormous, as though in a fever, or through
a lens. Their faces were magnified in his eyes, for a second
they occupied the entire landscape.
With a guilty heart, he sat up straight and felt in his buttoned-down shirt pocket for a marijuana cigarette. At the
sound of the match striking, both his parents opened their
eyes. As he inhaled the smoke, his father said, "Do you
have to do that, Lukie?" and he said, "Yes, Daddy, I do."
A
43
�He sat with his knees up, one arm around them, holding
his cigarette with his free hand. His parents sat up and
began to brush bits of grass off their sweaters. Leaves, the
color of apricots, with an occasional speck of light green,
were falling from the tree above.
"There's Sarah," said Elizabeth.
Sarah was at the lower end of the meadow. It was diffi·
cult to tell how far away she was. She looked tiny and
there was nothing to measure her by.
Elizabeth stood up and waved, but the sun was behind
her. "Saaa-rah." She gave a sort of yodel. Sarah turned in
their direction but Luke knew that all she could see was
the afternoon sun. They watched her walking up the
slope with her awkward, determined stride. She could as
well have been an utter stranger.
Luke gently tapped his cigarette on a rock in the wall
behind him. When he was quite sure it was out, he pinched
the end, and folded the remains in a bit of paper which he
carefully returned to his shirt pocket. Then he stood up
and in long strides ran the length of the field to Sarah who
was standing at the edge of the woods in a drift of leaves.
She watched him running towards her. The opening and
closing of his legs gave her the impression he was running
in slow motion and she started to reach for her camera,
but he got to her too soon, before she was ready. She
hadn't got the lens cap off when he grabbed her and held
his arms around her. "Oh, Sarah, don't leave me," he said.
She felt his heart leaping like an animal in a cage, she
smelled his sweat and felt the moisture on his neck and
face.
"I wasn't going to leave you," she said, but she felt, as
usual, a certain confusion, an apprehension. Why had he
lain down in the field in front of his mother and father
and taken up the whole blanket? Didn't that mean she
should leave him? How could they be going to lead their
whole lives together? Where was comfort to come from,
where was happiness? From passion? Perhaps, but it was
unreliable. Who was this man, this blond man? How had
she come to lie down with a stranger?
The sun was veiled, as a thin skin of clouds rose in the
west. As the light in the sky paled, the radiance of the
leaves increased. Something solemn and important was
happening in the woods. A chill crept over the meadow.
Luke's lips nuzzled Sarah's neck. His knee pressed between her legs. She saw the small figures of Elizabeth and
Thomas leave the far edge of the field and move toward
them over the stubble. Luke inserted his hand under the
waist of her jeans in the back and reached down to feel
her buttocks, thin and clenched.
"Luke," said Sarah, twisting about, "don't. Don't do
that."
Luke began to laugh. He wanted to wrestle with her, to
push her down in the leaves. The smell of the woods rode
upon the cooling air which poured into the meadow, carrying with it the smell of moss, of mushrooms, of rot, of
black mud, of rotting stumps and the rotting bodies of
small animals, of chipmunks, rats, mice, squirrels, of
44
everything that dies in the woods. The smell of decaying
leaves and decomposition was delicious, it appeared suddenly and turned thoughts to the secrets that lie in the
forest. Luke pressed against Sarah.
~~Later," said Sarah.
"I would like to go into the woods with you now," said
Luke.
He pressed his knee against the hard double seam of
her blue jeans. She stepped back and let herself fall to the
ground. The wind blew a hard gust. Above, the ash tree
let loose a shower of leaves, yellow, the color of dark mustard. They lay in the leaves, laughing.
"OK," said Sarah, in a soft voice, as Luke's parents,
smiling uneasily, drew near, "later."
Elizabeth slept and
woke, hearing the wind and the tap of branches
against the window of the unfamiliar room. She lay
in bed and thought about the leaves and their drying
stems and the trees they dance upon as they try to leave.
She thought about how hard it is for them to leave. The
tree sends juices, the leaf clings; the wind blows and the
leaf turns, spins, bends back upon its stem.
She went to the window and stood looking out. Her
bare feet on the wooden floor made her feel like a girl.
The room was cold. She heard the wind and saw that the
leaves were still falling in the dark. It was a grave matter
that all the leaves were falling, but she was very glad she
had come to see them.
T
T
HE WIND BLEW ALL NIGHT LONG.
in what had been a Congregationalist church, square and white, which had
been renovated to accommodate its new function.
Moulded stackable seats replaced the pews, and recording
equipment stuck out of the pulpit. On the floor, wires
trailed.
It took most of the first movement for Elizabeth to
begin to concentrate. She had to remind herself to pay at·
tention to the sound which drummed or gurgled in her
head, memorably, she thought, but no sooner had the first
bit opened into its development than it was gone. And she
couldn't get it back. She criticized herself, but at the same
time wondered if she was alone in this failing, or whether
there were others like herself who were confused.
The cellist plucked a loose strand from his bow and
poised himself to plunge in again. The cello was pale,
almost yellow; the viola was red. The two violins were similar in color, but one glittered, the smaller one. The second violinist was a woman who wore a long dress of bright
green. The dress was sleeveless and the woman's arms
were white. Elizabeth thought it was no doubt a C<Jnvenience for her not to have sleeves. A loose sleeve would
get in the way, and a tight-fitting sleeve would pull under
the arms, or at the elbow. And yet the young woman was
HE CONCERT WAS PLAYED
AUTUMN 1981
�exposed, and her arms seemed very private, with everyone looking on. Of the four players she was the only
woman. She was neither pretty nor ugly. From time to
time, as she played, she gave her head a shake, and her
smooth brown hair crested and fell back into place. The
first violinist played, and she waited, holding her violin
upright on her thigh. When he had played for several mea·
sures, she raised her violin and held it under her chin, let·
ting the bow hang loose from her right hand, watching the
other players, and nodding her head, until, with a sudden
deliberate movement, she lifted the bow and began to
play vigorously. Her thin arm went rapidly up and down.
The four leaned toward one another as they played. The
music was loud and strong. Then the three others plucked
their instruments and the woman in green played alone.
Afternoon light fell in stripes upon the listeners. In the
darkness between the stripes, motes of dust floated. Eliza·
beth held her breath. Something wonderful was happen·
ing. The music rose from the platform and spread to fill
the space above. The sound resonated upon whatever it
touched, the beams in the ceiling, the planked floor, the
walls. The first violinist and the woman in green were
playing sweetly and loudly to one another, while the
others sustained them with arpeggios. As he finished
drawing his bow and with a subtle gesture of his wrist was
preparing to return it, she was drawing hers to its tip. Her
head was bent down so her chin touched her chest, and
her arms were spread wide apart. Her face was hidden.
Only the top of her bowed head could be seen. The
sounds she was pulling from her instrument were the
sounds of tearing, the sound of something long being torn
in two. The cello and viola fell silent and then the first via·
linist stopped playing as though to honor the last of her
long trembling notes. Elizabeth thought: Then there is no
happiness. A rush of courage filled her completely, and
she thought, I can bear it, now that I know.
From above a peculiar noise distressed her. She realized
it had been pressing upon her for some time and she had
been resisting it, as though holding a door shut against a
great force, but now she gave way. She looked up. On a
ledge under one of the high windows, birds were sitting.
One fluttered out, circled and landed. The others chirped
and shrilled. It was a shocking breach. Could the players
hear? Elizabeth would have liked to do something to save
the situation, but that was ludicrous. What could she do?
Nothing, she thought, but sit there and wait it out. Dis·
tracted, she waited for the quartet to finish.
When the concert was over and the players had come
back several times to bow to the audience, which was
standing to applaud, Elizabeth turned around to look up
at the eaves. The birds had disappeared, but she thought
she saw straw sticking out from one of the high joists. The
glare of the lights caught a feather which was floating
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
down in an uneven way, impelled by whatever drafts
reigned up there.
Luke followed her gla:rrce. He put his arm around her.
"Did they bother you, the birds?" he said.
Love for him weakened her. She wanted to sit down.
She did not want Thomas to see how moved she was, or
Luke either.
"Sparrows, were they?" she asked, turning her face
away slightly to hide her eyes.
"Passer domesticus," he said, evoking thus the days
when he and she had walked together, noting the particulars of the world. She had carried with her her bird book
and little jars in which to bring home beetles or whatever
special things they should find. In this manner she had
felt she was molding him into the kind of man she dreamed
for him to become.
In the parking lot, they saw the cellist set his instrument
carefully in the back seat of his car. They said how glad
they were that they had already checked out of the inn,
that they could start home at once. Thomas agreed that
Luke should drive, and so he and Elizabeth sat in the
back.
Thomas reached for Elizabeth's hand.
"I am glad we came," he said.
"Oh, wonderful," said Sarah. "Thank you so much.
Thank you both."
Thomas fell asleep holding Elizabeth's hand. When she
saw that he was deeply asleep, she gently withdrew her
hand. Darkness gathered quickly. As the light sank out of
the air, the sky became dark blue. Sarah and Luke murmured together in the front seat, laughing occasionally.
Then they fell silent. Sarah leaned her head on the headrest. Soon she too was asleep. Elizabeth looked at the red
taillights extending far ahead and the sweep of the lights
of the northbound cars approaching. By the dim light of
the dashboard she could see the line of Luke's cheek and
his brow when he turned his head to look in the side
mirror.
"Mom?" said Luke softly. "Why don't you go to sleep,
too? I'm going to drive very carefully."
"I wasn't worrying," said Elizabeth, quite truthfully,
but nonetheless she too then fell asleep.
Although they had agreed to stop for a bite to eat somewhere near the halfway point, Luke did not stop at all. He
drove peacefully, absorbed in the task of not driving too
fast, or too slowly, in deciding whom to pass and whom to
let pass, checking the fuel gauge and the mileage. No one
woke until he stopped for the toll at the bridge. Both his
parents woke then, and after a minute Sarah, too raised
her head.
"Where are we?" she said.
"Almost home," said Luke. "You were asleep almost
the whole way."
45
�One Day in the Life of the New York Times
and Pravda in the World:
Which is more informative?
Lev Navrozov
To inform is not the raison d'etre of Pravda, for Pravda is.
no source of news for Soviet decision-makers. The latter
have for their daily information a multi-tier system of
their own "closed" (secret) newspapers like White Tass,
just as they have their own "closed" statistics, or their
own "closed" book publishing. The goal of Pravda, as well
as all uopen" media intended for non~decision·makers, is
to assure the Soviet expendable majority (which is to do or
die, not to ask why) as well as all vassals, allies, and supporters all over the globe that they are on the right (winning) side of history.
In contrast, the Western media must be informative, for
the entire population of the Western democracies makes
decisions, if only by voting, in foreign policy, strategy, and
defense, and the New York Times is the main source of
In 1971 Lev Navrozov left Russia for the United States with all of his
son, and mother (his father had been killed in action in the
Second World War). Trained both in the exact sciences (at Moscow Energy Institute) and in languages, he graduated in 1953 from the Institute
of Foreign Languages, Referents' Faculty-a facility, organized on the
specific orders of Stalin, to produce "outstanding experts whose knowledge of Western languages and cultures would not be inferior to that of
well-educated natives of the relevant countries." In Russia he translated
Dostoevsky's The Poor People and Notes from the Deadhouse and Alex·
ander Herzen into English. In 1975 he published The Education of Lev
Navrozov (Harper and Row), a work he had written in English in Russia.
Among his most important articles are: "The Soviet Britannica" (Midstream,
February 1980); "Liberty and Radio Liberty" (Midstream, January 1981);
"What the CIA Knows about Russia" (Commentary, November 1978);
and a series of reviews of recent novels in Chronicles of Culture. In 1979
he founded The Center for the Survival of Western Democracies. This
article is taken from a forthcoming book, What the New York Times
Knows about the World.
family~wife,
46
daily international news for top American decision-makers, including the President of the United States.
In short, for Pravda to be informative is a gratuitous luxury, while in the case of the New York Times, information
is a matter of life and death for the United States and the
entire non·totalitarian world. But is ~<international news"
more informative in the New York Times than in Pravda?
The top New York Times editors seem to be confident
that it is ridiculous even to compare the two newspapers.
Pravda is free to be informative only within its propaganda assignment. The New York Times is free to be as in·
formative as it wishes. Does it not follow therefrom that
the New York Times is as informative as a newspaper can
possibly be?
Who can compare the international news of the New
York Times whose Sunday edition averaged 558 pages per
issue and weighed seven pounds way back in 1967, with
that of Pravda which still consists of six pages?
In a book of generous self-appreciation written by fortyeight Timesmen," one of the contributors, Max Frankel,
says that at some point in his sojourn in Moscow as a New
York Times correspondent, he could compose a Pravda text
in advance, without seeing it, With 80 percent accuracy":
11
11
WORLD SERIES ... TASS ... NEW YORK ... The peaceloving peoples' valiant struggle for progress throughout the
world is being obscured in the American monopoly press this
month by a great hullabaloo over what American sport finan·
ciers arrogantly call a world championship. Not only the
heroic sportsmen of the Great Socialist Camp but even
America's poorer allies are barred from the games ... 1
We will see if Mr. Frankel's composition is good even as
a parody. Alas, the fact that Pravda is a sensitive and
AU1UMN 1981
�powerful totalitarian tool in an evil cause does not mean
that it consists, as Mr. Frankel assures us, of moronic gobbledygook, in contrast to the New York Times, "by every
objective criterion the most thorough, most complete,
most responsible newspaper that time, money, talent, and
technology in the second half of the twentieth century
had been able to produce," to quote Harrison Salisbury's
Without Fear or Favor.
Unfortunately, utotalitarian" and "evil" does not mean
"stupid" or "funny." Nor should it be forgotten that freedom means in particular the freedom to ascend to the infinite heights of genius as well as the freedom to descend to
the incredible depths of ignorance, stupidity, or general
personality degradation, as is exemplified by Walter
Durante of the New York Times who is now recognized,
even by Harrison Salisbury, to have been perhaps the
worst non-Communist falsifier of information on Russia
in the twenties and thirties.
So let us turn to Pravda and the New York Times as they
are, not as the "top Timesmen" assume them to be. As a
sample for comparison I take the issues of both newspapers dated February 18, 1975, a date I picked at random as
I scanned the New York Times for Cambodia-related
reports and articles.
In its "News Summary and Index" the New York Times
lists five news items as the "major events of the day." The
first of them the newspaper summarizes as follows:
International
Secretary of State Kissinger and Andrei A. Gromyko, the Soviet Fareign Minister, completed their talks in Geneva still in
disagreement over the Middle East. After five hours of discus-
sion on the Middle East, Mr. Gromyko told newsmen that
"there were questions on which our positions did not exactly
coincide." Mr. Kissinger said he concurred with that.
The relevant Pravda article is entitled "Joint Communique on the Talks Between A. A. Gromyko and H. Kissinger" and is the text of the official document so named.
The Pravda text is worth reading for seven words near the
end of the following paragraph:
Special attention in the talks between A. A. Gromyko and
H. Kissinger has been paid to the Middle East. Both sides
continue to be concerned about the situation there which remains dangerous. They have confirmed their determination
to do their best for the solution of the key problems of a just
and durable peace in this area on the basis of Resolution 338
of the United Nations Security Council, with due account of
the legitimate interests of all peoples in this area, including
the Palestinian people . ..
The sole purpose of the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" lay for the Soviet side in these seven words, "the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people," which
were to be officially and publicly endorsed by the United
States Government.
The question is: why did the New York Times leave out
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
these seven words in all relevant texts of the issue under
review?
My explanation, based on my studies of the New York
Times in the last sixty years, is that the New York Times
has always tended to conceal unpleasantly dangerous
"sharp angles" of the outside world and show it far more
benign, safe, and peaceful than it really is.
Here in 1975 there still flourished detente, that is, the
unilateral fantasy that the Soviet war-regime is a peaceful,
cooperative if essentially Russian and hence outlandish
society. And suddenly this American recognition of the
"legitimate interests of the Palestinian people" (read: the
establishment of "Arafat's Cuba" at the heart of Israel).
So the Soviet rulers were pushing their global strategic interests just as before-and much more successfully owing
to the American fantasy called "detente"?
This could upset some Americans, especially Jews, and
in the ensuing panic, paranoia, hysteria, they might (God
forbid!) question the meaning of detente itself!
It is true that the tendency of the New York Times to
conceal "sharp angles" becomes strong if the (future)
tyrant and his (future) tyranny can be connected with
"Left-wing" words like ''revolutionary," "progressive,"
"independence," "national liberation," as opposed to
"Right-wing" words like "reactionary," ~<colonialism,"
"imperialism/' "fascism." However, if the tyrant and his
tyranny are dangerous enough, the New York Times
seems to be anxious to play down the danger, no matter
whether it can be connected with Left- or Right-wing
words.
The New York Times was ruthless to Lon Nol's government in Cambodia since whatever its "ineptitude" and
"corruption" were according to the New York Times, even
the latter never suggested that Cambodia under this government was dangerous to any country on earth.
But the more dangerous the regime is the more determined the New York Times seems to be to conceal the
danger, just as some individuals conceal unpleasant news
from everyone around them and even from themselves,
and speak especially well of those who are powerful and
nasty.
Certainly Hitler and his regime could be much more
readily connected with words like "reactionary" or "fascism" than the government of Lon Nol of Cambodia, "inept" and ''corrupt" as it was, according to the New York
Times. But what was the coverage of Hitler and his regime
by the New York Times?
This digression into the past will not be time wasted.
"If the international Jewish financiers (read: the United
States, Britain, and France) go to war with Germany," Hitler stated in the official translation of his speech of January 30, 1939, "the result will be the annihilation of the
Jewish race in Europe." That is, Hitler officially declared
that he regarded the Jews of Germany and any country he
would occupy as hostages whom he would kill off if the
Western democracies tried to interfere with his conquests.
47
�The intention was clear already in 1938 as Dr. Goebbels's Angriff commented on Kristallnacht, the Nazi's ostentatious pogrom of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on November 10:
For every suffering, every crime and every injury that this
criminal [the Jewry] inflicts on a German anywhere, every in~
dividual jew will be held responsible. All that Judah wants is
war with us, and it can have this war according to its own
moral law: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
"Excerpts" from Hitler's speech of January 30, 1939, occupy pages 6 and 7 of the New York Times. But on the
front page we find an article headlined "Hitler's Advice to
U s. "
I had to read the article twice to get rid of the notion
that the New York Times was being sardonic. No, it was
dead serious. It presented Hitler's speech as Hitler's advice
to the Americans. I reproduce the article in full, down to
the last full stop:
"Hitler's Advice to Us"
Berlin, jan. 30-That part of Chancellor Adolf Hitler's
speech dealing specifically with German-American relations
reads textually as follows:
"Our relations with the United States are suffering from a
campaign of defamation carried on to serve obvious political
and financial interests which, under the pretense that Germany threatens American independence, are endeavoring to
mobilize the hatred of an entire continent against the European States that are nationally governed.
"We all believe, however, that this does not reflect the will
of the millions of American citizens who, despite all that is
said to the contrary by the gigantic Jewish capitalistic propa·
ganda through press, radio and films, cannot fail to realize
that there is not one word of truth in all these assertions.
"Germany wishes to live in peace and on friendly terms
with all countries, including America. Germany refrains from
any intervention in American affairs and likewise decisively
repudiates any American intervention in German affairs.
"The question, for instance, whether Germany maintains
economic relations and does business with the countries of
South and Central America concerns nobody but them and
ourselves. Germany, anyway, is a great and sovereign country
and is not subject to the supervision of American politicians.
"Quite apart from that, however, I feel that all States today
have so many domestic problems to solve that it would be a
piece of good fortune for the nations if responsible statesmen
would confine their attention to their own problems."
There is a story about a class at an American school
writing an essay on poverty, and one girl stating: "That
family was very poor, and their butler was poor, too." The
girl differentiated between wealth and poverty, but the
scale of differentiation was very narrow: the wealthy employ rich butlers, while the poor poor ones. The New York
Times differentiated between good and eviL Stalin's regime was good, and Hitler's eviL But the scale of differentiation was very narrow. From the article entitled "Hitler's
48
Advice to Us" it was clear that Hitler referred to "gigantic
Jewish capitalistic propaganda" and so he was an evil
man. But no more evil than Henry Ford I and other such
reactionaries who used the word "Jewish" in this sense.
And despite this evilness, the German Chancellor's
speech is presented by the New York Times as advice,
good and sensible: he is obviously for peace (the conjecture that Hitler may be for world conquest seems in the
context as outrageous as the conjecture that some poor
family may not employ even a poor butler).
But what about Hitler's warning that the "Jewish race"
in Europe would be annihilated? Surely this was the only
news in Hitler's endless verbiage. And surely this on/y
news was the news of the century, certainly so in New
York where so many Jews lived. The New York Times
tucked away this news of the century into the middle of a
paragraph, lost in the full-page expanses of Hitler's speech
far from the front page. I wonder how many scholars
found it. I have never seen it quoted or recalled anywhere.
On page 6, the New York Times printed within a frame
inside Hitler's speech a summary of the speech as a whole.
The summary is attributed to the Associated Press and entitled "Hitler's Salient Points":
BERLIN, jan. 30.-Following are important quotations from
Chancellor Adolf Hitler's Reichstag speech tonight, as contained in the official translation.
There are four salient points. In point I, subtitled "Colonies," Hitler speaks reasonably and peacefully about the
European colonial powers, though he tactfully mentions
no country. Do usome nations" imagine that ' God has
permitted" them to "acquire the world by force and to defend this robbery with moralizing theories"? The Chancellor suggests a peaceful solution "on the ground of
equity and therefore, also, of common sense."
In point 2, subtitled "Support of Italy," Hitler says, no
less reasonably and peacefully, that Germany will side
with Italy if the latter is attacked.
In point 3, subtitled "Need for Exports," Hitler explains~not only reasonably and peacefully, but indeed in
the tone of a pathetic plea-that the "German nation
must live; that means export or die." "We have to export
in order to buy foodstuffs."
And in point 4, subtitled "Foreign 'Agitators'," Hitler is
again made to present a well-justified plaint: when British
agitators rail at Germany this is considered part of their sacred rights, but when Germany defends herself against
their attacks, this is regarded as an encroachment on these
sacred rights of theirs.
So the forthcoming annihilation of the "Jewish race" in
Europe is not even a salient point of Hitler's speech.
In other words, part of the American media, including
the New York Times, had been seeing the totalitarian regime of Germany as a projection of their own American
middle-class experience. According to this projection, international peace is something like peace in an American
middle-class environment. If you have failed to make a
1
AUTUMN 1981
�deal, do not blame the other side: you have been insufficiently understanding, attentive, accomodating. What on
earth are you trying to say? That Herr Hitler does not
want peace like all of us? Chancellor Adolf Hitler is human, isn't he? Of course, he is a Right-wing reactionary.
So what? What about Henry Ford I? Study the interests of
Germany, especially in trade, try to see its side of the case
(you must admit that its grievances are just), negotiate,
resolve conflicts, settle issues, work out problems, and
sign an agreement to your mutual advantage.
Of course, the highest triumph of this kind was the Munich Agreement of 1938. On October I, 1938, the New
York Times announced it in its banner headline as: "AntiWar Pact."
Prime Minister Wildly Cheered by Relieved LondonersKing Welcomes Him at Palace
By Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr.
London, Sept 30-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had
a hero's welcome on this rainy Autumn evening when he
came back to London, bringing the four-power agreement
and the Anglo-American declaration reaffirming "the desire
of our two peoples never to go to war with one another
again."
"For the second time in our history," he told a wildly cheering crowd in Downing Street, "a British Prime Minister has
returned from Germany bringing peace with honor."
Mr. Chamberlain was comparing himself proudly to Disraeli, who came home amid similar enthusiasm after the Ber-
lin Congress of 1878.
A cynical outsider might have said that part of Czechoslovakia has just been given away to Hitler in exchange for
a piece of paper. The purpose of every conqueror is not
fighting, but conquest The fact that Hitler was taking
over part of Czechoslovakia without a single shot fired
and could and would conquer the rest in the same way
meant that he had won a war without any resistance (the
greatest triumph of every conqueror), not that he desired
~<never
to go to war."
There had been nothing like it here since grateful crowds
surged around David Lloyd George during the victory celebrations of 1918. London usually hides its emotions, and all
this exuberance was more astonishing than a ticker tape parade on Broadway.
Women Almost Hysterical
It had more than a trace of the hysterical about it. Most of
Mr. Chamberlain's welcomers seemed to be women, who
probably had not read the terms of the Munich agreement
but who remembered the last war and all it meant to them.
They flocked from little suburban homes to watch the
Prime Minister pass in his car along the Great West Road
leading into London. They stood outside Buckingham Palace
in pouring rain with newspapers over their hats waiting for
him to arrive for a welcome by King George and Queen
Elizabeth.
The crowd set up such tremendous cheers that Mr. and
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
Mrs. Chamberlain had to appear with the King and Queen
on the
again.
flood~lit
palace balcony as if this were coronation time
And here is a New York Times report from Munich itself:
"Britain and Germany Agree" by Frederick T. Birchall. Munich, Germany, Sept. 30- The whole aspect of European relations has been changed by developments today following
the signature of the four-power agreement over Czechoslovakia in the early hours of this morning.
However, something far more important happened:
The Czechs have consented to the agreement, but far transcending their acceptance in importance to the world at large
are the results of an intimate conversation between Chancel-
lor Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in
Herr Hitler's private apartments just before the departure of
the British delegation.
What is the Czech consent to the agreement (that is,
Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia) compared in importance to the world at large with an intimate (yes, intimate)
conversation in Herr Hitler's private (yes, private) apartments?
These results were made known in the following joint communique issued after the conversation:
We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor and the
British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today
and are agreed in recognizing the question of Anglo-German relations as of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe.
We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of
our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be
the method adopted to deal with any other questions that
may concern our two countries, and we are determined to
continue our efforts to remove probable sources of difference and thus contribute to assure the peace of Europe.
Never has a simpler document been issued in history with
consequences more far-reaching or more pregnant with hope.
If the two men who issued it stick to their resolves the peace
of Europe seems assured for a generation at least.
It is to Czechoslovakia that the New York Times devoted about one-tenth of its editorial space:
Czechoslovakia as it stood before the end of last week was
itself the product of a series of major surgical operations made
in 1919 by the framers of the Treaty of Versaille's. As the
world knows, the results of those surgical operations were far
from uniformly happy. The city of Vienna, which had been
the financial heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became
in many ways a shadow of its former self. The German industries in Bohemia, in becoming part of the new Czechoslovak
State, were torn from most of their previous market in the old
Austria-Hungary. It is partly for this reason that they have suf~
49
�fered so severely that many factories in that district have been
shut down and abandoned, often throwing whole communities into unemployment.
made unmistakably clear to the dictators, who have hitherto
relied upon the threat of force for the achievement of their
ends, that there is a limit beyond which the democracies of
the world will not go. Whatever Hitler may have thought be·
So what was happening to Czechoslovakia was good?
No: there is a serious but.
But if the new territorial amputating and grafting process that
is now going on partly corrects some maladjustments, it is
more likely to create new and more serious ones.
In other words, the New York Times sees Hitler's con·
quest of Czechoslovakia as a split or merger of a corpora·
tion, a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages.
The message of the editorial is to demonstrate that as
far as the still remaining part of Czechoslovakia is con·
cerned, the new split-and-merger gives it on balance more
disadvantages than advantages. True, it might have been
different:
In a world dominated by pacific sentiments and free trade,
changes in political frontiers might have only a minor economic significance. Trade relations would continue largely in
their accustomed channels, subject to those adjustments
made necessary only by changes in currency, in legal codes,
contract forms and courts, and in the incidence of taxes.
Alas, trade relations are not to continue in their accus·
tamed channels:
But the world today is dominated more than it has been for
generations by nationalism and the doctrines of protection
and self-containment. That is why the amputation of sections
of Czechoslovakia is likely to have so serious an economic effect on the part that remains.
On the editorial page the New York Times published
"Opinions on the Munich Agreement": five letters in all.
The first letter says:
The gains from the Munich settlement for the forces of law
and order are substantial and far outweigh the sacrifices.
The greatest gain of all is that the democracies set out to
enforce peace and succeeded. British and French arms
backed by American moral support brought home to Hitler
that there is a law which he could not defy with impunity-the law of nations, which though trampled underfoot
in China, still has vitality in EurOpe.
The second letter seems to continue the first:
Despite the scramble for settlement on the part of the democracies and their leaders allowing their powerful countries
to be humbled, I think that the Four-Power Pact preserving
the peace of Europe is the greatest tribute to the democratic
form of government.
The third letter assures the good New Yorkers that the
Munich surrender has
50
fore, he knows now that Britain and France are not afraid to
fight and that there are issues for which, if need be, they will
fight.
The fourth letter states that the relevant countries
have been spared untold agonies of slaughter and have saved
billions of dollars by the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia. It is right
that millions in these countries now pray and offer up thanks
for peace ...
And the fifth and last letter deserves to be quoted in
full:
To the Editor of the New York Times:
While it was good politics in Munich for Mr. Chamberlain
and Mr. Daladier not to underscore the important fact that
Hitler retreated shamelessly from the position he took up before the four-power meeting, it is deplorable that the newspapers and the public, instead of emphasizing this outstanding
defeat of Hitler's, concentrate on bewailing what Czechoslovakia lost.
If one thing has been proved beyond doubt at the Munich
conference it was Hitler's realization that threat of force for
power politics does not work anymore, and that the council
table has to replace his former methods.
Obviously, if a threat of force is of no use to Germany's future then Hitler is played out, as there are Germans with
greater competence available to settle its affairs by discussion.
Therefore, for the good of Germany and the rest of the world,
it is Hitler's defeat and not Czechoslovakia's loss that should
be emphasized and advertised.
Alexander Gross
New York York, Oct. 1, 1938
And here four months after this triumph, Chancellor
Adolf Hitler declared like an unreal movie gangster that
the Jews of Europe were his hostages, whom he would kill
off if the United States and other countries came to the
rescue of the rest of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler meant
to occupy in six weeks, or Poland, which he was to invade
late in the year.
Now we can return to February 18, 1975-to these
seven words about the legitimate interests of the Palestin·
ian people which Henry Kissinger duly signed in 1975 on
behalf of the United States government, but the New
York Times deleted.
My Britannica (1970) calls pre-1948 Israel Palestine. The
Arabs who live on the territory or have fled (though the
government of Israel invited them to return, according to
my Britannica) were first called the Palestinian Arabs, to
distinguish them from the Iraqi Arabs, for example. Later
the word "Arabs" was dropped (for brevity?) and they be·
came the Palestinians or the Palestinian people. Now,
surely Palestine must belong to the Palestinians?
AUTUMN 1981
�But there is something called Israel in the area? In reply
to this supposition, the Palestine Liberation Organization
drew in 1968 its "Palestinian National Charter":
The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of
the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage
of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and
inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of
the United Nations, particularly the right of self-determination.2
Still, what is Israel? "Israel is the instrument of the
Zionist movement," answers the Charter. But what is,
then, the Zionist movement?
Zionism is a political movement organically associated with
international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist
and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods.
On October 28, 1974, twenty Arab heads of government meeting at Rabat named the PLO with Arafat as its
leader "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." The Palestinian Arabs have not elected any
sole legitimate representative, you will say. But who
elected Stalin, the co-founder of the United Nations, to be
the sole legitimate representative there of more than 100
expansion in the Middle East, that the Soviet rulers had
repeatedly tried to crack by means of wars by proxy, and
only an unpredictable counter-attack of Israeli armor had
saved Israel in 1973.
How does one know that Arafat's ~~sovereign state" may
be like Castro's Cuba? But how did one know that Castro's Cuba would be a Castro's Cuba? The New York
Times argued that it would not be: Arafat's "sovereign
state" will be small. But Castro's Cuba was even smaller
compared with both Americas, Africa, and Asia, and yet
look at what it has been doing. There is no harm for the
Soviet rulers to try out Arafat: this is only one move by
one piece on the global chessboard. If the move does not
destroy Israel, some other moves will. If Israel destroys
Arafat, not vice versa, there is no end of spare Arafats in
this world. And if the war spreads to the entire Middle
East, its oil fields will become the first casualty, which will
be of immense benefit to Soviet global strategy, and the
Soviet invasion of the Middle East will be far easier too.
Later, the Soviet rulers will restore oil production in their
Middle East-possibly with Western aid.
On November 22, 1974, the United Nations Resolution
3236 "legitimized the interests of the Palestinian people,"
that is, Arafat's armed group. The Soviet rulers (the "Soviet people"?) voted for it with eighty-eight other "nations" or "peoples," including the Byelorussians or the
Czechs who also figure as (sovereign) "nations" or "peo-
cow a "permanent representation" (a Russian term mean-
ples" because their sole legitimate representative Stalin
wanted it that way. Most democracies, including Britain,
abstained, while a few, including the United States, voted
against. In his speech of explanation of the negative vote,
the United States delegate said that the United States favored the Security Council Resolution 338 of 1973. The
resolution does not mention any Palestinian people, let
alone their interests: it called upon the countries which attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur war and Israel which
saved herself by accident to cease fire in twelve hours and
begin to negotiate.
Pravda's text of the joint document to which Henry Kissinger agreed on behalf of the United States Government
refers to "Resolution 338 ... with due account of the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people." The word
"legitimate" leaves no doubt as to the meaning: "self-determination and sovereign state of the Palestinian
people" in Palestine, as the United Nations resolved. By
having signed the "Joint Communique" the United States
recast its vote in the United Nations, as it were, which
constituted the only news the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" contained and the New York Times extirpated.
This example does not mean that Pravda is truthful by
definition, while the New York Times is mendacious by
nature (as Pravda would assert). The information on the
ing both embassy and consulate). The "legitimate" (in
American side's agreement to "Palestinian sovereignty"
Russian synonymous with "legal" or "law-bound") inter-
that appeared in Pravda showed the Soviet readers that at
the height of so-called detente early in 1975, the Soviet re·
gime was expanding as victoriously as before: the establishment of an "Arab Cuba" at the heart of Israel could
nations of Russia? Arafat is a terrorist? American periodi-
cals I have happened to read at this writing, from the frivolous Time magazine to the sedate Foreign Affairs, explain
that Prime Minister Begin of Israel was once a terrorist
too. True, the PLO killed from June 1967 to September
1979 350 Arabs who disagreed with the PLO, including
Sheik Hashem Khozander, the Imam of Gazda. 3 On the
other hand, I have never heard that Begin ever touched
even the most Arab hair on the most anti-Israeli head in
the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Israel. But the fact
that Lenin killed those who disagreed with him as well,
and George Washington did not, is evidently an irrelevant
minor difference.
In unison with what was or has since become the pre·
vailing view of the American media, not to mention the
media of West-European countries, on July 30, 1974, a
"top-level Palestinian delegation," headed by Arafat was
officially received by Boris Ponomaryov, "head of the International Section of the Central Committee of the Com·
munist Party of the Soviet Union," and in August it was
announced by Pravda that the PLO was to open in Mas·
ests of the "Palestinian people" had thus come to mean
the creation of an "Arab Cuba" to be established at the
heart of Israel, this little hard nut of resistance to Soviet
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
51
�well mean the destruction of Israel, while the refusal of Israel to have an "Arab Cuba" at its heart would lead to the
"international isolation" of Israel, which would also be
helpful in the achievement of the same goaL
In general, the veracity of Pravda has been improving in
proportion to the growth of the Soviet rulers' global
might When Pravda said on March 6, 1919: "The Soviets
have won throughout the world," and added on the next
day: "The comrades present in this hall" (of the 1st Congress of the International) "will see the establishment of
the World Federative Soviet Republic," that was wildly
untrue. Such a statement today would not be so wildly untrue. Pravda does not now need to make such explicit, extravagant, or premature statements to keep the Soviet
population as well as Soviet allies, vassals, and supporters,
assured as to the "imminent victory of our cause all over
the world." Many Soviet inhabitants, whether they identify themselves with the regime or oppose it, now believe
in the "ultimate victory" of the Soviet regime without any
assurance on the part of Pravda. Because the Soviet regime has matched and surpassed American strategic
power only in the 1970s, it is obvious to them that the Soviet global game of chess has merely begun, and as in
every game of chess, the moves are tryouts, advances, re~
treats, detours, exchanges. Many Soviet inhabitants understand, for example, that the Soviet rulers keep Eastern
Europe on a loose leash just to demonstrate to their
potential vassals in France, Italy, or elsewhere that the latter will enjoy some latitude when they come to power in
their countries-if they behave, of course. Since the Soviet rulers are after the whole globe, they play with their
Eastern European pieces.
was this kind of truth-a truth in keeping with Pravda's
propaganda goaL
Inversely, the New York Times censored out the news
which could prompt some readers to question the view of
the Times that the foreign policy or strategy called detente was working to the advantage of all concerned and,
above all, the United States.
But surely this is a generally expected behavior of an individual or a social group in a democracy. The prosecutor
in a court of justice censors out the defendant's innocence, while the counsel for defense the defendant's guilt
Why should not the New York Times censor out what contradicts its view? The trouble is that the New York Times
has no adequate opposition source or adequate competitor as regards international daily news for American decision-makers. It is the prosecutor (or the counsel for
defense) without the counsel for defense (or, respectively,
the prosecutor). The evidence in the twenty years or so,
beginning with Castro's seizure of Cuba, indicates that
what the New York Times censors out usually remains
censored out in the process of decision-making in American foreign policy, strategy, and defense.
The rest of the New York Times article is sheer verbiage. In contrast to Pravda, it is not a documentary text,
but its own report, which the Times would define as "incisive news analysis" and Soviet decision-makers as Philis-
tine prattle. Whatever it is, it would be misleading in its
own way even if the New York Times had not extirpated
the only grain of news the official text contained.
In this first high-level Soviet-American meeting since Vladi-
What makes Soviet world' conquest so plausible to
vostok and the chill caused by the Soviet abrogation of the
1972 trade agreement, the atmosphere was described as
many Soviet inhabitants is not "Soviet gains" in Europe,
somewhat more formal and slightly more abrasive than in pre-
Africa, the Caribbean, or the Middle East What impresses them is the very fact that the democracies have
been allowing and even helping the Soviet regime to grow
from a militarily backward parochial country in the 1930s
to the global military mammoth of today. Just think what
will happen tomorrow! In 195 3 the Soviet regime still produced 38 million tons of steel a year as against the lO 1 million tons of the United States. In 1978 the Soviet regime
produced 151 million tons of steel, used mainly for military purposes, while the United States produced 124 million, put mainly to civilian uses. What will stop the Soviet
global military mammoth from continuing to outgrow the
democracies? If, having invested in defense since 1947
several trillion dollars, the United States does not yet
know how to defend the Middle East, for example, these
Soviet inhabitants conjecture that the United States will
know how to do it less and less.
In other words, today Pravda can often afford the truth
and thus gain credibility without sowing any doubt as to
vious sessions, but on the whole "joviaL''
The article is a projection of American middle-class life
all over again thirty-six years later-only this time not
onto the totalitarian regime of Germany but of Russia.
The incidental difference is that while the rulers of Germany were, in the columns of the New York Times,
American Right-wing corporation presidents, the rulers of
Russia are American progressive corporation presidents,
the ''imminent victory of our cause all over the world."
pleasant, warm, and forward-looking.
It will be recalled that the "Soviet abrogation of the
1972 trade agreement" the article mentions occurred as a
result of the Jackson-Vanik amendment in Congress
which tried to "attach political strings to Soviet-American
trade and interfere in Soviet domestic affairs," as Pravda
put it. Many top American decision-makers, including
President Ford (whom Pravda quotes on the subject in the
issue under review), agreed that the "Soviet Union" had
a good reason for being offended. And yet the "atmosphere" of the Soviet-American talks was on the whole
The news that the United States government agreed as of
February 18, 1975, to "Palestinian sovereignty," and thus
reneged on its United Nations vote of four months earlier,
dents, the Soviet rulers bear no grudge: Russia, Inc. is future-oriented, optimistic, positive-it looks forward to
52
"jovial." Like up·and·coming American corporation presi·
AUTUMN 1981
�agreements on world peace, international cooperation,
and everything else-in particular in the Middle East, and
this is why the Soviet side is so eager to convene the Geneva conference on the Middle East:
On the Middle East, the Russians have pressed for an early
reconvening of the Geneva conference so that they can play a
more active role. They are co-chairmen with the Americans.
The fact that the Soviet rulers (the "Russians") prepared two wars by proxy to destroy Israel and have been
penetrating the Moslem countries by all expedient means
short of the overall invasion of the entire Moslem world,
does not exist because the Soviet war-civilization and its
rulers do not exist: there is instead Russia, Inc. with its
presidents and lawyers, and naturally, they want to play a
more active role in the establishment of peace in the Middle East-in order to trade with the Middle East, travel
there and enjoy peace in general. What other earthly purposes can a human have?
The United States would prefer to see the Geneva conference reconvened while there was momentum for further
political progress and not as a last-ditch effort to prevent a
Middle East war.
Of course, Russia, Inc. is eager to prevent a Middle East
war. Still greater is its desire to add to the "momentum for
further political progress."
During the discussions, Mr. Gromyko raised the possibility
of an accord to limit arms to the Middle East. But this was in
the context of what would be in the final settlement, not as a
measure to be adopted now.
Actually, "Mr. Gromyko," that is, the Soviet rulers,
meant that the United States would "limit arms to the
Middle East" while the Soviet regime would send them to
their allies, guerrillas, and subversives in the Middle East
so secretly that no intelligence agency of the West would
know (not that it takes any special top secrecy to achieve
this). Anyway, we learn that Mr. Kissinger "dined tonight
at Admiralty House with [British] Prime Minister Harold
Wilson and Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, who just
returned from Moscow."
They compared notes on Soviet relations. The British leaders were the first Westerners to see Mr. Brezhnev since he be·
came ill in December.
Mr. Kissinger reportedly learned from Mr. Gromyko that
Mr. Brezhnev had been suffering from influenza and was
now in "fine health" although he would, by doctors' orders,
perhaps take two more weeks of rest.
A jovial meeting cif corporation presidents and lawyers:
Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Gromyko represent different firms,
of course, but they always swap tidbits of inside info.
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
Joking with Mr. Gromyko, Mr. Kissinger said he could not
compete with "the oratorical skill" of his colleague . ..
Obviously, no meeting of corporation lawyers is complete without their joking with one another, and since the
entire description is phoney, jokes may be contrived too.
The United States discerned Soviet flexibility on extending
the agreed 150-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful
applications.
Yes, flexibility is what also distinguishes Russia, Inc. in
negotiations. In fact, the third part of the New York Times
article is subtitled "A Russian Concession." According to
the Times, it is the Soviet side, not the American one,
which made a concession during these talks. What concession is that?
Having read the two relevant paragraphs of the article,
we learn that the Soviet side agreed that the "Geneva
conference . .. should resume its work at an early date/'
not "as soon as possible," the expression on which the Soviet side had allegedly insisted before. (Is "as soon as possible" necessarily earlier than "at an early date"?) In the
Pravda text of the communique in Russian (which is as
valid as the English text of the document) the expression
is "at the nearest time." So the Russian concession" that
the New York Times espied was lost anyway in the equally
valid Russian text.
While the Soviet side is flexible and makes concessions-as a future-oriented, optimistic, positive corporation should-this is more than can be said about the
American side:
11
Later, on the way to London aboard Mr. Kissinger's plane,
newsmen were told that Mr. Gromyko had urged the immediate reconvening of the Geneva conference on the Middle
East and had accused the United States of bad faith in excluding the Soviet Union from the Middle East diplomacy.
There is no mention, of course, that Gromyko merely
repeated the standard charge Soviet propaganda has been
making: the Soviet side is so eager to negotiate, to be flexible, to make concessions, but the egotistic American side
does not give the Soviet side half a chance in the Middle
East.
To be sure, corporation lawyers rarely agree as soon as
they meet. On the other hand, all issues can be finally resolved. After all, every issue between two corporations
can be reduced to money: who pays whom how much.
And each side will finally decide that it is worth its while
to pay the required sum, settle the issue, and recoup elsewhere the money lost.
The two sides still disagreed on some aspects of the European security conference, but the Americans believe the issues can be resolved.
All that is necessary is good will and legal expertise:
53
�After their talks in the Hotel Intercontinental in Geneva,
Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Kissinger came down to the lobby to
speak with newsmen. Mr. Gromyko said that "on many of the
questions we touched, our positions were close or coincide.''
For Stalin's man, Gromyko, who survived Stalin and
Beria and Malenkov and Khrushchev, to impersonate for
Western consumption a jovial HMr. Gromyko, Russia,
Inc." is about as difficult as for Al Capone or the Godfather to trick school children.
The last sentence of the article adds to the picture of
Hdynamism and genius" of Mr. Kissinger, America, Inc.:
The Secretary will be in Zurich for luncheon with the Shah
of Iran, who is vacationing in Switzerland.
While negotiating on the Middle East (and getting a
concession from the Soviet side), on the European security conference, and even on the extension of the
!50-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful applications, he is taking care at the same time of AmericanIranian relations right on the spot, in Switzerland. No
wonder the relations between the United States and Iran
are so good at this writing, what with the American hostages and the rest.
Pravda did not print a word of this verbiage. Why
should Pravda mislead its readers in this way? On the contrary, Pravda readers must know that the enemy made a
concession on "the Palestinian question" because Soviet
might cows the enemy, and this is what detente is about:
Western concessions, servility, self-disarmament, retreat,
surrender, hoping to placate the globally winning Soviet
regime. As for that Philistine prattle, let the Western Philistines consume it-the more the better.
What does Pravda regard as the most important international news of the day? Britain's signing of several extensive Soviet-British documents, each of which Pravda
printed in full. Those who were interested (and I prefer to
read documents rather than their interpretation by the
New York Times) could glean from them some grains of
news.
From "The Soviet-British Protocol on Consultations"
we learn that the Soviet war mammoth and the British
midget are "determined to contribute to the deepening of
the process of relaxation of international tension [the official Soviet Russian-language definition of the word 'detente'] and to render it [the process] irreversible."
The last word is the key. The natural resources of Britain are small compared with those of the United States,
not to mention Russia (the territory of Britain accounts
for l percent of that of Russia proper, excluding Soviet
vassals). When Henry Kissinger launched his detente, the
United States preserved at least the economic ability to
reverse its policy of transfer of American science and
technology to the Soviet military if the Soviet regime
openly invaded Afganistan, for example (at that time a
wild conjecture, of course). But not Britain. "The Soviet-
54
British Protocol" was aimed at making the "process of detente" irreversible for Britain. The definition of this goal
comes up again in "The Joint Soviet-British Statement"
(just as do the "legitimate interests of the Arab people of
Palestine," though Britain had abstained from the United
Nations vote four months earlier). "Irreversible detente":
the impoverished Britain would henceforth be like a hungry little fish on a big strong hook inside the bait of Soviet
imports and exports. The Soviet turn-off of British-Soviet
trade if Britain misbehaved would lead to such deprivations and dislocations that the Government would receive
a vote of non-confidence, not to mention the British trade
unions' wrath. To bite the bait of Soviet trade, Britain offered the Soviet rulers $2.4 billion in trade credits extended over five years: the little hungry fish paid for at
least part of its bait.
In the Soviet strategists' view, Britain is the most resistant country in Europe: it is the only European country
that takes defense at least as seriously (if this may be
called serious) as the United States: British and American
military spending account for almost the same percentage
of their respective GNP's, though the living standards in
Britain are lower than in the United States.
At this writing, I was interested to see how this most resistant country of Europe had reacted to the Soviet open
invasion of Afghanistan. The latest Facts on File carries an
item of three paragraphs entitled "United Kingdom Retaliates against Soviets.''4 The first paragraph can send a chill
down the Soviet decision-makers' spine. Is the little fish
off its big hook?
Great Britain Jan. 26 announced a series of retaliatory measures against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan.
The second paragraph will move to laughter even the
most humorless Soviet bureaucrat:
Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington told Parliament that
the government had canceled scheduled visits to London by a
Soviet minister and deputy minister, a performance by the
Soviet Army Chorus, and such ceremonial military contacts
as a planned exchange of naval ships.
The third paragraph announces that the five-year-credit
agreement expires in February (that is right: five years
have passed since February 18, 1975, the date of the New
York Times and Pravda we sampled). Will Britain stop at
least her financing of her transfer of science and technology to the Soviet global war-machine? Oh, no. It will continue to do so Hon a case-by-case basis."
I picked up the British newspapers and learned that two
days later, on January 28, Mrs. Thatcher said in Parliament with awesome gravity:
We have announced [see above] the measures that we shall
be taking with regard to the Soviet Union . ..
AUTUMN 1981
�In addition Mrs. Thatcher said she wanted Britain to
boycott the Olympics (an awesome retaliation in itself).
Alas, the spirit (of Mrs. Thatcher) is willing, but the flesh
(of the hungry little fish) is weak, and many British sportsmen will not inflict on the Soviet regime even the griev·
ous damage of staying home.
One section of "The Joint Soviet-British Statement" as
published by Pravda of February 18, 1975, is subtitled "Bilateral Relations." Here we learn about
the cooperation between British firms and Soviet organizations and enterprises in the field of reclamation of natural resources, including oil, aircraft building . ...
Let us pause here. So British and Soviet aircraft builders will cooperate bilaterally? The Soviet regime has been
producing at least twice as many helicopters and twice as
many combat planes as the United States, even according
to what the United States Department of Defense can observe or detect. Is Britain still dissatisfied? Perhaps Britain
wants to help the Soviet regime to realize its target of pro·
ducing one long-range bomber a day? Are there too few
Soviet transportation planes to carry troops and/or material to any point of the globe?
The documents Pravda published demonstrate how
British science and technology are put at the disposal of
Soviet military growth. Britain had expelled !05 Soviet
agents. But even 10,005 Soviet agents in Britain would
hardly be able to pass so much military-industrial information to the Soviet military. Yet, as of 1975 this all-out mass
espionage was to be called henceforth bilateral cooperation and include all possible forms of transfer of British
.;cience and technology.
Once upon a time Britain acquired colonies in order to
import raw materials from them in exchange for her scientifically or technologically sophisticated merchandise and
thus support her huge population on a small island. On
February 18, 1975, in order to achieve the same economic
goal, Britain made a major step toward becoming a Soviet
colony in economic reverse: that is, a colony which would
supply the Metropolis with her science and engineering in
exchange for raw materials and thus support her huge
population on a small island. In other words, just as Gambia was once a "raw-materials appendage of Britain" (as
Soviet propaganda puts it), so Britain began to move towards becoming a "science and technology appendage" of
the Soviet global military machine, and this is the news
Pravda of February 18, 1975, reported by publishing the
relevant documents.
The New York Times, which had printed the voluminous verbiage of the "Pentagon Papers," did not find an
inch of space for these documents. Instead, the New York
Times printed again a report of its own, from Moscow
"special to the New York Times." As nearly all "reports
from Moscow," the text could well have been written on
the New York premises of the New York Times. It is based
on the same American middle-class projection: the news is
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
that America, Inc. has been outpaced by Britain, Inc.
which landed a huge hunk of trade with Russia, Inc.:
The announcement of the British credits tended to bolster
Moscow's contention that it could find trading partners elsewhere in the West. In renouncing the 1972 trade agreement
with the United States last month, the Russians expressed
particular annoyance over the low credit ceiling, which is in
addition to about $600-million of loans already outstanding.
The United States does not want to sell on credit what
the Soviet rulers want? Then Britain will:
The credits, which Mr. Wilson said would be less than
£!-billion ($2.4-billion) are part of a broader program for
economic cooperation that was signed today. Mr. Wilson
characterized it as possibly "the biggest breakthrough in Anglo-Soviet trade that I have known."
Trade, cooperation, good relations:
The warm tone on which the British visit ended showed
that relations between the two countries had emerged from
the chill into which they were thrust after London expelled
105 Soviet diplomats on espionage charges in 1971. The
Kremlin accepted an invitation for Mr. Brezhnev, Mr. Kosygin, and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to visit Britain.
But why does the Soviet global military mammoth keep
spies in little Britain by the hundred (or by the thousand)?
Because it fears Britain's invasion of Russia? Or because,
on the contrary, Britain is for the Soviet rulers just another Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan, or indeed, Ukraine?
In terms of the middle-class projection, the only New York
Times answer is that Russia, Inc. kept those 105 spies in
Britain, Inc. in order to improve trade relations between
the two corporations.
Before Henry Kissinger's detente there was a practically
universal embargo on strategic trade with the Soviet re·
gime. After the embargo was repealed, each ally of the
United States began to reason that if it refrained from a
trade deal accelerating Soviet military growth, another
country would seize the opportunity. Henry Kissinger destroyed-possibly forever-whatever economic unity existed among the allies of the United States as against the
Soviet regime. If Hl'nry Kissinger were in charge of for·
eign policy in Russia, for that alone he would have been
put on trial and shot. But since he is on the other side, he
shines at this writing, as ever, and the Soviet rulers cer·
tainly owe him a monument for the destruction of a world
economic alliance against their war~regime.
Anyway, the state of world trade after the undoing of
the embargo on trade with the Soviet regime fits well the
misperception of the New York Times: the world as just so
many corporations vying with each other to sell Russia,
Inc. whatever it wants and on terms it chooses:
Mr. Wilson defended the decision to offer the low-interest
credits at a time when Britain has been hit by recession, while
55
�the Soviet Union has been increasing its foreign currency
holdings with greater oil profits. Moscow has already concluded deals for cash with other Western countries, notably
West Germany.
Or look at France, Inc. Only America, Inc. falls behind,
punishing itself:
The British credit falls short of the $2.5-billion extended by
France in a trade agreement signed last December. However,
it is seven times more than the $300-million limit set by the
United States Congress on Export-Import Bank loans to the
Soviet Union in a four-year period.
Let us now proceed to the third of the five "major [in·
ternational] events of the day" according to the New York
Times.
"World crude-oil prices have begun to sag noticeably
under the impact of reduced consumption by the indus·
trialized nations." No figure for this "noticeable sag." Is it
l, 2, 3 percent? Of what importance was this "sag" if the
OPEC countries had been raising the prices 100, 200, 300
percent? The New York Times ascribes this "sag" to "re·
duced consumption" because this tends to support the
view that the newspaper has been advocating throughout
the 1970s. In his lengthy article (February I, 1980) to
which the New York Times referred editorially with approval and which was put on the Congressional Record
twice in the same month, George Kennan says: "If the
Persian Gulf is really vital to our security, it is surely we
who by our unrestrained greed for oil have made it so."
One wonders whether it is America's greed for the fifteen raw materials without which the American economy
cannot function that has made the rest of the outside
world so vital to American security. Must the United
States overcome its greed for these fifteen critical raw materials and let the rest of the world go Soviet?
The "greatest real threats to our security in the area remain what they have been all along," Mr. Kennan says after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Predictably, the
Soviet invasion is not one of these threats. They are: "our
self-created dependence on Arab oil and our involvement
in a wholly unstable Israeli-Arab relationship." Not the Soviet involvement in this relationship, to be sure.
Let us assume that the United States has overcome its
greed for oil, and so has no need of the Middle East,
which duly becomes Soviet. As a result, the Soviet regime
will have additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually from oil alone, which means as many dollars for Soviet
global military power. Where will the United States take
additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually to invest in defense in order to counter the Soviet investment?
In other words, on February 18, 1975, the New York
Times front-paged an accidental annual or monthly crudeoil price fluctuation to support its view (which is as frivolous as it is lethal) and give it thereby the front-page
weight of a "major event of the day." Naturally, Pravda (or
1
56
1
any other newspaper in the world) did not mention it because it was not an event, whether major or minor.
The fourth "major [international] event of the day" according to the New York Times is another failure of the
Cambodian Government in its war against the "communist insurgents." Here the view of the New York Times
and that of Pravda (that is, Pravda's owners, of course) coincide in the sense that both newspapers assure their
readers that the Cambodian Government is doomed and
the sooner it will fall the better.
The reports on Cambodia in both newspapers are
wrapped in unmitigated gloom (for the Cambodian Government) except one paragraph describing the American
airlift. In Pravda this paragraph is as follows:
Washington, 17. (TASS). The United States has started an
airlift to supply the Phnom Penh regime with additional military material and ammunition. According to the Washington
Post, the first of those transportation planes, DC-8s, which
belonged to American Airlines and which the Pentagon has
chartered, has arrived in the capital of Cambodia.
The corresponding paragraph of the New York Times is:
With the Mekong blockaded, the Americans have expanded their supply airlift from Thailand. The airlift,
technically being handled by civilian contractors but actually
run from beginning to end by the American military, is mostly
devoted to ammunition so food and fuel are increasingly
scarce.
Food and fuel increasingly scarce? But the next para·
graph says that "rice and fuel stocks, if stretched carefully,
can last well over a month and even two months or more."
Does the New Yark Times expect the airlift to carry food
and fuel to the city three, four, or more months in advance? Does New Yark have food and fuel stocks for
three, four, or more months?
The differences between this paragraph of Pravda and
that of the New York Times can be outlined as follows:
Pravda
The New York Times
With Cambodia's defeat made
to seem imminent, Pravda emphasizes American involvement to show that even the
United States is so weak that
it can no longer defend any
country. Whether the planes
belong to American Airlines or
the Pentagon is immaterial.
Both are ultimately at one and
against us.
At the same time, Pravda
does not want to assure its
readers in advance that the
American airlift is ineffective
The New York Times emphasizes the wily wickedness of
the American military: they
have hired civilian contractors
for the airlift, a loophole in the
struggle led by the New York
Times against the American
aid to Cambodia.
The New York Times wants
to assure its readers that anything would be futile: that the
airlift is "mostly devoted to
ammunition," instead of carryAUTUMN 1981
�or futile: no one can predict its
outcome, and Pravda does not
want to commit itself and later
look foolish. Our side is winning, but temporary setbacks
are always possible.
ing also food and fuel to replenish the city's stocks three,
four, or more months in advance. The Cambodian Government is bound to lose, the
American aid must be stopped.
The fifth and last "major [international] event of the
day" according to the New York Times is the theft of pictures at the Municipal Museum in Milan. I am sure that
for a large part of the Western media (such as the other
two major newspapers of New Yark) this was the most important international news of the day or the only such
news worth reporting. Pravda ignored it.
Pravda was called by a Western newspaper the most
boring newspaper in the world. It is true in the sense that
Pravda feels no more obliged to be entertaining than does
the American Congressional Record or a CIA report. But,
having treated the theft as a major international event of
the day, does not the New York Times try to relieve its
boredom not by interesting information, which is so hard
to obtain, but in the same easy way the New York Post
does? Does not the New York Times mix the boredom of
Pravda (minus some of Pravda's grains of information) and
the entertainment of the New York Post?
So much for what the New York Times regards as the
five major international events of the day. Let us now take
a couple of international news items of the New York
Times which are not major events, according to the New
York Times.
On page 8 we find that in the "new winter-spring campaign" in South Vietnam the Vietcong forces, "with large
numbers of fresh North Vietnamese regulars," had "scored
their biggest gains in the Mekong area since the 60s."
This is no major international event. True, some read-
ers of the New York Times could still remember that on
January 27, 1973, the Paris peace agreement on Vietnam
had been signed after years of negotiations. So the Soviet
rulers, who were behind both the war in Vietnam and the
peace agreement in Paris, had treated the United States
But what about vast Soviet help (which is not even
mentioned)? If such exists, it is evidently part of the natural balance of forces. The Soviet rulers are part of the
nature in any country: it is the United States which is extraneous, foreign, aggressive everywhere. A truly minor
event this war is, a reassertion of the natural balance of
forces, a play of nature, as one might say. Who can compare this event to the theft of pictures in Milan or the
noticeable sag of crude-oil prices allegedly as the result of
reduced consumption!
As for Pravda's coverage of this war, here Pravda proves
that it is a totalitarian newspaper. The New York Times
can blot out or distort an event reported by the rest of the
media. But it cannot ignore it forever if the rest of the media persists. Now, according to Pravda, the war does not
exist. Of course, Pravda readers know about it from foreign radios. But Pravda does not risk the report: what if an
American Senator's aide finds such a report in Pravda?
Here you are (he will say): Pravda admits that North Vietnam's perfidious all-out invasion is fully on.
Pravda ran a three-paragraph item entitled "Repulsing
the Violators of the [Paris Peace] Agreement" only about
a month later, on March 14, 1975, after the Soviet rulers
had understood beyond all doubt (if only from the New
York Times' reports and editorials) that the top American
decision-makers regarded the Soviet perfidious all-out attack by proxy on an American ally as something having
nothing to do either with the United States or the Soviet
rulers.
Recently [days, weeks, months ago?] the Saigon administration has extended provocations aimed to undermine the Paris
agreement on Vietnam.
Fortunately, in South Vietnam there already exists the
legitimate government of South Vietnam: the Provisional
Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (the PRG of RSV). The PRG of RSV will not allow
the "Saigon administration" to violate the Paris peace
agreement.
11
Government as so many fools and used the peace" agree-
ment to prepare and launch an open all-out attack and
win the war. The impression the article creates, however,
is that this attack, brazen, perfidious, contemptuous of
the United States, is some remote war of two obscure
tribes neither of which has anything to do with the
United States, not to mention those jovial corporation
presidents and lawyers of Russia, Inc.
Besides, South Vietnam is not really endangered, according to the article. "So far most of the Communist
gains have come in the more peripheral parts of the
delta."
Some Vietnamese and Westerners therefore believe that
what is happening is a reassertion of the natural balance of
forces, which had been artificially extended in the Government's favor by vast American help.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
In response to the appeal of the PRG of RSV, the People's
Armed Forces of Liberation of South Vietnam are repulsing
with determination the violators of the Paris agreement.
Then for two weeks Pravda is silent again. On March 28,
1975, Pravda runs a report entitled "Situation in South
Vietnam." What is the situation? The same as before.
True, Pravda now says openly, the Provisional Government of the Republic of South Vietnam governs most of
South Vietnam, and surely South Vietnam must be gov·
erned by its government, not the "reactionary Thieu
clique, stubbornly violating the Paris agreement on Vietnam," as Pravda puts it, quoting the newspaper Nyan Zan
which the "legitimate" government of South Vietnam
publishes.
Pravda does not lie when the truth is to the Soviet rul-
57
�ers' advantage. But when Pravda is called upon to lie, it
lies with the same limitless insolence, professional skill,
and almost inhuman hypocrisy with which it lied on the
6th of November of 1917 when Lenin's troops attacked
the democratic institutions of Russia, while Pravda an·
nounced that we were being attacked.
The other report of the New York Times which it does
not list as a major international event of the day, but which
is remarkable in its own way, is an especially serene lOQQ.
word fantasy by Flora Lewis entitled "Security Talks
Moving to Finale." Since many Soviet decision*makers
are male chauvinists, they would classify this report as a
starry·eyed housewife's chatter rather than (male) Philis·
tine prattle.
There has been a great deal of difficulty over the wording
of the agreements. For example, a Soviet draft used "important" where a Western draft said "essential."
So this is the stumbling block. Otherwise the Confer·
ence on European Security and Cooperation, working on
what was later called the "Helsinki agreements," ushering
in a new era in the history of mankind, is "moving to finale." Take the third section of its epoch·making agree·
ments, for example:
The third section, on human contacts and exchange of information, caused problems last year, but has now been advanced to the point where only a few details are in dispute.
What details?
There was an argument over whether a clause on information should provide for "public access" or "access by the
public."
tution named after Patrice Lumumba, a "hero of African
liberation," has young people from eighty·nine countries.
This is where future Walter Ulbrichts or Fidel Castros
study and are studied in vivo, to be selected in order to be
trained, introduced to their fellows·in·arms, and helped to
come to power in their respective countries: the most am-
bitious and lucrative profession of today, Soviet satrap.
This is the breeding ground for the young personnel of
the Soviet global political infra·structure. This is where
the Soviet global empire is built.
A grand meeting in honor of the 15th anniversary of the
Friendship-of-Peoples University named after Patrice Lu-
mumba, with the awarding of the [Friendship·of.Peoples] Or·
der to commemorate the event, was held on February 17 in
the Kremlin Palace of Congresses.
The Pravda article is heavy, oppressive, monumental, as
befits the builders of the totalitarian world empire. But it
is informative compared with Flora Lewis's daydreams,
for example.
Elected unanimously as the Presidium of Honor was the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, with Comrade L. I. Brezhnev, General
Secretary of the Central Committee, at the head.
This is a university that enrolls young people of eighty·
nine countries. Foreign diplomats and correspondents are
present at the ceremony. Yet even before it begins, these
future doctors, engineers, scientists (and/or subversives,
guerrilla fighters, "revolutionary leaders") of eighty·nine
countries elect unanimously the Soviet Politburo as grand
supranational sovereign over them all, while the present
governments of their eighty.nine countries are not so
much as mentioned.
So in the Soviet regime there will be "public access" or
"access by the public" (the problem is only to decide which)
to exchange of information, not to mention human contacts. The conference is,
The speaker is B. N. Ponomaryov, that same "man in
charge of the globe" who legitimized in the person of Ara·
fat the "interests of the Palestinian people":
as one delegate described it, the only way "to transform detente from just a matter of states to something for individuals,
with human meaning."
Great Lenin was the first man to enunciate and champion
the right of the people of the colonies to self-determination
and national sovereignty. Our country fought for many years
to realize this principle. The debacle of the colonial empires
was the triumph of Lenin's great idea.
As of February 18, 1975, Flora Lewis is still living in a de·
tente which is just a "matter of states" (the invasion of the
state known as South Vietnam, in violation of an agree·
ment, being a remote irrelevant reassertion of the natural
balance of forces). But new agreements (also signed by
Henry Kissinger?) are to "transform detente from just a
matter of states to something for individuals, with human
meaning." As a Soviet lady journalist jeered off the record
on a similar occasion: uOne feels like singing, laughing,
dancing.''
Let us turn back to Pravda. "True to Lenin's Behest:
Patrice Lumumba Friendship·of·Peoples University is
Awarded Friendship·of·Peoples Order." The Soviet insti-
58
What next?
In their struggle for their economic independence, the developing countries are more and more determined to nationalize the property of foreign corporations [the Soviet regime's
property and personnel in these countries being sacred, of
course] and to take other measures assuring their sovereign
right to dispose of their national resources, as well as to con·
duct joint coordinated practical activity in defense of their in·
terests.
HThis course of events," Ponomaryov remarks with
grim satisfaction, "is obviously not to the taste of imperial·
AUTUMN 1981
�ism" (that is, any group which resists Soviet global expansion).
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics challenged them all,
liberated mankind, and saved civilization.
The imperialist powers do their utmost to arrest the progressive changes in these countries and keep these developing
states within the orbit of capitalism.
Our ideological enemies have set afloat the slanderous
myth of "superpowers." Of course, the Soviet Union is a
mighty power. But its might has not been created at the expense of exploitation of other peoples. It has been produced
by our people's labor.
The imperialist powers will fail. Bear in mind growing
Soviet global military might:
However, the international balance of forces has tipped
drastically and continues to change in favor of socialism and
progress [both of which the Soviet Politburo incarnates]. Under these conditions, the imperialists' possibilities to impose
their will on other nations become more and more limited.
The sub text of the message cannot be clearer. Young
people of eighty-nine countries! Do you see what is happening in Vietnam? Our side is winning after the United
States has paid with more than $100 billion and more
than 50,000 American lives to defend its ally against our
side. You will win in your country if you are with us. And
if you are against us, you will lose, as the South Vietnamese who defended South Vietnam are now losing, and the
United States makes believe that this has nothing to do
with them or with us.
We are on the eve of a great day, the thirtieth anniversary
of the victory over Hitlerism. It is common knowledge that
the Soviet Union sustained the he_aviest losses in this war and
made the decisive contribution to the rout of Hitler's Germany, to the liberation of the peoples of Europe from fascism, and to the rescue of world civilization.
How is this relevant to the eighty-nine countries today?
The lessons of World War II remind us of the need to maintain vigilance constantly and wage an uncompromising struggle against the aggressive plans of imperialist reaction trying
to impede the process of relaxation of tension [the official Soviet definition of detente].
Without naming the United States, the speaker makes
it clear that the United States has become a superpower
by exploiting the poor of the world.
In other words, Ponomaryov is propounding what may
be called "global Marxism." According to Marx, the rich
in each country have become rich at the expense of the
poor (who are poor as a result). The poor must rise in arms
and expropriate the rich. "The expropriators are expropriated!" said the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Obviously,
the same can be applied on the global scale to the rich
(countries) versus the poor (countries). There are dozens
of millions of "haves" in the United States, and hundreds
of millions of "have-nots" in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Why not sick these "masses of the underprivileged"
on the "handful of the rich"? It was done successfully in
Russia, Bavaria, Hungary way back in 1918. Why cannot it
be done globally-with the aid of the Soviet global armed
forces?
Ponomaryov's speech may be summed up by the following statement of his: "Domestic national policy of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union has found its extention on the international arena." If, indeed, the Soviet
regime was able to subjugate in the early 1920s the Moslem nations of Central Asia, it can absorb those of the
Middle East, for geographically and historically the Middle East is an extention of now-Soviet Central Asia. If the
Czechs or Eastern Germans fell under Soviet sway with
no more resistance than the Ukrainians or Estonians did,
the same strategic techniques can successfully be applied
to West Germans or North Americans. Ponomaryov is a
universalist: he believes that human nature is basically the
same everywhere-in Moscow, Kiev, Prague, Berlin, or
In other words, on one side, the side of goodness, is the
New York.
Soviet Union, detente, peace, progress, socialism, those
Neither the ceremony nor Ponomaryov's speech are re-
Western capitalists who sell the Soviet rulers strategically
important merchandise on credit, the young people of
eighty-nine countries, world civilization. On the other
side, the side of evil, is Hitlerism, Hitler's Germany, fas-
ported in the New York Times: The Soviet building of a
global totalitarian empire is screened out by the newspaper.
The other news of Pravda and the New York Times reduces to minor items which can be listed as follows for
brief comparison:
cism, all who are against detente, reactionaries, war, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism.
To someone like the philosopher Sidney Hook, this
Manichaean dichotomy may seem absurd. But to many
young people of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and indeed,
Europe and the United States, it may look like an ade·
quate general picture of history today. Some of them may
even believe that the capitalist United States and the
colonialist British Empire were at one with the reactionary Nazi Germany, while the freedom-loving progressive
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
The New Yark Times
"Syria Bids Arabs Bar A Limited Peace." "Syria" is against
Israeli-Egyptian rapproche·
Pravda
"Syria's Stand." The item
shorter, but no less perfunctory, superficial, empty.
ment.
59
�4
"Makarios Requests U.N.
Council to Meet." "The Cyprus Government of President
Makarios called tonight for an
urgent session of the Security
Council .... Nicosia is believed
interested in the Soviet proposal that the whole Cyprus
situation be taken up at a large
conference." The report does
not cite a word of the Makarios statement.
Statement by Makarios."
"I value highly the stand taken
by the Soviet Union on the
problem of Cyprus, as expressed unequivocally in yesterday's TASS statement,"
declared President Makarios of
Cyprus. " ... We are grateful to
the Soviet Union for its opposition to the Turkish community leaders' arbitrary decision
to proclaim an isolated state."
"Ethiopia, Battling Secessionists, asks U.S. for Airlift of
Arms." The article does not
say or imply that the Soviet regime regards the "military government" of Ethiopia to be on
the Soviet side, according to
Pravda. "United States officials indicated that there was
reluctance to comply with the
Ethiopian request" for arms
because Syria, South Yemen
and Libya will not like it: they
have been aiding the secessionists of Eritrea. The world
is construed by the New York
Times as a mosaic of totally
independent countries: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, South Yemen, Libya.
"For the Sake of Unity." A
300,000-strong demonstration
in the capital of Ethiopia to
support the "military government" in its war to keep Eritrea from secession. It is clear
frOm Pravda that the "military
government" is "on our side."
Small tyrants are likely to be
eventually on the Soviet side.
A tyrant will want the democracies to comply with his tyranny. They will finally waver.
The Soviet rulers will never
waver unless his tyranny is
against theirs.
"Yugoslavs Sentence 15 as
Secessionists." Why Yugoslavs?
Is the regime and "Yugoslavs"
the same?
"Yugoslavia: Subversives on
Trial." The "defendants have
close ties with extremist emigre elements in the West.
'
The other news items do not overlap: Pravda ignores
the news items of the New York Times and vice versa.
The New York Times
Pravda
"The United Kingdom: Can it
Survive?" Secession of various
parts of England: "it is not impossible that the United Kingdom, as we know it today, will
cease to exist."
"Insolent Challenge." Spain
has the insolence of sending
warships to its bases in Africa,
though every sane person
knows that only the Soviet regime can have bases all over
the globe.
"Pakistan Charges Afghan Subversion." "Afghanistan ... has
supported a demand ... for an
independent state to be carved
out of Pakistani territory." No
Soviet involvement at present
or in future is conjectured.
"NO! to Bases." A week of
protest against imperialist (that
is, American or NATO) bases
in the Indian Ocean has begun in Sri Lanka. The global
system of Soviet military bases
is growing without anyone's
protests.
60
"Released Koreans Allege Torture for Confessions." According to this article reprinted
from The Times, London, the
participants in the "demonstrations against the authoritarian constitution" in South
Korea in 1974 have been released and "charge today" that
they were tortured by the
"Korean CIA." Why is the al1leged torturing organization
called the "CIA"? Is the CIA
the world's only institution of
torture?
"The worst days were the
rainy days. I hated them.
The C.I.A. would use the
sharp ends of their umbrellas to prod us around the
cells."
Wait for a rainy day to use umbrellas for torture. The "CIA"
could not use them very well
on a fair day, could it? I doubt
that Pravda would print something so flippant or unintentionally comical.
"Chile: The Tragedy Continues." Pravda is after what may
be defined as an ideal democracy, of the kind the United
States would have been if Senator McGovern had been
elected President, as the New
York Times wished. The motives of the two newspaper~
are different, of course. Pravdd
is after an ideal democracy in
the "target countries" because
it is, according to the Soviet
rulers, the best form of government to be first neutralized
and finally destroyed. Therefore, Pravda is at least as sensitive as the. New York Times to
any violation of an ideal democracy. At the same time,
the article on Chile is very sedate. No torture is alleged, and
the article merely soberly
notes that "even the [Chilean]
authorities admit. that thousands of political prisoners
languish in the prisons of
Santiago alone."
"Saigon Drops Case Against
Six Papers." The Government
of South Vietnam, which the
New York Times calls in its
editorials "totalitarian," has
dropped libel charges against
six newspapers, and so they
can go on publishing allegations of the corruption of the
Government, while the invasion of South Vietnam, a minor event of the day, is on,
to obliterate the "totalitarian"
Government, its alleged corruption, the independent
newspapers, their allegations,
and all.
"Here Where the Chilean junta
will be on Trial." "It is here, in
the Palace of Arts in the capital of Mexico," that the third
session will be held investigating the ''crimes of Chile's military junta." The relevant
"manifesto" has been "signed
by a number of organizations,
including the youth organization of the ruling InstitutionalRevolutionary Party of Mexico." With this sort of social
atmosphere, no wonder the
Soviet rulers were preparing a
Cuba-like coup in Mexico, and
only a Soviet defector frustrated it.
"Ford Preparing Busy Schedule of Trips Overseas in the
FalL" "One source ... said
that Mr. Ford would like to be
on hand to sign personally any
Helsinki agreement." There is
not a hint that the value of this
action is equivalent to Mr.
Ford's being on hand to sign
personally shopping bags before TV cameras, while its
harmfulness goes much
deeper than meets the eye.
"U.S. President's Interview."
Said President Ford, as translated from the Russian of
Pravda: "In the United States
there are many people who realize~and will realize even
better in future-that the abrogation of the Soviet-American trade agreement resulted
from ill-thought-out decisions
in Congress."
AUTUMN1981
�"Gulf Oil Officials in Soviet
Talks." Officials of the Gulf
Oil Corporation started talks
"Preparations for the Conference." No, not the peace conference Flora Lewis reports,
today with the Soviet Government to explore the possibility
but the "power conference"-
of helping to market Soviet
oil."
"U.S. Tuna Men Held in Ec·
uador Are Bitter and in Fight-
ing Mood." A IOOO.word piece
about American tuna fishermen wishing to fight for the
right to fish within the 200·
mile limit off Ecuador though
fifty countries have established the 200·mile limit for
their territorial waters.
"Foes
Intensifying Drive
Against Mrs. Ghandi.''
the "conference of communist
and workers' parties of
Europe."
"Victory of Progressive
Forces." The "candidate of
progressive pardes" was
elected mayor of Kyoto yesterday. Thus, "among the ten
biggest cities of Japan, seven
have mayors representing the
parliamentary opposition, including the Socialist and Communist Parties."
"India: Women's Day." Prime
Minister Gandhi: all women of
the world, unite!
"Vorster Verifies Visit to
Liberia."
Turkey).
"Italians Preparing to Send
"Gambia Yesterday and To-
U.S. Extradition Request for
day" provides a specific illustration of Ponomaryov's global
approach.
Sindona," a run-away Italian
banker.
"Saudi Denies Price Talks
"Riots of Reactionaries" (in
With Kissinger Over Oil."
"Situation on Madagascar."
The "military directoriat"
Kissinger is said to have tried
to impel Saudi Arabia to have
(Pravda would not call "junta"
a junta it favors)" of the Mala·
a heart and bring down the
gasy Republic" smashed the
price of oil sold to the United
States (oh, the power of Kiss·
HQ of the Malagasy Socialist
Party and killed sixteen people
in the process. Pravda regards
inger's diplomacy). However,
Saudi Arabia denies alL
this little massacre of Socialists
as a victory for socialism, that
is, the Soviet rulers' power.
There are several more such news items in both newspapers, but we may as well stop here, observing that in the
volume of international news data, the issue of Pravda (six
pages) roughly matches the New York Times. International
information fills the bulk of Pravda, and its presentation is
mostly concise and factual, if not documentary, while in
the New York Times it is scattered like islands over the
vastness of the newspaper, and is mostly chatty.
The conclusions?
The international information in both newspapers is su·
perficial, easy-to-obtain and insipid (I disregard the enter·
tainment, such as the reporting of a theft in the New York
Times). Both newspapers shape whatever meager information they have to fit their respective views (motives or
goals).
Pravda's mendacity is instrumental: it is a professional
propaganda tool of Soviet global expansion. The mendac·
ity of the New York Times is motivated in particular by its
narrow-minded spineless middle class desire to wrap itself
in its middle-class experience, screen out the outside
1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
world, and to substitute an easy fantasy spun out of this
experience. Pravda deceives only others; the New York
Times deceives itself as well.
Apart from individual exceptions, inevitable in any institution, neither newspaper is intelligent or intended for
intelligent readers: certainly the issues under review do
not contain a line which would take more than a mediocre,
conventional, and conformist mind to write. A random
selection of the same number of news items as supplied
by any world news agency would be no less informative.
But all in all, as of February 18, 1975, Pravda presents
the Soviet regime as an expanding global system of power,
with many countries as local arenas of this world struggle.
The New York Times presents the Soviet regime in a far
more false and benign way than the regime presents itself
via Pravda. According to the New York Times issue, the
world is a mosaic of separate countries and local events,
none of which has any bearing on the Soviet regime, seen
as just another chip in this mosaic: a kind of corporation
much bigger than General Motors or Chase, but essentially also seeking-through its representatives-good re·
lations, economic cooperation, and trade.
This parochial world fantasy of the New York Times
makes it on the whole not only uninformative, but
misleading. None of those bits of information which the
New Y ark Times issue contains and Pravda does not can
compensate for this dangerous deceptiveness of the New
York Times dreamland, presenting mankind as its middle
class milieu multiplied to the global scale.
But when all this is said, we must perhaps look at both
newspapers from a higher vantage point.
Quite a few people assume that reality is a certain set of
objects, and so anyone can describe reality no worse than
Einstein or Chekhov-it is sufficient to name objects in
front of you: a house, Mr. Kissinger, a tree. Similarly, it is
often assumed that it is no less easy to describe newschanges of reality: the house has caught fire, Mr. Kiss·
inger is going to Moscow, the tree has grown by ten inches
in one year.
If we look at the New York Times and Pravda through
the eyes of such a Philistine, both newspapers can be said
to describe all the world news there is, and this means all
the reality and all its changes. How and what else can one
describe?
But looking at both newspapers from a higher than
Philistine point of view, it can be said that they have no
sense of reality (the New York Times is more hopeless in
this respect) and hence no sense of changes of reality
known as world news. To claim that the New York Times
presents news about the world at large is the same as to
claim that Philistine twaddle is space-time physics or
literature.
L The Working Press, New York 1966, 71.
2. "The Middle East and North Africa 1973-74," 20th Edition,
Europa Publications, London 1973, 61-62.
3. Middle East Review, Spring 1980, 45.
4. Facts on File, Facts on File, Inc., New York, February 1980, 67.
61
�The Incompleteness Theorems
David Guaspari
[Every mathematician shares] the conviction (. .. which no one has yet supported by a proof) that every
definite mathematical problem must necessarily be susceptible ofan exact settlement, either in the form of
an actual answer to the question asked, or by the proof of the impossibility of its solution.
DAVID HILBERT
An introduction
The Goede! Incompleteness Theorems are perhaps the
most celebrated mathematical discoveries of this century.
I hope to make those celebrations more informed; and, ac·
cordingly, take as my topic not the nature of mathematics
or of the mind-grand things and plausibly related to
Goedel's work-but something rather technical and more
mundane: What, exactly, do those theorems say? What
are the questions to which they constitute some sort of
answer and the new questions to which they give rise?
To understand those questions we must devote considerable attention to some of Goedel's great predecessors:
Frege, Cantor, Russell (and Whitehead), and Hilbert.
The story begins in 1879 with the invention, by Gottlob
Frege, of (formal) logic. This invention was important in
two ways:
l. It was necessary for the elaboration of the so-called
"logicist thesis": the thesis of Frege that arithmetic
is a part of logic; or, as Frege paraphrased it into Kantian terms, that arithmetic is analytic. Russell extended Frege's "logicist thesis" to the claim that all
of mathematics is reducible to logic-that is, that
formal logic provides a fundamental theory, a
grounding, of the whole of mathematics.
2. The devices of formal logic may be used, not to lay
David Guaspari teaches at St. John's College in Annapolis. Most of
his work in mathematical logic has been in set theory and proof theory.
62
out "the" theory of mathematics, but rather as the
basis for rigorous axiomatic theories of geometry,
algebra, set theory, etc. (For the distinction between
"an axiomatic theory of X" and "an axiomatic theory
which reduces X to logic" see section l.) This secondary use of formal logic makes possible a mathematics about mathematics, by providing it with a
precise object of study-formal theories.
Hilbert proposed the invention of just such a theory of
formal systems, umetamathematics" or "proof theory", as
the basis for a radical philosophy of mathematics. The domain of meaningful mathematics was to be reduced, essentially, to the domain of mere calculation. Mathematics
was to be framed within formal theories, and any non-calculational propositions of those formal theories were to be
seen merely as byproducts generated on the way to calculations.
Hilbert wanted to have things two ways: to have the
power of modern methods, while avoiding the difficulty
of explaining or justifying those methods. In order to
understand Hilbert we will therefore need to know something about the methods he wanted so desperately to
save.
I will use Cantor's invention of set theory as a synecdoche for the whole of the modern upheaval. Cantor did
not invent the notion of "set" or "class": he invented set
(or class) theory. Classifications (rather than things classified) became the objects of study, and mathematics became the study of patterns, not things: of "the third position in the sequence of natural numbers", not of "three".
AUTUMN 1981
�After winning his way to this position, Cantor made the
further and frightening step of pressing toward its logical
conclusion (which, we will see, skirts paradox). We will be
interested in Cantor not as a participant in the controversies about the character of mathematics, but as one of the
forces which, by radically altering mathematical practice,
made those controversies urgent.
I
The logicists
Classical logic-more or less a code word for Aristotleis plainly inadequate to give an account of the most elementary sorts of mathematical reasoning, for it gives no
account of sentences involving more than one term expressing generality: sentences such as "Everybody loves
somebody.''
Medieval logicians introduced elaborate theories treating of certain sentences with two general expressions.
Those theories were correct in that they certified the correct inferences to and from such sentences; but they were
both complicated and incapable of extension to more
elaborate sentences; which is evidence that they were just
plain wrong.
What was wrongheaded in medieval logic was the attempt to treat "Everybody loves somebody" as though it
were like "John loves Mary." "Everybody" was to be, like
11
John", a kind of name, referring to certain people who
somehow or other loved a person or persons denoted by
"somebody." The difficulties with this are legion: for
example, a proper name like "Mary" always stands for the
same person, while "somebody" -assuming it ought to be
thought of as standing for someone-can stand even in
the same context for different people: If John loves somebody and somebody is the mayor of Cleveland it does not
follow that John loves the Mayor of Cleveland. Again:
"John loves Mary" is equivalent to "Mary is loved by
John." If "everybody" and "somebody" were genuine
names we would be able to make the same switch. But we
cannot: "Everybody loves somebody" and "Somebody is
loved by everybody" are not equivalent.
In the restricted cases to which their theories applied,
medieval logicians surmounted such difficulties by making distinctions about the various kinds of ways in which
general terms could refer to their objects. Unfortunately
there seemed to be no end to the making of such distinctions, and with such a logic the best one could look forward to was an ever-expanding collection of ad hoc methods
and distinctions.
According to Frege his predecessors were misled by accidents of grammar, such as the accident that "John" and
"somebody" are governed by the same grammatical rules.
The logical structure of mathematical statements-i.e.,
those features in virtue of which statements can legitimately enter into chains of inference-are not systematically displayed (and sometimes not displayed at all) by the
grammar of ordinary speech.
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
If the logical structure of a sentence is to show on its
face-in its syntax-then a revised syntax and some new
grammatical categories become necessary. Frege's revised
language is not intended to give an exhaustive account of
natural language. It gives no account of metaphors, ambiguities, tenses, modalities, puns, or jokes. Its success
comes to this: the fact that all mathematical argument
(and therefore all deductive argument) can be expressed
in Frege's language and so be made altogether explicit.
(The principal novelty is Frege's introduction of thecategories of "quantifiers" and "variables", which constitute
an analysis of the uses of troublesome general terms like
"somebody." He also discards the "subject-predicate"
analysis of sentences, because of its intrinsic demerits and
because of the requirements of the quantifier-variable
analysis of generalization.)
In addition, Frege listed a small number of rules which
suffice for the purely formal derivation of all valid inferences. By calling the derivations formal I mean this: We
can apply the rules-i.e., determine whether a sentence is
an immediate consequence of some other or group of
others-simply by inspecting the syntax of each sentence
involved; and the procedure for doing so is mechanical. A
machine can check such derivations just as it checks multiple choice tests.
Frege wanted to attain rigor-and he did. Rigor cannot
go any further; controversy over the validity of a proof
came to have the same character as controversy over the
correctness of a long division. Frege had made it clear just
what complete rigor consisted in.
This achievement did not, however, have the desired
practical effect of making mathematical argument completely certain. An attempt to verify the validity of an ordinary prose proof by translating it into Frege's system
will in general involve so many steps that a clerical error
seems no less likely than a logical error in checking the
original informal proof. Nonetheless, the theoretical possibility of rigorously formulating mathematical theories
makes Frege's language and logic, and their kin, analytical
tools for investigations about those theories.
I will from now on call a language and logic like Frege's
a forma/language and the formulation of a theory in such
a language a formalization of the theory. Formalization is
therefore the first step in laying out a completely rigorous
axiomatic theory. It is not a trivial step.
If, for example, we tried to formalize Euclid, we would
immediately be forced to see that the basic terms of geometry are not only those denoting its objects-points, lines,
planes-but also those denoting certain relations among
them: e.g., the relation of incidence, which holds between
a point and a line when the point lies on the line. Symbols
for those relations would have to be included in the language as part of the special vocabulary of geometry. When
we looked for a suitable collection of geometrical axioms
we would come to see that Euclid's unexpressed assumptions largely concern those relations.
63
�In I884 Frege published another book, The Foundations of Arithmetic, this one about the nature of mathematical truths. He was interested not in how we acquire
mathematical truths, or why we happen to believe them,
but in the ultimate justification for believing them. Frege
asserted that the truths of arithmetic and algebra (although
not those of geometry) are truths of logic:
Frege was undertaking to do more than merely to lay
out a formalized theory of arithmetic. I might well frame a
(mere) formalized theory of arithmetic by beginning with
primitive signs for "1 "~ "2", "plus", "times", etc.-signs
which, so far as the theory is concerned, are employable
only as directed by the axioms. From the rules of logic
alone we could then deduce "I=1" and even "1+2=
1 + 2", but not, e.g., "1 + 1 = 2". The specifically arithmetical content of the theory I am describing would have to be
supplied by a list of arithmetical axioms. (The provision of
a suitable list is a mathematically deep, but for our purposes technical, problem.) We need the axioms because
"1 ", " + ", and "2", being non-logical (and therefore arbi-
trary) signs, can stand in no intrinsic logical relations to
one another.
If, however, "1", "+", and "2" are signs which are
themselves defined in other terms, it might happen that a
purely logical explication of those definitions would result
in a deduction of "l + 1 =2". Frege claimed just that, that
plus, times, etc., etc., could themselves be defined in
"purely logical terms," and that from those definitions
alone, and with no need for extra hypotheses, the arithmetical truths would follow.
Arithmetical truths could-and, to be properly understood, should-be regarded as highly compressed abbreviations of logical truths. The statement "2 + 2 = 4" or
''there are infinitely many primes" would be more compli-
cated than, but of the same character as, "A implies A."
Philosophical questions about the certainty and applicability of arithmetic would then be reduced to questions
about the certainty and applicability of logic.
The terms of Frege's proposal require explanation. A
satisfactory account of arithmetic must cover not only
statements like "7 + 5 = 12" but also certain kinds of empirical statements-but not all empirical statements-involving numbers, for there is no need to account for "2 is
my favorite number." The point of contact between arithmetical theory and its empirical application is counting.
The record of a bit of counting-"There are 2 bats in the
belfry" -is what Frege calls a "statement of number."
We must account for the statements of pure arithmetic
and the statements of number.
Next we need to ask what it would mean to "define" 2
at all, and what, in particular, it would mean to cast that
definition in purely logical terms. For Frege it is pointless
to ask what 2 "actually" is. That does not mean that talk
about numbers is talk about imaginings and private fantasies. Rather, to give the meaning of the word "2" is to give
an account of the contribution it makes to specifying the
64
conditions under which arithmetical statements containing "2" are true or false. Whatever does so correctly is entitled to be called a definition of "2".
Here is an example, a purely logical explanation of the
use of "2" in "There are 2 kings of Sparta."
For some x andy, x differs from y and each is a king of Sparta;
and,
it is not the case that there are x, y, and z, each of which is a
king of Sparta and all of which are different.
This explanation is correct; that is, it is true to say that
there are two kings of Sparta in precisely those circumstances in which our elaborate paraphrase is true. Furthermore, the account is perfectly general, being an
account of the role of "2" in all such sentences: to explain
"There are 2 bats in the belfry" we simply replace "king of
Sparta" everywhere by "bat in the belfry." Finally, the
fixed terms of this general explanation (that is, all terms
except "king of Sparta") are purely logical words; and the
non-logical phrases ("king of Sparta", "bat in belfry") occur
only in the simplest way possible, as simple predications.
This account is not a definition of "2". It explains the
role of ''2'', ''3", etc., in particular statements of numberthat is, the adjectival uses "There are 2 X's", "There are 3
X's", etc. It is insufficient to account for the uses of "2" as
a noun, especially for the thinghood we seem to attribute
to numbers by generalizations such as "For every number ... " Frege took the noun-like uses as fundamental. He
argued that it would be incorrect to analyze arithmetical
statements in such a way that numbers (some collection
or other of entities to be called numbers) disappeared altogether. His analysis replaced each appearance of "2" by a
noun phrase denoting, essentially, a certain set or class.
He then explained statements of number as elliptical references to such classes and explained generalizations at
face value as generalization over the lot of them. This
counted as a logical explanation because he regarded a set
as a kind of logical object.
My example has been intended only to show what kind
of thing a purely logical definition is, and to show that
Frege's proposal is: (a) neither opaque nor occult (which
already suffices to set it apart from most accounts of the
subject); and (b) altogether unconcerned with what happens to go on in my mind when I say or believe that there
are two kings of Sparta.
Frege outlined this program (the "logicist" program of
reducing arithmetic to logic) in The Foundations of Arithmetic and carried it out in the two volumes of The Basic
Laws of Arithmetic, the first published in 1893 and the
second, delayed by the discouraging silence which met
the first, in 190 3.
There turned out to be a problem. One of Frege's fundamental notions was that of "the extension of a concept" -what we would now call the set or class of things
AU1UMN 1981
�falling under the concept. He regarded "class" as a logical
notion-and in any event could see no way to do without
it- but pointed out that its treatment was the problematic part of his system. It turned out to be, in a sense, unproblematic-because it made the system inconsistent.
Frege learned of this, while volume two was in press, in
a letter from Bertrand Russell setting out what has come
to be called the Russell Paradox. Russell's paradox is a sort
of liar's paradox. Formulated for a theory of sets, it shows
its sting by demonstrating that an assumption seemingly
fundamental, natural, and innocuous, leads swiftly to a
contradiction. The assumption is that to every property
there corresponds a set, whose members are precisely those
things which possess that property. If we apply this assumption to the property "not a member of itself' and
call the corresponding set R (so that the members of Rare
precisely those sets which are not members of themselves)
we turn up a contradiction by asking: Is R a member of R?
For, R is a member of Ras long as Rs-atisfies the defining
condition "not a selrmember"; which is to say, as long as
R is not a member of R. Frege dashed off a quick and woe-
fully inadequate fix in an appendix beginning, with characteristic detachment, "Hardly anything more unwel·
come can befall a scientific writer ... " and concluding,
hopefully, " ... still I do not doubt that the way to the solution has been found."
Russell was not Frege's adversary, but rather his heir.
Principia Mathematica, published by Russell and Alfred
North Whitehead between 1910 and 1913, advanced even
more sweeping claims for logic: the system of Principia
Mathematica (from now on, PM) was a revision of Frege's
logic which purported to reduce all of mathematics to
logic. That PM sufficed for the derivation of known mathematics, Russell and Whitehead made clear. That it might
justly be called logic they did not. And no one could tell
whether PM would suffice for all future mathematics.
II
Cantor and "Modernism"
Meanwhile, mathematics went on. One of the things
that went on is commonly called a "crisis" -a "crisis in
the foundation of mathematics" -perhaps suggesting to
the innocent (falsely, as it turns out) that mathematicians
around the world were hurling themselves from their of·
fice windows. The central event in this drama was the ap·
pearance of a large array of paradoxes and contradictions
in the theory of sets, the Russell Paradox among them.
The thinking man's reaction might well be ... So what?
Why should the collapse of some particular theory be of
more than local interest? Frege's scheme fell to the
ground and no llcrisis" resulted.
In order to understand why the difficulties with set theory are of interest to other branches of mathematics it is
necessary to understand why set theory has become the
idiom of mathematics.
Set theory was invented by Georg Cantor in a series of
papers published between 1879 and 1897. It is important
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to know that Cantor's creation of set theory grew directly
out of his work on one of the important mathematical
problems of his day-on the convergence of a particular
kind of infinite series called a Fourier series. just what a
Fourier series is is not important to us, but two things
about Fourier series are: (1) Fourier series are a part of
hardcore applied mathematics. (Fourier introduced them
in order to study heat transfer.) (2) The theory of Fourier
series was, in Cantor's day, at the cutting edge of two important questions: What is the continuum? What is a
function?
If I needed a slogan to characterize the radical features
of twentieth century mathematics I would try something
like this: Functions are things, and things are extensional.
"Extensional" stands in opposition to "intensional", in
opposition, broadly speaking, to any concern for the "in·
ner nature" of mathematical things.
Consider Euclid's definition of "point." That definition
is never appealed to in proofs, and for that reason has no
mathematical interest. Nothing follows from it. The only
way in which something which we might call the "nature"
of a point has any mathematical significance is by way of
postulates about the relations between points and the
other geometrical notions, such as: Between any two
points there is a unique straight line. Euclid's definition of
point is an "intensional" attempt to tell us something
about the "nature" of points.
In contrast, what matters about a function is that certain inputs result in certain outputs. What a function has
by way of a "nature" is exhausted by the record of the in·
put-output pairs, conveniently representable as the set of
all such pairs. Relations are treated in the same way. The
"nature" of the relation "less than" comes to nothing but
a record of which numbers are less than which.
Galling the things of mathematics extensional comes,
grandly and vaguely, to saying something like this: What
interests us about a mathematical object is not its putative
internal constitution, but rather the role which that object
plays in the system of mathematical objects. Mathematics
is about the patterns into which things fall, not about the
things.
The other half of my slogan reads "functions are things."
What is at stake in calling functions things? The account,
I'm afraid, will begin and end in metaphor.
Think of a function as a black box from which; in some
way or other, the input-output record can be extracted.
Then I can, if I want to, take those things, those black
boxes, and put some or all of them into another box-so
that I have a big box full of functions. I offer this merely as
one example of what you can do with things. You can
heap things into big boxes.
I want to contrast this picture of function with another.
In the other a function is not a thmg, but a kind of continuing process, which you cannot put your hands on all at
once and therefore cannot pick up and toss into a box.
What's at issue behind these varying metaphors w11l have
to be considered later.
65
�Let me first give an example of the usefulness of the
first picture-function as thing. Quantum mechanics as·
signs to each thing in the world-electron, atom, cow-a
representative, a function called its wave function. Wave
functions, it so happens, input real numbers and output
complex numbers (the outputs are thought of as representing certain probabilities). All the.se wave functions are
then heaped together in a box called Hilbert Space. What
stands for the world is a box of functions.
Now, one of the other things you can do with things,
beside tossing them into boxes, is to input them into functions. It turns out that momentum, for example, can be
conveniently represented by a function which inputs not
numbers but those boxes in the Hilbert Space, and out·
puts not numbers but other boxes in Hilbert Space. Momentum and its kin, being functions, are therefore things,
and can themselves be heaped in boxes, input into still
other functions, and so on and on. All these entities have
in an important sense the same status as numbers. You
can do the same kinds of things with and to them. (An
aside: This example may give you some idea why it's wildly
wide of the mark to call our mathematics a "science of
quantity.")
To make functions and relations into things, and to be
concerned only with the extensional aspects of those
things, is to make the very fabric of mathematics a search
for patterns and analogies, whose aim it is to exploit the
power of generality. It is important also to realize that
study of the tops of those towers of generality can yield
consequences about things at the bottom. The elaborate
machinery of quantum mechanics yields testable predic·
tions about the behavior of atomic particles. Deep results
in number theory, which concerns the integers, have been
discovered by studying the calculus of complex numbers.
This raises a question to which we will return: Even if
such high-powered methods are helpful for finding theo·
rems and their proofs, are they in some way essential?
Set theory is important not in its details, but because
the point of view which is so conveniently formulable by
means of set theory is fundamental to the current mathematical enterprise. In David Hilbert's famous words: "No
one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has cre·
ated for us."
Hilbert was not voicing a consensus. He was uttering a
battle cry. The reception of Cantor's work made plain
deep and radical divisions among mathematicians. Those
opposed to set theory typically argued along lines like this:
Set theory is riddled with paradoxes and contradictions
because it admits as objects "infinite things", such as the
set of all numbers, and the notion of an "infinite thing" is
inherently contradictory. The two metaphorical pictures
of "function" show the same opposition. A function
which is a "thing" is, in general, an "infinite thing" -an
endless ledger of inputs correlated with outputs. A function, which is an "uncompleted process", is never present
all at once, but is a sort of drama at any stage of which only
66
finitely much has happened. The controversy over set
theory becomes "the problem of infinity."
This is not a problem about some alleged power, entity,
or principality called The Infinite. I, for one, have no idea
what that could mean. Nor has it anything to do with God,
goose bumps, mysticism, or eternity. (There is evidence
that Cantor thought: that it had to do with all these
things; that theological considerations vindicated set
theory; and, at times, that set theory had been granted
him by divine revelation.)
It would be better, but still not very good, to say that we
are asking whether there "really are" infinite sets. Part of
the trouble with that formulation (the passionate but redundant "really" gives it away) is that it has an air, wholly
spurious, of being clear and commonsensical, as though
the matter could be settled by an argument like Samuel
johnson's "refutation" of Berkeley: Johnson's proof that
there "really are" stones consisted of kicking some.
The fruitful view, I think, is that the important differ·
ence between the two positions is entirely expressed as a
difference in mathematical practice. In the mathematical
practice of one side infinite sets play the role of things,
and in the practice of the other side they do not. (In our
speech about Hilbert Space functions are assigned the
role of things: they serve as inputs and outputs of functions; they are collectable into boxes; they comprise a domain over which we generalize ... Moreover, that way of
speaking has been fruitful for the physicist as well as for
the mathematician.)
In one sense the practical problems of set theory were
solved in 1907 by Zermelo, who informally described a notion of set that seemed clear and persuasive, and pro·
duced axioms for that notion from which followed all of
the desired consequences of set theory and (so it seemed)
none of the undesired. To opt for Zermelo's set theory
was to opt for treating infinite sets as things. What
grounds might there be for making that choice?
The practicing mathematician might be satisfied by the
fact that set theory provides new terms in which to answer old questions, illuminates the work of his predecessors, and poses interesting new questions. If unimpressed,
however, by Zermelo's framework, he might maintain that
"infinite things" had to lead to contradictions and that
Zermelo's system would eventually tumble. He might hope
to find empirically interpretable consequences of set theory to test against experience. He might be appalled by set
theory's sheer perversity: Cantor said of one of his most
famous results, "I see it, but I don't believe it."
Set theory, in and of itself, is not a fundamental theory.
It is not an attempt to ground or to explain the nature of
mathematics, but is rather the organ of a revolutionary
change in mathematical practice. A set theorist can happily be an opportunist, tinkering with the axioms ad hoc
in order to avoid an awkwardness or a paradox. Set theory
is useful to "foundational" studies because it yields a formalization of all known mathematics, thereby making of
"mathematics" a precise object of study.
AUTUMN 1981
�III
Hilbert's metamathematics
In 1900 Hilbert began to formulate a radically new reason for deciding in favor of set theory, based on the possibility, which he seems to be the first to have fully grasped,
of using formalization as a tool for the investigation of
theories. Frege, well aware that deductions in his system
could be carried out mechanically, insisted on the importance of the fact that those deductions nonetheless had a
meaning. According to Hilbert, the fact that "deductions"
could be adequately guided by mechanical rules freed us
from the burden of trying to assign a meaning to each step.
Thus freed, we are free to see that much of the "meaning" we find in mathematics is nonsense.
Hilbert divided the statements of mathematics into two
classes: "real" statements, which are intuitively meaning·
ful and can be said to be true or false; and "ideal" statements, which are not, and cannot. Let us for the moment
sidestep all dispute about the legitimacy of such a distinction or about where to draw the line, and call anyone who
wishes to make such a distinction "Hilbertian." Let us
also temporarily adopt a "Hilbertian" position much less
stern than Hilbert's own: that the meaningful mathematical statements are the statements of elementary pure
arithmetic, such as "2 + 2 = 3", "There are infinitely many
primes," etc. Accordingly, propositions about real numbers~
calculus, or Hilbert Space are "ideal."
Let us further suppose ourselves to be contentedly employing a formal-and meaningful-theory of axiomatic
arithmetic, and to be one day confronted by Cantor. He
offers us a (non-meaningful) set theory which incorporates
our theory of arithmetic as a small part. Do we accept?
From our "Hilbertian" point of view we can think of set
theory as an ideal superstructure superimposed on a meaningful theory of arithmetic. Suppose it happened to be
the case that any meaningful proposition derivable in set
theory by ideal methods is also derivable by meaningful
methods-i.e., according to our present stance, from the
axioms of arithmetic. Then, in the "Hilbertian" view, the
controversy about set theory would be finessed out of existence. All the ideal machinery could be explained away
as an ingenious engine for facilitating proofs. We would
have saved set theory without giving in to the vulgar requirements of saving the sets; we would establish a paradise without angels.
To ask whether the ideal machinery of a formalized theory is redundant is to ask a precise mathematical question.
By formalizing a theory we make it an object of study. Its
statements are patterns of signs, comparable to positions
on a chessboard; and we possess, analogous to the rules of
chess, specified procedures, colorfully but irrelevantly
called proofs, for singling out certain of the sign patterns,
colorfully but irrelevantly called theorems. So that the
question "Does such and such a statement have a proof
employing no ideal mean?" has exactly the same character as the question "Could such and such a position on
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the chessboard have been reached without White's having castled?"
With some historical justification I will call the proposal
to justify the ideal means of set theory by demonstrating
their redundancy, the "Hilbertian" Program. To carry out
the "Hilbertian" Program we have to prove a mathematical theorem about a theory; and that proof itself must be
above suspicion or our justification would be circular.
This new branch of mathematics, the mathematical theory of formal theories, Hilbert calls "metamathematics" or
"proof theory."
To carry out the "Hilbertian" Program is also to demonstrate that all the meaningful consequences of set theory
are true. For we would be guaranteed that any meaningful
consequence of set theory, however originally obtained,
would also possess an uncontroversial proof, one employing only those arithmetical methods we had previously
been content to employ.
The "Hilbertian" Program hopes for a certain rough justice: that meaningful statements should have meaningful
proofs seems only fair. There is also some evidence in its
favor: many theorems of number theory originally proven
by ideal means have turned out to be derivable from the
axioms of elementary arithmetic. In any event, there is
now out on the table a genuine mathematical question,
susceptible to proof or disproof: Can all those positions be
reached without castling?
The Incompleteness Theorems answer, among others,
that question. Before turning to Goedel's paper, let me
summarize these three introductory sections.
Frege began his work as a participant in one of the great
intellectual enterprises of the nineteenth century-the attempt to make mathematics rigorous. He succeeded in
providing an analysis of mathematical proof which made
the notion of rigor precise and which provided all the
technical tools necessary for the elaboration of rigorous
deductive theories. This analysis led him to the conviction
that mathematics is in fact a part of logic. Neither this
thesis nor his powerful criticisms of other views of mathematics (the first half of The Foundations of Arithmetic is a
model wrecking job) received much notice until they were
partly rediscovered by Russell. Wider interest in the problems of founding mathematics arose not from Frege' s
work, but from the practical need to secure set theory
from paradox.
Hilbert, guided partly by his "faith" -the belief that all
mathematical problems can be solved-and by the specific desire to save for mathematics the generalizing
power of set theory, proposed a radically different foundation. Set theory would be saved by declaring most of it to
be meaningless; and by a proof (which he hoped to carry
out) that set theory could nonetheless be safely employed.
Goedel's 1931 paper "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems" replies to the characteristic questions of Frege and Hilbert:
Can mathematics be reduced to logic? Are the ideal methods of set theory redundant? Is "mathematics" com-
67
�pletely specifiable? I take this last question to be a concern
of both Frege and Hilbert. Frege attempted to encompass
mathematics within logic. Hilbert's "faith" can be construed as a belief in the possibility of devising a formal system adequate for known mathematics and capable of
proving or disproving every proposition arising within it.
To each of these questions Goede! gives the answer no.
What, then, can mathematics be supposed to be? Goedel's
own view is that mathematics must be understood not as
a body of tautologies, or as the result of our constitutive
mental activity, but as something we discover.
IV A first look at Goedel's theorems
In the first part of his paper Goede! exhibited an arithmetical statement in the language of PM which is independent of PM-i.e., neither provable nor refutable from
the axioms of PM. By itself, that is a striking technical
achievement, and evidence for the fruitfulness of Hilbert's
point of view: If you make theories into objects of study
just look at the surprising things you can find out.
Let us call a theory incomplete if some of its statements
are independent; and otherwise, complete. It might now
seem that we should get to work, promulgating some new
axioms in order to extend PM to a theory which is complete. If we can demonstrate the incompleteness of some
theories we surely ought to be able to demonstrate the
completeness of others. Then we would have justified Hilbert's "faith" by a proof. For a complete formal system
provides the means for solving every problem expressible
in its language.
Unfortunately, Goede! showed more. He pointed out
that his argument applies not only to PM, but to any
formal system which is sufficiently strong (strong enough
to contain grade-school arithmetic). Such a system must
be incomplete.
The last two sentences contain a mild lie. I can easily
describe a complete formal theory by stipulating that the
list of its axioms is to be precisely the list of all true statements of arithmetic. The trouble with that theory is that
we cannot use it. Should someone hand us a purported
proof in that theory we would not be able to appeal to any
general procedure for checking it, for we have no general
procedure for determining which propositions are axioms.
If we intend to use a formal theory in our demonstrations
or to provide a standard for our demonstrations, then we
must at least require that there be an infallible (mechanical) procedure for checking the validity of its proofs. The
First Incompleteness Theorem says that any sufficiently
strong theory with that property (the property that its
proofs can be checked mechanically) must be incomplete.
How does this bear on Hilbert, or Frege, or us? Can all
mathematical problems be solved? One precise way to
construe that question is: Is it possible to construct a usable, complete formalization of mathematics? Goedel's
theorem tells us that the answer is no. Frege's program
seems dead as well. If arithmetic really is logic, then since
68
arithmetic cannot be completely axiomatized neither can
logic be. There would be no general procedure for testing
the validity of proofs in such a so-called logic.
The "Hilbertian" Program is alive only until we ask:
What about Goedel's independent arithmetical statement?
Is it true or false-or, if the axioms of arithmetic (or PM)
contain all that we think we know about arithmetic, does
the question of its truth or falsity even have any sense?
Goedel's paper contained an informal demonstration that
that independent statement is true. His argument can be
formalized and carried out in set theory-proving that set
theory is not redundant. Goede! has provided an explicit
example of a "meaningful" statement unprovable by
"meaningful" means, but provable by the "ideal" methods of set theory. Therefore our "Hilbertian" Program,
and every "Hilbertian" Program which accepts Goedel's
independent proposition as meaningful, fails. (It will be
claimed below that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.)
The Second Incompleteness Theorem speaks directly
to Hilbert's (actual) Program, to understand which we
need a brief excursion. Hilbert called himself a "finitist".
He maintained that a precondition to thought is an immediate intuitive grasp of certain "extralogical concrete objects", which must be surveyable "completely in all their
parts" and must therefore be, in particular, finite. It is
only about such things and by means of such intuitions
that we can perform genuine ''contentual" inferences. An
adequate expression of "contentual" inference is the manipulation of signs. The concrete objects considered by
mathematics are the mathematical signs themselves-the
numerals. Accordingly, the "real" propositions are simply
the assertions about particular calculations: "7 + 5 ~ 12",
"2 < 3", '' l =/::. l ", etc. The ''contentual" reasoning by which
we attain to the truth or falsity of these propositions Hilbert calls elementary.
In Hilbert's thought not even the formula "x + 2 ~ 2 + x",
regarded as a shorthand for the assertion that "for every x,
x + 2 = 2 + x", designates a real proposition-for we cannot directly verify the infinitely many instances of true
propositions which it summarizes. Another way to say this
is to say that we cannot really negate that assertion; for
the purely existential claim that "there is some x for
which x + 2 ,P 2 + x", since it points to no particular x, has
no finitistic meaning.
Is any mathematics left? Hilbert is willing to admit the
"ideal" propositions such as ''x + L. = 2 + x", the proposi-
tions of algebras and calculus, etc., but denies that they
have any content in and of themselves. The introduction
of "ideal" propositions is analogous to the introduction
into algebra of~ which simplifies and unifies the algebraic rules. Although the ideal propositions are individually insignificant, the system of ideal propositions is
fruitful by virtue of its ability to simplify and unify, and
the ultimate reason for its success is that it discloses the
structure of our thinking.
To justify the introduction of ideal propositions (and
rules for their manipulation) we need only an elementary
AUfUMN 1981
�proof of the consistency of the resulting system. Hilbert's
Program is the proposal to provide such a proof.
Hilbert's Program is connected with our previous no·
lion of a "Hilbertian" Program as follows. The calculating
rules of grade school arithmetic suffice for the formal
demonstration of every real truth. Those calculating rules
are derivable in, e.g., set theory. Set theory, however,
might also contain a formal refutation of one of those
truths. That is, the only way in which set theory could be
non-redundant (with respect to "contentual" inference)
would be the ruinous way of being inconsistent. Hilbert's
Program, although differently expressed, is merely that
"Hilbertian" Program that corresponds to Hilbert's austere notion of "real".
The Second Incompleteness Theorem says, roughly,
that the means available in a theory are not sufficient to
prove the consistency of that theory; so that the consistency of axiomatic arithmetic-let alone of set theorycannot be demonstrated in an elementary way.
All this needs some explanation, since arithmetic is, after all, about integers and not about formal theories. How
can we even pose the problem "Is arithmetic consistent?"
in arithmetical terms?
The answer is that we communicate with a speaker of
the language of arithmetic just as we communicate with
speakers of other foreign languages-by means of translations. Suppose we wanted to discuss the consistency of
arithmetic with a computer. We could do so be devising a
numerical code in which to signify statements and proofs.
The statement "Arithmetic is consistent" could then be
translated as a lengthy statement, from now on called
CON, about numerical calculations involving the code.
(Those who are worried by this may be justified. The
sense of the claim that the coded translation CON
somehow "means the same as" the original is not immedi-
ately clear.)
Goede! showed that CON is unprovable in axiomatic
arithmetic. Now, axiomatic arithmetic is, I take it, consistent; that is, CON is true under the ordinary interpretation of its signs. Indeed, CON is provable in set theory,
and is therefore another example of an arithmetical truth
which becomes provable as a result of adding to arithmetic the "ideal" superstructure of set theory. This is a
perfectly general phenomenon: no consistent, usable, sufficiently strong theory can prove its own consistency; and
whenever we are able to add to such a theory a suitable
"ideal" superstructure, the consistency of the original the-
ory becomes one of the newly provable arithmetic truths.
This shows that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.
An elementary proof that an ideal superstructure is redundant immediately yields an elementary proof that it is consistent. If it is granted that the elementary means of proof,
whatever they may be, are exhausted by the means available in ordinary arithmetic, there can be no elementary
proof of consistency, and therefore none of redundancy.
If we use a theory we are, of course, implicitly assuming
that it is consistent. Nonetheless, that supposition is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
something over and above the suppositions of the theory.
Whatever convinces us that the theory is consistent lies
somehow outside its purview. That fact is a genuine piece
of news, even though the consistency of arithmetic is not
controversial.
Many mathematical questions which have at one time
or another been topics of active research have been
shown to be independent of the currently accepted axioms for set theory. It is a distressing fact that few of these
problems seem to be solvable by extending set theory
along the lines of its original inspiration; and that, indeed,
many are only known to be solvable by adding to set
theory hypotheses which are at best implausible and at
worst bizarre.
As a result the mathematician-in-the street typically responds to such news about a problem (the news of its independence) by losing interest in it and regarding this as
evidence that however things might have seemed at one
time the problem is not one of central importance. He can
sometimes justly say that he was seduced by set theory
into studying the wrong problem, or the right problem in
the wrong terms; but that would suffice as a general explanation only if the family of set theories were uniquely subject to the Incompleteness Theorems.
V A second look at the
First Incompleteness Theorem
Let me conclude by stating the First Incompleteness
Theorem correctly, in its most radical form, so that it is
tied to no particular formalism or formulation of logic, and
to no particular notion of proof. To do that it will be nee·
essary to look briefly at its proof. Goedel's original argument, which is important, is widely regarded as utterly
mysterious. From this apparent mysteriousness the Incompleteness Theorems derive some of their cachet. I
shall outline a different proof, which shows that the Incompleteness Theorems can be understood as facts about
mechanical procedures.
In 1936, A. M. Turing produced a precise definition of
the notion of "algorithm", or "computing rule" by defin·
ing a kind of paradigm computing agent (now called a
Turing machine). Turing machines can work in any symbolism you like and on any problem you like. We may as
well stick to machines that work on numerical problems.
Machines can provide solutions to calculating problems in
two ways-by decision procedures and by listings. Consider
the problem of determining which numbers are even
numbers. A decision procedure for the property "even
number" works like this: We hand our imaginary computer the name, in some specified notation, of a number;
it calculates awhile and then answers yes or no, according
as the number is even or not. It always answers and always
answers correctly. A listing of the property "even number"
works differently: We sit in front of the computer and
watch it. From time to time it writes down, in some specified notation, the name of a number. Only the names of
69
�even numbers appear in the list, and sooner or later the
name of every even number appears in the list.
There is no general procedure for turning a listing machine into a deciding machine (which might lead one to
suspect, correctly, that some listable properties are not decidable). Suppose I want decisions about the evenness of
6 and 7, and try to use the listing machine to get them. I
sit and wait. Eventually "6" turns up, at which point I
know that the decision about 6 is "yes." I'm still waiting,
but there has been no "7". I can never safely conclude
"no," because, for all I know, were I to wait just a little
longer 7 might turn up in the list.
"Evenness", of course, has both listing and deciding
machines, but there are indeed properties which can be
listed yet not decided. One example is the property of
"being a computer program that will run successfully." If
that were decidable (in some efficient way) life would be a
lot simpler. A Russian mathematician, Juri Matijasevic,
proved in 1971 that there is a listable but undecidable
property P of the following remarkably simple kind: For a
certain (polynomial) equation with "x" among its unknowns, x has property P (from now on, abbreviated
"P(x)"), if there are integer solutions for the other unknowns. That is, P(x) looks like the following assertion,
which I'll temporarily call R(x): There are integers y and z
for which 3xy + 2y2 + x2z +I ~ 0. So that 2 has property R
(or, for short, "R(2)") if and only if there are integers y and
z for which 6y + 2y2 +4z +I ~0.
Here is an outline for a proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem which, in a sense, only restates the fact that
there are such simple undecidable properties. Officially
we are proving a theorem about PM, but to show how
general the proof is, I will point out the only two facts
about PM which will be appealed to. The first is this:
(l) PM can "express" some undecideable
property~e.g.,
the
P(x) mentioned above. (From now on this will be abbreviated
as: PM is sufficiently strong.)
It takes a little effort to say just what "expressing" is.
For example, "+" does not happen to be one of the signs
of PM, but is instead defined in terms of others. So our
rendering of P(x) into the language of PM will be a little
indirect. That, however, is a minor point and will be ignored. I will suppose that the arithmetical signs we ordinarily use do appear in the formal language, so that "P(x)",
"P(O)", "P(l)", etc. occur both in English and in our formal
language. More important is the question: What does it
mean to say that some formula in a formal theory "expresses" the (English-language) notion P(x)? We can put
our rather weak requirement this way: Whatever PM happens to prove about the property is true. More exactly,
should the string of symbols for P(l7) occur among the
theorems of PM, then the English sentence P(17) is true,
which is to say that a certain equation with coefficient 17
has integer solutions. Should "not P(l7)" occur among the
theorems of PM, then we require that P(l7) be false. Weak
70
as this assumption is, we could get by with much less. If a
theory of arithmetic lacked the means to write down simple equations, or had the means but proved falsehoods
about them, it would not be of much use. So, for our purposes, this restriction is no restriction at all. The only theories of interest are those which are sufficiently strong.
The other thing we need to know about PM is this:
(2) The property of "being a theorem of PM" is listable.
For our purposes this is no restriction either, because it
turns out that (2) is a consequence of:
(2 ') The property of "being a proof in PM" is decideable.
I have already argued that a theory is of no use for theorizing if we cannot decide what counts as a proof.
The First Incompleteness Theorem says:
Any sufficiently strong, listable theory is incomplete.
Therefore no useful theory-PM, axiomatic arithmetic,
set theory-is complete; no useful theory can even settle
all the simple questions of elementary arithmetic.
To see the extreme generality of this it might be better
to replace the word "theory" by something like "recordable mathematical activity." We need assume nothing
about symbolism, logic, or the nature of the proofs that result from this activity, except that the activity can treat of
simple equations, and that a machine can decide whether
the record of some bit of activity counts as a proof.
The proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem is a
proof by contradiction. Assuming first that PM is listable,
I will describe a mechanical procedure (from now on to be
called M) which is an attempt at a decision procedure for
Matijasevic's property P. That is, the inputs to M will be
natural numbers and the outputs ''yes" and "no". We
know that there can be no decision procedure for P. That
is, for some input M must either give the wrong answer or
fail to give any answer at all. On the other hand, from the
assumptions that PM is sufficiently strong and complete
it will follow that M is a decision procedure for P, and
therefore at least one of the three assumptions "listable,
sufficiently strong, complete" is false. Having established
that we have established the First Incompleteness
Theorem.
Here is procedure M: Handed an input, say 17, turn on
the machine which lists the theorems of PM. If "P(l7)"
ever appears on the list, output "yes"; and if "not P(l7)"
appears, output "no".
Suppose now that PM is sufficiently strong. Then procedure M, whenever it does give an answer, gives the
right answer. Suppose further that PM is complete. Then
procedure M always yields an answer, because one or the
other of "P(l7)", "not P(l7)" is a theorem of PM and is
therefore bound to turn up in the list. It follows (from all
these assumptions) that M is a decision procedure for P.
AUTIJMN 1981
�That concludes the proof of the First Incompleteness
Theorem. (By juicing this up a little bit we can exhibit
a particular instance of property P which is independent
of PM.)
It might seem that this proof merely transfers the burden
onto the shoulders of Mr. Matijasevic, with his magical
property P. In fact, simpleminded undecideable properties are not hard to find. I chose property P only because it
seems evident that any self.respecting theory ought to be
able to express it.
We can easily tidy up the last loose end by showing why
(2') guarantees (2)-why the theorems of PM are listable.
A proof is a finite sequence of signs from the language of
PM. We therefore begin with a machine that lists all finite
sequences of signs of PM. (It is left to the reader to build
such a machine for himself.) This machine feeds its output to a proof checking machine. (Here is where we make
use of (2').) The proof checker decides which of those sequences are proofs and feeds the legitimate proofs to a
third machine; and that one writes down for us the proposition that each proof proves.
(Note: The First Incompleteness Theorem is itself
proved by elementary means. Although the hypothesis
"PM is sufficiently strong" cannot be so established, the
incompleteness of PM follows from that hypothesis by a
long chain of reasonings of the most elementary sort.)
Goede!' s own interpretation of his work is in some ways
quite cautious: Hilbert's Program has not necessarily been
shown to be impossible, because the notion of "elementary means of proof' is vague.
.
In other ways Goedel's interpretation is breathtaking:
Notice, he says, that the argument of the paper has resulted in a curious situation. Having shown that a certain
proposition {CON, let's say) is undecidable in PM, we
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
have nonetheless been able to determine that it is true.
That is, we have been able to appeal to a standard of truth
and falsity independent of the notions of provability and
refutability in PM. What could be the basis of such a standard of truth? Here Goede! reaches back to one of the
most ancient answers of all-to an independent, extramental world of mathematical objects. We believe in tables and chairs because we see no other way to make
sense of our sensible experience. Goede! feels equally
compelled, in order to make sense of his "mathematical
experience", to believe in the objects of mathematics.
Along this line of argument Goede! has few followers.
Aside from its philosophical difficulties, Goedel's view
must face a fact of our recent mathematical experience:
CON is a proposition which has been cooked up in order
to be undecidable. When we consider those set-theoretically undecidable propositions which have simply been
stumbled upon in the course of doing mathematics, we almost invariably find that we have no idea how to resolve
them or where to look for relevant "evidence."
What, then, do the Incompleteness Theorems say? As
soon as we get beyond the bounds of mere calculation, as
soon as we allow ourselves to enquire whether something
is so not merely for this or that number, but "for every
number"-we can no longer appeal to any systematic
method for obtaining answers. No improvements in mathematics or philosophy can get around that fact.
Philosophy is called on for a clarification-not to discover the address at which the numbers reside (or, perhaps, their convenience mail drop), but rather to give an
account of what we can justifiably mean by those problem-producing generalizations over the (infinite) domain
of numbers. To speak in a slightly loose and pre-Fregean
way: We need an account of the word "all".
71
�Philosophy and Spirituality in Plotinus
Bruce Venable
1 Knowledge as unity with God
The essential insight of Plotinus and, for us, the central
problem in studying the Enneads is that in them the practice of philosophy and the desire for mystical experience
are inseparable. For Plotinus, a philosophy that does not
culminate in mystical experience is an empty speculation;
the most justly celebrated passages of the Enneads, those
that have caused them to be read and cherished, are those
in which, after many pages of arduous dialectic, technical
distinctions, and dense argumentation, he summons the
reader to the state of serene union with God that fulfills
and transcends them. He felt, however, that a personal
religion that strives for mystical experiences without
grounding itself in philosophy is likely to degenerate or go
astray, like the Gnostics, into melodramatic fantasies and
delusions of cheap salvation. For those who regard philos·
ophy or, if you like, science and religion as independent of
one another their mutual dependence in the Enneads
must seem very strange and might seem even to invalidate them both because Plotinus presents neither a coherent rational philosophy nor a genuine piety, but only an
unsatisfactory muddle of the two.
In what sense is philosophy the necessary preparation
for mystical experience? In what sense is mystical experience the necessary culmination of philosophy?
Those acquainted with medieval scholasticism should
be advised that I shall not discuss this interdependence in
the form most familiar to them: the attempt to reconcile
faith and revealed religion with reason and philosophy.
The problem as it appears, for example, in the first question of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas
does not appear in the Enneads for two characteristic reasons: Plotinus recognizes neither divine revelation nor an
Bruce Venable is at work on a study of Nco-Platonic spirituality. A tutor
at Sante Fe, he delivered this essay as a lecture at St. John's College in
Annapolis on October 22, 1976, and at St. John's College in Santa Fe on
November 5, 1976.
72
independent science of theology UJ1der which the various
claims of revelation and philosophy are reconciled.
The strangeness of Plotinus' view can be somewhat dissipated if we try to peer beyond the fantastic formal complications of the Plotinian system in order to isolate the
ultimate or highest state of existence envisaged by that
system, briefly, a state of unconditioned unity and freedom. It appears in the Enneads twice: as the Good or the
One that is the unknowable first cause in metaphysics,
and again as the self that is the hidden center of the soul.
These two are very similar, if not identical, because, for
Plotinus, to ascend in thought above all created things to
a contemplation of the One is also to descend within the
soul to the hidden depths of the self. Furthermore, just as
a person does not view his self, but rather comes to exist
at that fundamental level, so also a person does not have a
vision of the One, but is rather unified with it. Returning
upon oneself is returning upon one's first cause and in at~
taining to this cause, one meets no stranger, but one's
very self.
Anyone who makes these assertions would consider
religion and philosophy inseparable and even very similar
to each other. But these assertions are rather strange.
Even setting the One aside for a moment as the mystery it
properly is, what about this notion of the self? Where does
it come from, what does it mean, and do we need it at all?
Plotinus, who was perhaps the first philosopher to feel the
need of such a concept of the self, frequently distinguishes the self as more inclusive and elementary than the
soul. The soul means the conscious activities, the acquired traits and personality, as well as the latent contents
and unconscious powers of the intellect, emotions, and
perceptions. The self means something both more primitive and more exalted than the soul. Not acquired or augmented by experience, education, or practice, it does not
present itself directly in any conscious activity, although it
supports and unifies them; the inclusive totality of the
psychic contents and powers, it is also independent of
them, isolated and aloof, unmanifested, unknowable, and
AUTUMN 1981
�unique. It is freedom. When the soul is free, it has withdrawn itself from its conscious life, its scattered thoughts
and feelings, its activities projected outward into the
world, and has gathered its powers into a motionless inward concentration. When it emerges again, the soul rea].
izes that all the goods which previously it sought outside
of itself belong to it naturally, eternally, are proper and intrinsic to itself. The soul is happy.
This description makes it clear that the self, as Plotinus
conceives it, is very similar to the One. It also makes clear
why union with the self will be union with the One. But
why did Plotinus use or even perhaps invent such a concept of the unknown self that is similar to God, when he
had already at hand the perfectly useful notion of the observed soul that is certainly not similar to God? If he had
not used this concept of the self he might have avoided
his confusion, perhaps an accidental one, between philosophy and religion.
Plotinus was certainly impelled by intimate religious desires to create and teach his philosophy. The fervor of his
desire for God is manifest in the Enneads, but something
of its inner meaning has not been shared with us. Because
he expressed his religious desires in the external form of a
philosophy that was in constant conversation with his
great precedessors in the Greek tradition, we can, by reexamining some relevant aspects of that more familiar or
less esoteric tradition, see the innovations of Plotinus in at
least the intellectual context in which he himself considered them and found them necessary. Because of his insistence on the mutual dependence of philosophy and religion,
Plotinus never teaches any religious doctrine, however
intimate its origins, that he would not be prepared to explain, amplify, defend, and fight for on purely philosophical grounds.
There was no philosopher with whom Plotinus' conver·
sation was more intimate than Aristotle. I shall begin,
therefore, with that strange passage in De anima book
three, chapter five that has caused commentators so
much vexation and disappointment.
Aristotle says that in every nature there is something
that is its matter; this is passive and receptive and becomes all the forms of that kind of being. There is also an
active or productive cause that makes all these forms in
the passive matter. It is necessary that these two exist also
in the soul: there is an intellect that makes all the forms
(of knowiedge, presumably) and an intellect that receives
or becomes these forms. The active or productive inte].
lect is like light which makes potential colors actual colors-the light that makes them visible and actually seen.
This active intellect is "separable, impassive, and unmixed." This means that the active intellect is independent of the body. Of these two intellects, Aristotle says,
the potential or passive intellect, which receives the forms
of knowledge, is temporally prior, but only in the individual; in general, the active intellect is prior. This is more
difficult to explain. The first clause seems to mean that in
each individual person, the potential for knowing exists
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
before any actual knowledge. But to say that in general
this is not so seems to imply that there is some other, nonhuman, intellect. Many ancient commentators said, therefore, that Aristotle here refers to the divine intellect.
The view that Aristotle does mean the divine intellect
gains support from his following remark that there is an
active intellect that is eternally thinking; or, as he puts it,
"it does not think sometimes and sometimes not think."
But what follows is again more puzzling: "only when it is
separated is it just what it is and this alone is immortal and
eternal." If ''separated" means "separated from the
human body," then Aristotle refers here to the destiny of
the active intellect of every individual person after the
death of the body. What follows seems to confirm this:
"But we don't remember because the active intellect is
impassible, but the passive intellect is mortal." The most
obvious interpretation of this sentence-although I don't
suppose that its being obvious must necessarily be held to
recommend it-is that every human soul contains two
intellects, an active and a passive; that only the active intellect is immortal, but that this active intellect, when liberated by death from the body, has no personal memory
of ourselves because it cannot receive the impression of
anything merely temporal and transitory, but on\y makes
universal ideas or concepts; the passive intellect does
receive the experiences of ordinary life and is related to
what we should call our personality; but this intellect
perishes along with the body. Thus there would be no personal immortality.
This interpretation was popular enough in antiquity to
cause it widely to be believed that Aristotle denied the
survival after death of any personal consciousness. Aris·
totle appeared to many as an enemy of the hopes for the
afterlife expressed in the Phaedo and the Republic.
This interpretation was not, however, without its opponents, who insisted that by the active intellect Aristotle
means the divine intellect. Many of these commentators
identified the active intellect with the thought of the unmoved mover which eternally thinks only itself. In support
of this identification, they argued that it was impossible to
imagine that Aristotle refers to any human intellect when
he says that the active intellect thinks eternally. But if this
chapter of the De anima concerns the divine intellect
rather than the human intellect, other commentators
wondered why it appears in Aristotle's book on psychology rather than in his books on metaphysics or theology.
So problems remain.
My only reason for discussing what Aristotle means in
this difficult chapter at all is to locate Plotinus in the con·
text of the problems that this chapter caused for ancient
philosophers: the possibility of something like God in the
human soul. It is easy in this context to combine or confuse metaphysics and psychology, as Plotinus seems often
to do. Perhaps it will be possible to combine or confuse
metaphysics and religion as well.
One of the most notorious interpretations of this passage
in the De anima is that of Averroes, an Arabic philosopher
73
�who lived in twelfth-century Spain. Averroes decided that
the active intellect is divine, universal, and immortal,
while the passive intellect is human, individual, and does
not survive the death of the body. An individual human
intellect actually knows only when it is illuminated by the
active intellect, passively receiving from it the forms, essences, or definitions of the things eternally known by the
active intellect. The human intellect is the mere disposition to receive intelligible objects and to suffer knowledge
to occur in it. Knowledge is not an act of the human intellect, because that intellect is purely passive, but only an
event that happens in and to the intellect. The human
person is a particular individual, but knowledge itself remains universal. Nevertheless, the individual's experience
of knowledge is a kind of contact with God. Because, however, the passive disposition of the human intellect perishes with the body, there can be no personal immortality,
no eternal life with God. In the language of religion, the
human individual is of no eternal significance and cannot
be saved. It is passive, transient, and helpless. There is a
conflict between the conclusions of philosophical psychology and the word of God as revealed in the Koran
which proclaims salvations and teaches personal immortality.
The consequences of this interpretation seemed intolerable to St. Thomas Aquinas, writing about a century
later, and he wrote a commentary on the De anima to
prove that the interpretation of Averroes was not in fact
the doctrine of Aristotle. He asked: If, as Averroes, says,
there is no individual active intellect, what sense does it
make to say "This individual person knows"? No sense at
all, St. Thomas thought. He maintained against Averroes
that, distinct from the divine intellect, every human soul
contains an active intellect as well as a passive intellect.
The passive intellect receives from the senses the images
of perceptible things; the active intellect, by its natural
power, extracts from these images their intelligible forms,
essences, or definitions. The active intellect is said to
"spiritualize" the images. In St. Thomas' reconcilation of
the psychology of Aristotle with the teachings of revealed
religion, the active intellect is spiritual in its essence:, sur-
vives the death of the body, and is immortal.
What, according to these interpretations of Averroes
and St. Thomas, is the relation between the individual
soul and the divine truth? Despite the differences between these two interpretations, this relation for both of
them is extrinsic or external. In neither interpretation is
the act of knowledge a co-operation or conversation between the soul and the truth.
For Averroes, the soul is completely passive; it receives
the illumination of the active intellect and experiences
knowledge, but remains, nonetheless, unchanged, without any intelligible content or intellectual power of its
own. The soul receives the truth as an inspired prophet
receives the divine revelation, as a free gift of a God who
exceeds the human capacity to imagine his purposes.
Because the soul is completely passive, it is not trans-
74
formed by the truth, nor can the truth save it, because it
has no immortal part.
For St. Thomas, it is of the soul's destiny and inherent
power to know the divine truth. But the soul constructs
this truth for itself, rather than receiving it from God. The
soul does not require the direct intervention of the divine
intellect to experience knowledge because the soul has an
autonomous and immanent power to know the divine
truth. This situation implies, however, that the soul is isolated; it does not meet, in the act of knowledge, any divine
being, power, or operation. Again, the act of knowledge,
and therefore philosophy, is without religious significance
for personal salvation. Also, as in the theory of Averroes,
knowledge has no specifically individual content. Although
the senses have particular experiences, the active intellect
extracts a uri!versal meaning from them. Individual salvation, therefore, according to St. Thomas, is conferred
upon the soul by an external donation of grace. Although
there is a cognitive content to this.salvation, it is incomprehensible to the human intellect unaided by grace. For
St. Thomas, as for Averroes, the soul, empty and helpless,
must accept its hope of salvation from divine revelation
alone. There is no continuity between its experience in
knowledge of the universal truth and its private desire in
religious feeling for a personal God.
St. Thomas and Averroes sought to resolve, perhaps
successfully, the conflicts that appeared to remain between philosophical psychology and personal religion.
The success of these efforts is not important here, for
these theories are far from anything that happens in the
Enneads. Averroes and St. Thomas begin with a stark contrast and separation of the human and divine intellects;
Plotinus regards them as connatural: of the same nature
and inseparable, they always act simultaneously. He considers human perfection to be a sharing in the divine act
of knowing but he does not want to have anything to do
with grace. Perfection must be real elevation of psychic
life to a higher act of existence, but must not be given to
the soul as something extrinsic to it. Perfection must be
internal and personal, it must be a discovery of and a
proper act of the self. It must also be divine; it must be
contact and union with God.
The difficulty of attaining perfection or even of describing it appears already in Aristotle: there seems to be no internal continuity between the individual human soul and
the universal divine intellect; there seems, therefore, to
be no way for the soul to share in the divine existence
without abandoning its own. In the passage from the De
anima Aristotle never says that he is discussing the divine
intellect, but he must mean the divine intellect when he
says that the active intellect thinks eternally, for surely no
human intellect can be said to think eternally.
With his usual taste for radical solutions, Plotinus says
that the human soul does indeed think eternally. Does
this mean that the human intellect shares what would
seem to be an exclusively divine power? How can an infinite divine power be present in a finite being without
AU1UMN 1981
�compromising the absolute distinction between God and
the soul (a distinction that Averroes and St. Thomas presuppose)? How can one resolve the problems of knowledge,
as posed by. Aristotle in the De anima, as the relation between the active and the passive intellects, without isolating the soul from God and without separating philosophy
from the practice of religion, as Averroes and St. Thomas
did? We seem to have either tgo much unity between
God and the soul or else not enough.
The ordinary philosophical question "How does the
soul get its ideas?" can develop convolutions that involve
the entire destiny of the soul and the religious problems
that surround that destiny. The soul has to be in contact
with God in order to have knowledge at all, but this contact with God threatens to engulf and dissolve the soul in
the ocean of the divine being.
2 Existence as unity with God
I now turn to the question of unity from a metaphysical
point of view, rather than from the point of view of knowledge and its possibility. The question of unity again develops consequences for personal religion and spirituality. It
will be seen again, I hope, that the distinction between
what happens inside the soul and what happens outside
of it becomes vague.
The Pannenides raises the problem of the participation
of material objects in their common, immaterial form.
The problem is seen there as an antinomy of immanence
and transcendence. If the many particular objects truly
participate in the single form, the form becomes immanent in them and is infected with their plurality; if they
partake of the form, they seem to take parts of it, to divide
it, and so do not all have a share of the same integral form
and so cannot all be called by its single name. Yet if the
form remains intact, if it remains untouched by, aloof
from, and transcendent to, the particular objects, it seems
that the particulars cannot participate in it at all.
The philosopher has two problems here: he wants the
form to be transcendent to the particular objects, single
and undivided, because he wants the form to be the authentic, unchanging object of knowledge, distinct from
the uncertain and changing appearances of the particulars, which can be the object only of opinion. At the same
time, however, or perhaps not quite at the same time, he
wants the form to be in some sense the cause of the particulars. This demand seems, however, to imply some contact between the form and the particulars that will violate
the integrity of the form as an object of knowledge.
This antinomy quickly became a traditional point of
argument in ancient philosophy. Most schools maintained
against the Platonists that the forms were in some way
immanent, or embedded, in the material particulars; the
Platonists strove to preserve the integrity and dignity and
the forms by keeping them separate from the sadness and
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
disorder of the material world. One typical gesture in this
direction was the view that the forms were the thoughts
of the divine intellect, the paradigms that guide its creation of the material world.
Eager to affirm the primacy of unity at all levels, Plotinus
would have inclined, as his theory of emanation suggests,
to a theory whereby the particulars, produced immediately by their causes, retain contact with them. His religious language, however, constantly exhorts one to flee
the confusions of this lower world for the true visions and
delights of a divine world somewhere "higher" and certainly separate from this one. The dilemma about unity
looks this way in Plotinus: how can the divine power
create and sustain the sensible world without (l) compromising its own transcendence and unity or (2) destroying
the real multiplicity and diversity of the sensible world?
Either the divine power will be dissipated in the world or
the world will be completely reabsorbed into the monochromatic unity of the greater power that creates it.
Plotinus devotes two long tractiltes to this technically
complex problem. He begins by attacking the Stoics who,
like him, were monists~people who emphasized the unity
of all things, but who, unlike Plotinus, were materialists.
The Stoics tried to solve the antinomy of transcendence
and immanence by making the world-soul present at
every point of the material universe. They diffused the intelligent, creative divine power throughout the world.
Plotinus objects that (l) the divine power is thus thought
of as material and that (2) it loses its unity with itself
because it is spread around on or in other material objects.
(Nothing will make Plotinus accept materialism: he thinks
it degrading. Some of the peculiarity of his own theory of
matter is due to this feeling.) Plotinus further objects that
the Stoic solution is impossible because two separate material things cannot participate in each other, they only
muddle together and lose their mutual independence. If
the world-soul is material, as the Stoics held, then the material world cannot participate in it at all. The world-soul
is left without any power to create or direct it. The objections of Plotinus to the materiality of the world-soul recall
the objections to Averroes' doctrine of the active intellect:
it abolishes the necessary distinctions between the creator
and the created.
The later Neoplatonists such as Proclus betray a desire
similar to St. Thomas Aquinas' in his doctrine of active intellect. They sought to preserve the dignity and integrity
of the transcendent form while allowing the immanent
form to govern the particulars, by distinguishing simply
and sharply between the transcendent forms in the divine
intellect, calling them unparticipated forms, and the
forms immanent in particular material things. The Neoplatonists had nevertheless to explain the real relation between the immanent forms and the transcendent form,
but not, of course, as participation. In their efforts to explain this relation they multiply distinct terms in a relation and then seek to justify their logical continuity~a
procedure that contrasts strikingly with Plotinus' method
75
�of establishing continuity between the transcendent form
and the material particulars.
I call Plotinus' solution the theory of integral omnipres·
ence. Typically, Plotinus accepts everyone's terms and
seeks to solve everyone's difficulties by comprehending
them in a universal theory that explains not only how
things are but also why other philosophers have the par·
tial and therefore false views of things that they do have.
It is a theory of consciousness, of attitudes and knowledge, as well as a theory of metaphysics, i.e., a theory
about the objects of consciousness. First, the metaphysi·
cal side of the theory because it is slightly less paradoxical
than the theory of consciousness, and because this order
provides an edifying climax.
The theory of integral omnipresence is a characteristic
expression of Plotinus' intuition of the universe as a single
spiritual life. In his philosophy, the distinctions of a static
structure of reality were overlaid and dominated by the
notion that this structure is in fact a dynamic interrela·
tionship of spiritual forces. The notion of life as a power
of self-movement and transformation prevails over the no-
tion of existence as formed and completed. Being is pri·
marily power and activity and only secondarily, form and
hypostasis (6.4.9, 23-25).
For Plotinus a form in the divine intellect is a radiance
or a power, illuminating and actualizing the particulars,
rather than an archetype or paradigm separate from them.
The transcendent form is universally present in particular
qualities. Conversely, the particular quality acts as the
form, locally present, although with diminished strength
and intensity. For example, the white color throughout a
bowl of milk is also the white color in two different bowls
of milk, because color is a quality not a quantity and,
therefore, has no parts (IV.2.l; IV.3.2). In more modern
terms, Plotinus equates the intension of a quality, its defi·
nition, with its extension, its range of application.
If the form in the divine intellect is omnipresent in its
spatially-separated and material manifestations, does this
presence not make the form itself spatial and material? If
so, Plotinus will have failed in his attempt to outflank
Stoic cosmology while retaining its dynamic character.
Plotinus attempts therefore to purify his notion of crea·
tion and created diversity from all spatial references, correcting thereby the materialistic implications of his own
imagery of emanation by which he represents the diffusion of infinite creative power into successively' lower and
weaker, but more determinate, forms of existence, desending at last to visible and tangible matter. He takes up
his own imagery and revises it carefully to remove from it
every spatial or material reference.
For clarity's sake the argument has often tried to lead the
mind to understand the origin of multiplicity by making an
image of many radii emanating from a single center. (cf.
5.1.!1, !0-!5). But one must add to this image the idea that
the radii become many while remaining together. One removes, as it were, the lengths of the radii and considers only
76
their extremities, lying at the center, where they are all one.
Again, if you add the lengths again, each radius will touch the
center still. Nevertheless (despite the length of the radii), the
several extremities at the center will not be separated from
the primary center but will be simultaneous with it. The
centers will appear to be as many as the radii which they
touch, but they remain all together. If, therefore, we liken all
the intelligible forms to many centers related to and unified
in one center, but appearing many because of their radii (although the radii do not generate the centers, but only reveal
where they are), let the radii be analogous to the material
things which, when the intelligible form touches them, make
the form appear to be multiple and to be present in many
places. (6.5.5)
In this chapter he uses a spatial image to express a
dynamic notion of causality: the generation of multiple
beings as distinct forces emanating from a single source of
creative power. Plotinus then carefully revises the image
in order to remove from it every spatial or material sugges·
tion: he strives to represent direction without quantity
and forces without a space across which they are extended.
Multiplied and diversified, the power of the creative
cause remains (paradoxically) concentrated and undiffer·
entiated in the cause. The diversity of the created world is
simultaneous with the simplicity of its cause, but utterly
distinct from it because each created being takes a direc·
tion in which it is manifested spatially and materially,
whereas the single cause is free from every specification
and limitation. The relation between cause and effect is
asymetrical; the cause has a transcendent existence be·
cause it is not exhausted in its relation to its effects: the
effects are completely defined by their dependence upon
their cause and their limited and local appearance in the
sensible world. This asymetrical relation is eternal and can
never be reversed. The primacy of the first cause lies in its
infinity and power which contrasts with the structured di·
versity of its effects.
This discussion shows one reason for introducing this
new theory. If all individuals, even the archetypes in the
divine intellect, are not constantly present to their trans·
cendent cause, the One, they will be separated from it
and deprived of its power. They will have no power of
self-subsistence and would perish as heat fades when fire
withdraws. Their death would leave the One as the single,
universal being, the imperishable substrate of its transitory
modes or emanations. A further consequence of particu·
Jar interest is that there could be no personal immortality
of the soul.
Plotinus offers this theory as a solution to the pantheis·
tic and monistic dilemmas encountered by his predeces·
sors. Nevertheless, one must admit that in seeking to solve
all possible difficulties he has invented a theory t)lat is far
stranger than anything his predecessors even imagined.
(I hope that you do not think that I am approaching my
subject frivolously. I have been provoked to this some·
what unscholarly fashion of speech in order to set the
problems aroused by a prolonged study of Plotinus in all
AUTUMN 1981
�their immediacy. Many scholars will blandly present a
bizarre theory like the present one without a hint of why
Plotinus should have desired it at all, without explaining
what sort of satisfaction he might have taken in it.)
The weirdest aspect of this theory is that it seems to
disregard matter entirely. Plotinus was ready for this objection. He points out that the greatest obstacle to understanding his theory is the persistent human weakness that
remains convinced, despite his many demonstrations to
the contrary, that the visible world is real and that consequently the intelligible world must be extended in space
to form and govern it (6.4.2, 28-43). He insists that the
material world is specious, the last feeble manifestation of
intelligible power in the blank and insubstantial substrate
of matter. This manifestation is appropriate only to the
most feeble exercise of thought: the naive opinion that
takes things for what they only seem to be.
Let me hasten to add that Plotinus does not deny that
matter is somehow real; he merely insists that its reality is
not intelligible in itself, but only with reference to the
divine intelligible power that creates, informs, and sustains it and with reference also to the power of human intellect that beholds it and seems to penetrate its deceptive
appearance. Matter is an illusion only in the sense that it
is the most diffused appearance of the divine thought
which recognizes it not as delusion or falsity, but as its
own exuberance and self-revelation. For Plotinus, all mere
existence (for the One is beyond existence) is appearance,
a real apparition of divine energy, in a particular intelligible, psychic, or material form, relative to the level of
consciousness that is able to perceive and understand it.
He insists only that the reality of these appearances is not
in themselves but in their cause because reality means in~
telligibility. All levels of reality are strictly relative to the
levels of consciousness-perception, emotion, discursive
knowledge, pure contemplation-which apprehend them.
The soul ascends to a higher level of reality as it attains to
a higher level of consciousness: the soul ascends to God as
it attains a divine power of thought. A topography of salvation is completely internalized.
This kind of thinking is unfamiliar to us and even Flolinus' contemporaries seem to have been puzzled by it.
Why does Plotinus want to think and talk this way?
Plotinus concludes from the immateriality of the intelligible world that whatever is able to participate in it, participates in it as a whole. Where there is no question of
extension or magnitude, whatever is present to any. must
be present to all (6.4.2, 43-49). The truth of this inference
is easy to see in the case of demonstrative knowledge
which, if it is to be genuine, universal knowledge, must be
the same for all human intellects, despite the differences
in human personalities. Plotinus' idea is another form of
the Aristotelian theorem that the intellect in act is identical with the intelligible in act. If individual intellects know
the identical object of knowledge, they must each become
it identically. Plotinus, therefore, says that participation in
knowledge, in the divine intellect, is identical because
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
knowledge, being immaterial, is equally present to all intellects that know it. The object of knowledge, likewise, is
equally available to any intellect that turns its attention towards it and becomes present to every intellect in proportion to its individual ability. to know it. But the differences
among actually attained knowledges are all on the side of
the individual human intellects; the divine intellect is
equally present to all. But this truth is not too obvious in
the case of existential participation, e.g. human participation in the divine virtues. Why, one may object, does this
participation not also appear uniform? Why in fact does it
appear to be wildly diverse, there being perhaps not a
single form-justice or beauty, for example-that appears
to be evenly distributed in the world? Plotinus answers
that there are manifest degrees of participation because
they correspond to the differing abilities of created things
to accept the impression of the form whose power is
nonetheless present and available to it (6.4.8, 39-40; 11,
3-5). These varying abilities to participate correspond in
turn to different intensities of the desire to receive the
quality or form (5.3.17, 28-32; 5.5.8).
Here Plotinus again uses the vocabulary of psychology
in a metaphysical discussion. But Plotinus is not just careless about his vocabulary: he wants the identification or
confusion of metaphysics and psychology to be an explicit
principle of his philosophy. Free will and not existence is
to be its foundation.
Because divine being is omnipresent and because its
presence is realized in the actual existence of each particular being according to the capacity and desire of each to
receive a divine mode of existence, this relation of the
transcendent power and immanent presence of the divine
being will be valid also for the individual soul. Because,
moreover, all divine reality is both intellectual and intelligible (both thinks and is the object of thought), the soul
shares in divine reality through contemplation, both expanding its knowledge and strengthening its power of
thought. The metaphysical interrelation of transcendence
and immanence is the structure of personal salvation. The
soul is elevated through contemplation to a divine and
universal mode of existence without losing its uniqueness
in that greater power. The divine existence appears as the
individual existence without resigning its transcendence.
This development reveals the importance of the idea of
the self as distinct from all the powers and contents of the
soul. (Compare the argumentation throughout 5.3, 3-4).
The human soul and intellect are manifestations of and
participations in the world soul and the divine intellect.
Just as, in the universe, the world soul and the divine intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of the One,
so, in the individual human person, the individual soul
and intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of
the self, superior to them and usually hidden by them.
Further, just as the One generates the world soul and the
divine intellect out of itself but remains unlimited by their
specific natures and undiminished by their specific activities, so the human self is the real source of the individual
77
�soul and intellect, but a source that remains unaffected by
their diverse natures and acts.
The soul is many things and all things, both the things above
and those below down to the limits of all life. We are each one
an intelligible cosmos, touching the lower world by the
powers of the soul belOw, but with our higher powers attain-
ing the entire intelligible realm. We remain with all the rest of
the intelligible above, but by our lowest edge we are bound to
the world below. (3.4.3, 21-27)
Only the attachment of the soul to a material body dulls
its perception of its continued residence in the divine
world. The soul does not literally descend into a body. Its
only descent is ignorance of its divine origin and nature.
Detachment from the body liberates the higher sensibility
and delivers the soul again to its original beatitude. Salvation, the ascent of the soul to divine life, is therefore selfknowledge; salvation is a re-awakening of the soul from
the torpor of incarnate existence to the eternal world of
its origin and its higher, inner, and secret life. Because the
interior cosmos of the soul mirrors the cosmos of the uni-
verse, the life of the philosopher becoming conscious of
himself is an archetypal personal history in which his individual existence is elevated to the status of an archetype
because it is consciously conformed, through his contemplation, to the pattern of universal being, a pattern that is
always present in his soul as an inherent possibility and
power of existence, the power to transform his life in the
image of the divine realities he contemplates.
As a consequence of the theory of integral omnipresence, a general theory of universal being becomes the
equivalent of the practice of the interior life of contemplation. Because of this equivalence, self-knowledge is
knowledge of God; because knowledge of God is salvation, self-knowledge is salvation.
Or is it? The One is unknowable.
But is the One God? Yes.
But is the One present in us, so that knowledge of the
self can be knowledge of the One? Yes. In the first tractate of the fifth Ennead, after outlining his metaphysics,
Plotinus continues:
It has now been shown that we must believe that things are as
follows: there is first the One which is beyond being, as our
discourse tried to demonstrate, so far as it is possible to dem-
onstrate about such things; next there is intellect and then
the soul. As these three exist in nature, so it is necessary to
believe that they exist even in ourselves. I do not mean in the
perceptible parts of ourselves-for these three are incorporeal-but in those parts that Plato calls "the inner man."
Even our soul, then, is a divine thing and of another nature,
such as is the universal nature of soul. (5.1.10, 1-12)
Plotinus says in other passages that we are joined to the
One, that we touch the ultimate Godhead, by a similar
nature in ourselves. He even says at one point, after hav-
ing described the ethical purification he demands as preparation for the contemplation of divine reality, "but our
78
desire is not to be free of sin, but to be God" (1.2.6, 2-3).
What is the meaning of this dark utterance? It is one
thing, and a thing whose meaning has, I hope, become
somewhat clearer in the course of this essay, to say that
the authentic self is an archetype in the divine intellect, a
self that is therefore unique, divine, and immortal; the
self, on this view, is a determinate aspect of the divine wis-
dom, relative to its limited sphere of manifestation in the
created world. But to assert that the One dwells in the self
seems to make an unrestricted claim for the divinity of
the self, seems to abolish the distinction between the
created self and the ultimate source and desire of all
created existence. Furthermore, because the One is said
to be present in every self and in every form in the divine
intellect, it seems that even the distinction between the
One and the divine intellect, so carefully made and so
strenuously defended, would disappear and with this distinction would disappear all rational justification for
created diversity and multiplicity.
The desire of Plotinus to unify metaphysics and personal religion has caused a serious problem.
3 Mystical Unity
I shall proceed obliquely and by negative contrasts. If
we find difficulties in the system as Plotinus presents it,
let us wonder what it would have been like if it were not as
Plotinus presents it. Specifically, if we see problems in the
distinction between the divine intellect and the One and
in the assertion that the soul can be unified mystically
with both of them, let us consider what the system would
look like without these features. I hope by this procedure
to reveal the appetites of Plotinus in making his system
and his satisfaction in it.
If, then, Plotinus had not posited above the divine intellect another deity, incomprehensible in thought, but attainable in an immediate, non-rational union, his religious
aspiration for union with God could still have been satisfied. He already speaks of the divinization. of the soul
through union with the divine intellect (5.8.7, 32-35;
5.8.10, 39-40; 5.8.11). He could have developed this idea
much as Averroes was to do, by making the conjunction
of the human passive intellect with the divine active intellect the goal of all religious and philosophical striving.
Such a theory would, however, have implied a different
notion of the self than that embodied in the system as Plotinus has it. The self for such a theory would be defined
by its being coextensive with the divine intellect as a system of laws, relationships, and pure archetypes of being.
The self would exist insofar as the truth of the divine intellect, its unity as perfect knowledge, is valid. This theory
implies a fundamentally abstract and impersonal view of
being; the self would be a law of knowledge, coextensive
with the divine intellect, rather than a life or a free will.
(Averroes, who professed this view of human beatitude,
found no need for an additional, personal immortality.)
AUTUMN 1981
�Even if this system included within the divine intellect
the forms of human individuals, the self, although imperishable, would still be defined as a unique point of view on
the finite content of the divine intellect. Its desire for
union with God would have no uniquely determined personal significance. Its immortality would be guaranteed by
the conformity of the intellect to the perfect order of the
divine intellect. This order has two essential characteristics: finitude and necessity. The self, in turn, would be
finite and contained by the necessity that governs all intellectual being. The divine intellect would be the single,
final, and absolutely integrated self and the pattern of all
genuine selfhood.
Against or, more accurately, beyond this notion of selfhood and of divinity, Plotinus sets another, for which intellect and consciousness are not the highest values. His
decision to do this sets him apart from his predecessors in
the Greek philosophical tradition. For Plotinus the two
most important personal qualities are freedom and, dependent upon it, love. It is precisely these two qualities,
insignificant in an impersonal notion of selfhood and
divinity, that Plotinus sought to preserve and exalt in the
mysticism that culminates in union with the One.
The basic affirmation of "intellectualistic" mysticism is
that each human individual is an archetype contained in
the divine intellect. Union with the divine intellect elevates the human intellect to the universality of the divine
intellect, but allows no freedom in that unity. If the self is
preserved as an eternal mode, moment, or aspect of the
divine intellect, its existence is limited and determined by
the necessary causal dependence that creates and maintains it. Such a self is not free and its personal religious
aspirations are ultimately irrelevant because that self will
cease to exist as separate. The intellect sees the One as
the supreme object of metaphysical speculation. Personal
religion desires not to understand the One, but to be
united with it as the object of its love.
This union of love reveals not only a new aspect of the
God that is loved, but also of the self that loves Him. (In
such descriptions Plotinus uses the masculine pronouns
which name a personal God instead of the more usual
neuter pronouns which name an abstract principle or im-
personal cause.) In this union with a personal God, the
self and its love are experienced as infinite and free. The
desire to experience the native infinity and freedom of the
self, in addition to purely metaphysical reasons, motivates
Plotinus' description of the One as itself (or Himself) infinite and free.
Here ·is a passage from the long and careful discussion
of how the One may be said to be free, in which Plotinus
makes it clear that his doctrine about the One's freedom
implies a similar nature in ourselves, a state of isolation
and self-mastery.
When we say that He (the One) receives nothing into Himself
and that nothing else contains Him, intending to place Him
outside of chance, we mean not only that He is free by reason
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of His attainment of self-unity and purity from all things, but
also that, if we discover a similar nature in ourselves that has
nothing to do with those things which depend upon us and
by which we suffer accident and chance (the body and its
emotions), we mean that by that nature alone we have the
same self-mastery that the One has, the autonomy of the light
that belongs to the Good and is good in actuality, essentially
superior to any intellectual light or goodness. When we ascend into that state and become that light alone, having discarded everything else, what else can we say but that we are
more than (intellectually) free, more than autonomous?
(6.8.15, 8-23)
It would be impossible to state more emphatically that the
discovery of an utterly transcendent God corresponds to
the attainment of a state of personal transcendence that is
the unceasing presence of that God within the self. In
religion, as in metaphysics, there is a union or coincidence
of an immanent power and its transcendent cause.
In this union with God the soul discovers that its deepest ground is not its archetypal being contained in the
divine intellect, that its highest aspiration is not, therefore, to become perfect self-consciousness, omniscence,
and formed existence. Its ultimate uniqueness is a mystery
inaccessible to discursive reason, because its authentic
self is infinite and free. The self is an ideal, a teleological
notion because the self can withdraw itself from its apparent, projected, personality (within whose boundaries it
can have only finite satisfaction) and can thereby discover
its infinity and freedom in union with the infinity and
freedom of the One (6.5.7). The aspiration of the self to
know itself as unique finds its complete satisfaction only
in this union with a God unlimited in activity and uncomprehended by thought. The One is experienced in this
union as one with the deepest point of the self (6.9.11).
But we must return to our problem: how did Plotinus
think that he could get away with this? We must return
because Plotinus himself had no patience with religious
enthusiasm unsupported by philosophy.
Plotinus does not see this problem quite as we do
because he is completely unaffected by incarnational
thinking and probably completely ignorant of it. He
believes that the divine world is omnipresent: its powers
and possibilities underlie every derived existence. The
One is present to the intellect as an innate desire to surpass its self-reflective unity of being and thinking; this
desire, moreover, is prior to the subject-object duality of
intellect precisely because the desire to be at one with
oneself is the presence of the One in the human person as
its innate unity and simplicity. The life of the One persists in the intellect as its inner light which strives to
return from thoughts to its original free and undefined
condition. The One is present everywhere as this spontaneous desire to transcend every internal division, as the
desire of all things for their inherent unity (6.5.1; 6.9.1-2).
Intellect is a principle of diversity and multiplication,
"for intellect is an activity manifest in the expansion of all
things" (3.8.9, 20-33). The One is an act of contraction of
79
�the soul upon itself, a descent into itself, a negative activity that shrinks from the nullity of phenomena mto the
core of the self. All consciousness IS concentratiOn, a
strengthening of the contemplative power upon the inside of the soul. The One appears as the final event of this
concentration. This state is not an intellectual intuition of
the self nor of an absolute unity, but is a coincidence of
the self with the One, not a coalescence of substances but
a coincidence of activities. In this coincidence neither the
transcendence of the One nor the dependence of the self
as created are violated.
Plotinus often recalls the language of the Symposium
when describing this union (1.6.7; 6.7.22; 6.7.34-35). Plato
interpreted erotic passion as the vehicle of personal transcendence into the world of true bemg because eros discovers and actualizes the likeness of the soul to that world.
The sequence of transcendences that conducts the soul to
a final vision of the forms and contact with the truth IS
described in the Symposium as an ascending dialectic of
desire stimulated and desire fulfilled, of beauty perceived
and beauty attained, of love aroused by vision and love at
rest in its object. Plotinus makes one significant addition,
speaking of "beauty perceived and beauty acquired" as
the contemplative soul affectively mmors the dlVlne perfections it beholds. The soul actualizes its visions as
deeper levels of its own virtual existence. Therefore the
dialectic of love in Plotinus culminates not m VISIOn but m
union. But it is a union of lovers that does not obliterate
their distinction, for that would obliterate also their love,
but causes them to forget the distance between them.
This union is two-fold: because it is an attainment of
the authentic self, it occurs within the boundaries of the
soul but because it is union with the One, it is also a certain'transcendence of the soul's individuality. This union
is the mystical counterpart of the metaphysical theory of
integral omnipresence and is a particular application of It.
The One is transcendent because it is the efficient cause
of the lower forms of existence which proceed from it; yet
as their final cause it is immanent in its effects because
they can return to it only by enfolding and concentrating
their activity around the center of their own existence.
Transcendence corresponds to the desire stimulated by
one's unattained good; immanence corresponds to the
tranquil possession of one's good as the part and activity
of one's own self. The soul is not poor: its best part, its
innermost self, is already somehow transcendent (3.5.3,
25-26). The soul does not need to become divine by grace
because its deepest point is already God.
We must put aside all else to remain in that Alone and to
become it, discarding all other attachments. We are impatient
to depart this life and to be free of it so that we may be enfolded upon our own entirety and have no part in us but ~hat
through which we have contact with God. Then it is possible
to see Him and one's self together, insofar as one may speak
80
any longer of vision. It is a vision of a self resplendent, full of
intellectual light, pure, weightless, lightsome, a self that
~as
become God, or rather that is God always, but only then wtth
its Godhead enkindled. (6.9.9, 50-58)
The spiritual meaning of the theory of integral omnipresence is thus made clear. When the soul is saved, it apprehends and possesses its good, it is assumed into and possessed by the more inclusive existence of its good, but II
has not departed from itself in an ecstasy nor has It received a new self by grace; it has only for the first time
realized the good inherent in itself.
.
This union with the God is both the culmination of philosophy (because philosophical contemplation is the only
valid preparation) and also a transcendence of philosophy
(because the union surpasses and temporanly obliterates
the subject-object duality of all contemplation). Phtlosophy is not a mechanical method that. will inevitably supply
the desired mystical experiences (such a view would
violate the freedom of God); the self must prepare·itself
for these experiences and wait (5.5.8; also 1.6.9; 5.3.17,
28-32; 6.5.12, 29-31). The visions of the sober intellect
are annulled by the experiences of the drunken intellect
in love with God (6.7.35). In this sense philosophy is itself
left behind by religion, although it will again be asked to
interpret the experiences at the essentially inferior level
of thought and speech.
The final personal tr')nsformation is to have one's
desire for God and one's vision of God so cldsely united to
one's essential self that the self becomes the pure mirror
into which the final revelation of God is suspended. The
whole sequence of contemplative vision is accomplished
within the soul as a life of theopathy, suffering the divine,
because the transfiguration of these visions occurs only
for the soul that is transformed by them. The important
factor is the correlation of the real apparition of God to
the soul and the soul's degree of inner association with
God, the degree to which it concentrates and strengthens
its inner light into likeness with God.
The ultimate spiritual attainment of the self and the
form of its salvation coincide with the ultimate manifestation of God. The true self, experienced only in union with
the One, is perfect freedom; the ultimate God, experienced only in union with the self, is pure creative spontaneity. The return of the soul through gradual simplifications of intellectual vision to the motionless self reveals at
the same time that self, in its purity and freedom, as the
only perfect revelation of God.
We have returned to the beginning, we have seen Flolinus' idea of the self, its inseparable connection with his
experience of God, and we have solved all problems. I
hope, finally, that it is clear, through th1s discusswn of the
union of the deepest self with the highest God, how the
entire philosophy of Plotinus is but the preparation and
intimation of the silence of that unimaginable splendor.
AUTUMN
I981
�OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
The Permanent Part
of the College*
By "the permanent part" of the College
in the title of my address, I mean, as you
have probably guessed, you, the alumni.
That is not just an ingratiating way of
speaking devised for the occasion, but it
has some facts in its favor.
Before I explain myself, let me remind
you of an occasion in which many of you
have participated-the president's Senior
Dinner. One part of it that is sometimes
quite moving is the Dean's Toast to theRepublic. If he is feeling thorough, it will
have four parts, ascending in order of
worldly magnitude and then dropping into
intimate immediacy. There will be celebrated the Republic of Plato, which is the
world's first book to set out the program of
a true school, the republic of letters which
is the commonwealth of all those who love
the word, the republic of the United States
of America which is the ground and foundation of our worldly being, and finally, St.
John's College, the living community of
learning.
The question concerning the continuity
of all these commonwealths with each
other, and of each in itself, in other words,
the question in all its range of the continuity of community has always been a preoccupation of mine. As I understand it, it is
an aspect of that question that you, as
alumni, want me to speak about, and I welcome the occasion for becoming clear
about it to myself. So to return to the position of the alumni within the college community.
Consider the students at any time attending the college. Presently they graduate, they go to a first degree of academic
honor and are students in the strict sense
no longer. The Board of the college changes
*Delivered at a gathering of San Francisco area
alumni of St. John's in the fall of 1980.
THE ST.JOHNS REVlEW
all the time; its members have a fairly short
term. Our last president was with us an
amazingly long time-the longest or among
the longest of any twentieth century college president. But he has now sworn not
to set foot on either campus for a year, for
a well-earned period of distance and refreshment. May our new president, whom
you will meet later in the year, be with us
for that length of time which betokens a
good fit!-but it will not be permanently.
And finally, the tutors themselves, who
may seem to you to be truly permanent fixtures at Annapolis and Santa Fe-they too
must retire late in life <!nd become
"emeriti," members of the college by
reason of their meritorious past but now
completed service.
Alumni, on the other hand, are alumni
for good. Their very name proclaims itthey are "nurslings" who have, presumably, absorbed something of the college's
substance. By the college Polity all students, once matriculated, become alumni
of the college, whether they leave with or
without a degree, and no one can retire or
"terminate" them. All other membership
in the college is by choice; that of alumni
alone has in it something analogous to being by nature.
So as nurslings of the institution, alumni
are first of all asked to nourish it in return. I
know very well and have a certain limited
sympathy for the complaint that when the
college communicates with graduates it is
too often about money-exactly the complaint parents have about their student
children. It has to be. Private colleges are
charitable institutions that give their services almost half free. Money-raising is the
price they pay for their freedom to choose
to be what they are. It can be done crudely
or tactfully, but done it must be, by our
president as by all other private school
presidents. Of course, the response is a
matter of choice. That choice may well be
determined not only by a general sense of
responsibility for the continuation of nongovernmental education but also by gratitude. For example, I have a fixed, and fairly
well-kept rule of sending twenty-five
dollars to St. John's whenever the institutions from which I graduated-whom I respected only as the employers of much
admired but very remote professors and
loved not all.-solicit me for money.
But, of course, the notion that the alumni's relation to the college-at least to our
college-begins or ends there is absurd. So
let me now consider the question what
constitutes the after-life of a student from
its most specific to its widest aspect.
First of all, and this turns out to be by no
means a mere formality, the alumni participate in the governance of the college
through their board representatives and informally by the weight of their organized
opinion. That opinion has on occasion
decided issues-such as the proposed
abandonment of our old name.
The college in turn, we all agree, owes its
alumni certain reliable services and wellorganized, substance-informed occasions
for their return. Among the first is the
prompt and effective composition of letters of reference. Among the second are
Homecoming with its seminars, and the exhilarating summer alumni seminars that
take place in Santa Fe. Then there are the
alumni meetings in the various cities, such
as this one. For all of these affairs the
tutors who help with them volunteer their
time and efforts, in acknowledgement of
the permanent bond between them and
their former students.
But the tutors have another kind of
duty~that more informal kind of duty
which, were it not such a pleasure to per-
81
�form, would probably not be very faithfully
observed. It is a duty which, even though it
is more sporadic than undergraduate
teaching, is as serious and as satisfying. It is
to be in some practical sense there for
alumni, to write to in weal or woe, to visit
on the way to a new departure or on a sentimental journey, to bring the conclusions
of life to. Those visits from former students-sometimes there is time only for fifteen minutes of conversation in the coffee
shop-are always talked about among us.
Nothing brings home to us the ultimate
impotence of the profession Of teaching
and the deeply dubious character of the
program as does a visit from a former student who is lost and who attributes that
condition to having been touched by some
unassimilable intimation of paradise or of
hell in this school. Nothing gives so exhilarating a sense of stability in change as the
appearance of alumni who have so well
and truly put the college in the past that it
is equa11y well and truly present in them:
an oracular saying which I am certain will
have some immediate meaning for most of
you, and of which I want to say more later.
But the feelings with which these encounters leave us, from disturbed regret to
a sense that the deliberate benevolance we
felt towards you in your student daysgood teachers are never "close" to their
students-is about to turn into life-long
friendship, are not my present point. That
point is that alumni are in a more than
metaphorical sense returning home, and
have a right to be received in that spirit.
Those, then, are the continuing relations
of the alumni with the college as a home
community, made up of officers and two
campuses and one faculty. Now I come to
the after-life of alumni on their own. How
does the college continue with them? It is
by far the more problematic topic and a
better subject for reflection.
Of course, it too has a practical and organizable part. The alumni organizations are,
as it were, independent extensions of the
college. In bringing former students together in the kind of event which is characteristic of St. John's, in seminars and
lectures legitimated by discussion, they
propagate the life of the college and provide members with the means for continuing to live it at their leisure. For us to hear
that a city has a lively alumni group is to
have a sense of having friends in the world,
82
and to come to such a city, for example, to
San Francisco, is a little like the experience
of the shipwrecked Greek who, being cast
up on a wild coast, saw scratched in a rock
the diagram of Eucid I, 47 and said: "Here
too are humans."
(Let me hasten to add that this feeling is
absurd. Humans, that is to say, people to
talk to, are everywhere. And yet, absurd as
it is, it is also humanly sensible, for it is humanly sensible to feel relieved at finding
one's own.)
This external, organized continuation of
college life away from the campuses is, of
course, only the expression of any inner individual continuity. Let me again begin at
the easy end by giving some plain and practical tutors' answers to the questions about
alumni life.
Alumni should continue reading. I imagine that most of you read quite a bit in the
ordinary course of your lives. Much of that
reading is in so called "papers" -newspapers, position papers, official paperseverything I call to myself "instrumental
junk.'' Mally of you probably also read
reams of poetry and of novels-my own
favorite genre-of that mean range of
excellence which goes down easily and yet
nourishes the imagination. Many of you
will have emerged from the program hungry for history written to that same
standard. I have often thought that the
much-bemoaned heavy tread of our program readings has in the best event this
happy side effect-that it leaves students
with a great appetite-some of you may recall that the Greeks called it boulimia, "oxfamine" -for miscellaneous reading. But
this kind of reading, which we share with
the rest of the literate world, is not what I
have in mind.
I am thinking of a very deliberate effort.
It involves first of all letting the time ripen,
by keeping the thought in mind without
pressing on to the execution. But then,
when you are ready, pick up the program
list. Readiness may be that the new ways of
life which you have, in a healthy zest for
contrast, thrown yourselves into have begun to fail you. It may mean that some specific question has returned to preoccupy
you, or that you see its true shape for the
first time. It may mean simply that you feel
the wave of activity floating you away from
the isle of contemplation.
Pick up the list and choose a text. Then
read it. Read it as experienced grown-ups
reread the books of their youth: with a
twinge of nostalgia for the circumstances
of its first reading and with some wry admiration for the lordly consumption of metaphysics of which you were once capable,
but after that with the critical discernment
which comes from a well-digested, that is
to say, half-forgotten education. That is my
small but precise recommendation for
doing alumni-deeds.
But now the moment has come for matters of larger scope. Let me work my way
into them by dwelling on a dilemma often
discussed or displayed by visiting alumni, a
dilemma at once highly specific to this college and of the widest human importance.
Alumni sometimes arrive with a shamefaced and apologetic air about them. How
have they sinned? They are respected at
their work and loved at home, but now
they have come to the place of accountgiving, and they feel wanting. The matter
is this: they are not living the philosophic
life.
Now that is a difficulty that I can only
imagine a St. Johnnie as being oppressed
by. Other students might be anxious before their teachers for having failed in the
world or even for having lost their soul, but
they would not usually know much about
or honor the philosophic life. I am always
charmed by our students' anxiety because
it shows on their part a willingness to take
root in a deep and wise tradition concerning the good life. But I am also, in turn,
anXIOUS.
Let me backtrack for a moment to be
more accurate. Sometimes there really is
something amiss in these uneasy visitors.
They may have become enmeshed in what
I will simply denominate here by its all too
instantiable formula, "the hassles of contemporary living". Or they are absorbed in
the mild miserie~ of forgetfulness and can't
come to. But more often their account of
their life is full of shy ardor and quiet intelligence. Then I ask myself: what on earth
does he or she, what do we all mean by the
philosophical life?
So the matter needs to be thought out.
Let me give you some of my thoughts,
some long in coming, some thought out for
the occasion.
When the ancient philosophers speak of
the philosophical life, the bios philosophiAUTIJMN 1981
�k6s, one thing is immediately clear. It is a
life and not a profession they are speaking
of. Professors of philosophy have certain
real disabilities in living the philosophical
life. For as professors they have a position
to maintain in the world, and work, not leisure, is their element. It is just the same
with returning graduate students in philosophy. Sometimes they are full of interesting reflections on their activity, but
sometimes they are so lost in their profession that it makes one's heart sink.
Not that tutors are altogether different.
To be sure, one incident that did much to
win my heart for the college was a salary report prepared now almost a quarter century
ago by Winfree Smith.
Its preamble declared that although tutors were paid to live, they were not paid
for their work because that was invaluable.
It was invaluable both in being a pleasure
and the need of their soul to perform and
because its value was incapable of being
quantitatively fixed. But while it is an inner
truth that tutors do not work for wages, it is
an external fact that we are the employees
of a demanding institution, who converse
by appointment, teach on schedule, and
study according to a program-and to miss
any of these official obligations without a
reason is highly unacceptable behavior.
It follows that we too are professionals,
and not free to live a daily life of absorbed
contemplation. But perhaps if no one we
know lives a philosophical life by reason of
even the best loved profession, it is still
true that that life is compatible with any
work, and any work can be done in a philosophical spirit. Let me pursue that.
The life of philosophy seems to me to
have one external condition, leisure, and
one reason for being, the search for truth.
That leisure is not exhausted "time off'
from work, bUt the free time for the sake of
which the other times of one's life are
spent. Of the search for truth let me say
only that it is not only a possibility but a
necessity for most human beings. In whose
life have there not been moments when all
considerations have waned but the desire,
the exigent desire, to know the truth?
The long and short of it is, I think, that
like all fundamental human modes the phil·
osophical life comes in graduated versions
which are continuous and even complementary, and those who come nearest to
living it in some pure form hold its shape in
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
trust for those who, from duty or preference, do the world's business.
For in spite of what I said before, there
are protected environments for that life,
and the college is the best place I know for
study and reflection. Its program and its
schedules are, after all, intended to be the
ladder and the handholds in the reflective
climb; most of us certainly I, myself, need
such prescribed paths, since a life wholly
free of stimulants and constraints leaves us
more melancholy than illumined. The
business of our college is in the service of leisure; it is a true schOol, if I m"ay recall to
you the old chestnut, that that word itself
comes from schole, Greek for '~leisure."
Of course, it is for that very reason not
the so-called real world. No one knows that
better than its long-term inhabitants, particularly since they also live out of it, as
neighbors, consumers, taxpayers, voters,
and world-watchers. To be sure, in large
academic conglomerations theoretical megalomania and practical impotence come together in that Lilliputian preoccupation
known as academic politics. But the atmosphere of smaller schools is usually no
more strained than that of an intensely
close family, while the tutors of St. John's,
because of the common allegiance to a program with integrity, form a remarkable
community of friends, willing to talk to and
to trust in each other.
Not only is the philosophical life best
carried on in a special place, it is even most
apt to be carried on by distinctive people.
That distinction seems to me to be less one
of nature or kind than of circumstance and
predeliction. For example, our students approach the leading of such a life by reason
of their being in leisured circumstances,
and most of us tutors come near it more
through our inclination than capacity for
intellection. I know that in saying all this I
can be accused of showing myself a child
of my time and of depreciating the philo·
sophical life. Those would be heavy
charges, but perhaps I must face them in
the question period.
How then is this special life, the life of
philosophy, related to the life of action, if
they are not in principle discontinuous? I
used to think that the movement back and
forth between them was entirely possible.
In particular it seemed to me that someone
who had thought deeply about the world
should be able to act wisely in it. I was
never such a fool as to think that academics or intellectuals would cope particularly
well ·with ruling responsibility, but I was
thinking of philosophers, people whose
thought is not divorced from the nature of
things. The notion of a philosopher kingor queen, for that matter-did not seem
impossible to me. I have not totally recanted, but the facts of life loom larger
now. I honor experience more, though that
is an argument against the activity of the
young as much as of the philosopher. What
matters more is that the rhythm and therequirements of the two lives seem to me
more irreconcilably different. From the
point of view of the life of reflection, the
other life seems unbearable for the continual curtailment of thought and its incessantly instrumental use, for the lack oflong
legatos of development and the hurried
forestalling of spontaneous insight it brings
with it. From the point of view of the life of
action, the inability to reach conclusions
without going back to the primal ameba (as
Elliott Zuckerman likes to say), the ob·
struction of progress on mere principle, the
lack of feel for possibilities, the sheer impotence of those who represent the other life,
must be repellent. I conclude that with
whatever freedom we may begin, at some
time we become habituated to one or the
other of the lives, and we will settle into
our profession and our setting accordingly.
But there is nothing at all in this against
frequent cross-overs. On the contrary, just
as those who make reflection the center of
their life must keep their worldly wits
about them to have anything to reflect on,
so those who do the world's business can
and ought to philosophize, either as a
steady accompaniment of their work, or intermittently, in their times of leisurewhichever fits the economy of their life. I
think our alumni often live just that way.
Would that they knew how close to us they
seem when they do it!
That is what I wanted to say about the
relations between the college as an institution and its alumni.
Now I would like to conclude by consid·
ering how alumni might cope with the college insofar as it is a place and a time in
their lives. I would like to entitle this section: "How rightly to forget the college."
By forgetting I mean, to begin with, a
phenomenon well known to theorists of
learning-and of course, to learners. Most
83
�learning begins in proud but hesitant selfconsciousness and later subsides into a
latent, yet ever active, condition. Such
learning informs the soul as a second nature-it reshapes it with good nourishment
and right exercise. It is in the hope that
something of that sort has happened that
alumni are called alumni. I think much of
that inner shaping, that passage into the
past by which what was once a time in your
life becomes a permanent possession, actually takes place in the decade after you
have left the place itself, and takes a considerable digestive effort.
Let me tell you what seem to me the
signs that the passage has taken place. My
recital will be illustrative rather than
exhaustive, because I am not much enchanted by analytic check lists of the lib·
eral skills and attitudes, and those are, of
course, what I am talking about. If you like,
we can talk more about these in the question period. And my examples will be given
pell-mell, mixing the sublime and the trivial-always remembering though, that
"trivial" originally meant: belonging to the
trivium, the triple arts of language, gram·
mar, rhetoric, logic. Here, then, are some
of the features of that second, that alumninature, which we always recognize with
deep satisfaction:
l. An unpretentious, companionable
closeness to some deep and difficult
books.
2. A fairly wide factual learning of the
sort that is absorbed incidentally, in
the course of trying to understand
some matter.
3. A resourceful recalcitrance toward
all translation, be it from Greek into
latinate English, from common language into technical jargon, from
book onto screen, from original text
to popular paraphrase.
4. A long perspective on our modern
tradition which avoids either kvetchy cavilling or easy riding, because
it is based on some knowledge of our
roots and our revolutions.
5. Knowing that the plural of eYdos is
etde.
6. A carefully cherished ignorance that
texts of mathematical symbols and
of musical notes might be anything
but essentially accessible expressions
of the human soul.
7. A determinedly naive faith in the
possibility of principled political action, supported by a shrewd and
ever-evolving theory of human nature which will neither buckle under
the weight of the world's wickedness
nor invite more of it.
8. A love for the illuminations of the
studies of motion and of life, that is,
physics and biology, and no disposition at all to be taken in by them.
9. As a precipitate of many etymologie::;
studied and many meanings discussed, a constitutional inability to
use even the most current words
without taking thought for their origin and the accumulated burden of
sense they bear.
10. A disposition toward that marriage
of radical reason with reverent respect which was when you were
there, and always will be, the best
mood of the college.
Let me finish by telling the second way
in which the college might pass into a recollection. This way has to do with the fact
that it is the place of your youth. It seems
to me likely that you never had been, nor
ever will be, so young again. Such places of
quintessential youth tend to leave a powerful after-image. McDowell Hall and Peter·
son Student Center become temples
through which float diaphanous figures
swathed in love and logos. Sometimes
when you return, this image may suddenly
fit itself onto the reality-the result will be
pure romance. However, let me try to be
sober about this phenomenon, for it is, I
think, an indispensible instrument in the
shaping of a good life-but only if the col·
lege has become a true object of recollection. By that I mean that you have allowed
life to carry you cheerfully away from its
temporal and spatial coordinates, until the
after-image has in it neither regret nor nostalgia and has become a mere vision.
When those conditions are met, the inner image can and should serve as a source
-a source, not the source-of shapes for a
good life. Then it may provide a paradigm
-a paradigm, not the paradigm-of that
earthly paradise I imagine our alumni as
forever trying to prepare for themselves: a
community of friends held together by a
love of learning. Then you will have put
the college well and truly behind you.
lie policy. But the complexity of the controversies among the great philosophers of
the past should caution us not to expect
easy answers to the questions that are
raised by such an inquiry. Philosophy and
Public Policy is a collection of twenty-one
essays that Professor Sidney Hook has selected from his work over the past thirtyfive years and edited for publication as a
book. Nowhere in this book does the author give more than passing attention to
the important disputes among the great
philosophers. Instead, he offers one admir-
ing essay about John Dewey and one introductory essay of his own on the general
theme of "philosophy and public policy."
Early in this introductory essay, the author summarizes the results of his historical studies: "The most comprehensive as
well as the most adequate conception of
philosophy that emerges from the history
of philosophy is that it is the normative consideration of human values." This definition, though the author gives Dewey credit
for it in another essay, is somewhat reminiscent of Socrates' exhorting us to think
EvA BRANN
FIRST READINGS
Philosophy and Public Policy, by Sidney
Hook, Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale
& Edwardsville, 1980.
Philosophy and politics have enjoyed a
strangely intimate and uneasy relationship
in Western civilization. This curious entanglement, which began no later than the
time of Socrates, remains today at least as
difficult to understand as it ever was. The
historical fact of the relationship should
move every student of politics to inquire
about the influence of philosophy on pub-
84
AUTUMN 1981
�about the pre-suppositions of our ordinary
opinions and activities. Such exhortations
may help move certain people to begin
seeking wisdom, but the definition does
not by itself enable us to distinguish philosophy from ordinary moral reasoning. When
the author tries to provide this distinction,
he encounters difficulties that he does not
surmount. He concedes that philosophic
inquiry is not always about moral phenomena and is not always "morally motivated"
in the usual sense of that term. But he
avoids pursuing the difficulties in the relationship between morality and philosophy
by saying that "[t]he relationships among
the various philosophical disciplines is a
meta philosophical problem, and sti11 open."
At the end of the essay he seems to return
to his original position by saying that "[t]he
philosopher is uniquely a moral seer .... "
But nowhere does he say precisely what a
moral seer is, how he comes to be, why he
does what he does, or what he is good for.
In place of ~m adequate account of philosophy, the author attempts to distinguish
the philosopher by the special skills and
outlook that he might bring to the discussion of public affairs. But the outlook and
skills he describes are available to any
thoughtful man. What Professor Hook
offers is very little more than the uncontroversial standard according to which philosophers' speech, like everyone's, should be
reasonable. That standard is a good one,
however, and I shall try to apply it to the
other essays in this volume, most of which
concern specific political issues.
Perhaps partly because he has not undertaken a thorough examination of the
Western philosophic tradition, Professor
Hook is an extreme liberal, or as he calls
himself in one essay, a "social democrat."
Though he stays well within the boundaries of modern liberal principles, he is not
as crippled by that limitation as many other
contemporary writers are. The cause of
this, I suspect, is that he has the great gift
of common sense. But whatever the cause,
he writes very well when attacking Communists, who subscribe to one of the most
poisonous liberal heresies, and when criticizing liberal fools, whom he calls "ritualistic liberals." Common sense operates best
when dealing with narrow issues, and on
such issues Professor Hook often steps resolutely aside from the sad coffle of liberal
opinion. Confronted with the little tyrannies brought to us by recently fashionable
forms of racism and feminism, he provides
a careful and devastating liberal critique of
what is so euphemistically called "reverse
discrimination." In the same spirit, he
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shows that William 0. Douglas's confused
and intemperate defenses of political violence are incompatible with the principles
of liberal democracy. And Professor Hook
reminds us that to be a liberal one need not
substitute a fetish about the free speech
clause of the First Amendment for an intelligent interpretation of the Constitution.
But when he takes up topics that are
very general or remote from specific events,
Professor Hook is apt to become confused
and unilluminating. The volume's longest
essay, which is devoted to "human rights,"
displays this shortcoming vividly. In the
fashion of contemporary academic philosophy, the author is much concerned with
defining his terms and defending his definitions. His discussion tends to revolve
around the following statement:
A human right is a morally justifiable
claim made in behalf of all men to the enjoyment and exercise of those basic freedoms,
goods, and services which are considered
necessary to achieve the human estate. On
this definition human rights do not correspond to anything an individual literally
possesses as an attribute, whether physical
or mental. Morally justifiable claims are proposals to treat human beings in certain ways.
Human rights are not names of anything.
They specify procedures-courses of action-to be followed by agencies of the
government and community with respect to
a series of liberties, goods, and services.
If we follow ordinary usage, in which the
term "right" means something justifiable,
the first sentence appears to be little more
than a tautology. Later in the essay, the author uses the terms "rights" and "freedoms" interchangably; while this would
eliminate the tautology, it would leave us
to wonder how a freedom can be a claim to
a freedom.
Much of the essay is devoted to criticizing other definitions of human rights;
these others are worse, and most of his criticisms are appropriate. But not once does
he mention the notion of "natural rights,"
which is the best known-and I believe
also the best-alternative to his own conception. That he means to reject that
notion is evident from his claim in the quotation above that human rights are not
names of anything and are not attributes of
human beings; and his rejection of it is implied even more clearly when he later asserts that human rights "are not derived
from the reason of things or the reason in
God, Nature, or Man." The closest he
comes to offering any evidence against
such a derivation is to point out that bills of
rights are altered and re-interpreted as time
passes. But this fact does not even begin to
prove that the truth about rights has ever
changed or ever will.
Despite its lack of any arguments against
the concept of natural rights, Professor
Hook's essay does contain hints of at least
three grounds upon which that concept
might be discarded. Perhaps an appeal to
natural rights would be rhetorically ineffective in our time because of the power of
cultural relativism among our most literate
and influential citizens; or perhaps "nature" is a term so broad that it induces us
to pay insufficient attention to the particular political conditions within which all human rights are enjoyed and circumscribed;
or perhaps we should rely on human progress rather than reason, nature, or God to
tell us what the limits of human claims and
freedoms should be. There may be some
merit in one or more of these suggestions,
but Professor Hook does not defend them
adequately. His own rhetoric in this essay
is so convoluted and academic that even
such old-fashioned writers as Jefferson and
Lincoln still sound strong and timely by
comparison. And despite the author's frequent insistence on the need to understand rights in their historical context, he
offers some strained interpretations of history; with perfect seriousness, for example,
he treats the Bible's injunction to observe
the Sabbath as a recognition of "the right
to rest and leisure." In general, Professor
Hook tries to talk about rights without
specifying their limits, apparently in the
hope that this will contribUte to the expansion of human rights and human happiness. But this leads him to substitute a
rather hazy optimism about human possibilities for a definite statement about human nature and enduring human needs.
One result is that he pays too little attention to the practical constraints on the expansion of human rights. He defends the
United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights without showing that it can
ever be more than a pious fantasy; and he
acquiesces in Justice Douglas's fabrication
of a constitutional right to privacy without
so much as mentioning the grave political
consequences that this doctrine has had
through the Court's abortion decisions. Before we forsake the notion of "natural
rights," which has been such a central element in our political life, we should wait
for a more solid substitute than the one
Professor Hook offers in this essay.
On occasion, Professor Hook's weak
grasp of general issues leads him to make
statements that are simply astonishing.
85
�One example occurs in an essay on the
rights of victims of crime:
I am prepared to weaken the guarantees and
privileges to which I am entitled as a potential criminal or as a defendant in order to
strengthen my rights and safeguards as a potential victim. Purely on the basis of probabilities, I am convinced that I run a greater
danger of suffering disaster as a potential
victim than as a potential criminal or defendant. It is these probabilities, that shift from
one historical period to another, that must
be the guide to wise, prudent, and just administration of the law.
The crude egoistic utilitarianism of this
statement appears nowhere else in the essay or in the rest of the book. One can easily advocate a firmer enforcement of the
criminal laws without elevating fear for
one's own safety into a principle of justice,
and elsewhere in the essay Professor Hook
does just that. But through this one careless formulation of the principle upon
which the rights of defendants should be
circumscribed, he allows his otherwise reasonable and public-spirited arguments to
seem motivated by a selfish calculation of
his own advantage.
Another example of the author's clumsiness with general formulations occurs at
the end of an essay on political heroism:
The democratic republic that was born in
this hemisphere some two hundred years
ago is the only political alternative ever
devised to mediate, in Lincoln's phrase, "between anarchy, on the one hand, and despotism on the other."
The patriotism of this statement is touching, but the claim is preposterous. The
United States is not the first, let alone the
only, nation to escape the evils of anarchy
and despotism; and an Englishman could
remind us that our republic is not even the
oldest existing alternative to those evils.
Abraham Lincoln, in whose works I have
not been able to find the quotation offered
above, would certainly protest that his position has been distorted. In the First Inaugural Address, Lincoln does say that the
majority principle, rightly understood,
must be maintained lest the country fall
victim to anarchy or to some form of despotism. But Lincoln's whole argument is
directed to the controversies about secession that were burning in America in 1861.
He does not claim that the Union is the
first or only legitimate polity in history, nor
even that it is the best; he says nothing
about other countries, nor about the forms
86
of government that might be suitable to
them.
Not all the disagreeable statements in
the book result merely from the author's
carelessness in formulating his positions. In
one essay, Professor Hook very sensibly argues that the Cold War has been the best
mean between suicidal appeasement and
the terrible dangers that are now inherent
in military warfare between the great powers. But a little later in the same essay, he
makes this remark:
In the past, President Eisenhower, whose
charming and vacuous smile matched his
knowledge of international affairs, and who
confessed.himself stumped by General Zhukov's questions as to what ideals inspired the
West, repeatedly warned us against the dangers of "atheistic communism" as if a communism that was not atheistic would be any
less objectionable.
The language at the beginning of the sentence lacks precision, but the meaning is
clear: President Eisenhower was a buffoon.
It is unfortunate that Eisenhower became
perplexed in the encounter with Zhukov,
but that does not justify this casual and
premeditated display of disrespect; and the
injustice is especially striking since it
comes at the expense of the man who presided over the execution of policies that
Professor Hook has just spent several pages
defending. At the very least, Professor
Hook should explain to us how this buffoon managed to lead our nation through
eight years during which Communist imperialism was successfully contained and
during which prosperity at home grew almost without interruption. But the main
point of the author's sneering remark concerns President Eisenhower's opposition to
"atheistic communism." Does Professor
Hook consider all communism, whatever
its form, equally evil? Was the Oneida
COmmunity as objectionable as the Soviet
Union? Is life in the Israeli religious kibbutzim comparable to life in Cambodia? The
insistent atheism in Marxist-Leninist doctrine is certainly not the only source of its
errors; and the atheism of Communist regimes is certainly not the sole cause of the
horrors that they bring about. But one has
to ask why Professor Hook refuses even to
consider the possibility that atheism might
be one of the soui-ces of Communism's
evils.
The explanation probably lies in the author's own manifest, though unacknowledged, atheism. For reasons that are not
made clear in the book, he fails to state his
position forthrightly. But that position
becomes visible when he calls himself a
''militant secularist.'' And it becomes trans·
parent when he makes, almost in passing,
the following theological pronouncement:
"It is only because human beings build
gods in their own moral image that they
can reasonably hope that the divine com·
mandments can serve as a guideline in human experience."
Professor Hook has included in this vol·
ume Jacques Maritain's graceful and pow·
erful critique of Hook's secular humanism.
The heart of Maritain's position lies in
three propositions: "no society can live
without a basic common inspiration and a
basic common faith"; this faith must in·
elude "convictions ... which deal with the
very substance and meaning of human
life"; and for this purpose no decent substitute for religion has been found. Professor
Hook tries to refute this view by pointing
out the weakness of the logical link between religious faith and allegiance to
democracy. This weakness is obvious, and
it should remind us that tolerance of atheists is not necessarily incompatible with
preserving a decent polity; it should also re·
mind us that strong religion does not guarantee good politics. But Maritain never
denies the Weakness of the logical link: his
claim is that religion, and religion alone,
can provide a society with the durable
common morality that is one necessary precondition of political democracy. Professor
Hook, who maintains that the "validity [of
moral principles] rests upon their fruits in
human experience," offers not a single example of a society that has given up
religion without degenerating into savagery. Nor does he offer any evidence to
show that such a society can be brought
into being; indeed, the poverty of his own
anti-religious faith is manifest in the last
paragraph of the book: "How to inspire, ex·
tend, and strengthen faith in democracy,
and build a mass movement of men and
women personally dedicated to it, is a difficult problem which cannot be treated
here."
Despite its weaknesses, Philosophy and
Public Policy contains much that is sound.
The strengths of the book appear most
clearly in the section on "Heroes and AntiHeroes." The section begins with a loose
and unimpressive general essay on the
place of leadership in democracies. But
when he turns to criticizing the Communists, liberal fools, and leading hypocrites
of our time, Professor Hook emerges as a
powerful and sometimes brilliant polemicist. In a review of a biography of Trotsky,
he shows why even large men cannot be
AUTUMN 1981
�truly great if they cling to Lenin's doctrines. In a discussion of Bertrand Russell's
political ravings, he shows quite clearly
why America's involvement in Viet Nam
may have been moral without necessarily
also being prudent. In an essay on the Hiss
case, he vividly reminds us that this country has indeed recently been threatened by
at least one genuine and dangerous conspiracy. And in the volume's best piece,
Professor Hook destroys Lillian Hellman.
He is brave enough to call her "an eager
but unaccomplished liar"; he is well informed enough to convict her of act after
act of "political obscenity"; and he is generous enough to distinguish her from
Dashiell Hammett, who kept his integrity
despite his colossal political misjudgments.
Because Philosophy and Public Policy
displays so much common sense and anti-
Communist passion, it could be good medicine for contemporary liberalism. And
because the author accepts most of the liberals' leading assumptions, there is no good
reason for them to refuse him a hearing.
tory and progress~makes for the power of
Europe. But Europe also brings corruption:
Hit was Europe, I feel, that also introduced
us to the lie ... we were people who simply
did what we did. But the Europeans could
do one thing and say something quite different. .. It was their great advantage over
us." Salim discovers that a line supposedly
from the Aeneid on a Belgian monument
commemorating the founding of the city
has been altered. It reads: 41He approves of
the mingling of peoples and their bonds of
union"; but in the original the gods warned
Aeneas not to marry Dido, not to mingle
Europe and Africa. "Rome was Rome.
What was this place? To carve the words
on a monument beside this African river
was surely to invite the destruction of the
town."
The self-deluded Europeans are now
gone, driven out by their former subjects,
but their example remains ~n all its ambiguity. The Africans imitate European institutions, buy European goods, and, increasingly, look on Europe itself as a place of
refuge. As his mentor and fellow Indian
Nazruddin explains to Salim on a visit to
London, HAll over the world money is in
flight. People have scraped the world clean,
as clean as an African scrapes his yard, and
now they want to run from the dreadful
places where they've made their money
and find some nice safe country." In London, foreigners from all corners of the
Commonwealth threaten to undermine
unquestioned European values. With a
mixture of irony and dismay, Salim observes that the Arabs in London have
brought with them their black slaves; Britain now tolerates at home the slave trade it
had once stamped out in East Africa. "In
the old days they made a lot of fuss if they
caught you sending a couple of fellows to
Arabia in a dhow. Today they have their
passports and visas like everybody else, and
nobody gives a damn."
The escape to Europe is possible only for
a handful, but the pressures of modern African life~ the insecurity of rapid and random change-foster escapism throughout
the population. Salim realizes that even in
the city "when you get away from the chiefs
and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa; everyone is a villager."
In times of trouble the city empties as people return to their villages and the simple
life of the bush, to re-emerge when things
quite down. A new generation of young Africans, however, without ties to the bush,
who know nothing except the empty and
imitative life of the cities, has no place to
retreat. At the same time the country's
leader opens up the countryside to bring
the previously inaccessible rural population under his control.
The dilemma of the "new African" is
symbolized by Ferdinand, a young man
whom Salim befriends. Born in the bush,
Ferdinand goes to school at the Europeanrun lycee, is trained at the Domain (the Big
Man's school for future leaders), and eventually becomes the local district commissioner. Ferdinand is trapped by his own
modern upbringing, and by the precarious
nature of political life, where every official
is at the mercy of the Big Man, who rules
through a talent for playing his enemies off
against one another. At first, Ferdinand is
confused, his mind "a jumble, full of all
kinds of junk." But in the end he achieves
a terrible clarity: "Nobody's going anywhere. We're all going to hell and every
man knows this in his bones ... Everyone
wants to make his money and run away.
But where? That is what is driving people
mad. They feel they're losing the place
they can run back to ... "
The political stratagems of the Big Man
produce temporary peace and prosperity,
but in the end serve only to break down
traditional restraints. When they fail to
quell a rural uprising, the soldiers of a tradi-
NELSON LUND
Nelson Lund teaches political science at the
University of Chicago.
'THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES
A Bend in the River, by V. S. Naipaul, 278
pp., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., !979,
$8.95
V. S. Naipaul's novel, A Bend in the
River, never names the city and country in
which the narrative takes place. Its true
setting, however, is clearly Kisangani
(formerly Stanleyville), the second-largest
city of Zaire (formerly the Belian Congo);
and the mysterious Big Man, the unnamed
country's ruler, is Sese Mobotu, Zaire's dictator for the past fifteen years. Though
Mobotu's Zaire is a poor and ill-governed
Third World country, Naipaul does not
take the stance of an expert trying to
diagnose and cure the 'disease' of underdevelopment. The principal danger he foresees is anarchy 3.nd nihilism, more often
cause than result from the impoverishment that preoccupies the experts.
The disorder and despair which permeate the novel result primarily from the
haphazard coming together of different religious, ethnic, and cultural groups. Naipaul's protagonist, Salim-an Indian
brought up in an Arab-dominated section
of East Africa, educated in British schools,
who now lives in a newly-independent black
African state-embodies Africa's contradictions. The book's great theme is the
disaster this mingling of peoples brings to
Indians, Africans, and perhaps to Europeans as welL
Europe has been the catalyst; it provides
the possibility of self-understanding for
Africans and Indians alike. Salim says: ''All
that I know of our history and the history
of the Indian Ocean I have got from books
written by Europeans ... without Europeans, I feel, all our past woUld have been
washed away, like the scuff marks of fishermen on the beach outside our town." The
ability to detach oneself, to form a distinct
self-image of one's past, present and especially future condition~the source of hisTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
87
�tional warrior tribe are treacherously disarmed and dispersed by an imported force
of white mercenaries. Unable to adopt
commercial or agricultural ways, they form
the nucleus of a new and deadlier rebellion. Official corruption, fostered by the
pervasive insecurity, makes a mockery of
the regime's motto, "Discipline Avant
Tout." The opposition turns by degrees to
unqualified hatred: "When they've finished nobody will know there was a place
like this here. They're going to kill and kill.
They say it's the only way, to go back to the
beginning before it's too late."
Salim too seeks safety, a place of retreat.
He and the other Indian expatriates fight
an ongoing battle with nostalgia and regret,
with the temptation to find refuge in the
past, in the memory of their lost East
African birth place. Unlike his friends who
become rich by acquiring the town's "Big
Boy" franchise, Salim does not forget himself in the successes of commerce. At the
end his property is nationalized, and he be-
88
comes a homeless refugee. He finds his But people are like that about places in
safety in the personal equilibrium, de- which they aren't really interested and
tached and clear-sighted, that shows itself where they don't have to live. Some papers
in the book's opening sentence: "The world spoke of the end of feudalism and the
is what it is; men who are nothing, who al- dawn of a new age. But what had haplow themselves to become nothing, have pened was not new. People who had grown
no place in it."
feeble had been physically destroyed. That,
Salim's hard-won balance does not de- in Africa, was not new; it was the oldest law
pend on condemning those who are inca- of the land." Unlike the manipulative coldpable of such accomodation. He does not blooded ness of the development theorist
explain away the Big Man's machinations or ideological reformer, Salim's detachas 'necessary' or 'progressive'; he appreci- ment comes from experience of the perenates success but rejects the ruthlessness nial laws of the human condition and of
and the denial of the past which so often the ties between personal and historical
accompany it. Naipaul/Salim understands experience.
that Africa's lost balance may be impossible to regain, and that while the losses are
ADAM WASSERMAN
c~rtain, the gains may be illusory. On hearing of the revolution which cuts him off
from his coastal homeland, he is astonished
at the optimism of some of the foreign
papers: "It was exraordinary to me that
Adam Wasserman is a space program analyst
some of the newspapers could have found for the Congressional Office of Technology Asgood words for the butchery on the coast. sessment in Washington, D.C.
AUTUMN 1981
��The St. John's Review
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Jaffa, Henry V.
Josephs, Laurence
Klein, Jacob
Levin, Michael
Collins, Linda
Navrozov, Lev
Guaspari, David
Venable, Bruce
Lund, Nelson
Wasserman, Adam
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Barbara]. Sisson
Consulting Editors:
Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Editor's Note
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance.
Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St.
John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404.
Although there are currently no subscription fees, voluntary contributions toward production costs are gratefully
received.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in winter and summer.
Volume XXXI!
WINTER 1981
Number 2
© 1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0010-0862
Cover: Library of Hadrian, west facade. Photo by Alison Frantz.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�~HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTER8]
1
The Libraries of Ancient Athens Homer A. Thompson
17
Guardian Politics in The Deer Hunter Nelson Lund
29
The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism Arthur
Collins
43
Family Pages, Little Facts: October George Dennison
49
The Latin-American Neurosis
53
The Origins of Celestial Dynamics: Kepler and Newton
Wilson
66
Recent Events in the West Leo Raditsa
82
The Streets on which Herman Melville Was Born and Died
Meyer Liben
85
DeGaulle's Le fil de /'epee
95
FIRST READINGS
Irwin's Plato's Moral Theory
98
101
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Carlos Rangel
Curtis
Will Momsey
Davtd Bolotin
AT HOME AND ABROAD
Letter from Nicarauga and Guatemala Honor Bulkley
FROM OUR READERS
t
�Figure 1. West side of the Agora; view from the southeast, 1956.
tl
WINTER 1981
�The Libraries of Ancient Athens
Homer A. Thompson
Our knowledge of the Athenian libraries is now, and always will be, exceedingly scrappy. For the Classical and
Hellenistic periods we have a little, but tantalizingly elusive,
literary evidence, supported by virtually no archaeological
remains. For the Roman period, in contrast, we can point
to a couple of actual buildings, but the literary testimonia
become extremely meager. Nor need I remind you that
none of the individual libraries known from ancient Athens can compare in fame or in institutional importance
with the libraries of Alexandria or of Pergamon, which
stand out above all others. Athens, moreover, could not
vie in the sheer number of her libraries with Rome; according to the regional census of Constantine in A.D. 350,
Rome had twenty-eight public libraries.
Nevertheless we shall find reason to believe that it was
Athens which contributed the expertise, the "know how,"
essential to the organization of the Alexandrian Library.
The kings of Pergamon, in turn, in setting up their library
a century later, undoubtedly drew heavily on both Athens
and Alexandria. As for the contents of these justly famous
libraries, there can be no doubt that the contribution from
Athenian authors was greater than that from any other
national group.
Interesting also ·is the variety in the kinds of libraries
known to have existed in ancient Athens. We read about
private collections, academic libraries, and public libraries,
ranging in date from the Archaic period into Roman Imperial times. The money for setting up and maintaining
these libraries came from various sources: private philanthropy, culture-conscious foreign princes, the Roman emField Director of Excavations from 1947 to 1967, Horner A. Thompson
has worked on the most recent excavations, since their beginning in
1931, of the ancient Agora in Athens, where clearance of the Agora of
Classic'al times is now nearing completion. He has been a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., since 1947.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
peror. The testimony of such non-Athenian writers as
Polybios and Plutarch indicates that Athens was a good
place in which to carry on serious scholarly research.
Aristeides of Mysia, writing in the second century after
Christ, observed that Athens had stocks of books such as
you could find nowhere else in the world, together, Aristeides adds, with splendid baths, race courses, and gymnasia. (Panathenaicus XIII, 188).
According to a widespread tradition the first library in
Athens was formed by Peisistratos, the tyrant who with
his sons dominated Athens for much of the sixth century
B.C. He is reported to have made his collection accessible
to the people, and after the expulsion of the tyrant's family
in 510 B.C. the people are said to have added to it. The
collection, we are told, was carried off by the Persians in
479 B.C., but was sent back to Athens after Alexander's
conquests by Seleukos Nikator. All this sounds rather too
good to be true. How many books were available anywhere in the Greek world at this time, and how many
Athenians were capable of reading in the sixth century?
We know, however, that there was a great upsurge of interest in the arts, notably architecture, sculpture, and
painting, in the time of the Tyrants. Distinguished poets
such as Simonides and Anakreon were induced to come to
Athens. Peisistratos and his son Hipparchos were credited
with bringing together the Homeric poems into their canonical form, and with making the recital of those poems
a regular part of the newly founded national festival, the
Panathenaia. In view of all this I am prepared to believe
that Peisistratos may indeed have put together a small
personal collection of books; if so, he may well, in keeping
with his genial character, have allowed these books to be
consulted by interested citizens. But I would stop short of
having this collection carried off by the Persians: if
readers were few in Athens surely they would have been
even fewer in Persepolis!
1
�Figure 2. The Athenian Agora in the 2nd century A.D.; view from the
northwest. Drawing by John Travlos.
There is little record of book collecting in Athens in the
century and a half between Peisistratos and Aristotle. The
Athenians perhaps, were too busy writing to have time
for collecting. Yet this period witnessed a marked growth
in the reading public in Athens. One of many indications
is the fact that the practice of publishing official docu·
ments such as laws, decrees, treaties, and financial accounts began for all practical purposes at the end of the
sixth century and increased steadily through the fifth and
fourth centuries. This was a costly procedure, and it was
not likely to have been followed had not a large proportion of the citizens been able to read the inscriptions. The
growing interest in the theater in the course of the fifth
century may also have been a factor in stimulating the
circulation and collection of written texts. Scripts were
needed, after all, by the performers, and they were no
doubt wanted by literary-minded citizens.
In this connection it is interesting that Euripides should
have been sufficiently well-known as a book collector to
have drawn jibes from Aristophanes in his Frogs (!. 943)
and to have been credited by Athenaeus (1, 4) with the
possession of "one of the largest libraries in the ancient
world." Another collector of the late fifth century of
whom we read was Eukleides, presumably the archon of
1
2
403/2 B.C., the year in which the Athenians turned officially from the old Attic script to the Ionic.
Let me note in passing that a date around 400 B.C. ap·
pears to have been a turning point in the history of the
state archives of Athens. Public records had of course
been kept in earlier times, but in a random way, whereas
from now on procedure became more regular. About this
time a new meeting place for the Council of 500 was
erected on the west side of the Agora, and the old Council
House seems now to have been made available for the
storage of all manner of official records. One should be
careful not to equate archives with libraries. In antiquity,
however, official documents were written on papyrus or
parchment just like books, and they were rolled in the
same way. Consequently the methods of storing and of
cataloguing must have been similar. The same feeling for
orderly arrangement was essential to success in the keeping of both records and books. (Figures 1-5.)
We are woefully ignorant of the physical arrangements
employed in the Classical period for the storage of books.
We get some help, however, from the school scenes that
appear occasionally on red-figured vases of the fifth cen·
tury. In these scenes the rolls stand upright in wooden
chests with folding lids of a type used for many purposes
WINTER 1981
�in the Greek household. It seems probable that in the
Classical and Hellenistic periods books were stored in
similar containers even in large libraries. In the Roman
period, however, we know that the rolls were stacked hori·
zontally on wooden shelves, sometimes set in cupboards.
Men of letters are often shown with book boxes by their
sides: round or rectangular cases in wich the rolls stood
vertically. (Figure 3a.)
Strabo, writing in the time of Augustus, observed of Aristotle that he was "the first man of our knowledge to col·
lect books" (XIII,!, 54: -rr:p&roo, §'v 'iop.<v, ovvor-yaywv
{3.(3f..ia). If by this Strabo meant, as he probably did, the
first to build up a library as distinct from amassing volumes, his statement is entirely plausible. Let me remind
you that Aristotle came back to Athens in 335 B.C. as a
mature, indeed a distinguished scholar. He rented some
buildings in a grove sacred to Apollo Lykeios and the
Muses, and there set up the school which took its name,
the "Lyceum," from the divinity. Various indications,
some archaeological and some literary, point to a location
in the area of the modern Syntagma Square and the Na·
tional Garden, i.e., outside the ancient city wall toward
the northeast. Here Aristotle lived and taught until he was
obliged to leave Athens because of anti-Macedonian feeling in 323 B.C.; he died the following year in Chalkis.
Aristotle's style of scholarship necessitated a new conception in the handling of books. His range was wide: the
natural sciences, moral philosophy, politics, literary criticism, to name only the principal areas. In addition to his
original writings on these subjects he put together various
lists for general use such as records of the victors at the
Delphic and Olympic festivals and at the dramatic con·
tests in Athens. He must have worked with great intensity
himself, and he also employed assistants. As an example
of the amount of research that might go into the making
of a single book let me remind you that in preparation for
the writing of the Politics Aristotle had monographs composed on the constitutions of no less than !58 states; only
Figure 3. (Above) West
side of the Agora in
the 2nd century after
Christ (view from the
southeast). Model by
John Trllvlos.
Figure 4. (middle)
Tholos and Old Bouleuterion (view from
the southeast, ca. 450
B.C.). Drawing by
W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr.
Figure 5. (below)
Headquarters of the
Council of 500 (Boule),
ca. 350 B.C .. Old Bouleuterion and Tholos
are dark, New Bouleuterion and its Propylon light. Drawing by
fohn Travlos.
Figure
3a.
Attic red.figure
Lekytho' (450-25 B.C.) attributed to the Kluegmann painter,
Louvre.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
one of these special studies has survived: The Constitution of the Athenians. From the tempo of Aristotelian
scholarship we may be sure that it was based not only on a
large, but also on a well organized collection of books.
Aristotle, we must remember, was not only a great
scholar; he was also a busy teacher and the head of an active school. We have no knowledge of where he kept his
books or of how freely they were made accessible to his
collaborators and pupils. One thing, however, is certain:
the library remained the personal property of Aristotle,
and as such it was bequeathed by him to his successor,
Theophrastos. Theophrastos added his own holdings to
Aristotle's and bequeathed the lot to a friend and fellow
3
�Figure 6. Marble
head of Aristotle,
copy (lst century
A.D.), probably of a
portrait commissioned by Aristotle's
pupil, Alexander,
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
scholar, Neleus, who was presumably thought to be in line
for the succession. But Neleus was not appointed; he
went off home to Skepsis in the Troad, taking the library
with him. (All this we Jearn from Strabo [XIII, l, 54], and I
continue to draw on Strabo's familiar and hair-raising
account).
Neleus's heirs in the Troad were ordinary people who
paid little attention to the library until alarmed by the efforts of the kings of nearby Pergamon to collect books for
their new library. The heirs then concealed the books in
an underground vault. Here they lay, suffering from moisture and bookworms, until eventually they were sold for a
large sum to one Apellikon of Teas. The sale included the
books of both Aristotle and Theophrastos. Apellikon is described as an ardent collector but a bibliophile rather than
a philosopher. He had copies of the damaged texts made,
but the gaps were restored with many errors. The result of
all this was that the Peripatetics who came after Theophrastos had virtually no books and so were not able to
philosophize in any practical way. After the faulty copies
became available they were able once more, to be sure, to
philosophize and Aristotelize but were forced to call most
of their statements mere probabilities.
Apellikon, Strabo continues, perished in the Mithridatic Wars. The original library fell into the hands of the
Roman general, Sulla, and was taken by him to Rome in
84 B.C. There the texts suffered once again through being carelessly copied for unscrupulous booksellers. The
next step is reported by Plutarch in his life of Sulla (XXVI,
l-2). The grammarian Tyrannion, a lover of Aristotle, saw
to it that a set of copies was sent to Andronikos of Rhodes,
later to become head of the Peripatetic School. This set
was used by Andronikos as the basis for the complete edi·
tion on which subsequent Aristotelian scholarship has for
the most part rested.
4
The account given by Strabo and Plutarch is very circumstantial and seems credible. But according to another
version preserved by Athenaeus, Neleus, the heir ofTheophrastos, sold the library to Ptolemy Philadelphos, King of
Egypt (283-246 B.C.). It may well be that the collection
was in fact divided, part going to Skepsis and so eventually
to Rome, the rest going to Alexandria.
So much for the most famous of all the libraries of Athens. It has had few rivals in the number of its vicissitudes,
and fewer still in the extent of its influence on scholarship.
Strabo, after describing Aristotle as the first man known
to have assembled books, went on to say that it was Aristotle who taught the kings of Egypt how to organize a library. This is an interesting but incredible statement. We
do know, however, that Aristotle's successor, Theophrastos, was invited to Alexandria by the first Ptolemy. Theophrastos declined, and Ptolemy had to be satisfied with
Theophrastos' pupil, Demetrios of Phaleron. In inviting
to his court a distinguished scholar such as Demetrios,
Ptolemy was following a practice already familiar at the
courts of Philip II and Alexander. Such persons were commonly expected to act as tutors to the royal family, to advise the monarch on matters cultural and scientific and to
enhance the tone of the regime. Although there is little
hard evidence for the role played by Demetrios, Peter
Fraser in his masterly book on Ptolemaic Alexandria
(1972) concludes that Demetrios' advice was significant in
shaping the two closely related establishments through
which Alexandria made its chief contribution to the culture of the western world,-! mean, of course, the Museum and the Library. The Museum has been regarded in
various ways. I have heard it described as the ancestor of
all institutes for advanced study. A contemporary poet,
Timon of Phlius, however, had this to say: "In the populous land of Egypt many are they who get fed, cloistered
bookworms, endlessly arguing in the bird-coop of the
Muses" (trans. P. Fraser). But there is general agreement
with the view that the Museum of Alexandria, as a small
and intimate society of research scholars committed to
the service of the Muses, was patterned chiefly on the
Academy and the Lyceum of Athens.
A similarly close link with Athens may be hypothesized
for the sister institution, the Library, or rather the Libraries, of Ptolemaic Alexandria. The older and much the
larger of the two libraries was included, like the physical
facilities of the Museum, in the palace complex. It would
seem to have been regarded chiefly as a research library at
the disposal of members of the Museum. The smaller
library, sometimes referred to as "the daughter", was incorporated in the Sanctuary of Sarapis founded by
Ptolemy Euergetes in the third century B.C. Here again
we are woefully lacking in specific information, but there
is good reason to believe that the Alexandrian Library, in
its breadth of scope, in its aim at universal coverage, and
in its careful organization reflects Athenian, more specifically Aristotelian, practice. In its turn, the Ptolemaic founWINTER 1981
�Figure 7. Ptolemy I Soter;
obverse of a coin of Ptolemy
II Philadelphos, British Museum.
dation was to exercise a role of incalculable importance in
the preservation, editing, and dissemination of earlier lit~
erature both Greek and non-Greek.
A word about the personalities, and first Aristotle. The
marble portrait now in Vienna admirably corresponds
with the image that can be recovered from his writings: a
man of great intellectual capacity seasoned with a little affectation and a good deal of astringency. (Figure 6.)
Demetrios of Phaleron, alas, has not been recognized
with certainty in any ancient portrait. He is said to have
have been recognized. Even the extensive excavations
carried out in the Sanctuary of Sarapis in the 1940s failed
to bring to light any plausible candidate for the daughter
library.
The most probable physical remnant of the Library is
this block of granite 17 1/4 inches in length. Found in
1847 in the garden of the Austrian consulate in Alexandria, the stone is now in Vienna. In the top, as you see, is a
shallow rectangular socket; on the front is the inscription:
!lto<IKOVp[O~<I r TOfWL (Dioskourides 3 volumes). The block
has generally been regarded as a container for books, and
for over a century scholars have been exercising their in~
genuity in fitting three papyrus rolls into the cavity. As an
alternative solution I would suggest that the depression
held a carved portrait of the author, either in the round
Figure 8. Granite base found in Alexandria, inscribed: flwaKoup[O"']S
r6p.ot, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Figure 9. Ptolemy III Euergetes; obverse of a silver coin
of Tarsos, Boston, Museum
of Fine Arts.
been honored by the Athenians with 360 bronze statues
in recognition of his services to the city. But when he was
driven out on the coming of Demetrios Poliorketes (307
B.C.) these statues were pulled down, sold, cast into the
sea, or turned into chamber pots. Aristotle on being asked
"What grows old quickly?" replied, "Gratitude."
Of Ptolemy I Soter we are fortunate in having some
magniQ.Fent portraits on coins. Here we are face to face
with a Churchill-like figure: a great warrior, national
leader and serious historian. Through the compatibility of
temperament between Ptolemy and Demetrios much of
the learning accumulated by the old Greek world was passed
on to the new, and the principal channel was the Library
of Alexandria. (Figure 7.)
The structures that housed both the Museum and the
Library were in all likelihood much more modest than
their fame would imply. In any case no structural remains
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
r
or in relief, and that copies of his writings were kept nearby
in a box or on a shelf. (Figure 8.)
Under the later Ptolemies the Library's holdings continued to be built up, and the pace of acquisition became
feverish when competition developed between Alexandria and Pergamon in the second century B.C. The channels of acquisition were both regular and irregular, and
the governing ethics were all too anticipatory of the modern commerce in rare books. Let me remind you of the
well known story told by Galen of how Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 B.C.) acquired a set of the works of the
Figure 10. Eumenes II; obverse of a unique silver coin,
British Museum.
5
�Figure ll. Pergamon: Sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros (view from the
southwest). The Sanctuary lies between the Theater (lower left) and one
of the Palaces (upper right). Model, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
F1gure 12. Pergamon: Sanctuary
of Athena Nikephoros (A); Library
(B); Palace (C);
Theater (D); Altar
::: : ·' =
=
-···-" =
:~~:::·:
of Zem (E). (H.
Kahler, Pergamon,
66).
three Attic tragedians: Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides. Learning that an official copy of these texts existed
in Athens, Ptolemy asked for their loan so that he might
have them copied for his Library. By way of security he
deposited with the Athenians fifteen talents, a truly enormous sum. The copies were made on exceptionally fine
papyrus. It was these copies that Ptolemy then sent to
Athens with instructions to the Athenians to keep both
the copies and the deposit. The originals remained in Alexandria, and the Athenians could do nothing but consent. The silver coin of Ptolemy Euergetes now in Boston
6
WINTER 1981
�Above, figure 14. Athena Parthenos, Varvakian copy, National Museum, Athens. Photo by Alison Frantz.
Left, figure 13. Athena from the Library in Pergamon, Pergamon Museum, Berlin.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shows you with what manner of man the Athenians were
dealin&. (Figure 9.)
Another distinguished personality led to the formation
of the other most famous library of the Greek world, that
of Pergamon. There is a portrait of Eumenes II (197 -159
B.C.) on a unique silver coin now in the British Museum.
It was this ruler who was chiefly responsible for making
Pergamon one of the greatest artistic and intellectual centers of later Greek time. (Figure 10.) Here, as often in the
Greek and Roman world, the library was incorporated in a
sanctuary. Above the Theater and the Altar of Zeus and
just in front of the royal palace lay the Sanctuary of Athena
Nikephoros, the patron goddess of the city. This old sanctuary was modernized by Eumenes and enclosed on three
sides with two-storied colonnades or stoas. The south,
outer side was left open so that the temple could be seen
from the lower city and the countryside. (Figures 11, 12.)
The Library occupied a suite of four rooms that opened
on the upper floor of the north stoa. Excavated by German scholars in the late nineteenth century, the structure
figures in all serious publications regarding Greek libraries. Nevertheless some problems of interpretation remain
and the ruins need to be thoroughly re-examined in the
light of our present knowledge. Without going into the
technical evidence let me state my own view briefly. The
books, I believe, were stored in wooden containers of
some sort in the three smaller rooms. The large north
room was a splendid lobby for the users of the library, and
at the same time a veritable art gallery. A massive stone
pedestal that bordered the back and two side walls was not
intended, as commonly supposed, to support book cases,
but for the display of sculpture. A central place was occupied by a great marble figure of Athena that was found
in front of the Library. (Figure 13.) The goddess was flanked
by statues of famous literary figures of the past with emphasis on those who came from Asia Minor. Inscribed
bases bear the names of Homer, Alkaios, Herodotos,
Timotheos. Dowel holes high up in the walls of the room
may have held paintings done on wooden panels. The
broad two-a isled colonnade in front of the four rooms provided a promenade where scholars might take the air in a
characteristically Greek way while enjoying a magnificent
view over the city and countryside.
Plutarch reports that Mark Antony bestowed on Kleopatra the contents of the Pergamene. library, some
200,000 volumes (Antonius 58, 9), presumably to compensate her for the destruction caused in Alexandria by the
fire of 48 B.C. Even if this account be well founded, the
loss did not put an end to libraries in Pergamon. We now
know, thanks to the German excavations of the 1930s,
that a substantial library was erected , in the time of Hadrian, in the Sanctuary of Asklepios by a woman, Flavia
Melitine. By this time the center of intellectual life had
shifted from the splendid but arduous heights to this
more luxuriously appointed establishment in the plain.
As we leave Pergamon let us glance back at the figure of
Athena which once presided over the Hellenistic Library.
7
�Figure 15. Athenian Agora: the Metroon. Draw-
ing by John Travlos.
Figure 16. Athenian Agora in the 2nd century A.D. (view from northwest). Model by John Travlos.
Figure 16a.
Athenian Agora.
Standing 3.5 meters high the statue is clearly a free adaptation, at a scale of one to three, of the image of Athena
Parthenos made by Pheidias for the Parthenon. (Figure 14.)
Such a recall is symptomatic of the close sympathy, cultural as well as political, that existed between Pergamon
and Athens. In recognition of their debt to the older city
the rulers of Pergamon one after another made splendid
gifts to Athens: a park in the Academy, a group of sculpture on the Acropolis, a stoa beside the Theater at the
south foot of the Acropolis, another two-storied stoa on
the east side of the Agora. This last building, erected soon
after 150 B.C., was reconstructed in the 1950s to serve as
a museum for the finds from the excavation of the Agora.
In Athens about the same time, in the third quarter of
the second century B.C., another major building project
took place on the opposite, i.e. the western side of the
Agora. Here the Old Council House that we believe, as
noted above, to have housed the official archives of the city
since about 400 B.C. was demolished to make way for a
large new building, the Hellenistic Metroon. The remains
are slight, but sufficient to justify the restoration which
shows the Metroon in relation to the New Council House
and to the round Club House of the councillors, the
Tholos. The primary function of the Metroon as of its
predecessor was the safekeeping of the state archives. A
wide range of material is mentioned in inscriptions and
ancient literary testimonia: decrees, treaties, public accounts, even on occasion the will of a prominent citizen.
8
Some of the old original texts of decrees were regarded as
"collector's items," and in the first century B.C. one lot
was stolen by Apellikon, the notorious collector of librar·
ies whom I have mentioned above (Athenaeus V, 214d-e).
In plan the Metroon comprised four rooms of which
the northernmost was much the largest. All four rooms
faced eastward toward the open Agora through a broad
Ionic porch. The second room from the south has the
scheme of a temple; an altar stood in the open square in
front of this room. In this compartment, presumably, we
must place the famous seated statue of the Mother of the
Gods, the "M~r~p 8t0lv," who gave its name to the building. The statue was a work of Pheidias or, more probably,
of his pupil Agorakritos. The goddess is referred to by
Deinarchos (I, 86) as "guardian for the city of all the rights
recorded in the documents." The rooms that flanked the
shrine were presumably the repositories for the storage of
documents which would have consisted for the most part
of papyrus rolls. The north room contained a small courtyard open to the sky: this, we assume, served as a cloister
where users of the archives, including research scholars,
might work quietly, emerging occasionally for a stroll in
the outer colonnade. (Figure 15.)
The similarities between this Athenian building and
the only slightly earlier Library in Pergamon are so many
and so striking as to indicate some close relationship. I
venture to suggest that the construction of the Hellenistic
Metroon may indeed have been one more benefaction
from a Pergamene ruler to the venerable city of Athens.
The kings of Pergamon were not the only benefactors
of Athens in the Hellenistic period. At some as yet unknown point near the north foot of the Acropolis and to
the east of the Agora was a gymnasium called the Ptolemaion, so named after its founder. The earliest references
to the establishment date from the middle of the second
century B.C. Which Ptolemy was responsible remains
uncertain: Euregetes (246-221 B.C.) and Philometor
(180-145 B.C.) have been proposed. For our present purpose the interesting point is that the Ptolemaion certainly
contained a library. In the Hellenistic and early Roman
periods the Ptolemaion rivalled the famous old gymnasia
WINTER 1981
�as a center both of secondary education and of intellectual
life. One would like to think that the library was part of
the original foundation. That would certainly have been
appropriate in a Ptolemaic context, but our evidence con~
sists only of a number of inscriptions beginning in the
year ll7/6 B.C. which record an annual gift of one hundred books to the library in the Ptolemaion from the
graduating class of ephebes, that is the young men who
had completed their two-year course of training in the
gymnasium. These books were presumably for school use,
and the annual donation may have done little more than
compensate for wear and tear. But the Ptolemaion certainly became more than a secondary school: describing a
day in Athens in 45 B.C., Cicero tells of hearing a morning lecture by Antiochos, then head of the Academy, in
the Ptolemaion. The Ptolemaion remains to be found.
Libraries are known to have existed in gymnasia in
other Greek cities, but it is very difficult to identify specific library facilities even when a gymnasium has been
excavateo. All the more welcome, therefore, is a bit of evidence which came to light in the Sicilian city of Taormina
in 1969. In red paint on the white plastered wall of what
was evidently the library of a gymnasium were written
short biographical notices of various writers: Kallisthenes
of Olynthus, Philistos of Syracuse, and Fabius Pictor of
Rome. The transcription of the entry for Fabius will serve
as a sample: first the name, then a brief listing of the
author's principal works: the arrival of Herakles, Aeneas,
and Askanios in Italy, the story of Remus and Romulus. A
date for the inscription about 130 B.C. is proposed by Professor G. Manganaro who has published the new find in
the Romische Frilhgeschichte of Andreas Alfoldi (1976).
We may be sure that these notices were in convenient
proximity to the book containers, and we may suppose
that similar aids were a regular feature of school libraries.
We return to Athens to consider the oldest Athenian library of which actual remains have been found. It was a
modest establishment founded by one T. Flavius Pantainos ca. A.D. 100 at the southeast corner of the Agora.
Its excavation began in the 1930s and was completed in
the 1970s. The remains on the ground are slight, chiefly
because the building was demolished in the late third century after Christ to make way for a new fortification wall
in which was incorporated much of the stonework of the
Library. (Figures 16, 16a.)
_
The Library stood just to the south of the Stoa of Attalos. Between the two buildings passed a marble-paved
roadway that led from the old Agora eastward to the Marketplace of Caesar and Augustus. The principal room of
the Library was a spacious hall measuring about 9.75 x
10.75 meters. This room opened on a colonnaded courtyard which was bordered by ranges of small rooms to
north and west; these in turn were flanked by Ionic colonnades. The main, probably the only, entrance led through
the middle of the west side. Some surely, and perhaps all
of the small rooms had no direct connection with the
Library. Certainly the suite of two rooms to the south of
TIIE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Above, figure 17. Library of Pantainos (view from north), 1975.
Left foreground, the south pier of
arch between Library and the
Stoa of Attalos.
Right, figure 18. Southeast corner
of Agora in 2nd century A.D.
(north at top). Drawing by John
Travlos.
Below, figure 19. Library of Pantainos (view from the southwest).
Model by fohn Travlos.
the entrance had served as a sculptor's studio. We came
on quantities of his marble chips and on some pieces of
his very second-rate sculpture. Some of the other small
rooms may have been shops-the location at this busy
corner was suitable. (Figures 17, 18.)
With the construction of the Library this became, architecturally, one of the most attractive parts of the Agora.
The building faced westward across the Panathenaic way
toward a small plaza that was bordered on the south by a
9
�Figure 20. Odyssey and Iliad from the Library of Pantainos, Agora Museum in Stoa of Attalos.
temple and a large fountainhouse. The west colonnade of
the Library was continued southward by the porch of a
slightly later shop building. Northward, between the Library and the Stoa of Attalos, was another small and intimate plaza partially closed on the side toward the old
Agora by an earlier monument and defined on the east
side by a marble arch closely contemporary with the Library. (Figure 19.)
Although the walls of the Library were of coarse, rubble
masonry the marble work of its porches was of good quality. The floors of the great hall and of the courtyard had
both been paved with marble, and the lower part of the
walls faced with marble. Of this revetment only the imprints remain in the mortar.
One would dearly like to know how the books were
stored in the Library of Pantainos. The walls seem too
thin to have accommodated niches such as are commonly
found in libraries of the Roman period for book cupboards. We may therefore suppose that the books were
carried on wooden shelving set against the walls as was
certainly the case, for instance, in the Villa of the Papyri
at Herculaneum.
Figure 21.
Odyssey.
Figure 23. Iliad. The right
hand held a sword, the left
probably a spear.
10
WINTER 1981
�Figure 22. Odyssey: cmass. The central figure is Scylla; on the lappets: Aiolos, three Sirens, Polyphemos.
Ancient libraries whether private or public were normally adorned with works of art, above all with statues or
busts of famous authors. Our library was no exception. Its
most striking ornament was undoubtedly a marble group
comprising a seated figure of Homer flanked by standing
figures of the Iliad and Odyssey personified. Only the two
female figures have survived and they only as torsoes
which had been used as filling in the late Roman wall that
overlay the west front of the Library. They came to light
in 1869 near the northwest corner of the Library, and they
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
are now displayed nearby in the Stoa of Attalos: robust
figures clad in armor and slightly over life size. They were
conceived of as daughters of Homer. The Iliad, traditionally the older poem, is appropriately shown as larger than
her sister. The Odyssey is signed, on one of the lappets of
the cuirass, by Jason the Athenian. Since it is altogether
probable that the statues are contemporary with the Library (about A.D. 100), they are important in the history
of sculpture as among the few closely dateable Athenian
works of imperial times. (Figures 20-24.)
11
�Figure 24. Inscribed base of the Iliad, Agora Museum in Stoa of Attalos.
The figures were Identified long ago by Georg Treu,
who recognized on the cuirass of the smaller statue
motives appropriate to the Odyssey: Scylla with her dogheaded extremities, Aiolos, god of the winds, Sirens, and
Polyphemos. The identification of the Iliad followed
naturally, especially since there are traces of a sword, her
normal attribute, held at her right side. Both figures show
marked weathering on their upper parts, and both have
the rich honey color characteristic of Pentelic marble that
Figure 25, Marble relief commemorating a victory in a literary coniest
By Archelaos of Priene, 2nd century RC, British Museum.
Left, figure 26. Arch between
Library of Pantainos (right)
and Stoa of Attalos (left),
(view from west). Drawing by
W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr.
Right, figure 27. T. Flavius
Pantainos(?), marble head
found near Library of Pantainos, Agora Museum, Stoa of
Attalos.
12
WINTER 1981
�has long been exposed to the elements. We may be sure,
therefore, that the group stood out of doors, and indeed it
was long ago observed by Paul Graindor that the bold
treatment of both torsos and drapery favored an architectural setting. (Figure 22.)
In 1953 from the curbing of a well of the Byzantine
period just to the west of the Library the excavators
recovered the many fragments of the plinth of the Iliad.
The inscription is enigmatic, but nevertheless helpful: "I
the Iliad both before and after Homer stand by the side of
him who bore me while young." This text justifies therestoration which I have already proposed, i.e. a group of
Homer flanked by his "daughters." Several such groups
are known, the most familiar being that at the lower lefthand corner of a relief of late Hellenistic date now in the
British Museum. The sculptor, Arkelaos of Priene, has
obligingly labelled all the figures. Homer seated, staff in
hand, is flanked by the Iliad and Odyssey, here shown as
small kneeling figures. (Figure 25.)
The chief question still outstanding about our group is
its original location. The Library has now been completely
excavated, and no base suitable for such a monumental
group has come to light within the building. In any case,
as we have already seen, the group must have stood outdoors. Since there is no reason to question its association
with the Library, we must look for a location outside the
building but close enough to it so that the association
would be obvious.
As a possible location I believe we should consider the
top of the marble arch that spanned the roadway between
the Library and the Stoa of Attalos. Of this arch there remain the lower parts of the two lateral piers, the threshold
between the piers, and one block of the crowning course.
We do not have time to go into technicalities, but I do
wish to point out that neither the arch nor the adjacent
colonnade of the Library would have made architectural
sense without the other. Moreover, the care with which
the Library colonnade is fitted to the arch leaves little
doubt that they are parts of one building program. (In contrast, the colonnade bordering the south side of the street
leading eastward toward the Market of Caesar and Augustus is related to the arch very awkwardly. That colonnade,
however, belongs to a slightly later building program
which, as we know from an inscription, was financed by
the People of Athens.) An arch of this type would certainly
have carried sculpture. No other candidates have been
found apart from our Homer group, and that group, as we
have seen, cries out for such a location. (Figure 26.)
Portraits of other great literary figures of the past may
well have figured among the furnishings of the Library,
and such may someday be recognized among the fragmentary sculptures found on the site. Nor is the founder
of the Library likely to have gone unhonored. As a candidate for a portrait ofT. Flavius Pantainos, I should like to
propose a marble head, well over life size, that was found
near the northwest corner of the Library in 1933. The
piece is so fresh as to indicate that it had not travelled far.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 28. Dedicatory inscription from the Library of Pantainos.
The haircut and the tooling point to the time of Trajan,
and an identification with that Emperor has indeed been
proposed. But it really doesn't look like Trajan. Moreover,
the head is crowned with a laurel wreath that would be
unusual on an emperor. I prefer to regard it as representing the actual wreath or crown which the people of Athens
would surely have bestowed on Pantainos as a benefactor.
It is identical for instance with the wreath worn by
Tiberius Julius Aquila, the builder of the beautiful Library
of Celsus in Ephesus. (Figure 27.)
You may wonder how I can speak with such assurance
about the donor and the date of our Library. My source is
the dedicatory inscription engraved on the lintel from
above the entrance to the building; it now forms part of
the late Roman fortification wall. (Figure 28.) The text in
translation reads:
To Athena Polias and to the Emperor Caesar Augustus Nerva
Trajan Germanicus and to the city of the Athenians, the priest
of the Muses who love wisdom, T. Flavius Pantainos, son of
Flavius Menander head of the school, dedicated _the outer stoas,
the peristyle, the library with the books, and all the embellishment of the building, from his own resources along with his
children, Flavius Menander and Flavia Secundilla.
Figure 29. Notice
from the Library of
Pantainos, ca. A.D.
100, Agora Museum,
Stoa of Attalos.
13
�The emperor's title points to a date close around A.D.
100. Pantainos was a man of some consequence in Athens.
He is known to have held the archonship (which at this
time implied wealth) probably in A.D. 115/6, and he had
been honored for some reason with a portrait Herm. Nor
is it impossible that he was the grandfather of the Pantainos who is known as the head of the first Christian
Figure 31. Library of
Hadrian, west facade.
Photo by Alison Frantz.
Figure 32. Library of Hadrian, model in Musco della Civilta Romana,
Rome. Photo by Alison Frantz.
Figure 30. Hadrian; in the Agora excavations.
school in Alexandria and the teacher of Clement, the early
church father whose writings betray a wide knowledge of
pagan Greek literature.
The books presented by Pantainos have· gone beyond
recall. The building and all its embellishments are sadly
ruinous. What does remain to us, and that in its pristine
state, is a library notice. The text was engraved at convenient height on the shaft of a Herm. It reads, "No book
14
shall be taken out, for we have sworn an oath. The building shall be open from the first hour till the sixth." Who
were the "we" who took the oath? The expression used
here, coupled with Pantainos' description of himself as
"priest of the wisdom-loving Muses", makes one suspect
the existence of some society, perhaps a local "Museum"
such as is attested for Athens and for some other Greek
cities, the forerunner of modern Athenaeums. (Figure 29.)
Pantainos' building, modest though it may seem, is important as representing the type of public library that
must have been a normal component of the community
center of many a city throughout the Roman Empire.
We tum, finally, to a library of a quite different stamp.
The Emperor Hadrian is well known as a great philhellene, and above all as a devoted friend of Athens. His attitude toward Athens is happily symbolized in a marble portrait statue found near the west side of the Agora in 1931,
the first season of excavation. Athena, patron goddess of
Athens, stands on the back of the Wolf of Rome. The
Wolf has her fosterlings, Romulus and Remus: Athens has
her owl and sacred snake; the goddess is being crowned by
two Victories. (Figure 30.) In all her long history Athens
never had a more generous benefactor than Hadrian. The
Emperor contributed to many departments of the city's
WINTER 1981
�""
lo • • •
- ·- - - · ·
''---"'
.di:o
Figure 34. Library of Hadrian; quatrefoil church of the 5th century appears in the middle of the court.
Figure 33. Library of Hadrian; inner face of back wall of principal room,
showing niches for book shelves. Photo archive, John Travlos.
life: he completed the colossal temple of Olympian Zeus,
erected a temple of Hera and Zeus, built a sanctuary of all
the gods, a gymnasium and an aqueduct. At the end of his
well-known list of Hadrians's benefactions, Pausanias (I,
18, 9) remarked, "Most splendid of all is (a structure) with
100 columns; walls and colonnade alike are made of Phrygian marble. Here too are rooms adorned with gilded ceilings and alabaster, and also with statues and paintings:
books are stored in the rooms." (trans.). G. Frazer).
The identification of this building, the Library of Hadrian, is now securely established. It stood in the middle of
the city, just to the north of the Market Place that had
been built with the aid of grants from julius Caesar and
the Emperor Augustus. It rose a stone's throw to the east
of the Classical Agora, and it represents the final increment to that centuries-old community center. The Library was also the last fine building to be erected in
Athens in Classical antiquity and the most splendid of all
ancient libraries known to us. Although the great building
has not yet been completely excavated, and much of its
area is still cluttered with modern buildings, its visible remains, rising in a slum district of the city, startle one with
their monumental quality. (Figure 31.)
Since a good publication of the building by the English
scholar M. A. Sisson is readily available I shall be brief.
The principal facade was enlivened by fourteen monolithic columns of green marble once crowned with
statues. Through a columnar propylon in the middle of
that facade one entered an enormous colonnaded courtyard with a long pool on its axis; the open area was un~
doubtedly planted. Pleasant alcoves opened out from the
lateral colonnades, three on each side. (Figure 32.)
The richly adorned rooms mentioned by Pausanias are
recognizable at the far end of the court. A great central
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
chamber was undoubtedly the principal repository of
books. Two corner rooms, as demonstrated recently by
john Travlos, were certainly lecture rooms with sloping
floors and elegant appointments. Smaller intermediate
rooms were perhaps intended for special collections of
rare books that required greater security. Whether the
bilateral symmetry implies a division between Greek and
Latin as in the Library of Trajan in Rome we cannot say.
Enough remains of the back wall of the central room to
show that here, as in the Library of Celsus at Ephesos, the
books were stored in cupboards set into the face of the
wall on three levels. (Figure 33.)
Despite the monumental scale of the building and the
dazzling wealth of the building materials, the basic plan is
beautifully clear and straightforward. What is more, we
find here the same elements that we have observed in earlier libraries from Pergamon onward: one room of im~
pressive scale, ample provision for strolling in colonnades,
and quiet areas for more peaceful study or discussion.
The design is undoubtedly the creation of some gifted
architect chosen by the Emperor, perhaps a man who had
assisted in designing the several libraries in Hadrian's own
villa at Tibur, and surely someone who was thoroughly
familiar with the great buildings in the capital, above all
the Templum Pacis ("Forum of Vespasian") and the
Forum of Trajan.
The Athenian building may be dated in the l30s. It appears to have suffered severely in the Herulian sack of
A.D. 267. Its subsequent history is intriguing but full of
major uncertainties. Some of the surviving bases of the
main colonnade are of crude workmanship and presumably belong to some post-Herulian reconstruction. In the
propylon, high on the wall to the left of the doorway, if
you arrive when the sun is right, you may just detect a
15
�British Museum, by permission of the Trustees: Figs. 7, 10, 25
Deutschcs Archiiologisches lnstitut: Fig. 12
Alison Frantz: Figs.14, 31,32
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Figs. 6, 8
Museum ofl"ine Arts, Boston: Fig. 9
Pergamon Museum, Berlin: Fig. 13
Staatliche Museen, Berlin: Fig. II
John_Travlos: Figs. 33-35
Short Bibliography
Figure 35. Quatrefoil church in the court of Library of Hadrian; second
period, 7th century {view from the southeast). Photo archive, John Travlos.
metrical inscfiption recording the dedication of a statue,
apparently a large one. The honoree was none other than
the high-ranking imperial official Herculius, Prefect of [].
lyricum from 408 to 412 A.D. The one who dedicated the
statue was Plutarch, founder of the Neo-Platonic School
and its head. In the epigram Plutarch describes himself as
"steward of letters", Hercu1ius as "steward of the laws."
My colleague, Alison Frantz, has argued persuasively that
Herculius may have been responsible for the repair of the
Library. The interest shown in the undertaking by the
famous philosopher Plutarch favors the view that at this
time the establishment still served the world of letters.
This is understandable, for even at this late period Athens
continued to be one of the most active intellectual centers
of the ancient world, attracting distinguished scholars
from near and far.
Later in the fifth century the pool on the axis of the library courtyard was filled in, and a church with an
unusual quatrefoil plan was erected in the middle of the
court. The church was rebuilt, with altered plan and inferior technique, in the seventh century. It may be assumed that the whole complex had suffered, like several
buildings in the area of the Agora, from the Slavic incursions of the 580s. There is no indication that the library
facilities survived this devastation. We know from our excavations in the Agora that by the seventh century lamps
had virtually ceased to be made in Athens. One may infer
that reading had declined to the point where neither
lamps nor libraries were needed. Here then our story
ends. (Figures 34, 35.)
Grateful acknowledgement for the use of illustrations is made as follows:
American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Agora Excavations):
Figs. 1-5, 15-24,26-30
16
General
Christian Callmer, "Antike Bibliotheken," Acta Instituti Romani
Regni Sueciae X (1944) 145-193
H. Kahler, "Biblioteca" in Enciclopedia dell' Arte Antica, vol. II (1959)
92-99
J. Platthy, Sources on the Earliest Greek Libraries with the Testimonia,
Amsterdam (1968)
Athens: Library of Aristotle
W. Jaeger, Aristotle, 2nd. ed. (1948) Ch. XIII: The Organization of Research
J.P. Lynch, Aristotle's School: a Study of a Greek Educational Institution (1972)
Athens: Metroon
H. A. Thompson, Hesperia 6 (1937) 115-217
H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora XIV
(1972) 25-38
Athens: Ptolemaion
R. K Wycherley~ The Athenian Agora III (1957) 142-144 (testimonia)
J. Delorme, Gymnasion (1960) 146f.
C. Pelekidis, Histoire de l'Ephebie Attique (1962) 263f., 266f.
M. Thompson, "Ptolemy Philometor and Athens," American Numismatic Society, Museum Notes XI (1964) 119-129
Athens: Library of Pantainos
Hesperia 4(1935) 330-332: IS (1949) 269-274; 15 (1946) 233; 42 (1973)
144-146, 384-389; 44 (1975) 332ff. (excavation reports); 15 (1946)
233 and Supplement VIII (1949) 268-272 (dedicatOry inscrlpti0r1)
J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (1971) 432-437
H. A. Thompson and R E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora, XIV
(1972) 114-116
Athens: Library of Hadrian
M. A. Sisson, Papers of the British School at Rome 11 (1929) 58-66
A. Frantz, "Honors to a Librarian", Hesperia 35 (1966) 377-380
J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (1971) 244-252
Alexandria
R. Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship (1968) 95ff.
P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972) Ch. 6: Ptolemaic Patronage:
the Mouseion and Library
Pergamon
R. Bohn, Altertilmer von Pergamon II (1885) 56-75
E. V. Hansen, The Attalids of Pergamon (1971) 272-274, 355f.
0. Deubner, Das Asklepieion von Pergamon (1938) 40-43
C. Habicht, Die Inschriften des Asklepieions (Altertilmer von Pergamon
Vlll, 3. 1969) 15-18, 84f.
Ephesos
W. Wilberge, M. Theuer, F. Eichler, J. Keil, Die Bibliothek (Forschungen in Ephesos V, I) (1945, 1953)
F. Hueber and V. M. Strocka, "Die Bibliothek des Celsus," Antike
Welt 6 (1975) 3-14: restoration of facade
W. Oberleitner eta\., Funde aus Ephesos und Samothrake (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) (1978) 113-115
Pompeii
L. Richardson, Jr., "The Libraries of Pompeii", Archaeology 30 (1977)
394-402
WINTER 1981
�Guardian Politics
The Deer Hunter (1978)
•
1n
Nelson Lund
I
NIVERSAL PICTURES' THE DEER HUNTER is not about the
Vietnam war. The film makes no statement about
the justice or prudence of our participation in that
conflict. Instead, it dares to remind us that most Americans-soldiers and civilians alike-gave little thought to
the great questions of foreign policy raised at the time.
And it dares to suggest that they are not to be damned for
that
This seeming indifference to large issues of political
morality probably accounts for much of the hostility that
critics have expressed towards the film. But if we refuse
either to disregard this indifference or to be prejudiced by
it, we can find our way through the film's deeper exploration of the grounds of political morality.
Though The Deer Hunter is. set in an era that most of us
remember vividly, we see in it almost nothing of what that
era recalls to us. The film begins by focusing on three
young Americans as they prepare to serve in the Army
during the late 1960s; it shows a few startling scenes from
their experiences in Vietnam; and it examines the aftermath of their service. But the fall of Saigon is the only historic event that plays a part in the film; no politicians appear or are mentioned; we hear nothing of the anti-war
protests or other civil disturbances of the time; and the
film's notorious Russian roulette sequences have no
known basis in fact.
The Deer Hunter makes us think about politics and war
and our country. But because it addresses these issues
only indirectly, and because of its odd juxtaposition of
U
Nelson Lund is a graduate student in the Department of Government
at Harvard University,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
wrenching violence and unfashionable sentiment, the
film is apt to leave the viewer shocked and disoriented. As
I hope to show, the film can lead us beyond this painful
confusion to an uncommonly true and useful view of ourselves and our society.
The film's protagonist, the deer hunter, is named for
the Archangel Michael, who guards the gates of hell,
brings to man the gift of prudence, and will in the final
judgment weigh the souls of the risen dead. The Archangel is the leader of the army of heaven, and is traditionally pictured bearing both sword and shield. As we
shall see, the deer hunter's name suits him welL
At many points in the film, Michael reminds us of the
most typically American hero, who is perhaps most familiar from the film Casablanca. The everyday manners of
this figure are cynical, independent, and somewhat disreputable. In fact, as we know, he lives by principles of
decency and is prepared in extraordinary circumstances
to sacrifice his own pursuits for the common good. Reluctant to become the hero of others, he always becomes the
guardian of decent people when they truly need him.
Most American art presents this character in his maturity and reveals enough of him to provoke our admiration
and respect. The Deer Hunter is unusual because it examines the difficulties of his genesis, and thus brings a special clarity to the complexities of his relations with the
people who rely on his virtues. Its most valuable effect is
This essay owes a great deal to my father, Horace N. Lund, who first
taught me much of what I learned again from The Deer Hunter. I am
a~so indebted to several friends who talked with me about the film, espeCially Leon Kass and Amy Kass. Larry Sonnenfeldt and Leo Raditsa read
early drafts of the essay and offered many sharp and generous criticisms;
all these suggestions were helpful, and the ones I accepted enabled me
to present my views more clearly and precisely-N.L.
17
�to help us add a new understanding to our old admiration
and respect.
about. The film's attention to this great question gives it
a significance beyond the obvious issues that are raised
by our country's experience in Vietnam or even in war
generally.
W
HEN WE FIRST MEET MICHAEL,
we are confronted
with a natural leader. He is more talented than
those around him, and more reckless. But the skill
and daring with which he drives his magnificent '59
Coupe de Ville show us that his talents and his inclina·
lions have few outlets better than those he can find at the
wheel of his automobile. He lives in a rather ordinary
working-class community in Clairton, Pennsylvania; most
of the men work in the steel mills, most of the women stay
in the background.
The mills themselves appear as a kind of earthly helL
The flames, the roaring noise, and the men's protective
garments convey a little of the sense of modern warfare.
But while war is the true earthly hell, life in the mills is
routine, depressing, and without the fascination that real
violence and sudden death can bring.
In the background, the steeple of the Russian Orthodox
Church soars above the residential part of town with cool,
distant grace. Early in the film, we enter the church to
watch a wedding that is truly majestic in its setting and
forms; but the magnificence of the ceremony appears
slightly comic because religion is so small a part of the
lives of the participants. The bride is pregnant, the
bridegroom's mother is distraught, the priest is a cipher.
Michael himself is openly amused by the rituals of piety,
and he appears truly interested only in the maid of honor,
Linda, who is also his best friend's girL
Young and restless, Michael is eager to escape the suf·
focating life that Clairton and the mills impose. But he
lacks the licentious and childish impatience for which so
many of his contemporaries of the 1960s are still
remembered. In the past he has lived for his occasional
hunting trips to the mountains, and now he has enlisted
in the Army. He wants adventure and challenge, but he
betrays no desire to rebel against Clairton or to cut his ties
with the town. The Army promises him a respectable way
out of his dreary and grimy home.
- Michael's maintenance of his ties with Clairton is emphasized by the fact that two of his friends have enlisted
with him for the war. Like him, they seem motivated by
restlessness. This desire for adventure is a private passion,
and to pursue it is to risk the protection and supports that
we find in social life. These men hope to reduce that risk
by leaving Clairton together and maintaining their friend·
ship in the Army. In this they are doing nothing unusual
or hard to explain; but they encounter unforeseen
troubles in the war.
Can men form friendships that allow them to pursue
their private passions while preserving the benefits of co·
operation and social dependence? The Deer Hunter shows
us difficulties that are easy to overlook; and it suggests
that the solution is hard to accept and harder yet to bring
18
II
on the wedding day of Stevie, one of
the enlistees. That morning, Michael proposes that
he and his friends go on one last deer hunt before the
departure for Vietnam; and he gives an odd reason for the
T
HE FILM OPENS
proposal. Upon noticing an atmospheric phenomenon in
which a kind of halo appears around the sun, he says:
"Holy shit! You know what that is? Those are sun dogs
.... It means a blessing on the hunter sent by the Great
Wolf to his children .... It's an old Indian thing." This
casual paganism is the first sign of how very different
Michael is from those around him.
That afternoon, Michael talks about the hunt with his
roommate Nick; Nick, who has also enlisted in the Army,
appears a little scandalized that they are discussing the
hunt just before Stevie's wedding. In the course of the
conversation, Michael makes a serious attempt to state
who he is. He firmly asserts his preference for the moun·
tains over the town; and he vehemently asserts the importance of killing a deer with one shot. According to
Michael, this is the right way to take a deer, and the fail·
ure to accept the principle indicates a lack of human
stature: "Two is pussy .... 'One shot' is what it's all about.
A deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell people
that, but they don't listen." Nick indicates that his own interest in the "one shot" ethic has declined and that he has
grown fonder of the natural beauties of the mountains.
Nevertheless, Michael insists that their other hunting
companions are defective: "They're all assholes. I mean, I
love 'em, they're great guys, but without you, I'd hunt
alone. Seriously, that's what I'd do." Nick calls Michael a
"control freak," without explaining how Michael's desire
for control is excessive; Michael responds by saying, "I
just don't like no surprises."
This scene foreshadows two of the major themes of the
film: the ambiguity of Michael's relationships to his friends
and the question of his own being. Quite clearly, he does
think of his hunting companions as friends, but it seems
that only his relationship with Nick makes his friendships
with the others possible. Michael treats Nick as an equal
because Nick has accepted the "one shot" ethic. And yet,
Nick is apparently not content that just the two of them
should hunt together, so Michael tolerates the presence
of the inferior hunters for Nick's sake. Though Michael
wishes to treat Nick as his equal, Nick is less committed
than Michael to the "one shot" ethic and more emotion·
ally dependent on those who do not accept it at all.
Michael seeks to overlook this difference between himself
and Nick; he apparently believes that they are or can be
WINTER 1981
�equals in friendship if they maintain their allegiance to a
common principle. Only later do we discover how crucial
the dissimilarity between them is; but we are enabled here
at the beginning of the film to see that it exists.
As Michael originally states the "one shot" principle, it
appears to be a statement of the right way to hunt; his
commitment to it appears as a striving for excellence, here
for the hunter's excellence. His vehement statement of
the principle suggests that only ignorance or self-indulgence could account for the failure to adhere to it. If this
is so, Nick's characterization of Michael as a "control
freak" is misleading because it tends to confound excellence with power, self-control with control over other beings. Nevertheless, Michael shows that he shares Nick's
confusion when he replies: HI just don't like no surprises."
Here Michael is obviously wrong about himself. One
who dislikes surprises does not find his greatest satisfac·
lions hunting wild game in the mountains; such activity is
anything but routine. And one who wants to avoid surprises surely does not volunteer for hunting's great
counterpart, war. Michael may believe that he wants to do
away with surprises, he may believe that he seeks power
or control in the broadest sense. But if what he is truly
seeking is excellence, he is a better man than he knows
and so should prove able to learn. Before the film ends,
Michael learns a great deal indeed.
During the subsequent hunting trip, Michael shows
that his commitment to a standard of excellence is no
mere private passion. A small base person named Stanley
has forgotten to bring some essential piece of gear; he
now expects to borrow Michael's spare. Stanley has a long
history of such irresponsibility, and Michael refuses to
lend him the gear. Stanley gets out a small revolver and insults Michael's manhood by commenting on his unaggressive behavior towards women. Michael, who happens to
be holding his rifle, takes a cartridge from his pocket and
very forcefully says: "Stanley, see this? This is this. This
ain't something else. This is this. From now on_you're on
your own." Michael slams the round into its chamber, and
the conflict continues until finally Nick intervenes; he
chides Michael for his stubbornness and gives Stanley
Michael's spare equipment. Michael angrily raises his rifle
and fires into the distance. Just before the argument,
Michael had noticed a deer running through the brush; no
one else was watching.
41
This is this" means first that weapons have purposes.
They have their proper uses, for example in hunting deer;
and they have their typical abuses, as Stanley's behavior
vividly illustrates. Michael must sense that this does not
apply only to weapons. Perhaps he sees it most clearly in
weapons because they are men's most necessary tools; the
way he drove his fancy Cadillac is enough to remind us
that an instrument's proper use is not always so easy to
see. Unlike most people, Michael insists on this standard
of what is proper when he can discern it and seeks it when
he cannot. The insistence is shown to us here at the be·
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ginning of the film; his seeking will be the spring of his
later education.
Michael's speech to Stanley has a further meaning implied in the conclusion, '(From now on you're on your
own." Those who are too ignorant or self-indulgent to
confront the world as it is become irresponsible. Like
Stanley, they tend to become derelict and apt to do unintended damage to themselves and others; as a result, such
people force others to take responsibility for them. Michael would refuse to tolerate Stanley's excess, but Nick
interferes: to prevent the group from breaking into factions, Nick has to deflect Michael from the natural course
of his principled intolerance. In frustration, Michael ap·
pears to violate his own principle by firing his rifle without a target. Were it not for his friendship with Nick,
Michael might become a solitary hunter; as we shall see, it
will be hard for him to become anything else.
.
URIN. c THE FILM, Michael becomes larger; by the end,
he would no longer insist so harshly on the "one
shot" ethic and he would not make such truthful
but difficult assertions as "this is this." But though he
does undergo an education, the film presents no educator:
nowhere in The Deer Hunter is there any man better than
Michael or any indication that such a man could exist. His
great triumph lies in his later mastery or education of himself, but the film leaves no doubt that he is superior to ordinary men from the beginning.
From the first, Michael is highly spirited; he is eager for
war, sure of his strength, and remarkably capable of doing
without the company of women. But in addition to this
raw virtue, Michael has a drive to understand what he
D
sees and hears.
An example of this drive occurs when Michael and the
other enlistees, fairly drunk and full of bravado, encounter
a Green Beret at the wedding reception. Michael inquires
about Vietnam and Nick expresses his eagerness for dan·
ger; Stevie echoes Nick's sentiments. When the soldier
snubs them by refusing to say anything but "Fuck it,"
Michael begins repeating the formulation in different
tones of voice, as though he is trying to discover what it
means: "Fuck it ... Fuck it." Finally, in a simultaneously
challenging and curious tone, he asks: "Fuck who?" While
Nick and Stevie seem surprised and worried, Michael
seems almost intrigued. He is sufficiently eager and indelicate to interrogate a veteran about his experiences, so he
must have some of the illusions common to spirited men
who have not seen combat. We would expect someone as
combative as Michael to respond to the man's rebuff with
mere anger or perhaps with awe. But Michael wonders
about the meaning of the man's behavior.
It is very rare to find a man as self-assertive as Michael
and also so ready to learn. The film offers no explanation
for the cause of this superiority and so encourages us to
infer that it has come about by nature. By calling atten-
19
�lion in this way to the natural inequalities among men,
the film commits a breach of the etiquette of our time.
Eventually the film suggests that these inequalities result
in a politically relevant hierarchy of human types; this
challenge to one of the deepest prejudices of our time has
probably caused much of the misinterpretation to which
the film has been subjected. That challenge, however, is
neither idle nor gratuitous. Events have made it necessary, and the film is careful to remind us of that fact.
Stevie, the boy who marries just before leaving for war,
is the most ordinary of the three main characters. l-Ie has
no great strengths or failings, no burning passions or re-
markable idiosyncracies. l-Ie is decent, but ineffectual-a
natural follower and indeed a natural loser. l-Ie loves his
fiancee and insists that she loves him. However sincere he
may be, his hopes seem preposterous since he has never
slept with this girl who he knows is pregnant. Stevie appears to be her dupe and perhaps also the dupe of the
child's father; later we learn that the father is almost certainly Nick. In war, Stevie proves incompetent, unlucky,
and weak. Michael repeatedly must save his life; and at
least once, he has to take a terrible risk with his own life in
order to rescue Stevie. Stevie loses an arm and both legs in
the war; and even after they return to America, Michael
has to carry him from the deadening comfort of the V.A.
hospital and force him to rejoin the town. Time after time
we are reminded that merely decent people cannot take
care of themselves.
Someone might protest against the harshness of this
view. But though the film does expose Stevie's shortcomings, it leads the viewer to see a problem rather than an
indictment. We might not have to emphasize Stevie's
weakness if his decency had sufficient support in the institutions of his community. The weakness of those institutions is the great problem raised by the film's treatment
of Stevie.
with a tanker-truck rolling into
Clairton at dawn, reminding us that the towns of
this country are connected to one another by close
ties of economic interdependence. But besides this, what
signs of a national community can we find in the film? We
see a football game on television and we hear popular
T
HE FiLM OPENS
music on jukeboxes; and there is a veterans' organization,
whose only role in the film is to provide the hall where the
wedding reception is held. These shared amusements
mark the people of Clairton as typically American; they
are typical, too, in their lack of curiosity about the nation's
public affairs. Working people, without much schooling,
they do not have much leisure or incentive to enlighten
themselves about the world beyond their city. Certainly
America's political institutions encourage this insularity.
With our complicated federal system and our traditions of
local independence, we have always inclined towards the
sort of provincialism that we see in Clairton. The fact that
20
this narrowness so often seems benign does not imply that
the nation as a whole is either unified or well-ordered.
Our own recollections of the late 1960s should be enough
to remind us that the strength of this country's social
fabric cannot be taken for granted.
Despite the lack of interest in public affairs, Clairton is
supplying three volunteers for the government's war. Obviously, then, the people here must feel that they belong
to the nation and that they owe her their allegiance. But
the United States has always been too large and too
diverse and too young to draw its greatest strength from
patriotic sentiment. At the wedding reception, the
bandleader introduces the three young men who are leaving "to proudly serve their country"; everyone listens in
respectful silence, and afterwards they cheer. But none of
the volunteers ever indicates that his enlistment has been
motivated by a sense of duty or political responsibility.
Patriotism lives in Clairton, but the people seem not to be
formed by it any more than by discussion of the affairs of
the day. And again, we can easily remind ourselves that
patriotism did not flourish during the 1960s in America's
more enlightened and vainly cosmopolitan cities.
Our political tradition, of course, has never sought the
sort of national enthusiasm to whose absence the film directs our attention. In this country, we have expected po-
litical liberty to bring the greatest possible freedom from
government intrusion into our private affairs and volun-
tary social activities. This proud tradition of individuality
and local independence has always acknowledged that direct national needs are the rightful concern of the central
government; accordingly, we hear of no draft-dodging in
Clairton. But the cultivation of citizens and decent human beings like Stevie has not been regarded as the necessary or proper concern of the government, except through
the local public schools. Moral education has been left
largely to the church and family; it is there that we must
look for the institutional underpinnings of the decency
that Stevie represents.
The looming presence of the Russian Church in Clairton reminds us that Christianity is a religion with univer-
sal claims. It addresses us from beyond all political
horizons and promises to provide a framework for human
decency that is both loftier and more solid than that provided by any merely political order. But the church in
Clairton fails miserably at its first task: helping its adherents to see the world as coherent and ultimately benign.
Stevie's mother is extemely distraught about the behavior
of her son, who is marrying a pregnant girl and volun-
teering for war. just before the wedding she approaches
her priest as he mechanically prepares the altar for the
service, and tearfully appeals to him: "I do not understand, Father. I understand nothing anymore. Nothing.
Can you explain? Can anyone explain?" The priest stiffly
embraces her but he has nothing to say. When priests can
no longer even attempt to answer the most pressing ques-
tions of an ordinary middle-aged woman, the church can
WINTER 1981
�hardly be thought to play a significant part in the moral
education of the young. A church that cannot even articulate a defense of Stevie's conduct can hardly provide
the basis for cultivating and protecting the kind of human
character that he displays. And one would have trouble
showing that any major church has recently been doing
better than this one does in Clairton.
What little family life we see in The Deer Hunter is a
mess. Stevie and his mother are without a common ground
of discourse, so they only quarrel; Nick's girlfriend is
beaten by her drunken father; Stevie's wife goes quietly
mad while he is away in the Army. Neither Nick nor
Michael seems to have any family at all.
Early in th~ film we see Stevie instinctively reaching for
the stability of family life: deprived of the psychological
protection that a strong home offers, he anxiously tries to
establish a family of his own. But his attempt is doomed.
He seems to believe that a ceremony is sufficient to establish a marriage, for he foolishly leaves for war a day or so
after the wedding. But even without this fantastic misjudgment, the prognosis for his marriage would be very
bleak. His bride's pregnancy directs our attention to the
disorder in the social institutions that surround and affect
the family. A leading purpose of the institution of marriage is to fix responsibility for the care of children. When
we see as decent a man as Stevie reduced to undertaking
responsibility for some otl1er man's child, we have to con-
clude that the private behavior of women has broken
loose from the restraints that are needed in any political
community. We might believe that he is just being generous if we were given any indication that he had much
chance of finding a more respectable wife. Since we are
not, we have to see his marriage as a pathetic, futile ges-
neither lust nor flirtation: he looks intently and thoughtfully at her, as though he is powerfully aware of some ignorance or other defect in himself. This expression comes
to his face again when he sees her at the reception. To
their surprise and embarrassment, Nick encourages them
to dance together. We see right afterwards that Nick did
this in order to free himself to pursue a sad and lonely
looking girl nearby; and then we see him repulse an earnest male friend in order to toy with this vulnerable girl.
While Michael is with Linda, he seems uneasy with himself in a way we have not seen before; he appears caught
between his attraction to her and his loyalty to Nick. He
has been drinking, and just as his attraction to Linda
seems about to win out, Nick interrupts them and she
hurries out of the room.
Unlike Michael, Nick treats Linda carelessly, as though
she is merely one of several goods that he wants but by
which he does not want to be confined. After the disturbing encounter with the Green Beret, he proposes mar-
riage to her; when she eagerly accepts, he qualifies the
proposal so severely that it becomes merely hypotheticaL
Disappointed, she remarks: "Anything that goes through
your mind comes out your mouth." After the reception,
Nick tells Michael of his attachment to Clairton and his
fear of not being able to return there from the war. We
can guess that his attitude towards Linda is similar. He
wants what she offers and he fears losing her forever, but
he desperately wants something more; and he senses that
Michael can lead him to a better life than Clairton and
Linda promise. Were it not for Michael, Nick might attempt, like Stevie, to arrange for a comfortable and regular existence; but in the presence of Michael, even Stevie
is drawn away from Clairton to the war.
ture against the social disintegration that began to be-
Though Nick's behavior towards women is more obvi-
come evident in the nation at large during the years when
ously blameworthy than Stevie's, Nick also senses more
clearly the real difficulties of doing well. We saw before
that Stevie's decency is bound up with his weakness and
blindness. Nick, on the contrary, is strongly aware of the
dangers of leaving Clairton and Linda. While alone with
Michael after the reception, he proclaims his love for
Clairton and asks Michael to promise not to leave him in
Vietnam. In order to permit Nick to keep his pride after
such a humbling request, Michael replies with a casual
formulation; but his tone of voice is quite solemn: "Hey
this story takes place. Because it points so clearly at the
weaknesses of the family, church, and government, the
film implies that those institutions are not likely sources of
the social re-integration that is so obviously desirable. And
the film certainly does not suggest that men like Stevie
are plausible agents of improvement.
NLIKE STEVIE, Nick is neither ineffectual nor very
decent. And unlike Stevie, he is quite handsome
and graceful. We have seen that he is not as emotionally self-sufficient as Michael. Neither is he as competent. Michael accomplishes feats with his car that Nick
did not think possible; Nick loses to Michael at pool; and
Michael takes the buck that we see them tracking together. But more important, and despite his admiration
for Michael, Nick is more irresponsible than his friend.
U
We can see this most clearly in their relations with Linda,
Nick's girl.
Nicky, you got it."
At this moment, Michael's dilemma becomes more
clear. As we know from Stanley's insults on the hunting
trip, Michael does not pursue women in the careless way
that Clairton's customs encourage. But his reluctance to
pursue Linda stems mainly from the conflicting claim of
his friendship with Nick. This suggests that Michael has a
normal male attraction to women, and that he restrains it
for the sake of his friendships with men. When we recall
that he would rather hunt alone than with men he dis-
As we observed earlier, Michael's attention at the wed-
dains, it appears that he is seeking in human relationships
ding is directed most forcefully at Linda. His face shows
primarily the equality that might foster sharing of the best
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
21
�experiences. The experiences that now seem most impor~
tant to him are hunting and its great brother, war.
Michael knows that his attraction to these pursuits is essentially male; hence he rather reasonably sets his attraction to women aside for the sake of his friendships with
men, and especially with Nick. And as his promise to Nick
reveals, Michael is ready to commit himself to those
friendships as firmly as one would commit oneself to marnage.
But Nick's need to hear Michael make the promise reveals the difficulty with Michael's reasoning. Nick shows
here that he is very dependent on Michael's strength, so it
is unlikely that they will prove equal in war or able truly to
share its experiences. In view of that, it might make sense
for Michael to reconsider the subordination of his interest
in women. By the end of the film, he does so. But it is a
mark of his nobility that he refuses to accept the implications of Nick's inferiority as easily as our argument sug~
gests that he might.
III
the men return to a
tavern that one of them owns. The hour is late, they
are tired and alone with each other. The tavern
owner, who sings in the church choir and regrets being too
unhealthy for military service, plays a Chopin nocturne at
the piano. The music soothes the men and provides a moment of peace between the hunt and the coming trip to
war. With an unforgettable rudeness, the film cuts suddenly to a deafening, fiery helicopter assault on a Vietnamese village. This transition vividly suggests the painful
and exhilirating shift that soldiers experience when they
truly leave civilized life by going into battle. Michael's
education begins here in Vietnam.
At the scene of the assault, we find Michael lying amid
the rubble and corpses; apparently there has been a firefight, he has been injured, and is just now regaining consciousness. As he comes to, he sees a solitary enemy soldier
hunting for survivors. Finding some civilians hiding in a
bunker, the soldier throws a grenade in among them. By
chance, one woman survives and emerges with a child in
her arms; the enemy coaly machine-guns her and the
child as she runs from the bunker. While this is happening, Michael grabs a flamethrower and charges him.
Though too late to save any of the civilians, Michael sets
the killer afire. And though the soldier has just signaled to
some other troops, Michael pays no attention to his own
safety; now in a frenzy he shoots the enemy again and
again, even after the monster is obviously dead. Michael's
anger and disgust seem to have taken control of his conduct; but though his act itself is neither moderate nor
beautiful, he is obviously moved by a deep revulsion at
the shamefully unnecessary violence.
As in the scene where he responds to Stanley's misuse
A
22
T THE END OF THE HUNTING TRIP,
of weapons, Michael loses some of his own self-control
when faced with an abysmally indecent man. But here the
goodness of Michael's anger is more clear. Michael is not
one of those eerie aficionados who are fascinated with
war, but neither does he seek to retain the equanimity
and outward dignity appropriate to most civilian situations. In this scene, Michael seems very disturbed-even
slightly deranged-but the cool efficiency of the enemy
soldier indicates the danger of carelessly importing moral
standards from one world to another.
with the murderer, more
American troops arrive by helicopter. The group
includes Nick and Stevie, and they are all taken
prisoner shortly thereafter. We now watch the VietCong
torture American and South Vietnamese P.O.W.s by forcing them to play Russian roulette against each other; the
captors amuse themselves by placing bets on the matches.
While waiting their turns, Stevie and Nick both lose their
composure. Stevie becomes hysterical and Michael tries
to calm him; Nick also needs Michael's help but he cannot
speak loudly enough to ask for it. When Michael and
Stevie are made to play against each other, Stevie flinches
and his cowardice saves him from destroying himself; but
the VietCong just throw him into a pit to die. Perceiving
the hopelessness of allowing the games to continue as
they have been arranged, Michael conceives a bold but
very dangerous scheme. He persuades Nick that they
should play against each other with extra cartridges in the
revolver; he hopes to clear two of the chambers, and then
use the gun against the captors. Quite against the odds,
the trick works. But Nick has to be coaxed and bullied
through the game: though it is his only chance of surviving, he does not have the strength to put his life so clearly
in the hands of an unfavorable chance. Michael is at least
as averse to dying as Stevie or Nick, but he can play if he
has to; and he can arrange an even more dangerous ver~
sian for the sake of overcoming the game.
Russian roulette will become the movie's most insistent
and memorable metaphor, and thr0 ugh it we can discover
some of what Michael learns. In an obvious way, the game
begins as an image of the experience of modern battle.
Nearly all articulate combat veterans speak of the terrible
disorientation caused by living where men die frequently,
violently, and with seeming total randomness. Some men
go mad, most become superstitious, and virtually all become cynical about the moral standards that regulate
peacetime life. The horror of this experience seems to
arise largely from the fact that other human beings are intentionally causing all this random death-and perhaps
too from the soldiers' awareness of their own active role in
maintaining the hostilities that make war what it is.
Russian roulette is an especially rich image because it emphasizes the participation of the victims in an activity that
makes little sense in terms of their most basic self-interest.
W
HILE MICHAEL IS ENGAGED
WINTER 1981
�Through this metaphor, the film turns our attention away
from the grand sweep of battle to the great psychological
demands of combat. Here we find the basis of the film's
statements about human excellence and its bearing on
our political life.
Since war cannot be done away with, there have to be
men who play that form of Russian roulette. The most
common way to play is probably Stevie's. Men like him
can be lured or pressed into the arena, and they can be
pressed and coaxed to participate up to a certain point.
But once they have to face what warfare brings, they in·
stinctively recoil and seek to escape it as quickly as possible. In the terrifying moments before he has to play,
Stevie screams: "I don't belong here .... I want to go
home." Though one's sense of natural justice grants his
proposition and makes one wish that his desire be satisfied, the conditions of battle usually allow very little scope
for acting on such sentiments. At least in part, Stevie's
manifest unfitness for war must account for the extraordi-
nary risks that Michael later takes for his sake; but after
Stevie has been thrown into the pit, Michael orders Nick
to forget about him and concentrate on the requirements
of his own survival. Nick thinks that Michael is playing
God, but his command has to be obeyed if Stevie himself
is to have any chance of survival.
Nick seems less weak than Stevie and he has a closer
friendship with Michael, so Michael chooses him to play
the more difficult form of the game. In order to enable
himself to go through with his plan, Michael deliberately
generates a terrific, concentrated hatred towards the captors. This hatred is not pretty, but it is necessary, as we
can see by contrasting it with Nick's paralysis. Though
Michael tries to bring out courage in his friend, Nick's attention is too focused on himself to allow him either to
hate or to respond calmly to the demands of the situation;
even with Michael's encouragement, he almost fails to
act. Michael's hatred gives him the detachment from himself that is needed to perform the unnatural act required
in Russian roulette.
As in the earlier combat scene, Michael's anger is the
engine of an appropriate though ugly action. Under
Michael's governance, Nick also manages to perform the
necessary act, but he is obviously acting beyond his own
capacities: without Michael and the inhuman ferocity
that he calls out of himself, Nick would be as helpless as
Stevie. Here Michael's spiritedness-his violent and even
savage self-assertion-is irrefutably justified. It should not
diminish our sense of that justification to point out that
Michael's hatred is not autonomous. His intelligence is responsible for the plan that he executes, and his savage
anger is therefore directed by a superior principle; but
only through his brute courage does Michael's intelligence come to rule him. Nick too can understand what
needs to be done; only Michael's stronger reserves of selfassertiveness and even brutality save him from falling into
Nick's confusion, self-absorption, and impotence. And
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
lest we think that Nick is somehow finer or more human,
the film shows him furiously beating one of the VietCong
corpses after the danger is past.
the three soldiers get separated. A
helicopter tries to pick them all up, but Stevie falls
into a river and Michael jumps off after him.
Stevie's legs are badly injured; Michael carries him out of
the jungle and turns him over to some South Vietnamese
troops who have a jeep. At this point we lose sight of
them, and the film shifts to Nick's experiences in Saigon.
Several scenes take place in which Nick shows signs of intense inner disturbance-he speaks only with difficulty,
A
FTER THEIR ESCAPE,
weeps easily, looks twice at Linda's picture, and imagines
once that he sees Michael in a Saigon bar. Finally an urbane Frenchman lures him into a house where people
amuse themselves by betting on Russian roulette matches
between men who play for money. Though Nick does not
see him, Michael is there watching the games. Unlike
most of the other people present, Michael seems neither
excited nor indifferent: his face reveals an intelligent, concentrated, absolutely serious-looking. At this moment we
know that he has been trying since we last saw him to
understand what he has been through. As soon as he sees
Nick, his concentration vanishes and he reaches towards
his friend.
When Nick sees the game, he frantically interrupts it;
after grabbing the revolver, he dry-fires at one of the players, dry-fires at himself, and rushes out of the building.
Michael chases after, only to see the Frenchman driving
Nick away in a car; with a gesture of final hopeless abandon, Nick throws a fistful of money into the air above the
crowded street.
After what Nick has gone through, the sight of men taking these risks without compulsion is too much to bear.
Nick's character has always been ambiguous or undefined: in Clairton he was discontented with the goods
within his reach, and yet unable to find principles or direction for himself. Like most people whose finest gift is a
longing for the good, Nick has tended to be dominated by
the most fascinating influence in his surroundings. So
long as that influence was Michael, Nick might safely
have sought the noble life; but once he faces Russian roulette without Michael's help, Nick cannot resist its gruesome magnetism. That magnetism is founded in war's
tantalizing suggestion that nothing good can stand up in
the violent onslaught of brute chance; when Nick sees
Russian roulette played voluntarily in the midst of civilization, he cannot resist the implication that human life is no
more than warfare, that everything is permitted, that
nothing is of enduring worth. The film later confirms this
scene's suggestion that Nick has just given himself over to
a career as a Russian roulette player; from now on he will
play for money and for love of the game. Like other men
who become enthralled by the spirit of war, Nick will live
23
�on for awhile, but only as a kind of ghost. He becomes indifferent to his own life and his own good; he moves in
our world but his eyes are open only to the incoherencies
that we all naturally resist. As a human being, Nick is now
dead.
Unlike Nick, who is captivated by Russian roulette,
Michael appears here as a student of the game. In its first
use in the film, Russian roulette was a metaphor for war as
experienced by ordinary men in battle. Most soldiers experience combat as something for which they are drafted
or for which they find that they have imprudently volunteered. The sight of war has its charms, but these are ac·
cessible chiefly to its observers, just as the pleasures of
Russian roulette are available to the spectators who bet on
the games. Seen from a distance, both follow fairly regular
patterns or rules and hence have a kind of coherence. But
these patterns so threaten the self-preservation of the participants that voluntary acceptance of life under them
appears to most men in combat as prima facie evidence of
insanity. This should not be surprising since the love of
living there is indeed conclusive evidence of insanity.
In Saigon, Michael returns to Russian roulette as a
spectator, but we do not see him betting on the outcome
and we see in him no love for the game he is watching.
Since he has not simply turned away from the game, he
must know that he may play again. Since he betrays no
desire to do so, he must also believe that playing can be
justified without reference to maxims of insanity. To sec
war as necessary and yet not as an end in itself is easy for
those who have little experience of it; it is not anticipating
too much to say that Michael's special excellence is to live
as a warrior without ceasing to govern himself. He differs
from enthusiastic mercenaries because he does not love
war; he differs from merely dutiful soldiers because he
does not take his bearings from the goals offered in civilian life. We saw Ivlichael exercising the warrior's courage
almost by nature in the first Russian roulette scene; his
looks in the Saigon scene indicate how difficult it is for
him to include such activity in his way of life; the madera·
tion he displays here enables him to appear in the film's
third and final section as the man whom justice would require to rule in Clairton.
W
he goes on a
hunting trip with his old friends; Stevie is too
crippled to come along and Nick is missing in
Vietnam. During the trip, Stanley begins stupidly
threatening another man with a revolver that he seems to
believe is unloaded. At the sight of this, Michael becomes
very angry; he takes the pistol away, discovers that it is
loaded, fires a bullet into the ceiling of the cabin, and removes the cartridges from the gun. He then chambers one
round, spins the cylinder, points the gun at Stanley's
24
rule. But in order to appreciate that conclusion, we need
to re-examine Michael himself.
Let us recall that the insanity of war is most evident
when one considers the threat war poses to the combatants' self-preservation. Any justification of war requires
IV
HEN MICHAEL RETURNS TO CLAIRTON,
head, and pulls the trigger. The gun does not discharge.
By our usual standards, Michael's conduct in this third
Russian roulette scene is unreasonable. For how could the
attempt to educate a person as vile as Stanley is be worth
the risk of committing murder? In part, Michael's action
may be an unthinking passionate objection to Stanley's
carelessness with human life; to the extent that this is so,
his conduct would resemble Nick's interruption of the
game in Saigon. But what Michael does is more measured
and purposeful. Unlike the players in the Saigon house,
Stanley is a danger primarily to innocent people; further,
Michael is tied to most of Stanley's potential victims, and
even to Stanley himself, by some ties of friendship; and
unlike Nick, Michael does not turn the gun on himself.
Above all, Michael's act is not a gesture, as Nick's is; it certainly is dramatic, but the drama points very clearly to a
simple and important lesson. After Stanley survives-and
the odds were quite high that he would-it is very unlikely that he will forget what Michael has taught. At least
he will probably stop playing with guns, and he may even
be moved to begin living in a generally more subdued and
responsible way. At the end of the film, his careful treatment of Stevie's wife suggests that he may be rising a little
from his habitual petty vanity and self-absorption.
To whatever extent Stanley is improved, we can attribute it to Michael's deliberate extra-legal coercion on the
hunting trip. Michael has stepped outside the law to exercise a rule that justly belongs to him; the film clearly and
correctly implies that unless men like Michael rule, there
will be no rest from the ills occasioned by the base and irresponsible. Since American institutions make little provision for such rule, private justice like Michael's can be
seen as a beneficial supplement to our officially political
life. But the unlawfulness and riskiness of Michael's open
assertion of rule over Stanley remind us not to expect that
such rule will ever play a powerful part in our government; and the dangers of trying to institute such domination should be obvious to us all. At the end of the film, we
shall be able to discover Michael's substitute for open
the introduction of considerations beyond the preservation of the combatants' lives. For them to accept such a
justification, they have to see their self-interest in broader
terms than those comprehended in self-preservation; and
rarely, if ever, can their motives for fighting be quite the
same as those of the army or nation as a whole. The same
difficulty arises in explaining Michael's participation in
the game of Russian roulette with Stanley. From the narrow perspective of self-interest his behavior is senseless,
even demented: he has very little to fear from Stanley, and
much to lose if Stanley dies by his hand. When we examine Michael's conduct in the light of the common interest
WINTER 1981
�Nick broke under the pressure of war. One might think
that this merely proves Nick's inferiority, and that
Michael should wait for friendship until he meets a man
truly like himself. His failure to do so indicates that he no
of Stanley and his potential victims, we can see the good
in what he does. But why should Michael risk himself for
these others? The fact that he displays such strong anger
in this scene suggests that something of his own is at
stake. In order to see what that might be, we have to look
once again at Michael as he is alone.
just before the Russian roulette scene with Stanley, we
watch Michael in solitary pursuit of a handsome buck. After some time, the animal stops at the edge of a clearing.
Michael draws a bead on it, and we expect to see his "one
activity that can be shared among equals.
Is friendship then impossible? Michael relaxes his "one
shot" ethic when he spares the deer, and he spends most
of the rest of the film caring for the people of Clairton.
His masculine virtue enables him to help them; but that
shot" virtue reconfirmed. But just as he seems about to
same virtue conflicts with his decision to care for them
take the shot, he jerks the rifle up, and shoots over the
deer. He appears agitated, and he asks in a strained vbice:
"Okay?" Though he seems to be talking to the deer, the
question must really be addressed to himself because we
then hear him answer in a long drawn-out shout: "Okay."
While the answer is being given, we do not see Michael
himself but look instead at the surrounding landscape. As
it sometimes happens in the mountains, the shout echoes
back: "Okay." This echo suggests that Michael finds himself in accord with nature.
rather than to despise or try to dominate them. The echo
in the hunting scene vaguely hints that nature supports
his decision, but the decision is also clearly a difficult one
for him to make. And we simply do not know why he
HROUGHOUT THE FIL", Michael has been a laconic
man. The fact of the film's title establishes the im·portance of this scene in which Michael chooses not
to slay his deer; but the one word he utters offers little indication of his motive for throwing away the shot. The
significance of the scene lies partly in its mystery. From
this point forward, Michael's motives are not explained to
the other characters and they have to remain somewhat
obscure to us, too. Fully to overcome this obscurity would
require knowing all that Michael knows, and perhaps
more; the film does not pretend to provide the viewer
with that knowledge, even for a moment. But we can attempt to see why this obscurity is necessary.
If we think back to the first section of the film, we can
see Michael has a kind of prisoner of his natural superi-
T
ority. His· dominant impulse was the masculine love of
hunting and war; his superiority emerged in his great com-
petence at those activities. Had he pursued his passion for
the development of his masculine superiority, he might
have become a solitary hunter or a mercenary soldier; had
he pursued this passion in his relations with his friends, he
would have tended to become a despot of one kind or
another. At times his speech suggested that masculine,
se1f-serving superiority is what he most desired: "Two is
pussy; 'one shot' is what it's all about_ ... This is this.
From now on you're on your own." But we never see him
live as though he completely accepts his own principles.
He is prevented from doing so by a different, and not specifically masculine, impulse: the desire for friendship, the
desire to share the best activities with other human beings.
Michael set aside his interest in women in order to pur-
sue that friendship with Nick in which he hoped to share
the most masculine activities. This project stopped when
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
longer thinks that the exercise of masculine virtue is an
makes it. From this point forward, we must confine our-
selves largely to examining the effects of Michael's activities in his new role as guardian-hero.
When Michael puts himself into a position to kill the
deer and then spares it, he enters into a peculiar relation-
ship with the animal. While it had previously been merely
a natural being, it now owes its freedom to Michael's
choice. Despite the deer's ignorance of Michael's responsibility for its future existence and activity, Michael now
rules it more nobly than he would have had he chosen to
destroy it. Similarly, Michael's rule over his decent
Clairton friends will be much less visible to them than his
direct but temporary domination over Stanley. For that
reason he will be able to begin establishing a community
rather than a mere reflection of the natural hierarchy
among human beings.
This change in Michael's relation to the people of
Clairton first emerges through the replacement of Nick
by Linda as the link between Michael and the others.
When Michael first returns to his hometown, he avoids a
party at his house arranged in his honor. Linda has been
living in the house, and he goes there after the others
have left in the morning. When the two meet, there are
moments of awkwardness, just as one would expect. Dur-
ing this first meeting, Linda brings out a sweater she has
made for Nick, and she tries to see whether it could fit
Michael; it is not the right size, but she is tearfully confident that she can alter it. Very clearly, Linda has little notion of the important and unalterable differences between
the two men; since she cannot truly appreciate what
Michael is, her present urge to give up Nick does not indicate that any great change has taken place in her since the
beginning of the film. When Michael offers to escort her
to her place of employment, she reveals both her appreciation of his outward appearance and her inability to understand what lies below his surface: "Mike, you're so
weird. You're always such a gentleman."
Like Nick, Michael has been attracted to Linda from
the start. Nick carried a picture of her to Vietnam, and we
saw him look at it twice just before his breakdown.
Michael carried the same picture, but we do not see him
25
�look at it until just before he returns to see her. With Nick
missing and probably dead, Michael now tentatively begins to reopen his own relationship with her. Though we
might have expected him to be offended by her confusion
in the scene with the sweater, he soon chooses to offer a
most generous and helpful interpretation of her ambivalence: "Linda, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about
Nick. I know how much you love him; I know it could
never been the same .... " We can be sure that if Nick
were to return, Michael would try gracefully to avoid standing between him and Linda. By paying such respect to the
prior claims of the old relationship between Nick and
Linda, Michael acts to preserve Linda's sense of the worth
of such claims. We know enough about Nick and Linda to
know that they are not the source of whatever strength
such claims might have; we saw before that Nick's commitment to her was less than wholehearted, and the film
hints that she has not been faithful during his absence.
But Michael knows enough about the fragility of the
bonds among human beings to be careful with those that
exist; he is opposed to overturning them for the sake of
what might be a specious improvement.
Because Linda is a woman and understands little about
Michael, she is impatient to feel the security that she
hopes he can offer: very soon, she desperately proposes
that they comfort each other by sleeping together. He
seems unoffended, but he only reluctantly allows her to
accompany him to his motel room; and we are permitted
to infer that he tries to comfort her without accepting her
offer of sex. Besides the problems that he must so clearly
recognize in establishing intimate ties with people who
cannot adequately understand him, Michael has just
learned that Stevie is alive and back in the United States.
just as Michael seeks to help Linda preserve a healthy respect for her past love, he must recognize the possibility
that she could undermine his loyalties to the friends who
followed him to war.
After the hunting trip and the encounter with the deer,
Michael returns to Linda and offers himself without his
previous reluctance; he now takes her for the first time to
his own bed at home. After she falls asleep, he looks at the
hunting trophies in his room and at the mills in the distance; now, finally, he goes out to visit Stevie. In war,
Michael was Stevie's protector. But in civilian life, friendships between men require that the natural distinctions
among them be very much obscured; this is what made
his relations with other men so difficult before he went to
war. Michael's new friendship with Linda, which is based
on the clear and acl!:nowledged natural distinction between the sexes, allows him to begin taking care of Stevie
in the artificial circumstances of civilized life. There is order in Michael's relationships with the people of Clairton,
an order made possible by his decision to relax his insistence on the primacy of his masculine, self-serving virtue.
When he visits Stevie in the hospital, Michael learns
that Stevie's wife has been receiving small carved ele-
26
phants and large amounts of cash from Saigon; she forwards the souvenirs and money to her crippled husband,
maliciously enclosing it all in socks. Michael immediately
knows that Nick must still be alive; though he does not tell
Stevie or anyone else, he also knows that Nick must be
getting the money by playing Russian roulette. Nick's sudden intrusion disrupts the order of Michael's relationships
in Clairton.
to the Communists and the
city is afire with the frenzy of America's final evacuation. Bombardment by enemy artillery provides the
flames that light the nights; the harsh light of day exposes
the desperate fever to escape among those who sense
what the victors from the north will bring. Somewhere in
this doomed city Nick, or what is left of him, continues to
pursue his private obsession. Michael is intent on finding
him, and by some miracle of cunning and daring, gets into
this earthly hell. He appears as resolute- almost as monomaniacal-as a man in Nick's occupation would have to
be.
In the course of tracking Nick, Michael encounters the
Frenchman who seduced him into his presenf career.
During their first conversation, Michael says that he
wants to find Nick in order to play Russian roulette
against him. Since we know that he has no such desire, we
have to wonder why he expresses it. He could as plausibly
have said that he wanted to see the famous American play
the game; in fact, one would think that the European
could more easily have understood such a motive. But
Michael must know more about Russian roulette than we
do. The first time he played, he not only won but he overcame the game itself. We have seen him studying its mercenary variety, and we have seen him use the game as a
tool of education in the United States. What began as a
metaphor for war has been subtly expanded so that it
points towards greater questions about the responsibilities
of human beings to themselves and one another. By so
mastering the game that he can play it usefully in civilian
life, Michael revealed that his own relation to it is one of
aversion and attachment. He never shows any love for this
purest form of exposing one's own well-being to dark and
uncontrollable forces. In this way he has shown that his
S
AlCON IS ABOUT TO FALL
early statement about his aversion to surprises has a core
of truth: in his heart, Michael has remained more a deer
hunter than a warrior. At the same time he appears to
have concluded that bravery and skill in Russian roulette
are conditions of the excellence he has always sought. He
plays it not only when it is obviously necessary, but
also-as with Stanley-when he judges that it can bring
some important good. In the last deer-hunting scene,
Michael appeared to turn away from the solitary pursuit
of his own excellence; he is a member of the Army's elite
Rangers, and the film gives no indication that he intends
to leave the military now that the war is over.
WINTER 1981
�Knowing so much about Russian roulette, or war
broadly conceived, Michael has to know that Nick's life
since he disappeared will have put a great deal of distance
between the two of them. We see him taking great risks to
find Nick; he must know that he will have to take greater
risks to bring Nick back. Michael has gone into hell after
his friend and he must somehow foresee that he is going
to have to play yet another round of Russian roulette
before he returns.
When Michael finds him, Nick shows no recognition.
He is intent on the present; except for the strange fact
that he sends elephants and his winnings to Stevie's wife,
he seems to have lost all touch with his past. In a desperate attempt to give Nick back his memory-to bring this
ghost back to human life-Michael arranges to play the
next game against him.
When he first came into the house where Nick plays,
Michael had been visibly distressed to see another player
kill himself. Now, at the table with Nick, Michael begins
urgently trying to talk him back to himself: "We don't
have much time .... Don't do it." When the spectators
have finished placing their bets, Nick still has not heard
Michael. Nick takes the first turn; the hammer drops on
an empty chamber. Since mere speech has failed, Michael
picks up the pistol and asks, "Is this what you want?"
After saying sadly, "I love you, Nick," Michael's face twists
up with a terrible dread that we have seen in no professional Russian roulette player. He puts the revolver to his
head and pulls the trigger; again, the weapon fails to discharge. But Nick remains oblivious to Michael's efforts to
reach him. As Nick picks up the gun again, Michael grabs
his wrist, sees track marks on his arm, and begins talking
urgently of home, of their friendship, of the mountains.
Now at last, what Nick would most remember about
Michael returns to him: he says, "One shot," laughs
softly, and blows his brains out. Screaming with grief,
Michael grabs the corpse and starts shaking it in an
instinctive effort to bring it back to life.
This scene invites us to interpret it in terms of
Michael's love for Nick. That love is surely what enables
him to risk himself in the game. But what is the basis and
framework of the love? Michael must know how small are
the chances that Nick could be retrieved from the living
death in which he finds him. By virtue of what principle
did he take upon himself with no visible hesitation this illicit 12,000-mile trip to hell in search of a man who is not
sane enough to return from there by his own will? And by
virtue of what principle does Michael risk Nick's life in the
round of Russian roulette they play?
In this scene, love is the passion that carries Michael
through the hardest part of the game, just as hatred or anger carried him through the previous games he played.
But in no case do these passions simply rule Michael's
conduct. In the other games, Michael was ruled by his insight into the justification for his participation. Here the
only visible justification for the risks he takes is the old
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
promise he made to Nick not to leave him in Vietnam. By
holding himself and Nick to that promise, Michael affirms
the gravity of a human relationship to which he has committed the word of his honor; he thus establishes the superiority of the relationship implied by a promise over
either of the human beings who participate in that relationship. We see in this last Russian roulette scene how
much Michael dislikes what he has to do; not once does
he seem tempted to protect his own human feelings with
callous notions about imperatives of abstract duty. Still,
he does set the authority of his promise above himself and
others, and he thereby brings that authority into being.
The Deer Hunter correctly teaches us that love and decency would not exist as goods were it not for this
harsh-and painful-insistence on self-respect.
As we saw before, Michael's earliest and highest hopes
have not been met: he has not found his equal and has not
found perfected friendship. Nor has his struggle against
the rule of chance in human affairs been wholly successful. It would be hard to imagine a man who takes firmer
responsibility for himself and for his own activity; because
of this he can be said to have done as much as one can do
to prevent chance from living within oneself. But in order
to achieve this victory, he has had to live where chance
does virtually rule: he has had to face enemies out beyond
the protecting conventions and institutions of civil society. In the film this is presented through his experience of
war; but the contrast between him and the other two soldiers shows that what truly distinguishes him is his understanding of what war reveals about himself and others. To
reach that just estimation of men, Michael has had to take
enormous risks and exercise great courage and moderation. Men with his natural talents and inclinations are rare
to begin with, and they are more likely than most others
to die in battle. The blessing of his survival will enable
him to help others more than they can fully appreciate.
After Nick's funeral, his
friends go to the old tavern to have breakfast alone
together. The scene is similiar to the one just before
the first transition to Vietnam. But this time it is day, now
there· are women present, and one of the group is very
conspicuous by his absence. While in the kitchen preparing the food, the tavern owner tries to choke back his tears
by humming and singing a little of "God Bless America."
In the earlier tavern scene, the orderly motion of his
music helped provide a brief but satisfying relief from
struggle; now, however, the pain that Nick's death has
brought seems as likely to break out in violent weeping as
in the reconciliation of song. Sensing that a critical moment is at hand, Linda begins to sing with a shaking voice:
"God bless America/Land that I love .... " Nick has lost
his life, Linda and the others have lost him; this prayer,
with its patriotism and its assumption about the cosmic
supports for patriotism, might allow those present to
T
HE STORY ENDS IN CLAIRTON.
27
�believe that these sacrifices were worthwhile. But their
hesitation to join in the singing betrays their doubts about
the song's credibility.
One man can ease those doubts. Michael once said that
these others were "assholes"; there is nothing to indicate
that they have changed much during the film. Michael
has always been skeptical of piety, adhering to a pagan
hunting religion if to any at all; nothing in the film indicates that he has found in the world the coherence that
could make this song even remotely plausible. Whatever
Michael may once have felt towards the others, and whatever he may now believe about the world, he joins in the
singing. As he is thereby ratifying their belief in the comforting words, his attention seems directed mainly at
Linda; but he performs the function of a priest for them
all. Michael has always had a natural air of authority, and
now his credentials are strengthened by the fact that he
has been with open eyes where none of them could go.
Without Michael's assent the singing would be ludicrous-by joining in, he protects the others from having
to admit how much reason there may be for despair. And
he protects them, too, from having to admit how dependent they are on him for protection from the horrors he
has survived. He bestows on them what freedom they are
28
capable of, much as he did for the deer he spared in the
mountains. The image of the deer should remind us that
one of the dangers he protects them from is his own urge
to dominate them by force.
At the last moment, Michael reminds his friends-and
us-that the reconciliation provided by the song is a little
too easy. The edifying words of "God Bless America"
could not be said to foster bad beliefs, but by themselves
they are empty. So at the conclusion of the singing,
Michael raises his glass and says: "Here's to Nick." By reminding the others of the importance of keeping the
memory of the friend who died, Michael tries to prevent
them from going too far into the refuge of comforting sentiment: he imposes on them at least a little of the difficult
work of cultivating the grounds in which a noble sense of
freedom and community can grow. They respond by repeating the toast in unison, and the film ends. Michael
knows how costly this communion has been, and how
fragile are the supports that make it possible; his work has
only begun, and may never be completed. But if we have
gained a greater understanding of the deer hunter and of
his place in our community, the film has achieved its principal purpose.
WINTER 1981
�The Scientific Background of
Descartes' Dualism
Arthur Collins
Dualism is the thesis that all the finite individual things
that exist in the universe are either minds or bodies.
Bodies are material things whose principle and defining
feature is extension or the filling of space, and minds are
nonmaterial things and their principle and defining
feature is thinking or being conscious. The most important aspect of Descartes' dualism is its characterization of
a human being as a composite entity. In an individual
man, mind and body are closely associated. In some sense
they are united. However, they cannot lose their distinctness as two separate substances, that is; as two entities
each of which endures through time, undergoes its own
changes, and thus accumulates its own history. Changes
the mind undergoes are changes in thought and consciousness, and the history of a mind is a sequence of
mental states, mental contents, and mental activities. The
body undergoes physical changes and has a physical history, the history of a material object. The crucial claim of
dualism is that the body is not the thing that thinks in a
man. The fundamental nature of body is being extended
and this contrasts with and excl!ldes being conscious.
Descartes' philosophical arguments for this dualism are
most fully rendered in his Meditations on First Philosophy.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this work bears the
subtitle, "In which the existence of God and the distinction between Mind and Body are demonstrated." 1 The
same arguments are prefigured briefly and partially in
Part Four of the Discourse on Method. They are recast in
Part One of the Principle of Philosophy, and they appear
elsewhere in Descartes' writings.
Although Cartesian dualism still exerts an immense influence in philosophy, Descartes' arguments for his dualism, from their earliest presentation, have been found
wholly inadequate by most readers. Even those who ac-
Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in numerous philosophical journals on epistemology, philosophical psychology, and the history of philosophy.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
cept or share his dualist convictions have found his
defense of them quite unsatisfactory. The inadequate
arguments represent an effort to frame definitive demonstrations for convictions that were deeply held by Descartes and that were understandably compelling to him.
But the thinking which actually led Descartes to these
convictions is remote from the matters that figure in the
official proofs of his late metaphysical works.
Descartes' Argument
The Meditations can be divided into two unequal parts
at the end of the second day's thinking. Under this division the first part contains the initial encouragement of
systematic and radical doubt, culminating in the two general skeptical hypotheses: the dream hypothesis, and the
deceiving demon hypothesis. This first part also contains
the cogito argument by which doubt is at last halted in the
unshakeable self-knowledge of the thinking subject. It
concludes with the recognition in the latter part of the
Second Meditation, that the immediate contents of consciousness, construed only as "ideas" in the mind, all
share the indubitability of the cogito. At this point, the existence of the thinking subject and the existence and content of all his ideas are guaranteed. Preparation has been
made for the survey and classification of ideas in the
Third Meditation. Everything but this sphere of consciousness remains in doubt. The existence of a material
order and of the thinking subject's own body remain to be
argued for. Even the simplest mathematical propositions
have yet to attain standing as truths.
To this day, every philosophical intelligence feels the
power of this representation of the subjective starting
point for philosophical thinking. Although modern philosophers owe so much to the phenomenological starting
point discovered in the first two Meditations, almost nothing in subsequent thought has been influenced by arguments and claims found in the second part of the work.
29
�But the whole of Descartes' official defense of dualism is
found in this second part.
In the Third Meditation Descartes turns to God in devising an escape from the threatening prison of solipsistic
consciousness. Few have followed him in his view that the
idea of God is the first for which we are able to know a
corresponding existence. Of empiricist philosophies, only
Berkeley's accords comparable prominence to theological
premises in moving from the flux of immediate
experi~
ence to a more stable independent reality. Empiricism has
generally rejected the uses of theology on which Descartes relies.
The function of Descartes' theology in the Third Meditation is precisely to prepare the ground for the proof of
the existence of material things. The causal argument,
there mounted, claims that the existence of God is implied as a needed causal antecedent both by the existence
of an idea of God and by the subject's possession of that
idea. This reasoning is supplemented in the Fifth Meditation by Descartes' version of the "ontological argument"
for God's existence. The intervening discUssion concerns
the nature of human error and establishes the compatibility of man's imperfection with the conclusion reached in
the Third Meditation: Man's creator is an infinite and perfect God. This is Descartes' highly intellectualized version
of the traditional problem of evil. His solution emphasizes
human freedom and places responsibility for human deficiencies on men themselves, while God is asserted to have
made men capable of correcting all the errors to which
they are susceptible;
This reconciliation of divine perfection and human inadequacy is not original. Saint Augustine presented much
the same argument, although he vigorously rejected optimistic attitudes concerning man's power to correct his
shortcomings. Augustine adverts to the freedom of man
in order to deny God's responsibility for human vices. In
his proof of the existence of a material world and its distinctness from the mental, Descartes exploits an aspect of
the argument never contemplated by Augustine: If God is
absolved from responsibility for human failings only because man is free and, thus, responsible for himself, then,
insofar as man is not free, it should follow that God is
responsible for him. As we shall see, it is just this contrapositive entailment of an earlier solution to the problem
of evil that Descartes invokes in moving from our ineluctable belief in the existence of a material world to the justification of that belief.
The very same pattern-exploitation of an old argument for new ends-recurs in the use of the ontological
argument in the Fifth Meditation. This argument is best
known in the eleventh-century formulation of Anselm of
Canterbury and in the framework of its later rejection by
Thomas Aquinas. Descartes has proved the existence of
God in the Third Meditation. Is another proof added as
reinforcement? No, in the Fifth Meditation, the material
world is Descartes' real objective. The ontological argument serves to focus the discussion on the concept of es-
30
sences that Descartes requires in his subsequent reasoning. The discussion consists in an extended comparison of
our idea of God and our ideas of material things. Both are
construed as formulations of essences. For our purposes,
we can think of an essence as a cluster of characteristics
that define an entity of a certain type. In the case of extended things such as triangles, the investigation of essence
provides answers to the question, What must an existing
thing outside the mind be like if it is to be a triangle?
Then theorems about triangles are said. to be entailments
of the essence of triangles. Such propositions, formulating
geometrical knowledge, do not assert the existence of
anything. In the example considered by Descartes, knowledge of essence yields only an entirely secure but hypothetical statement: If there is actually a triangle
somewhere, then it has an angle-sum of two right angles.
A parallel examination of the essence of God as indicated
by our idea of God reveals, according to Descartes, that
the proposition "God exists" is entailed by this idea, just
as the angle-sum theorem is entailed by the idea of a triangle. Descartes' interest in the ontological argument really
lies in the contrast it affords between the essence of God
that sustains an existence claim and the essence of matter
that does not.
In the last Meditation the existence of material things is
proved via complicated appeals to the known essence of
material things and the now-known existence and character of God. Because his power is infinite, God could have
given us the ideas that we have of material things in our
geometrical thinking and in perceptual experience even
though there were no such material things outside our
thought. He could have planted ideas of external things
directly in our consciousness, or he could have induced
them through some intermediate reality, sufficient for the
production of those ideas, but entirely unlike a material
world. Such possibilities, however, would be inconsistent
with God's infinite goodness. For we have an irresistible
disposition to refer our perceptual ideas to material things
outside us. If no such material things were in fact the
source of those ideas, our disposition would be a systematic misinterpretation of our experience that we could
never correct. Just here Descartes employs the optimistic
principle introduced in the Fourth Meditation: God enables us to correct any errors to which we are susceptible.
This justifies the proposition that there is a material world
which is the source of our perceptual experiences and
which is the nonmental subject matter of which geometrical truths are true.
The dualism which is the final objective of the Meditations now requires only the proposition that bodies and
minds, both of which are known to exist, are also distinct
existences. Descartes argues that, though it may be that
every mind is an embodied mind, minds could exist without bodies and God could have made our conscious minds
just as they are without equipping us with bodies at all.
He seems to regard this appeal to God's power as a
needed premise for the distinctness of minds and bodies.
WINTER 1981
�This is likely to be confusing to his readers. After all, if the
essence of triangles is to be three-sided, and of pentagons,
to be five-sided, then, obviously, existing triangles cannot
be existing pentagons. But Descartes writes as though he
takes seriously the possibility that the thing that is conscious might be a corporeal thing, even though its essence
is consciousness, while the essence of corporeal things is
extension, and even though these are distinct essences.
We notice that the essence: being conscious, does not obviously exclude the essence: being extended, on logical
grounds, as three-sidedness and five-sidedness exclude
one another. But this difference is not the only foundation for Descartes' conviction that further reasoning is
needed.
Prevailing scholastic-Aristotelian conceptions explicated the relationship between mind and body with the
help of a ubiquitous form-matter distinction. Applied to
human existence, the soul is taken by this tradition to be
the form of the body, so that the animated body is a single
substance, and not a composite of soul and body, each
possessing an independent substantial existence. In light
of this doctrine, the immortality of the soul and its survival of the dissolution of the body in death became special problems for scholastic philosophers.
In addition to this tradition, Descartes takes into
consideration common-sense intuitions which make it difficult to think of a person as a mere association of a
spiritual being and some inert clay. In the famous phrase,
he allows that "I am not present in my body merely as a
pilot is present in his ship," 2 and he draws attention to
pains, which are experienced and not merely observed as a
pilot might observe events damaging to his vessel. This intimacy with the corporeal nature of one's own body arises
"from the mind's being united to and, as it were, mixed
up with the body." In a letter to his sometime disciple
Regius, Descartes says that an angel inhabiting a body
would perceive impinging motions but would not feel sensations as we do 3 An angel would be like a pilot in a ship.
In this letter Descartes expresses a confusing vacillation
between the accepted scholastic view that a man is an ens
per se (a substantial unity) and the view that a man is an
ens per accidens (a composite being) which an angel inhabiting a body would be. Descartes' vacillation is partly due
to his desire not to offend other religious thinkers and
authorities needlessly. He recommends qualified endorsement of the prevailing view to Regius as a matter of prudence. But his intellectual uncertainty is also apparent.
Descartes never reaches a satisfactory understanding of
the "mixing" of mind and body in human existence.
Descartes' demonstration of dualism amounts to these
propositions: (1) We have indubitable knowledge of the
existence of ourselves as thinking beings, and of the content of our conscious thought and experience. (2) The
idea of an infinite, perfect, and independent being, which
is the idea of God, is found among our conscious
thoughts. (3) We know that God must exist as the required
cause of the idea of God. (4) Some of our ideas are clear
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
and distinct, and propositions involving clear and distinct
ideas can be known to be true. (The seeming mutual dependence of this and the previous proposition is the foundation of the common charge that Descartes' reasoning is
circular.) (5) Mathematical truths are prominent among
those certified by their clarity and distinctness. (6) Perceptual ideas of sensuous qualities are confused ideas of
things external to our minds. (7) Geometry is clear and distinct thinking about extended things, without the confused sensuous aspect, but with an essential imaginative
component that connects geometry with perception. (8)
The goodness of God assures us that there is an external
world corresponding to and causing our perceptual ideas,
and that this reality exemplifies the truths of mathematics
in the form in which they are imagined in geometry, but
not as represented in perceptual experience. (9) From our
ideas alone we know that the essence of mind is consciousness and the essence of body is extension, and that
these are distinct essences. (10) The power of God certifies the real distinctness of existing minds and bodies,
though the thinking subject's mind is intimately connected
with his body in a way that is not entirely intelligible. (ll)
The distinctness of minds and bodies is confirmed by the
reflection that a mind is an indivisible thing, for example,
there is no such thing as half a mind. Bodies are all essentially divisible.
The striking thing about reactions of Descartes' early
readers to this argument for dualism is that so much of it
is ignored. The standard response to Descartes, one might
say, has been to accept his dualism and to pay little attention to his demonstration of its correctness. The authors
of "Objections" published with the Meditations write as
though Descartes has based his dualism on the first two
Meditations alone. In criticisms addressed to the Second
Meditation, Hobbes and Gassendi, authors of the third
and fifth set of Objections, respectively, both complain
that Descartes has only assumed that the mind is not corporeal.4 In replying, Descartes points out that he did not
claim to have proved the incorporeal status of the mind
until the Sixth Meditation. In the earlier context, where
these materialists find an unsupported assumption of dualism, Descartes merely notes that he can imagine that
there are no material things at all, though he is at the
same time conscious of his own existence. He cannot
imagine that there are not minds for his own conscious~
ness is incompatible with that supposition. Then he says
1
But perhaps it is the case that these very things which I suppose to be nonentities [that is, bodies imagined not to existL
and which are not properly known to me, are yet in reality not
different from the "I" of which I am aware. I do not know and
will not dispute the point. 5
At this point he does not dispute the view that the thinking
thing may be corporeal. It may be the body that thinks.
It is not only the predictably critical materialists who
31
�respond as though Descartes had rested his dualism on
the first two Meditations. The preponderance of readers
incline to look for, and to find, in the first part of the text a
more direct, less ornate argument for the nonmaterial
status of the mind. Then they find this simpler argument
inadequate; but it is not an argument that Descartes has
presented. The "diverse theologians and philosophers"
whose views Mersenne assembled as the second set of
Objections say
ous but still skeptical. Her attention is quite properly
focused on the desperate problem of mind-body interac·
tion that is imposed by the acceptance of dualism. She
writes to Descartes
Up to this point [the Second Meditation] you know that you
These critical reactions are at least partly a conse·
quence of the order of the argument in the Meditations.
We start with assurances about the mind and mental contents. The question at the beginning of the Third Medita·
lion is: What else exists? What is there in addition to this
mental reality? And the answers: God and the material
world naturally seem to be an articulation of further
realities outside the mind. There is an awkward turn of
thought in the reflection that the mind itself might be a
constituent of this further material reality. Managing the
awkward turn of thought, readers come to imagine that it
has eluded Descartes and that he rests his dualism on the
natural presumption of the otherness of body that derives
simply from the skeptical subjective starting point. When
we correct this misinterpretation, however, we are left
only with Descartes' unconvincing theological arguments.
Descartes' demonstration of dualism is, then, inadequate. Empiricists have generally eschewed any religious
foundation for metaphysics, and even the firm believers
among Descartes' first readers and critics found little to
convince them in his theological premises. This is under·
standable. However great our faith, how could we pre·
sume to have so fine a grasp of the implications of the
goodness and power of God as to rest upon it our confi·
dence that outer reality does fit our spatial intuitions and
does not fit our perceptual experiences? The response to
Descartes' argument shows that his premises are less attractive than his conclusions. We cannot avoid asking, Are
there not other reasons for his acceptance of a dualism
that, in itself, has seemed correct to so many philosophers?
are a being that thinks; but you do not know what this thinking thing is. What if it were a body which by its various mo-
tions and encounters produces that which we call thought?
For granted that you rejected the claim of every sort of body,
you may have been deceived in this, because you did not rule
out yourself, who are a body. For how will you prove that a
body cannot think, or that its bodily motions are not thought
itself?6
Even the judicious Antoine Arnauld either ignores or re·
jects out of hand the whole elaborate argument we have
summarized. In his, the fourth set of Objections, Arnauld
says
I can discover no passage in the whole work capable of effecting this proof, save the proposition laid down at the outset: I
can deny that there is any body or that any extended thing exists, but yet it is certain that I exist so long as I make this denial, hence, I am a thing that thinks and not a body, and the
body does not pertain to the knowledge of myself. But the
only result I can see this to give, is that a certain knowledge of
myself be obtained without knowledge of the body. But it is
not yet quite clear to me that this knowledge is complete and
adequate, so as to make me sure that I am not in error in excluding the body from my essence.7
It is true that Descartes does not give any fuller reason
for his contention that the essences of mind and body are
distinct than the clear and distinct separability of these
ideas in our thought. We can suppose all bodies nonexis·
tent but we cannot suppose all minds nonexistent. How·
ever, this is not Descartes' argument for dualism. He
invokes theological premises three times in moving from
this thought-experiment to the conclusion that the mind
is not material. The existence of God is needed to assure
me of the truth of what I think clearly and distinctly, by
ruling out the deceiving-demon hypothesis. The goodness
of God is appealed to in assuring me that my propensity
to refer perceptual ideas to an outer material reality is jus·
tified. Finally, the power of God is cited to certify the dis·
tinction between minds and bodies, however intertwined
their real instances.
Even Descartes' friendliest critics such as Father
Gibieuf and Princess Elizabeth do not find his reason for
the distinction between mind and body satisfactory, and
in their hesitations they pay no attention to theological
niceties. Gibieuf thinks that the claim to have established
the real essence of mind may have been accomplished by
an illegitimate abstraction. 8 Elizabeth's response is gener-
32
The senses teach me that the soul moves the body but neither
they nor the imagination nor the intellect teaches me how.
Perhaps there are properties of the soul unknown to us which
will overturn the conviction of the soul's nonextension which
I acquired from the excellent arguments of your Meditations.9
The Scientific Background
In the Meditations, we are invited to consider the
securely known conscious mind and then to ask, Could
this consciousness turn out to be a corporeal thing? Could
it be the body that thinks? It is instructive to consider a
parallel question that is not represented in the Medita·
tions at all. Suppose that we could, somehow, start from a
secure knowledge of material things and then ask, could
these material things themselves manifest intellectual ac·
tivities and consciousness? Could it be minds that are extended? No such question can arise in the Meditations
because, following the skeptical method, "the mind is
more easily known than the body." 10 These unfamiliar
questions, however, would far better reflect the order of
WINTER 1981
�discovery in Descartes' own attainment of a dualist metaphysics than the artfully organized questions and answers
of the Meditations. He is convinced that matter cannot
possibly think long before he attempts to prove that mind
cannot be extended. It is his scientific thought about the
material world, unencumbered by systematic metaphysics, that is the source of Descartes' conviction that mind
and matter are distinct essences and distinct existences.
The metaphysical doctrines for which he is famous did
not receive any formulation in Descartes' writings and
played no part in his thought for many years after he had
begun systematic study of the physical world. It is easy to
read the philesophy of the Meditations and the Principles
of Philosophy back into Descartes' earlier thought as expressed in his youthful scientific writings, in Le Monde,
and in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Etienne
Gilson's studies of Descartes have done much to correct
this error. 11 In the Discourse on Method, Descartes tells us
that after he had resolved on a life of search for truth and
had begun to construct scientific explanations on the
model of mathematical understanding
... nine years elapsed before I had yet taken any position con·
ceming the difficulties commonly disputed among the
learned or begun to search for the principles of any philosophy more certain than the common variety [plus certaine que
la vulgaire.] 12
Descartes identifies the success of his physical researches with the gradual elimination from his own thinking of a prevailing tendency to ascribe intellectual functions to mere physical things and events. Aristotelian
physical explanations fail, in his opinion, just because
they confuse mental and physical things and they ascribe
mental powers and functions to matter. These are the
scholastic accounts in terms of substantial forms and real
qualities that Descartes attacks in letters to other thinkers.
Writing to de Launay he says
The earliest judgments which we made in our childhood and
the common philosophy later, have accustomed us to attribute to the body many things which belong only to the soul,
and to attribute to the soul many things which belong only to
the body. So people commonly mingle the two ideas of body
and soul when they construct the ideas of real qualities and
substantial forms which I think should be altogether
rejected. 13
And to Princess Elizabeth
... we have hitherto confounded the notion of the soul's
power to act on the body with the power one body has to act
on another. We attributed both powers not to the soul, whose
nature we did not yet know, but to the various qualities of the
body such as weight, heat, etc. We imagined these qualities to
be real, that is to say to have an existence distinct from that of
bodies, and so to be substances, although we called them
qualities. 14
Descartes overcame these confusions by developing a
conception of material things that excludes mind. In his
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
replies to the sixth Objections, offered by anonymous
theologians and philosophers, Descartes says that his own
reasons set out in the Meditations for the view "that the
human mind was really distinct from the body and was
more easily known than it," were not fully persuasive,
even to him, when he first thought of them. He was like
an astronomer who could not stop thinking of the earth as
larger than the sun after possessing demonstrations that it
is much smaller. Then Descartes says that, to reinforce his
assent he "proceeded further," 15 keeping his ideas straight
until
I observed that nothing at all belonged to the nature or
essence of body except that it was a thing with length, breadth
and depth, admitting of various shapes and various motions.
[Such shapes cannot exist apart from the bodies that have
them and, in contrast,] ... colors, odors, savors, and the rest of
such things, were merely sensations existing in my thought,
and differing no less from bodies than pain differs from the
shape and motion of the instrument which inflects it. Finally,
I saw that gravity, hardness, the power of heating, of attracting and of purging, and all other qualities which we experience in bodies consisted solely in motion or its absence,
and in the configuration and situation of their parts. 16
One aspect of dualism emerges here from the concept of
the subjectivity of the sensuous. Descartes reports his appreciation of the fact that a shape cannot exist separately
from the body shaped, while color does not exist in the
shaped body and, therefore, must exist in some other substance. So a nonmaterial mind is implied here as the locus
of secondary qualities which have some reality somewhere but cannot be referred to the physical world. It is
often said that the mind for Descartes is a receptacle for
sensuous characteristics which have been removed from
bodies. There is justice in this interpretation. The last
clause in the quoted passage, however, leads to a deeper
reason for the thesis that the mind is nonmaterial.
l(Gravity, hardness, the power of heating" and other
~~qualities" are prominent in Descartes' examples of spurious scholastic explanations that purport to know about
the substantial forms of things and the real qualities they
contain. Descartes thinks of his own attainment of a far
superior conception of physical objects and events as
conditioned by the rejection of these concepts. The scholastic explanations Descartes discards are those often ridiculed for their vacuousness by later critics: burning wood
heats because the wood contains the power of heating;
opium induces sleep because of its soporific virtue. This
charge of vacuousness is not all Descartes' objection. He
finds the scholastic explanations defective because they
import a psychological dimension into the physical order
where explanation should only be mechanical. Qualities
and substantial forms are psychologically intelligible determinants of change. They are like souls.
Writing to Mersenne in 1643, Descartes says that there
are two principles that need to be established:
33
�The first is that I do not believe that there are in nature any
real qualities, attached to substances and separable from them
by divine power like. so many little souls in their bodies.
[Claims involving such qualities make assertions that we do
not understand, and] . .. the philosophers invented these real
qualities only because they did not think they could otherwise
explain all the phenomena of nature; but I find on the contrary, that these phenomena are better explained without
them.
The second principle is that whatever is or exists remains always in the state in which it is, unless some ulterior cause
changes it. . .. 17
The first principle excludes the psychological from
physics. The second rejects intrinsic causality, and it is
the foundation of Descartes' law of inertia. 18
The two principles of physics Descartes expounds to
Mersenne are closely connected and both focus on the re·
pudiation of mental functions in accounts of physical
change. Real qualities and substantial forms were con·
ceived by the scholastics as self-contained causes of motion, in the general sense in which both qualitative
changes and movements were called motions. If every
change of state (and motion is itself a state for Descartes)
must have some ((ulterior" cause, that is, external cause,
as the second principle requires, then there will be no selfinduced motions to be ascribed to the real qualities and
forms that are rejected by the first principle. But we still
have to ask why it is that Descartes construed the prevailing explanations as psychological and why he says they
amount to projecting "little souls" into material things.
The concept of substantial forms rests on Aristotle's
distinction between form and matter. Any existing entity
must be composed of something and that matter of which
it is composed must have some organization or other making it the particular thing it is,for the same matter has the
potential to figure in the constitution of many different
particular objects. So Aristotle thinks of rna Iter as potentiality which is realized in a particular being by form or
actuality. This pair of metaphysical concepts reflects a
Platonic influence and it was much exploited by medieval
thinkers. Unlike Plato, Aristotle usually says that forms do
not exist by themselves, apart from any matter, any more
than matter exists by itself without being anything in par·
ticular, that is, without any form at all. 19 The real qualities
and substantial forms of scholastic science are derived
from this basic concept of form and matter. To under·
stand them we should appeal to a further Aristotelian distinction between natural objects and artificial colloca·
tions, and to the Aristotelian emphasis on organisms as
the paradigm illustration of existing substances.
A natural entity for Aristotle is precisely one that con·
tains within itself the causal initiative for its own motions
and changes. 20 It is the possession of such self-realizing
potential that makes something into a substantial unity in
the fullest sense. 21 For Aristotle, this concept is the faun·
dation of the difference between artifacts and self-repro·
34
clueing things that are made by men 22 The intrinsically
caused motion that is best illustrated by reproduction
marks an entity as a natural object. Reproduction leads us
immediately to the emphasis on organisms that is characteristic of Aristotle.
We should note, however, especially because it is directly relevant to Descartes' thinking, that natural objects
manifesting natural motions are not confined by Aristotle
nor the scholastic tradition to living things. The down·
ward motion of heavy things toward ·the center of the
universe is a natural motion according to Aristotle. This
coheres with common sense in that one does not have to
do anything to a heavy thing to induce its fall except
remove obstacles. 23 One does not have to remove obstacles and then push the heavy thing downward. It is,
then, as though the push comes from within as part of the
nature of the heavy thing which will be manifested in selfinduced changes when inhibiting forces are removed. In
the same way, light things recede from the center and,
generally, the four elements have their proper places in
the universe, which is where they tend to go. The empirically observed universe has a layered structure, earth
mostly at the center, water for the most part next closest,
and so on. This seems obvious confirmation of the conception of natural motion since it appears that things
have mostly gone where they belong. 24 And Aristotle has a
theory of the transmutation of elements from heavy to
light and from light to heavy, which could account intelligently for the fact that a permanent stasis is not reached 25
Within the setting of this theory of natural motion, to say
that a body is heavy is just to say that it contains within
itself a causal factor that originates motion toward the
center. As we shall see, Descartes' contention that scho·
lastic physical explanations psychologize inanimate material things is especially clearly articulated in connection
with weight and gravitational motion. 26
In Aristotelian thought, the motions and changes that a
thing can induce in itself in virtue of its formal nature are
all construed as realizing an innate potentiality or attaining an objective. Such objectives are ascribed to the ob·
jects that are able to move themselves. The power to initiate motion is thus an intrinsic directedness. The motions
which result from this in-dwelling causal initiative are,
therefore, susceptible to teleological explanations citing
final causes. The natural motion that the contained quality gravity induces is a directed motion toward the place
the heavy object seeks to occupy.
This finalism connects the inanimate physical world
with essentially biological understanding. Gravitational
motion is assimilated to the pattern of explanation that
seems so natural for motions, like those involved in respiration, which have a legible goal in the welfare of the
breathing animal. So the paradigm of a substance is a living organism. The Aristotelian doctrine articulating four
types of explanatory question, usually called the theory of
four causes, can be thought of as an implicit definition of
an individual substance. For a thing that is a true substan·
WINTER 1981
�tial unity, each of the four questions, including the question that calls for a purpose or objective, has an answer.
Physicists as well as biologists investigate final causes of
phenomena. Although in some cases the efficient, final
and material causes collapse into a single factor for Aristotle, finality is never absent from natureP
The various souls that Aristotle finds in plants, animals,
and men are among the forms capable of initiating motions with obvious natural objectives. The organization of
complex organisms is intelligible in terms of hierarchies of
such forms. In De Anima, the rational soul is the highest
form of the body making up a man. It is "the first actuality
of the body," a doctrine taken over by Thomas and other
scholastics." Aristotle considers the possible separate existence of souls, which seems to be excluded by his formmatter conception of individual things. "Suppose the eye
were an animal, sight would have been its soul . .. ". 29 A
sightless eye could exist as a material object with a lower
form, though not really as an eye, while sight could not exist at all without some material embodiment. In a passage
that has reverberations in the Meditations, Aristotle goes
These Aristotelian-scholastic views are the occasion for
Descartes' contention that forms and qualities are like
"little souls" in material objects. The conscious rational
soul of man, in this tradition, is the substantial form of
man. It accomplishes in a consciously articulated way the
initiation of movement toward ends just as substantial
forms and qualities in inanimate objects initiate directed
changes in phenomena like combustion and the fall of
heavy bodies. The heat generated in combustion, as Descartes reads scholastic accounts, is the realization of a con~
tained goal-like potential in the wood. For Descartes, the
production of heat is not the goal of a material object. Nor
is burning a self-caused action in which a piece of wood
can engage. Nothing happens but the turbulent motion of
minute particles, progressively disturbing the stabler
structure of the unburned wood. Heat is merely a subjective feature of our perception of these particle motions,
which are not directed from within the particles that
move. In "La Traite de la Lumiere," tactfully summing up
his rejection of scholastic explanations of combustion,
Descartes says:
on to say
Though another may imagine, if he wishes, that there is in
From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable
from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has
parts)-for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actuality of their bodily parts. Yet some may be separable because they are not the actualities of any bodies at all. Further
we have no light on the problem of whether the soul may not
be the actuality of the body in the sense in which the sailor is
the actuality of the ship.3o
I want to emphasize that, in Aristotle's thinking, souls
are like the qualities gravity, heat, and attraction in that
they are originative causes of motion and change. Intrinsic causal agency is found in gravitational fall, in the
growth of plants, in the locomotion of animals, and in consciously directed human actions. Behavior-directing factors which are mental by Descartes' criterion are, for Aris~
totle, sophisticated versions of the same inner determina~
tion of motion that is manifested by heavy objects.
The Aristotelian model of explanation, invoking forms
as causes of motion, was accepted by the scholastic thinkers to whom Descartes reacts. 31 In scholastic terminology,
forms are qualified as substantial not because they are
thought to be independent substances. Substantial form
contrasts with accidental form. The substantial form of a
thing comprises its essential nature. Accidental forms
have the same status as intrinsic causes of change, al~
though possession of them is inessential:
... [T]he substantial form differs from the accidental form in
this, that the accidental form does not make a thing to be absolutely, but to be such, as heat does not make a thing to be
absolutely but only to be hot. 32
An existing thing could lack an accidental form that it has
and yet remain what it is. Accidental forms include the
real qualities that Descartes repudiates.
1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
this wood the Form of fire, the Quality heat, and the Action
which burns it, as entirely distinct constituents, for my part,
since I am afraid of error if I posit anything more than what I
see must be there, I content myself with conceiving in it only
the movement of its parts. 33
The burning wood manifests only externally caused motions of particles. The realization of self-contained potentialities and the attainment of objectives, which do characterize actions of minds, are absent in combustion.
In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes says that he finds
"final causes to be wholly useless in physics," 34 for the reason that the purposes of an infinite Divinity are largely
opaque to men. But his scientific investigations have
given him a more fundamental reason for excluding finalism. He actually finds teleological explanations defective
even in cases where our assessment of purposes and ends
is quite correct.
This rule-that we should never argue from ends-should be
carefully heeded. For. .. the knowledge of a thing's purpose
never leads us to knowledge of the thing itself: its nature remains just as obscure to us. Indeed, this constant practice of
arguing from ends is Aristotle's greatest fault. 35
For example, when we rightly understand that the heart
beats in order to circulate the blood, we do not thereby
know anything at all about what makes it beat as it does.
We still need a causal explanation that purpose does not
provide or even suggest.
Descartes' most instructive criticisms of mental con~
cepts in physics concern weight and gravitational motion.
He portrays the evolution of his own thought about gravity as a gradual emancipation from a universal propensity
to mind-matter confusions traceable to childhood inter-.
pretations of experience:
35
�... I noticed that from infancy I had passed various judgements about physical things, for example, judgements which
contributed much to the preservation of the life I was then
entering; and I had afterwards retained the same opinions
which I had before conceived touching these things .... [And
although the mind was at the time] conscious of its own
nature and possessed of an idea of thought as well as extension, nevertheless, having no intellectual knowledge, though
at the same time it had an imagination of something, it took
them both to be one and the same and referred all its notions
of intellectual matters to the body. 16
The primitive theory of childhood springs from the intimate connection between phenomena and the conditions
for our survival as organisms. Sensations of pleasure and
pain succeed in the function of assuring survival precisely
through our inclination to identify pleasurable and painful sensations with the outer objects that stimulate them.
As a consequence of this biologically useful merging of
physical cause and mental effect we naturally develop a
mentalistic conception of physical reality.
Reconstructing his own intellectual biography, Descartes explains how the scholastic-Aristotelian explanation of the fall of heavy bodies springs from this childhood
imputation of "intellectual matters to the body." Gravity,
conceived as a real quality, is the self-contained cause of
motion in a heavy thing. This quality is a soul-like constituent, in the first instance, because it cannot be located inside the heavy thing as a part can be, just as the conscious
mind of a man initiates his movements but is not locatable
in some particular place within his body. The soul is able
to focus all its causal efficacy at a single point and so, too,
the formal quality "gravity" can exercise its causal force at
a point. In the case of the efficacy of the soul at a point,
Descartes means that, in the transition from intention to
behavior, a single part of the body can be moved in a particular way while the rest is unaffected. The heavy body
seems to mimic this in that, wherever a rope is attached,
all of the contained gravity acts at that one point "as if the
gravity resided in the part along which the rope touched
and was not diffused through the others." 37
Descartes' physics, however, rejects the concept of gravity as a space-filling quality of body that can act at a point.
Effectiveness at any selected point remains the right idea
when we are thinking about the operation of minds in
bodies that do have minds: "Indeed it is in no other way
that I now understand mind to be coextensive with body,
the whole in the whole and the whole in any of its
parts." 38
Descartes finds the most telling evidence of a confused
assignment of mental functions to matter in the alleged
directedness of gravitational movement.
The chief sign that my idea of gravity was derived from that
which I had of the mind, is that I thought that gravity carried
bodies toward the center of the earth as if it contained some
knowledge of this center within it. For it could not act as it did
without knowledge, nor can there be any knowledge except in
the mind. At the same time I attributed also to gravity certain
36
things which cannot be understood to apply to the mind in
the same sense; as, e.g., that it is divisible, measurable, etcYJ
In other words, the internal source of motion must be
understood within the scholastic explanation, not only as
an agency capable of inducing movements that express
the whole power of the inner cause at any one point in
the body, but also the inner agency must know where the
center is from the place the heavy body happens to occupy. Given a spherical universe, heavy bodies may reside
in any direction whatever from the center. It follows that
the same quality, gravity, is able to induce motions in one
body in any direction whatever. A body will move in a certain direction along a straight line through the center of
the universe, if it is on one side of the center, and it will
move in exactly the opposite direction along that same
line, if it is on the other side. How does this inner determinant manage to cause diametrically opposed motions?
The supposition that it does requires that the inner causal
factor be able to discriminate from one another the positions a body may occupy relative to the center. By analogy, a bird's nest is its natural place, and a bird is able to
and does move toward that nest, if the obstacles are not
too great. But this ability would be quite unintelligible if
we were not willing to ascribe to the bird something like
knowledge of the location of the nest. It would be unintelligible just because the ability imputed is a plastic disposition that issues in variously directed flight, depending on
the relative positions of bird and nest. It is not a brute tendency to move in some set way. Thus, the theory of
natural place and natural motion, widely accepted by such
prominent scholastic scientists as John Buridan and Albert of Saxony, does interpret gravity on a pattern suitable
for animal and human behavior that exhibits discrimination and intelligence. 4<l
In the last analysis, Descartes assigns even the intelligent performances of birds and all other nonrationalliving
things to the world of mindless mechanical interactions. A
man knows where his home is, and his knowledge together with his conscious control of his own movement
does indeed explain his homecomings at the end of the
day. The explanatory schema here, however, is grossly
misapplied, Descartes believes, in accounts of free fall,
and it is misapplied in accounts of the behavior of brutes
as well.
The uncompromising segregation of human actions
which do support psychological explanations and animal
behavior which does not is simply the consistent workingout of the implications of the rejection of mental factors
in elementary phenomena such as gravitational fall. The
essence of mind is consciousness. Where there is no consciousness, mind-like functions have no footing in scientific explanation. The deeply rooted inclination that we
possess to read psychological activities into nature is most
obvious in our thinking about animals that share so much
with us from the point of view of physiology. Even this almost irresistible psychologizing is the elaboration of the
WINTER 1981
�confused thinking of childhood wherein the inner conscious affective and sensuous representation is hopelessly
mixed up with the outer things that are both the causes
and the objects of the ideas that we have in perception.
Descartes adheres firmly to the view that physiology is
just mechanical physics applied to intricate structures and
elaborately organized functions that are found on a very
small scale in living things.
Contemporary materialist philosophers of mind rely on
the complexity of the brain and the nervous system to
lend plausibility to their hypothesis that neural events
may be identical with conscious experiences and thoughts.
No simple. working of levers and gears could produce a
feeling. But, perhaps, somehow, the billions of nerve cells,
each with its delicate electrical activity, interconnected in
hierarchical networks, containing a world of feedback
mechanisms, graspable as a maze of information chan~
nels, controls, dampers, and amplifiers-pei-haps mere
physical activity at this level, still dimly, partially, and provisionally understood, can amount to conscious thought.
Descartes is unattracted by this kind of speculation. He
was deeply impressed by physiology, and his visionary program for a physiological psychology in The Passions of the.
Soul is in the spirit of contemporary neurophysiology
even though the details of Descartes' neural science are
now but picturesque misconceptions. He is never tempted,
however, by the hypothesis of mind-brain identity. Complex physical events are only physical events.
This intuitive conviction that the intricacy of the physical cannot convert it into consciousness was well expressed
by Leibniz. In the Monadology, he suggests that the
microscopic size of things in the nervous system gives a
spurious aura of feasibility to materialism. But if the
mind-machine were enlarged to the size of a mill we could
enter it and would "find only parts which work upon one
another, and never anything by which to explain a perception [that is, a conscious experience.]" 41
Descartes' rejection of materialist conceptions of mind
rests on his conviction that his own gains in understand~
ing have been possible only because he has eliminated a
mental aspect from even the subtlest physical activities.
La Description du Corps Humain begins with the theme
of self-knowledge. Man's understanding of himself should
extend to anatomy and physiology and not only to the
moral dimensions of human existence. From this self-
study Descartes envisions unlimited practical results for
medicine in the cure and prevention of disease, and even
the retarding of old age. But these results will be forthcommg
... only if we have studied enough to understand the nature
of our own body and do not attribute in any way to the mind
the functions which depend only on the body and on the disposition of its organs. 42
Again Descartes cites patterns of thought developed in
childhood as an obstacle to understanding. We know we
have conscious control of some bodily movements and,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
therefore, we incline to ascribe a mental principle to all
the others. Ignorance of anatomical structure and the mechanics of physiology permits us to extend the psychological explanatory idiom to the motions of the heart, the
arteries, and digestive organs, ''though these, containing
no thought, are only bodily movements." 43 One body is
moved by another, not by anything non bodily. Where we
do not consciously experience the dependence of
move~
ment on the mind, we should not ascribe it to the mind.
... [A]nd even the movements that are called voluntary proceed principally from the disposition of the organs, since they
cannot be excited without those bodily dispositions, whatever
volitions we may have, even though it is the mind that determines thern. 44
The physiology of bodily movements, then, reveals that
even for movements under the control of the will, physical effects must have physical causes. Here the question
of a final reconciliation of a thoroughgoing mechanical
viewpoint with mental control is left open.
La Description will try to explain, Descartes says, "the
machine of our body" and to show that we have no more
reason to ascribe its physiological workings to a soul than
we have to impute a soul to a clock. 45 A clock plainly has
no soul, although its inner workings and outer behavior
are elaborately organized in ways that reflect the intelligence of its maker and the human objectives in its use.
These relationships to conscious mental activities are not,
in the case of a clock, the occasion for a confused imputa-
tion of thinking to the mechanism itself. But it is just this
confusion to which we are susceptible when we think
about the workings of an animal's body or our own.
Descartes' lifelong interest in automata, 46 clever prod-
ucts of engineers devised for the amusement of kings, provides him with another telling analogy with which to
expose the error of mentalistic explanations in physiology.
Automata seem to react to stimuli, to have goals, and,
generally, to move as though directed by a contained intellect. A naive spectator will actually believe that a mechanically operating automaton is guided by some kind of
conscious appreciation of the environment, and that it
manifests a will of its own and thought-out responses.
When we understand that such things are accomplished
by cleverly rigged magnets, or gears, or hydraulic valves
the illusion of mental control vanishes. 47 Descartes believes that the appearance of a mental element in the
natural machines that are animal and human bodies is just
as much an illusion, although it is much more difficult to
dispel.
The finest and most consistent expression of a mechanical conception of human physical existence extending to
all of the inner. and outer manifestations of mind appears
at the end of the posthumously published fragments of Le
Monde. Descartes has exploited throughout the book a
curious rhetorical device that is both prudential and intellectually liberating. He expressly offers, not an explanatory picture of our "world" and the human race to which
37
�we actually belong, but, instead, the complete science of
an imaginary world located somewhere in the reaches of
extension far from our skies.48 Suns and planets are
· formed by an evolutionary process commencing from an
initial chaos from which everything develops in strict obedience to permanent laws of motion. Living things and
the analogs of men, in this imagined world, come into existence in the same way. In the "Traite de L'homme",
these are "men of clay whom God has made to be as like
us as possible."49 Descartes does ascribe a mental constitution to these umen". Like US 1 they have ideas, appetites,
passions, and memories. The physical aspect of their existence is absolutely mechanical and wholly explicable
without any appeal to a mental constitution. Insofar as
Descartes believes that we are in fact such men, he
ascribes to us, here, a complete physiology without mindbody interaction.
I would like you to suppose that all the functions I have attributed to this machine, such as the digestion of food, the pulse
in the heart and arteries, the nourishment and growth of the
members, wakefulness and sleep; the reception of light, of
sounds, or odors, of heat and similar qualities, by the external
organs of sense; the impression of ideas from them on the
organ of common sense50 and of imagination, the retention or
engraving of these ideas in the memory; the interior movements of appetites and of passions; and finally the exterior
movements of all the members, which are so well suited both
to the action of objects presented to the senses and to iriner
passions, that they imitate as perfectly as possible those of a
true man: I say I would· like you to consider that these functions follow entirely naturally in this machine, from the mere
disposition of its organs, neither more nor less than the movements of a clock or other automatoh follow from the disposition of its counter weights and wheels; so that there can be no
reason at all to conceive in it any other vegetative soul, nor
sensitive soul, nor any other principle of movement and of life
than its blood and its spirits, excited by the heat of the fire
which burns continually in its heart, and which is of no other
nature than all the fires which burn in inanimate bodies. 51
Of course, Descartes does not mean that the workings
of the human body do not show any indisputable marks of
mind and intelligence at all. God is responsible for the
constitution of men and his workmanship manifests a
standard of creative intelligence that no engineer can approach. The human body reflects, therefore, the mind of
God, but in the creation of the body-machine God has utilized only extended particles interacting according to
fixed laws. From this point of view, all of the motions of
the human body, molar and microscopic, including all
those that go into voluntary actions, have their sufficient
physical causes. Only this exceptionless principle could
justify the corresponding claim that no motions of the
"men" of Le Monde require explanations that invoke a
mental function.
Descartes drew back from this wholly mechanical man.
He mars the consistency of his insight by allowing a
38
unique locus of mind-body interaction in the pineal
gland. In this tiny gland, the animal spirits, which are the
most rarefied blood-like constitutent of the nervous
system, are affected by the mind. Descartes invokes the
fragile support of the fact that the pineal gland is not double and is, to that extent, a plausible site for a central integration of the functions of the many dual parts of the
sensory system and brain. 52 The animal spirits are only
deflected by mental influence, according to Descartes' aC:
count, so that the total quantity of motion of physical
things can remain constant.
Had Descartes retained the rigorously consistent view
he formulated at the end of Le Monde, he might have been
led to abandon the concept of a substantial mind altogether. The idea of deflection of the animal spirits re·
quires a quasi-physical influence and leads at once to a
"paramechanical" conception of mind. 53 And the interac-
tion creates a fundamentally unintelligible leakage from
the self-sufficient sphere of physical activity. Mental deflection of particles, however subtle they may be, violates
a crucial feature of a mechanical system like that which
Descartes' physical universe is supposed to comprise.
This is expressed by later science as violation of the conservation of energy. If nonphysical agencies can cause any
movement or deflection at all, that movement or deflection could, for example, compress a spring or raise a
weight, thus causing an increase in total energy. Defects
in his understanding of force leave Descartes without an
appropriate concept of energy in terms of which he might
have grasped this criticism. However, his limitation of the
supposed influence of the mind to deflections that leave
"the quantity of motion" unchanged reveal Descartes'
own qualms concerning the compatibility of conservation
and mind-body interaction. His clear grasp of inertia, requiring uniform motion in a straight line, should have but
did not reinforce those qualms considerably.
But for the pineal gland Descartes' dualism would have
a very different force. The tendency of his total scientific
effort is the elimination of mental direction as a factor in
explanations of physical changes and motions. Beliefs,
acts of will, desires, and intentions do not move parts of
the body any more than an inner quality, gravity, moves a
heavy thing, or inner self-realizing heat creates changes in
a piece of wood. Of course, we are left with the fact that
men do act, execute their intentions, and gratify their
desires.
The uncompromised vision at the end of the "Traite de
L'homme" rejects the idea that the relationship between
psychological explanations of human behavior and physical explanations of the motion of bodily parts can be expressed as any kind of interaction between substances.
Beliefs, desires, and the like, figuring in psychological accounts, are not physical causes and only physical causes
can move material objects. All motions, even of "the
blood and the spirits" have sufficient physical causes
although we do not have a complete account of these
physiological events. "No other principle of movement" is
WINTER 1981
�required, not in the case of a man's body any more than in
the case of an automaton.
For myself, apart from the outmoded scientific details, I
think this view of bodily motions is correct. The right way
of capturing intellectually the relationship of mental concepts and physical events is at present the subject of
scientific investigation and of unsettled philosophical
reflection. At present, a materialist philosophy of mind
that identifies beliefs and desires with neural states and
processes is dominant. Like the theory of the pineal gland,
this contemporary materialism assigns a causal role to
mental things. For Descartes' paramechanical events materialism substitutes a frankly physicalist interpretation of
mental functioning. The theory gets undeserved support
from association with the sophisticated physiology and
anatomy that has replaced Descartes' curious conceptions
of the facts. As far as I can see, materialists have not offered anything at all to make it intelligible that a physical
occurrence in the brain can be a belief, or a desire, or a
thought. 54
There is a strange irony in the mechanical perspective
on the body expressed in Le Monde. It is as though we
start wanting to know how a certain miracle occurs the
miracle of mental control of movements in the physical
world. How does a desire and a belief move a hand? We
know that muscles, not thoughts, move hands. Nervous
impulses, not desires, move muscles. The ironic explanation of the miracle that Descartes reaches, at least on this
occasion, is that the miracle does not occur. Beliefs and
desires and other mental things simply cannot be attached
to motions as their causes. The same irony appears in
Descartes' account of the miracle of vision. How do we
manage to get a conscious picture of the external world
through the organs of sense? In the Optics Descartes explains what happens when we see, invoking as a helpful
analogy a blind man feeling his way with a stick! Descartes
particularly wants to reject the idea that "intentional
species," which scholastic philosophers took to be tiny images, leap into the eye and somehow migrate to an inner
center of conscious reception. He interprets the transmission of light as a kind of pressure which does not involve
the entrance of anything into the eye, 55 just as pressures
in the blind man's stick do not involve a flow of things
through the stick and then into the hand. This is the
thinking that lies behind the Second Meditation when
Descartes says
1
1
But it must be observed that perception of the wax is not
sight, not touch, not imagination; nor was it ever so though it
formerly seemed to be; it is a purely mental contemplation . ... 56
In other words the miracle of real contact with outer reality does not occur at all. So vision is like blindness and
mental control is really automatism.
These understandings would be grotesque but for their
profound appreciation of the idea that elements in our
discourse about conscious experience are not to be iden1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tified with stages in physiological processes. The positive
thesis that Descartes adopts is unsatisfactory. Because he
thinks of the mind as a second substance with its own independent footing in reality, he is left with a "two-worlds"
view and the quagmire of unintelligible interaction that
leads to bizarre Occasionalism or idealist elimination of
the physical world altogether. Although he rightly rejects
confused interpretation of mental discourse that assigns it
physical referents, Descartes precipitates these difficulties because he posits an inevitably mysterious nonphysical mind.
The question remains, why did Descartes construct the
metaphysical proofs presented in the Meditations which
reflect the true foundations of his thinking so inadequately? There is a strand of reserve and secrecy in Descartes' writing. As a young man, Descartes described
himself with some aptness as entering on the stage of public life masked like an actor, so that his audience will not
see his true state of mind. 57 He intentionally published his
geometry in a form difficult to follow lest others, grasping
his discoveries too easily, claim to have possessed them already. He was always concerned about the reception of
his scientific innovations by religious authorities. He withheld the publication of Le Monde upon hearing of the
condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition. He always organized his presentations as prudently as he could. His life
and letters show an exceptional desire for privacy and
avoidance of embroiling controversy. Leibniz and others
complain that he conceals the sources of his ideas which
often contain unacknowledged influence of the writings
of others. The first concern of Descartes as a writer is not
the artless expression of his personal thought.
Descartes, however, certainly did believe that the
many-sided insights of scientific works needed a coherent
metaphysical foundation to replace the discarded Aristotelianism. The theological turn of his arguments rests on
sincere religious commitment. Furthermore the metaphysical arguments do involve as their first stage the articulation of the subjective point of view, which has great
power and from which the metaphysical arguments are
mounted with a certain naturalness. It is worth emphasizing that this systematic subjectivism is not part of the context of scientific investigation for Descartes. Egocentric
skepticism is absent from the methodology of the Rules.
There is no hint of the method of doubt or of the phenomenological resolution of doubt by the cogito argument in
the scientific work presenting the findings that motivate
Descartes' dualism.
Finally, the metaphysical demonstrations constitute a
conservative and backward-looking project for Descartes,
relative to the progressive content of his scientific
thought. The crucial arguments are reconstructions and
new employments of ideas taken over from existing traditions. Starting from the cogito argument, the Meditations
are full of Saint Augustine. The ontological argument is
Anselm's. In discussing causes that contain the reality of
their effects ''eminently" versus "formally", Descartes is
1
39
�employing traditional scholastic distinctions. 58 The concepts of essence and existence, as Descartes employs
them, are taken over from Saint Thomas and Aristotle.
None of this battery of terms, concepts, and arguments
appear in the scientific contexts that really motivate Des·
cartes' dualism.
We can see the late metaphysical works as a restatement
in which Descartes tries to connect his radical conclusions
to existing traditions of thought. This understanding does
not confer any greater merit on the tortured theology of
the official proofs of dualism. I should say that the influence of dualism, which is certainly not due to these arguments, rests, first, on the appeal of the subjective starting
point of the Meditations and, second, on a rough, wide-
spread, frequently unstated appreciation of the tendency
of Descartes' scientific thinking which I have tried to describe here.
Conclusions
The philosophical issues to which Descartes' dualism is
addressed are still at the center of metaphysics and epistemology. In contrast, the relevance of Cartesian science
diminished rapidly following the appearance of Newton's
superior theories. Descartes has retained prestige as a
mathematician, although his mathematical work is read
chiefly by historians. But Descartes' metaphysical writings have always been studied, and they have exerted a
decisive influence on modern thought, especially through
Berkeley, Locke, and Hume. It is Cartesian metaphysics,
separated from the context of scientific thought, that has
influenced empiricism.
In assessing Descartes' dualism we should restore its sci-
entific setting. We should also ignore the deficiencies of
his outmoded conceptions. This does not mean only that
we should overlook Descartes' beliefs that a fire burns in
the heart and that animal spirits are a rarified form of
blood. More important, we have to ignore his limited conception of physical objects and his reduction of physical
events to motions and impacts among particles. Even his
idea of causality ill fits contemporary physics wherein
The seeming difficulty is clear. If mental things like
beliefs and desires are not physical causes, and if only
such causes can account for physical changes and motions, then what is the connection between beliefs and
desires and human actions to which beliefs and desires are
patently relevant? Under the pressure of this question,
Descartes allowed an exception to his otherwise rigorous
mechanism, a unique channel connecting two metaphys-
ically incommensurable worlds, namely, the pineal gland.
This is a mistake. The mistake is engendered by a
substance-conception of mind. Descartes patterns his
thinking about mental concepts on material things and
events, as though, by somehow subtracting materiality,
we arrive at nonmaterial things and events. This kind of
thinking is encouraged by the methodological outlook of
the Meditations. We are more or less forced to conceive of
the mental as a realm of things and events. The phenomenological perspective seems to certify the reality of mental goings-on, and then raises the question: What is all
this? By this we mean: What is the metaphysical status of
mental things, the existence of which is assured? When
the materialist identification is rejected, mental things
and events necessarily appear to be another kind of reality.
Then the problem of interaction is generated and Descartes' compromise, so destructive of his principle insight,
is motivated_
We have to ask: What is a conception of mentality that
does not generate a second realm of things and then lead
to the hopeless problem of interaction? This question
from Descartes' perspective is, What are we to make of
the phenomenology of the Second Meditation, if we
neither identify mental things with neural things nor posit
any substantial res cogitans. It is helpful here to focus on
truth where Descartes focuses on reality. The thinking
subject, tentatively repudiating all empirical knowledge,
finds that his own beliefs and desires, as such, are not
jeopardized. Though the outer world may all be illusion,
he believes, for example, that he is in a room with an open
fire, and he desires to warm himself. Belief and desire arc
thus insulated from empirical skepticism. Descartes reads
this, in the idiom of realities, as demonstrating the ex-
istence of certain things (ideas in the mind) or the occurrence of certain events (thinking). Though there may be
causal relations are expressed in equations that do not
break up reality into discrete consecutive events. Let us
no firelit room, my believing-that-there-is is something
just imagine all of Descartes' old-fashioned ideas replaced
by some up-to-date conception of the physical world. We
want a conception that is free of psychological and teleological ideas. We do use such a conception of physical
this mode of expression we can retain the insights of the
subjective point of view by saying that "I believe I am in a
reality in our thinking and it corresponds to, in fact it is
the heir of, Descartes' mechanical universe of extended
particles.
Given such a conception of the physical world, I believe
that Descartes is right to exclude explanations that introduce nonphysical factors as causes of physical events.
He is also right to refuse a materialist reduction of the
mind to the body. The joint assertion of mechanism and
rejection of mind-brain identity can appear paradoxical.
40
that does exist, and my desiring does occur. Abandoning
firelit room" and "I want to warm myself by the fire" are
true, and these truths are independent of the existence of
the room and the fire. Though these subjective reports
are true, what their truth implies about realities is not obvious. In particular, it is not obvious that believing and
desiring are things that are present in, or go on in men.
Elsewhere I have argued that any account of belief that
identifies believing with an inner something, whether material or nonmaterial, cannot be correct. 59 At the least, reflection on mental concepts creates serious questions
WINTER 1981
�about the unargued-for interpretation of these concepts
in terms of inner realities, that is, the inter¢retation that
Descartes shares with contemporary mind-brain materialism. If this interpretation is set aside, we can try to
overcome the illusion that mental states must be identified with brain states lest they be identified with states
of some unscientific and intrinsically mysterious nonmaterial mind. This illusion is one of the pillars of mindbrain materialism.
In the "Conversation with Burman," Descartes is close
to the kind of understanding I recommend here. Explanations that state the purpose for which things take place do
not give a causal account even if the claim about purpose
is correct 60 Applied to psychology, Descartes' insight
amounts to this: We ask a man why he has done something, fired a gun, for example. The answer tells us that he
desired something (to scare the birds away from his field)
and that he believed something (that firing the gun would
scare away the birds.) So a combination of a desire and a
belief explains the action by displaying the purpose of the
behavior explained. If Descartes is right, however, this
leaves untouched all physical questions of the form: What
caused this object to move? And is it not clear that Descartes is right? Assuming the correctness of the psychological explanation, we know the man's intention and
the point of his behavior. But none of this sheds light on
causes of the movement of his finger on the trigger, any
more than it sheds light on causes of the movement of tlie
·
bullet in the gun barrel.
There is something naive in the idea that a man's believings and wantings are states and events inside him that
are capable of moving parts of his body, as contracting
muscles can move fingers and expanding gases can move
bullets. It would be preposterous to say that "wanting to
scare birds" might directly cause the motion of a bullet.
Nor could wanting something directly cause the motion
of a finger. As Descartes puts it, motions of fingers depend on "the disposition of the organs", which means
that there are physical events and conditions in the nerves
and muscles which explain the motion of the finger.
These physical causes are certainly not what is referred to
as "wanting to scare birds." When we are subject to materialist inspiration, we are tempted to place the causal efficacy of mental things further along in remote neural
stretches of the sequence of physical events. "Wanting to
scare birds" then becomes a posited neural cause, the immediate effect of which also has to be posited. A vague
sense of the fabulous complexity of the brain helps us to
imagine that this transaction that would be preposterous
out in the open is easily accomplished in the nervous
system. But, in fact, "wanting to scare birds" does not
belong anywhere in a sequence of causally intelligible motions of things. Nor are wantings spiritual occurrences.
We must formulate the truth-conditions for "He wanted
to scare the birds" without making wanting into any occurrence at all.
The difference between the Cartesian theory of the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
pineal gland and the materialist theory is that the materialist asserts that the relevant mental things are
themselves physical states and events. He does this precisely to make them eligible as causes of motions while
saving the principle: physical motions must have physical
causes. That is the principle that Descartes adopts and
also compromises. But the trouble with mental things as
candidate causes is not just their vexed metaphysical
standing. From the point of view of physics "knowledge
of a thing's purpose never leads to knowledge of the thing
itself."" Here, knowledge of the thing itself means knowledge of the causes of physical changes. Beliefs and desires
explain actions in terms of purposes and goals. As Descartes believed, these explanations, even if they are correct, leave all questions of physics unanswered.
Translations are from the English"language versions cited in these
notes. Wherever there is no English reference the translations are mine.
No references are given for well-known themes of the Meditations except where passages are quoted. For my general understanding of Descartes I am much indebted to other writers and most indebted to
Etienne Gilson.
The following abbreviations are used in these notes:
AT I-XI C. Adam, and P. Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Nouvelle
presentation, Paris 1964.
HR I-II E. S. Haldane, and G. R. T. Ross, The Philosophical Works of
Descartes, London 1911.
AG
E. Anscombe, and P. Geach, Descartes: Philosophical Writings, London 1964.
K
A. Kenny, Descartes' Philosophical Letters, London 1970.
*'*
l. This subtitle appears first in the second Latin edition, 1642; HR I,
144; AT VII, xxi.
2. AG 117. See also note 30.
3. January 1642, AT III, 491; K 127-8.
.
4. For Hobbes' view, HR II, 61; for Gassendi's, HR II, 142. Descartes'
replies: HR II, 63, and 211.
5. AG 69.
6. HR II, 25.
7. HR II, 83.
8. K 123: AT Ill, 474.
9. K 144.
10. The LJhrase is part of the title of the Second Meditation.
11. See Etudes sur le rOle de la pensee medievale dans la formation du
systeme Cartesien, esp. zeme pt., 1.
12. Discours, Ill, AT VI, 30; P. Olscamp, Discourse etc., Indianapolis
1965, 25.
13. July 22, 1641, K !09; AT III, 420.
14. May 21, 1643, K 139; AT III, 667.
15. "Postquam autem ulterius perrexi ... ,"AT VIII, 440; HR II, 253.
This suggests a temporal order in Descartes' thinking that cannot be
taken literally.
16. HR 11, 253-4.
17. April26, 1643, K 135-6; AT III, 648-49.
18. Compare Principles, pt. 2, art. 37: "The first law of nature: that each
thing as far as in it lies, continues always in the same state; and that
which is once moved always continues so to move." Art. 39 asserts that
"all motion is of itself in a straight line." HR I, 267. For an illuminating
account of Descartes' concept of inertia and its influence on Newton,
see A. Koyre, "Newton and Descartes," in his Newtonian Studies, Cambridge 1965,69-76.
19. Metaphysics, Z, 8, l033a-4a. But compare L, 4, 1070a. 'I'his passage
seems to allow a possible exception in the separate existence of the
41
�forms of natural beings and, in particular, of the rational soul of man.
The same kind of suggestion is made at H, 2, l043b, "Whether the substance of destructible things can exist apart is not yet at all clear; except
that obviously this is impossible in some cases; e.g., a house or a utensil.
Perhaps, indeed, neither of these things themselves, nor any of the
other things which are not formed by nature, are substances at all; for
one might say that the nature in natural objects is the only substance to
be found in destructible things," W. D. Ross, Oxford 1908. It must be
noted that Aristotle speaks here of forms by themselves as "substances."
On this confusing alternative usage he does not apply the term to composites of form and matter, although this is commonly his practice
elsewhere. 'At 1070b-la, Aristotle states flatly, "Some things can exist
apart and some cannot, and it is the former that are substances." These
passages very much conform to the conception of soul-like separable
constituents, capable of causing motions in things of which they are
forms, that is, the very conception that Descartes ascribes to the
scholastics and then rejects.
20. Metaphysics, H, 3, 1043a-b.
2l. Metaphysics, H, 6, 1045a-b.
22. Physics, I, A, 1, l93a.
23. On the Heavens, Bk. I, 1, 7-8, 276a-b; and Bk. 3, 2, 300a.
24. On the Heavens, Bk. 1, l, 8.
25. On the Heavens, Bk. 3, 7, 314b-6b, and On Generation and Corruption, Bk. 2, 4, 33la-2a.
26. Holders of the sort of view to which Descartes refers are not limited
to Aristotle and the Schoolmen of the thirteenth century and later who
were so deeply affected by the rediscovery of Aristotle's works. Even
Saint Augustine voices both the idea that heavy things are directed to
goal-like natural places by their weight, and the idea that this activity of
heavy bodies resembles human desire-guided behavior. Augustine says,
"Our body with its lumpishness [Augustine has merely 'corpus pondere']
strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to
his own place also. All things pressed by their own weight go towards
their proper places ... Things a little out of their places become unquiet.
Put them in their order again and they are quieted. My weight is my
love. By that I am carried wheresoever I be carried." Confessions, Bk. 13,
Ch. 9; trans. W. Watts, London 1912, 391.
27. Physics, Bk. 2, 3_~nd 7.
28. Physics, Bk. 2, 1, 4l2a-b; and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 76, a 4.
29. De Anima, Bk. 2, 1, 412a-b; trans. J. A. Smith.
30. De Anima, 413 3 • I take this to be the precedent for Descartes' pilotship analogy in the Sixth Meditation.
31. Gilson shows that these doctrines are prominent in the manuals
from which Descartes was taught as a boy at La Fleche. See Etudes, 155
and 161 n. For a full survey of the Aristotelian concept of form and substantial form in patristic, scholastic, and Renaissance thought, see
"Form und Materie," in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed. J.
Ritte<, Basell971, Vol. 2, 978-1015.
32. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 76, a 4, Dominican trans.
33. Le Monde, AT XI, 7. See also Gilson's discussion of this passage,
Etudes, 152-53.
34. AG 94.
42
35. Descartes' Conversation with Burman, J. Cottingham, London 1976,
19.
36. HR II, 254. The view that self-preservation is the biological function
of our confused experience of pleasure and pain is also presented in the
Sixth Meditation, without reference to the inadequate theories that
Descartes thinks this confusion tends to promote. HR I, 197.
37. HR II, 255.
38. HR II, 255.
39. HR II, 255.
40. See Crombie, A.C., Medieval and Early Modern Science, New York
1959, Vol. 1, 128, and Vol. 2, 46 and 68ff. Crombie also reports medieval
theories involving natural place influenced by Plato's Timaeus and
incorporating the on-Aristotelian notion of multiple worlds (no one
center) such as that of Nicolas of Cusa. Such accounts are part of the
historical background of Descartes' vortex theory of planetary motion.
Insofar as these alternative medieval cosmologies accepted some version
of the idea of natural motion, they are simply further illustrations of
what Descartes took to be a universal error.
41. Art. 17, Latta, R., The Monadology etc., Oxford 1898,228. Latta also
quotes Leibniz's "Commentatio de Anima Brutorum," (1710): "Whence
it follows that, if it is inconceivable that perception arises in any coarse
"machine" whether it be made of fluids or solids, it is equally inconceivable how perception can arise in a finer 'machine' ... ," Gerhardt, ed.,
Phil. Schriften, Vol. 7, 328.
42. AT XI, 223-24.
43. AT XI, 224.
44. AT XI, 225.
45. ATXI,226.
46. For a survey of Descartes' discussions of automata and an interpretive investigation, see F. Alquie, La decouverte metaphysique de I' hom me
chez Descartes, Paris 1950, 52-54.
47. See Discourse, HR I, 116; and Principles, IV, art. 203-04, HR I,
299-300.
48. AT XI, 31.
49. AT XI, 120.
50. That is, the sensus communis, a hypothetical organ or faculty which
integrates the input of the several senses according to Thomas and
other scholastics.
51. AT XI, 201-02.
52. Passions, art. 32, HR I, 346.
53. This is Gilbert Ryle's penetrating epithet, from The Concept of
Mind, London 1949, 19.
54. See my, "Could Our Beliefs Be Representations in Our Brains?"
Journal of Philosophy, 76, 1979, 225-44.
55. Dioptrique, I, AT VI, 84.
56. AG 73.
57. Cogitationes Privatae, AT X, 213. See also H. Gouhier, Premieres
pensees de Descartes, Paris 1958, 67.
58. For example, Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 4, a 2.
59. Summa Theologica, I, q 4, a 2.
60. Cottingham, 19.
61. Cottingham, 19.
WINTER 1981
�Family Pages, Little Facts: October
George Dennison
W
E LIVE AT THE NORTHERN EDGE
of the hardwoods
in central Maine, a region of hills and mountains,
ponds, lakes, streams, rivers. Most of the homes
lie scattered in the intervale below us, a flat, narrow valley
that IS freshened and sometimes flooded by a rocky
stream, but a few rest on the sides of hills, as does ours. It
is the second week of October. The slopes across from us
catch the morning sunlight and have become dazzling
banks of reds, oranges, and yellows, all the more intense
because of the shadowed evergreens around them. A
week ago delicate sheets of ice covered the puddles between our sheds, and the children lifted them entire and
looked at one another as through panes of glass, but now
the days are so warm that Patricia goes into the garden
without shoes. The insects are gone. Most of the birds are
gone. Long, gleaming filaments of airborne spiders drift
across the fields and over the ponds.
What a mood we are in! We are torporous, yet restless;
restless, yet free of discontent, as if walking through the
landscape of a dream. I drove to the lakeside mechanic's
this morning and saw a broad-backed, red-faced country·
woman emerge from her car and stand looking at that motionless water. "Oh God!" she called to me, though we
were strangers, HAin't it some weather!" An hour later I
saw her again, sleepwalking, as are the rest of us, staggermg past the bank and the grocery store.
I look out the window of my bedroom workroom and
see Patricia going slowly up the hill, deep in thought. She
the wood's edge, one
throws herself on the tall grass
ai
arm across her eyes.
I should be working.
Wherever I look one, two, or several leaves with
.
.
'
mg motions, fall to the ground.
rock~
The table is covered with yellow paper. On the topmost
sheet I read:
He is sleeping in the wheelchair, his small bald head hanging
all the way forward. . . .
·
-a description of my former neighbor, Dana Tomlin
who is in a nursing home now. But my eyes go again t~
the sunlit window, where flies that were dead last night
are buzzing violently. Their wings are twisted. Nothing
works. Theu flights are wild arcs ended by collisions.
It is impossible to sit here.
As I leave the room I hear a far-off barking and think of
yesterday's sight of the Canada geese, whose honking, in
the distance, had sounded like dogs, but we had heard it
agam, closer, and had realized what it was. They were
right above us, not in a V but an undulant long line, noisy
and rapid. How powerful and grand they are! Everything
about them is forceful and grand. They passed out of
sight qmckly, honking noisily and stroking like rowers
with their powerful wings, and I was surprised by the longing and sadness I felt.
Ida's class at school has been reading poems and she
had been asked to write some at home. She is ten. The
geese in flight, she had said that evening looked like the
fishermen's buoys we had seen at the ~cean. She was
right. The geese had drifted up and down in their formation as if long, gently heaving swells were passing under
them. She composed aloud, dictating, and I wrote the
words for her:
Geese, when they are flying south
look like strings of buoys
bobbing up and down
on the deep, wide ocean.
Geo:ge Dennison recently published Oilers and Sweepers and Other
Sto~ws {Random House 1979). In 1969 he published The Lives of
Chddren: The Story of the First Street School.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Liza, her .sister, who is two years younger than she,
began chantmg all kinds of things, and some of these too
we wrote as poems:
43
�When the days are orange
leaves are falling down.
As I come out of the house the geese, the poems, the
girls-and four-year-old jacob, who had sabotaged everything that evening-mingle in my thoughts with images
from long ago that have been coming into consciousness
of late: fields of brown grass, a yellow brick building in
which certain sisters lived, twelve and thirteen, with
brand-new breasts.
If I had thought that I was going somewhere, this stepping out of doors into the mild, bright sunlight turns out
to be an arrival, and I realize abruptly that I don't know
what to do. I stand there indecisively and look across the
yard at the three dogs, who are sprawled in the grass with
as deep a lassitude as my own, and who lift their heads to
look at me, but do not alter their positions.
The dirt road ends in our dooryard. Across the road are
the barn and the shed, and between them, nose to nose
and bathed in light, stand the two drowsy, half-wild ponies. They are a sight to see. They have been gorging for
weeks. Our crop of corn had ripened progressively and
had been husked in the grass near the cornfield, and the
ponies had attended every session. They had eaten all the
husks, all the silk, many unfilled tips of ears. They had
consumed whole bushels of cooked cobs. After that had
come the apples, a flood of them, and once a feast of
slightly rotten pears. The ponies are so fat now as to be
comical, yet they are handsomer and more vigorous than
ever, and are enchanting to watch when they sprint in the
evening, as they do without fail before dark, just as the
fork-tailed swallows, all summer long, had sped around
and around the house at sunset. They gallop madly, apparently with abandon. They toss up their heads and then
plunge downward, kicking both heels high. They whinny
and veer off through the small orchard and come drumming back again, their curved haunches bunching and
thrusting powerfully. Their winter coats are almost complete: richly colored, deep-piled hair that is almost fur, a
mixture of soft and coarse that will bring them through
nights of twenty below, and a few of forty. They lift their
heads as I approach, and move them from side to side
looking sharply at my hands, which are empty of apples. I
stand there a moment scratching the powerful jaw of the
chestnut male, and he drops all the weight of his head into
my hands, either playfully or simply for the enjoyment of
resting. Without quite realizing what I am doing I close
my eyes and breathe deeply his mild, clean, yet pungent
aroma. And then I become aware that this streaming of
heated odors from his mouth and barrelled sides is consoling and deeply reassuring. Only a few seconds have
elapsed, but the jealous dogs are trotting toward me and
the foremost, a golden retriever, is barking querulously.
Now ponies and dogs follow me into the orchard, the dogs
gamboling competitively around my feet and the ponies
ambling lazily, moving their bodies as if in sections.
Only eight apple trees are left. Once there were four
44
hundred and the orchard went uphill into what is now a
stand of maples and pines. A few apples still dangle from
their twigs, plump and generous, and wonderfully decorative against the blue of the sky. I throw a stick and three
come down, and the alert ponies draw near. While I feed
an apple to the chestnut gelding, I hear again-actually I
imitate it in my throat-the slurred, dense, attractive
voice of old Eddie Dubord, who ten days ago helped me
split wood with a rented hydraulic splitter. He had fed an
apple to the pony in just this way, scratching the working
great muscles at the base of its jaw, saying, "Yeah,
Starbright, you put your firewood inside you, don't you!
Yeah-uhhh .... "
The ponies stay, the dogs follow me to to the vegetable
garden which is just uphill of the house. I lean on a rail of
the crude fence and look thoughtfully at the surviving
greens.
meant something! My
thoughts are scattered like leaves. I am scarcely a
person. There in front of me are the late crops that
must be harvested, the broccoli, Swiss chard, collard
greens, Brussels sprouts, survivors of the first frosts, and I
do actually see them, but I see the children, too, made
quiet by the stillness and the mild sun, wearing puffy
orange vests, kneeling in the canoe while I move us glidingly over the reflections of clouds and colored trees. It
was only yesterday, but these are remembered things now
and are almost on a par with other memories; exciting Fall
weather and I'm running home past lighted windows,
tossing a football. Again now, as repeatedly in recent
weeks, I see my mother's exhausted brave face the day
before she died, almost four years ago. The disease had invaded all parts of her body. She had become too weak to
hold a spoon or lift a cup. Early that morning it had spread
again and she could no longer form words. A young nurse
had been coming to the house. She had just changed the
bedsheets and gently lowered my mother's head to the
mound of pillows. My mother spoke to her, but a blurred,
gutteral sound came from her mouth, shocking to hear.
Without expressing annoyance, my mother closed her
lips, raised her hand and stroked the young woman's head.
The nurse had grown fond of her and was weeping as she
left us. We heard the opening and closing of the front
door. My mother looked at me and held out her hand. I
went to her. She took my hand and laboriously drew it to
her lips, and with a steady, grave look held it there a long
while, kissing it. Three years later my father too was dead,
not on the anniversary of her death, as he had hoped.
Now that they are gone I hear my mother's voice in my
own, and notice outbreaks of my father's temper. There
are glimpses of his face in Liza's brow and chin, and in
Jacob's eyes. Ida resembles my mother. Several days ago,
in the afternoon, when already this motionless time had
begun, I gave up stalking partridge in the shaggy high
fields of a neighbor and lay down in the sun by a stone
A
S IF THIS PURPOSIVE GAZE
WINTER 1981
�wall that made me think of loaves from an oven, and was
pulled under instantly. I slept deeply and for a long time,
and then did not awaken at once but passed into a waking
dream in which I imagined that I was coming into the entranceway of our present house, making noise, and my fa-
ther leaned around through the inside doorway angrily.
He was talking on the phone. He covered the mouthpiece
and began to upbraid me, but I forestalled him by indicating my apologies with gestures. I noticed that I had set
aside false pride and had not responded to his anger with
anger of my own. I began to feel buoyant. The actions of
the dream took on the quality of revelation. I put my arm
around him and kissed his forehead, and he blushed and
smiled happily. I too was happy, and I felt the excitement
of liberation that comes with understanding. The dream
changed now entirely into insight, a train of thought, the
gist of which stirred me as deeply as had the images. I
understood that touching, affectionate touching would
ease our relationship of its angers and relieve his need for
tokens of esteem. I thought of the times he had responded to affection with just this melting surprise,
blushing and smiling.
But a terrible unease invaded all this reasoning. Something was wrong. I became aware that I was not awake,
then opened my eyes and sat up in the cooling shadows of
the wall and remembered that my father was dead. The
ground was damp. The sun was low and the sky was white
with clouds. The sadness I felt was a child's sadness. I remembered things I had forgotten for decades, and could
see the faces of my parents in their youth, good-looking
and far younger than I was now. The images were so nu-
merous that I could scarcely register them ... and in the
very instant that I became aware of their abundance, they
vanished. I wanted to stop their going but could not, and
when I tried to call them back I found that my mind was
blank. I set out through the woods, which soon began to
darken, and walked the long way home without thought
at all.
who had been lolling at my feet while
I gazed at the garden, suddenly leaped up and
whirled around, barking explosively. They ran to the
road, arrayed themselves across the brow of the hill, and
with legs braced and heads slightly raised, barked without
cease. The sound of a lightweight motor grew louder, and
then a battered blue Volkswagen parted the dogs, who
bounded stiff-legged beside it, barking obstreperously as it
rolled to a stop under the locust trees.
Justine was nursing her baby. She smiled at me and
waved and looked down at the inconspicuous head. Her
somewhat pretty husband waved too, and sat there
behind the steering wheel watching them. A few minutes
later the chortling infant was clinging to its mother's hip,
wet-lipped and bedazzled, and I bent over to admire it,
really to bask for a moment in Justine's heady aura.
She asked for Patricia. I said that she was sleeping and
T
HE THREE DOGS,
1BE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
offered to get her. "No, no," said Justine, stopping me
with her hand, "we're not going yet . ... "
We carried five sacks of apples into the barn. The huge
space was dim and cool and was striped gorgeously with
gleaming blades of sunlight between the boards, vertical
in the walls and horizontal in the gables. Other bulging,
lumpy sacks, smelling of apples and hempen fibers, leaned
against one another in the hayloft. Beneath the loft and to
one side of it stood the massive press of roughhewn
beams. In a week or two we would gather here, perhaps
twenty of us. The sacks would be lifted and the apples
dumped noisily into a narrow high trough, along which
they would be hurried by hand to the belt-driven grinder.
A worker with a wooden rake would shove the emerging
pulp down another trough, steeply pitched, onto the
square platform of the press. There it would be levelled in
layers and covered with strong cloths stained a rich sienna
from many years of pressing. When the layers were complete, still other friends, pushing three or four abreast at a
stout lever, like sailors at a capstan bar, would crank the
giant screw slowly tighter, and the sweet smell of apples
would grow more intense. There would be ten or a dozen
children and several unengaged adults standing around or
sitting on the edge of the hayloft, legs dangling. After the
first pale flowing into the wax-lined barrel everything
would stop. Cups and glasses and dippers of this finest,
purest juice would be passed around, and many voices
would comment on its quality.
Justine and Henry would be missing all this. They were
going home to Albany for the winter. Patricia had offered
to press their cider and send it down by a mutual friend.
Before they left they stopped in the high doorway of
the barn and glanced at each other.
"The weirdest thing happened that night we did the
lambs," Henry said. I had helped him butcher two ewes.
They owned a ram as well, but had let it live, intending to
board it for the winter.
"We were just ready to go to bed," he said, "when we
heard this knocking at the door. ... "
"It was a pounding," said Justine. "It was strong."
"I said, 'Who's there?' -but there wasn't any answer,"
said Henry, "only this pounding. I thought, wow, what is
it? I opened the door, and my God, I couldn't see
anything ... but I heard something, and then I felt
something rush past me .... "
"It was the ram," Justine said. "He was wild. He ran
through the whole house. He pushed open the hall door
and went to the woodshed and stood there butting the
door . ... "
''That's where the ewes were," said Henry, "they were
hanging from the rafters in the woodshed."
-which I knew, as I had helped him carry the carcasses, and had myself draped the skins over the neat
stacks of split wood.
After they had gone I went to my room and wrote the
story of the ram in a notebook, appending it to a description of the slaughtering and cleaning of the ewes.
45
�I
SAT THERE A WHILE
reading earlier entries in the note-
book-descriptions, ideas, quoted words. There are
many such notebooks in this room, and journals as well,
and diaries, saved letters, clippings, unfinished literary
projects ... so much of it, finally, that I can scarcely avoid
seeing that its real purpose all along has been to stop the
draining away of time.
My parents' photograph album is here, on a shelf
among books. It ends in their early adulthood. I was six
then, my sister five, my bwther four. I seldom open it.
Those ochre and ivory images are as if imprinted on my
mind, one especially, of my mother as a young woman,
just twenty-two, extremely pretty, with something innocent in her face, a leftover glow of childhood. She wears a
skirted bathing suit. Her legs are curled to the side and she
is leaning on one arm in shallow water, on a sandy beach.
She seems to be happy and is looking trustingly into the
camera. Her arms and legs are long, yet are handsomely
rounded. Her abdomen, too, is slightly curved, but I
myself, in embryo, am the cause of that. How strangely
this image affects me! Here is the woman herself, who
later vanished into that beloved invention called mother!
And here, invisibly, is the young man, the mere youth
holding the camera. What was he like, free of me? Here
also am I, before time has begun. This picture astonishes
me. It entices and baffles me ....
vigorous, brash and tender. The strap of her canteen
crosses her chest diagonally, and she wears a headband,
from which a large fern sweeps back rakishly, like a plume.
She looks adventurous and dashing. The leader of this
trio, however, is observant, bright-faced Ida, who moves
along so lightly that one might expect her to turn a cartwheel at any moment, or take leave of the ground
entirely.
The children's faces are intent and serious. Having
greeted the dogs, they are silent again. They cross the
yard ... and Jacob deserts his sisters. "Mommy! Mommy!"
he calls. They have not seen Patricia, who is standing in
the grass now and is fully dressed. I hear the opening of
the front door, and hear it slamming backwards, and hear
the voice again, "Mommy! Mommy!" suddenly babyish.
This summons, and the flood tide of demand held in
readiness behind it release me from the doting happiness
I had been feeling. I become defensive. I let him call
Mommy! Mommy! and though I haven't moved, the fact
is, I am hiding. I say to myself He'll reject me if I go down,
it's Patricia that he wants-but I know that this is not the
reason. The reason is that this present mood, in which the
feelings are so close to words and the words to feelings, is
precious to me and must be defended, especially against
Jacob, whose demands are innocent and boundless. And
so I sit at my table and take up my papers. From the window to my right I can see the roadside trees of the valley.
Most are not large, but spaced among them are the
stumps of elms that once were large indeed. How handsome that road must have been when the huge trees towered over it, and wagons and horses went along in their
I
of the dogs again, and go
to the window. They have not run to the road, but in
the opposite direction, to the woods. Now I hear the
HEAR THE CHALLENGE BARKING
children's voices, and in the same instant, with a shock of
embarrassment, I see Patricia, entirely naked, sit up in the
tall grass and with hasty, guilty movements shake out her
red blouse and blue skirt. After the embarrassment, I feel
affection, admiration, and compassion for her middleaged longings, her large and stately, slightly dumpy, oddly
childish middle-aged body.· Then small anxieties appear. ...
But now the children come into view, who have long
been the antidote to my own desperations, and such happiness leaps within me as is almost frightening. How could
I deserve these three? They come through the wagonbreak in the low stone wall, where years ago cattle came
and went. They step out of the shadows of the trail into
the open sunlight of the yard, bare-legged, as in the
depths of summer. All three, even four-year-old Jacob,
carry walking sticks picked up in the woods. I can see the
barbaric whorls and streaks-red and blue Magic
Marker-Jacob had applied to his arms and cheeks after
breakfast. His shorts are cut-off jeans. Someone-Ida,
probably-has placed the stems of ferns under his belt.
The ferns cross his chest and flutter as he strides along.
He goes beside Liza, his great love, who is stalwart and
46
shade! The past is everywhere. There are cellar holes deep
in the woods, inexplicable stone walls, farm roads that are
now deer trails, rows of grayed apple trunks crumbling
among maples and pines. The papers on my table are de·
scriptions of these things, and of some of the surviving
elders, whose rural graciousness and sweet modesty have
often astonished me. The topmost pages are of Dana
Tomlin, whom I have seen twice this week at the nursing
home, and who is ninety-eight now. Three years ago, late
in the summer, I saw him standing in line at the bank
looking shyly all around him and smiling continually. He is
the eldest of the town's elders, and his manner showed a
consciousness of his status, but his wrinkled face was as
shy and sweet as a child's. His look of grateful happiness
affected everyone. People came to him and greeted him,
and he returned their greetings, though it was clear that
he did not know who they were. He was well-knit, or had
been-of a middle size and workaday substantiality. He
wore an old gray suit, a gray fedora hat, and button-up
shoes of a soft black leather. When he came to the teller's
window, he tweaked open a pouch-like leather purse,
looked down into it soberly, and rummaged about with his
thumb and forefinger. He was walking well then and must
have weighed thirty pounds more than he does now. He is
confined to a wheelchair, and his thighs and shins have
become mere rods of bone.
WINTER 1981
�I
HAD WRITTENo
... He was asleep in the wheelchair-rather, there in the
chair was a heap of old clothes out of which a hairless speckled head hung forward alarmingly. The young woman shook
him gently and said, "Dana ... Dana .... " There were other
patients in the community room. Some had been studying me
from the moment I had come in. Now at the sound of her
voice most of the others turned their heads. "Dana .... "
There was a stirring amidst all that clothing, as when some
small, shy forest creature stirs under a covering of leaves. He
braced himself with his hands. The cords of his neck tightened, and his shoulders and back slowly straightened. At last
he was looking at us. His small speckled face was anxious.
"Dana," the young woman said, "your visitor is here. You're
going out in the car today. Have you forgotten? It's a beautiful
day, Dana."
His face relaxed and took on its characteristic sweetness,
and he said, "Yes," very faintly, but he was still confused.
She spoke to him once more, in the loud, clear voice of nurs·
ing homes. He blinked laboriously while he listened. The
doughy, almost liquid folds around his eyes merged so thoroughly that it was surprising to see them part again.
"You can take him to his room. Call me if you need help,"
the young woman said, adding quietly, "He can't turn the
wheels."
I guided the chair down the corridor. He was looking at the
hands in his. lap. Presently he raised his head and said whisperingly, "Oh ... it's funny ... you know ... I can't always
think of what I want to. Tell me again where you live."
"I live in the house your sister lived in. You brought her
over one day about five years ago."
I was not sure he had heard me. He lifted his hand to his
watery triangular blue eyes and patted it with a handkerchief
was shearing sheep, so dad said to me, 'Would you rather haul
milk, or shear?' and I said,"-here he turned to me, smiling
wittily and peering goodhumoredly out of that triangular blue
eye-"I said it didn't make no difference, they was both work.
So that's when I started. I was sixteen years old .... "
I heard footsteps, then a rapping of knuckles on my
door, at no great height. The door moved inward, and
there in the doorway stood strong, diminutive Jacob, grinning expectantly. I could see that he had been primed
with a speech. His eyes danced on mine and he shouted
happily, "Hurry up, daddy, we're starved t' death!" Before
I could answer, the smile faded from his face, and his fouryear-old eyes darted omnivorously about the room. "What
are you doing?" he said-a temporizing question. By the
time he had reached me his fingers had handled half-adozen things. Someone-Patricia or Ida-had washed his
face and hands. He leaned against me and said, "Can I
see ... daddy, can I see the hunting knife and the pistol?"
He went by himself to the drawer where these things were
kept, and opened the drawer slowly, looking back at me
over his shoulder. I stood behind him and watched him
unsheath the knife, and unwrap the soft cloth from the
-automatic. The pistol awed him. He had scarcely any idea
what it could do, nor was it a symbol of anything in his
eyes, though certainly its sequestered place had given it
status. It was the object itself that impressed him, so
weighty and handsome. He turned it in his small
hands ....
There came a pounding on the downstairs wall that was
obviously Patricia, Liza, and Ida pounding in unison, and
we put away the knife and gun and went down to supper.
that had been balled in his fist. The other eye, the left, is blind
with cataracts.
"I had four brothers ... two sisters ... and a mother and
father," he said falteringly, "now I'm all that's left."
He sat there just breathing for a moment, apparently recovering from the effort of talking; and then with cautious, trembling movements he extracted a handkerchief from the breast
pocket of his flannel shirt, unwrapped a set of dentures and
fixed them into place.
"They drop out very easily now," he said, "so I keep them
in my pocket." The lines across his forehead deepened and
his single good eye grew brighter. He was smiling. "I lost two
teeth out o' them," he said. ''I'm afraid o' losin' the whole
thing." His entire face brightened with shy humor, astonishing to see, and in this very moment of finding pleasure in his
own wit he remembered that we had planned to go out, and
that I was the one who was writing something about the early
days of the town. Fifteen minutes later we were driving in my
car along a hilltop road in the most delicious sunlight and air.
There were woods to the left of us, and long vistas of pastures,
woods, and distant hills to the right, and he was telling me of
the milk route he had serviced for sixty years. His melnories
were geographical. He could recall the time of a thing once he
had established the place of it.
"We got started because the old creamery failed," he said.
"My dad went around to the farmers and asked if they'd let us
haul their cream to the North Folsom creamery. They said
they would. It was March. My dad took ill, and my brother
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
with autumn colors. One would
think that by now they would be familiar, but they remained astonishing, and our eyes, as we ate, at least
Patricia's and mine, went back to them again and again.
Glowing, blazing, flaming . .. one uses fire words. No
others are accurate. It is not only that the colors are intense, but that the leaves are translucent, the light passes
through them, and the colors are lit from within. It is due
to this effect, too, and to the profuse scattering of the
leaves in space that one receives so little sense of discrete
surfaces, but sees instead a vibrating haze of color.
The dining-room door was open, and the doorway
framed three bands of color. The topmost, a narrow band,
was a soft, rich blue. Then came the wide band of the
saturated reds and ochres. And finally-the widest band
of all-the bronzed greens of the dying grass.
VERY WINDOW GLOWED
E
blood
cranberries
pomegranate
Morocco leather
red apples
dark roses
hot magentas
rose madders
47
�-these are the reds of the red or swamp maple, some of
whose leaves also turn orange. The clouds of saffron,
slightly rusted, are poplars and birches. Here and there
one sees the dull purples of white ash, and the buckskin
and tobacco shades of red oak. But the flaming oranges
and lighter reds, the saturated ochres and the deep, sal·
mon pinks are sugar maples, intensified in color by the
pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock that surround them.
We ate quickly, almost heedlessly, so drawn were we to
the lingering warmth and light at the open door. Jacob
was the first one out. And as often happens, he gave immediate, naive expression to impulses we others felt as
well as he but were too inhibited to act upon. He began to
leap and twirl and throw out his arms. He kept it up even
after we others came out. Ida and Liza joined him at once,
and so did the three dogs, who barked in high-pitched,
complaining voices and ran from one whirling child to another. Patricia glanced at me and laughed. She was still
barefoot. She pranced out into the midst of the capering
figures and began to swing her arms and lift her knees. I
followed behind her, in spite of my self-consciousness. By
now the dogs were barking hectically. They plunged
against one another, sideswiping and nipping. A rubber
ball was lying there in the grass, and I threw it toward the
front of the house. All three dogs sped after it. They centered on it, growling in strange, plaintive tones. The aging
retriever picked it up ... and here one must say Ia and
behold! for just as the dogs turned, the brown pony and
the black one emerged from beyond the house, and all
five animals, side by side, wheeled together in a momentarily perfect flank, and came prancing towards us abreast.
Ida shouted with delight. Liza turned to see what was hap·
pening, and she shouted too. I glanced at Jacob. He hadn't
noticed a thing. He was still dancing. He was chanting or
talking to himself, was whirling and jumping, and kept
throwing out his arms, first one and then the other, m
marvelous, mighty gestures . ...
woods to my left. Had there really been a melting sun that
afternoon? There was no illusion now: winter was coming.
All this landscape that had seemed to be an emanation of
one's own torporous dream was real again. There were
real chores to do, real wood to split, carry and stack, real
cabbages to hang in the root cellar, chard and collards to
be picked and frozen, screens to be taken down, storm
windows to be installed, hay to be covered in the barn so
that the cider-makers wouldn't wet it ....
Earlier in the year I had tried to follow the spring thaw
in daily notes, and had brought my notes through May,
having kept track, though certainly skimpily, of returning
birds and returning green, and of the sequence of the
wildflowers. On the last day of May I wrote:
... more rain. Lilacs everywhere. The locust leaves are wellestablished, but are not full size. Dandelions are going to seed,
though the yellow heads are still plentiful. A few lightning
bugs ...
-and there my journal ended. Which is to say that it was
at this moment that I was carried off in the flood of sum·
mer, aware only that everything was shooting upward,
was spreading outward, was beautiful, and that I myself
was spinning like a top. Now in the dwindling of the cold
it all becomes perceptible again. Within a week the lavish
colors were gone, and the last leaves, as usual, did not fall
of their weight, but were pulled away by the wind and
knocked down by rain. Soon the hills had darkened to the
shadowed greens that would last until spring. The coldness of the nights persists into the days, and there comes
an afternoon that "spits snow," followed by a morning of
whiteness, which the sun transforms into vapors and fat
drops of water at the eaves. In the woods I notice a small
moth beating this way and that, apparently haphazardly,
and I wonder where it is going and how it survived the
freeze of the night before. And then, driving in the dark·
ness over wet asphalt roads, I see in the headlight beams,
as always this time of year, every quarter-mile or so in the
intervale, a little frog, or several, hopping across the road.
WALKEDALONE after dark up the lumber road that passes
for a mile through woods and then emerges into fields.
It was cold and the wind was moving briskly through
the trees. I wore a sweater and a woolen jacket. There had
been stars, but now the ~ky was overcast. Two screech
owls were screaming back and forth in the dark stretch of
I
48
They are so purposive, so doomed, so pathetically ineffi·
cient, going up laboriously in high Gothic arches just to
move forward a foot or two! I laugh and shake my head at
the wretches, yet slow the car so as to avoid crushing
them. They had been sitting on the heat-retaining road,
fending off the cold. Soon enough that glistening black
surface will be white with snow and ice.
WINTER !981
�The Latin-American Neurosis
Carlos Rangel
The political ground of Latin-American society has not
yet gotten over the earthquake of the Cuban revolution;
for that matter, no recovery is possible. What happened in
Cuba since 1959 marks at least as much of an era as the
Wars of Independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and as the enunciation of the Monroe
Doctrine in 1823.
The Monroe Doctrine's Perverse Results
For about one hundred and thirty-three years, Latin
America, a mosaic of sovereign states, existed in an infantile way in the face of the complexities of international
politics. Only Bolivar and a few other statesmen of the
generation of the struggle for independence grasped the
differences between the imperialistic powers and the risks
run by the small and the weak in a world where power settles essential questions. European affairs directly involved
this handful of untypically clearsighted men born under
Spanish rule. They lived high international politics intensely, often at a distance, but sometimes, like Miranda
and Bolivar, on the scene of events. France between 1789
and 1815 fascinated them like everybody else. They came
to understand strategic power-above all the naval power
that had decided events in England's favour. They kept in
touch with England, sometimes at the highest level-contacts favored by Whitehall's early concern at the crumbling
of Spain's empire in America. Because with Napoleon's
downfall they immediately perceived the danger of a
A Venezuelan, partly educated in the United States {at New York University), Carlos Rangel wrote The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship With the United States (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1977), a
book that has become something of a classic in France.
This article first appeared in 1980 in the spring issue of Commentaire.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
restoration of the ancien regzme in their America also,
these men greeted President Monroe's declaration enthusiastically. Only Bolivar, however, grasped that LatinAmerica was exchanging the certainty of subjection to a
North American protectorate for the "open" risk run by
the other weak regions exposed to conquest, intervention,
or colonization by the great powers of Europe.
The external protectorate suffered one noteworthy
breach. Absorbed in their Civil War, the North Americans
did not check France's violation of the Monroe doctrine
when it sent troops to support Maximilian, installed by
Napoleon the Third on the throne of Mexico. But this
was merely an episode. The higher ranks of Latin-American society soon forgot that in the world as it is, the sovereignty and security of weak countries run permanent
risks. They took Monroeism for a part of the landscape
without anyone noticing, for a long time, that it diminished sovereignty and encouraged irresponsibility. Here is
the deep, perhaps irreparable harm that the United States
did Latin America-not the grievances habitually listed
under "imperialism."
Political maturity, the realism necessary for reasonably
effective policy, springs from the recognition of the precarious character of all security and from the consequent
recognition that survival requires unremitting efforts to
increase a society's margin of safety with its available ways
and means. Real military power matters-not a comic
opera army-and a serious, consistent, not excessively inept foreign policy. A society that meets these minimal
conditions will probably find itself upon the way of modernization and economic development. For economic development and modernization are the consequences
rather than the causes of political maturity. But Monroeism deprived Latin America of the "natural selection"
that makes political maturity the necessary condition of
49
�survival. With Monroeism (except perhaps in Brazil,
which would explain a great deal) the creole class suddenly regressed to the state of irresponsibility it had lived
in before the North-American and French revolutions
brought the "abnormal" generation of Independence.
The combination of Monroeism with traditions of slavery,
of a feudal-mercantilist economy with parish-pump politics, the legacies of three centuries of Spanish rule, pro-
duces after 1830 widespread mediocrity, specifically, the
"political underdevelopment" thaf)ean-Fran9ois Revel
has rightly underscored. 1 To explain the deep frustration,
-of a sOciety othCrwise fortunate in its endowment -you
have to look, as Revel suggests, to this "political underdevelopment." With its predominantly western character
this body of human beings should not theoretically offer
major obstacles to modernization, to economic and social
development, or to stable democracy. Some of these
countries even enjoy an urban infrastructure and "modern" institutions, such as universities, that are older than
those in the United States. In addition, the region enjoys
exceptional advantages in natural resources; in a living
space ample for its population; in a varied climate (which
cannot, therefore, be held accountable); in navigable
rivers, in a supply of fresh water unequalled elsewhere
which affords considerable resources for hydroelectric
power, etc. These relative advantages distinguish LatinAmerica from the rest of what is called the "Third World."
After 1945 with the complete realization of the "interAmerican system" and with the United States' assumption not only of hemispheric but of world leadership, the
security guaranteed South America free of cost even
made wars between Latin-American countries inconceiv-
-able: The activation of the "system" could stop outbreaks
of hostilities within a matter of hours (for instance in Honduras and El Salvador in 1969). But with the new era inaugurated by the Cuban revolution and the coincident
Americans. With astounding reasoning the Mexican
philosopher, Leopolda Zea (whom Jean Fran9ois Revel
cites), takes not only Washington's former complicity with
Latin American dictatorships for a manifestation of
Yankee imperialism, a truism, but he also calls the Carter
administration's pressure on right-wing dictatorships that
torture, diabolical neo-imperialism. Wicked and powerful,
the United States can do anything. We can do nothing.
After twenty years the embargo and the malevolence of
the United States still serve to excuse Cuba's failure in
everything except its resolute and lasting defiance of
North American predominance in the hemisphere -a defiance that lends the Cuban revolution prestige and measureless importance.
The Latin-American Neurosis
On a visit to Argentina in March 1979, in all likelihood
on business for the Chase-Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller had a curious exchange with an Argentinian journalist at a press conference:
Journalist: You say that you have come to Argentina for meetings with bankers, but I have here a list of ten business enterprises, ostensibly Argentinian, actually controlled by your
family. Were you ignorant of this fact?
Rockefeller: Perhaps, if you show me the list, I may be able
to reply.
): (Reads a list)
R: Well, the International Basic Economy Corporation
(IBEC) is a company founded by my brother Nelson, who
died recently, and now directed by his son. Other companies
on your list are subsidiaries of IBEC. So it's correct that my
family has connections with them. But what are you driving
at?
): The Rockefeller family controls the policies of the
world, serious conflicts like the barely avoided war between Chile and Argentina over the Beagle Channel
again became possible in Latin America. Prolonged and
United States whatever the party in power. I should like to
know if you also intend to control Argentinian and Latin
American politics thanks to the companies you own i:n our
country, and the several score of others that belong to you in
Latin-American, such as Exxon and others on this other list.
bloody civil wars like the recent one in Nicaragua occur.
(Reads it).
All this happens with only the most cautious involvement
of the United States and without the activation of the
R: Your question is somewhat absurd. My family owns
none of the companies you have just mentioned. We are dealing with joint-stock companies in which one or other of us
from time to time may hold one percent or less of the shares.
The only exception is Rockefeller Center, which belongs entirely to us. My grandfather founded E:X:xon a hundred years
ago, but today we have almost nothing invested in it. You are
mistaken in supposing that we strictly control the businesses
on your list
widespread erosion of North-American power in the
"inter~American
system."
·with the crisis in Monroeism, denied by Washington
for some years but today recognized even in Presidential
speeches, Latin American leaders have experienced, with
dread, the inherent precariousness of the internal make-up
of their states and even of their survivaL' The bankruptcy
of the alibi that attributed every disagreeable occurrence
in Latin-America to outside interference (North-American
imperialism or-the obverse of the same false coin-the
international Communist conspiracy) should finally be
evident. Latin America, however, continues to be the last
region of the globe where educated men, with access to all
the available information, continue to pretend to believe
·in the omniscience and all-powerfulness of the NI;>rth
50
In his subsequent article (from which I drew the previous quotation) our insightful journalist delighted in his
success in making David Rockefeller admit his family was
sole owner of Rockefeller Center. 3 For this "holding com,
pany" could be presumed to own in its turn one hundred
and thirty-two companies in Latin America, including the
Exxon subsidiaries. Obviously, this fairly influential jourWINTER 1981
�nalist does not know what Rockefeller Center is. But what
need is there to bother about details of this kind, when a
member of the clan leaves the fortresses of Wall Street to
descend upon defenceless Argentina:
These people don't travel to far-away countries like ours
merely to inspect a bank branch. They come to have conversations with the Minister of Finance (an actual reason, it appears, for l\!Ir. Rockefeller's trip) and to receive information,
confidential information, about our economy-information
not vouchsafed the people of Argentina.
In politics and economics paranoia serves to keep a cer-
tain number of Latin-American leaders at the level of the
most out-of-date and ill-informed of their colleagues, in
countries undeniably poor and just out of colonialism.
The Latin-American neurosis, in face of the United
States, corresponds less and less each day to the facts. For
the weakening and inconsistency of the country, so long
the guide and protector of Latin America, can no longer
go unrecognized. With the Cuban revolution, however,
the United States' interest in this region reached its highest point in an intense but short-lived blaze. An interest, I
should add, always faint in public opinion and even
among North-American leaders-with the exception of
certain statesmen from Henry Clay (Secretary of State to
Monroe) to John Kennedy, for whom Latin America was
not only a private preserve that the United States maintained in face of European lusts, but also a sister region
that came to independence in the same surge of history
as, and in the wake of, the United States; and that embraced republican and democratic government, at a moment when that innovation survived only in the Western
Hemisphere.
Monroeism had two components: first, without the
close guardianship of the United States and her intervention if necessary in Latin America, other powers outside
the Hemisphere would necessarily intervene-with serious strategic consequences and dangers unacceptable to
the United States. Secondly, the real though condescending sympathy that idealistic North Americans have always
held for peoples whom they see attempting to better their
lot by adopting political institutions which they regard as
virtuous, because inspired by the North American
republic. The weapons revolution with its ICBM's and
nuclear rocket submarines that, for instance, made possession of the Panama Canal strategically inconsequential,
have made it bluntly clear that the second component was
much less important than the first. American public opinion's resistance to President Carter's attempt to part with
the Canal, came not of any interest-almost non-existent-in Panama or in Latin America, but because of the
legendary exploits, taught to Americans in school, of the
engineers and doctors who dug the canal. For Americans
the canal is not the Panama Canal but a North American
canal that crosses Panama (as a Senator put it). A man
who knows what he is talking about described the actual
attitude of the United States toward Latin America:
THE ST. JOHNS REVffiW
One of the more conspicuous hypocrisies of the (North)
American way in foreign affairs is the combination ofritualistic solicitude about the inter-American system with visceral
indifference to the Latin American ordeal. On ceremonial occasions United States leaders talk lavishly about hemisphere
solidarity. When a United States company is nationalized or a
United States diplomat kidnapped, Latin America creates a
brief stir in the newspapers. But one cannot resist the conviction-certainly Latin Americans don't-that deep down most
North Americans do not give a damn about LatinAmerica. 4
The United States now plainly displays the lack of interest
in Latin America as a whole (for instance, President Carter's speech of April 14, 1977) that before was "at the bottom" of its attitudes. From now on the Americans will
deal with particular situations, like relations with their
neighbor, Mexico, illegal immigration, and other problems
directly connected with them, that they cannot help seeing. They want to continue to count in Latin Americabut without acknowledging, still less affirming, the special
responsibility and the fraternal bond that existed in the
past.
After 1966 (when Johnson in the last spasm of Monroeism sent the Marines to the Dominican Republic), the
countries of Latin America found themselves more and
more abandoned by the power that had for so long "overprotected" them. Abandoned, just in the years when they
had to struggle to come to terms with the vast upheaval
triggered by the Cuban revolution.
With the most firmly established and the most cunning
political system of Latin America, Mexico alone weathered the storm, relatively unscathed. Mexico alone stood
up to the United States in the economic and diplomatic
ostracism of Cuba and refused to sever relations with the
Castro regime. As a result, it preserved its "progressive"
image abroad and kept the extreme left at home isolated
and insignificant-at the same time that it mercilessly
crushed not only the occasional underground guerrillas
but also, in passing, dissenting students, massacred in
their hundreds in 1969, during a demonstration right in
the center of the capital. Only Venezuela, which came
out of a military dictatorship just before the fall of Batista
(1958), found leaders capable of founding and defending
undeniably democratic institutions in the face of the double challenge from the militarists of the right and from the
armed extreme left, inspired and actively encouraged by
Havana.
Elsewhere the rising wave of the Cuban revolution
made for enduring upheavals, without anywhere establishing a truly socialist regime, or even a "military socialism,"
since the ((Peruvian model" betrays a kind of perfection in
economic and political failure. Everywhere it provoked
tragic civil wars; undermined long-standing democracies
(in Uruguay and Chile); spurred a new right authoritarianism, based as in the past on military power, but more
implacable, because for the first time since the establishmenfof professional armies in Latin America the "military
party" faces the problem of survival, in a hemispheric and
51
�world-wide political context that, in Cuba, brought the
dissolution of the regular armed forces and the execution,
imprisonment, or exile of all their officers.
This new situation is nowhere more discouraging than
in Argentina, a country once indisputably (and still essentially) the most advanced in Latin America. Sunk in its
present nightmare, Argentina shows how hard it is for
Latin America, more specifically, for Spanish America
(for, although analogous, Brazil is too distinct for automatic inclusion in generalizations about Latin America) to
overcome its political underdevelopment. Quite comparable to a serious neurosis, this difficulty in overcom-ing
political underdevelopment comes, essentially, because it
is our lot to share the "New World" with the United
States and because up to the present (in our inner conviction) we remain the dark panel in the diptych of the great
American enterprise.
The Paradoxical Prestige of Castro
back for the Cuban people and even for Latin America as
a whole; his submission to the strategic plans of the So·
viets, like his only noteworthy contribution to the business of our time. To the Soviets he handed over the youth
of Cuba, first for an army of disproportionate size, afterwards for an expeditionary force-a project that the Soviet Union must have conceived and guided for quite
some time, at least since 1965. But Latin America counts
what strikes any non-Latin-American as a shameful business for the Cuban nation and a bloody hazing for its
young people, forced to play the "Senagalese of the Soviet empire," as an additional plus for Fidel. Pro-Soviet or,
more generally, "leftist" circles are not the only ones not
to find fault with Fidel in this regard. Social Democrats,
liberals, and even Latin-American conservatives (and
many military men including officers) take secret pridethe pride of "decolonized men" -in the fact that our
home-grown soldiers have, for the first time in history,
trodden the soil of Africa, the Maghreb, Arabia, Vietnam,
Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
Everyone acknowledges the bankruptcy of the Cuban
I do not dare expect that political evolution in the near
revolution-except ill Lclfh1-Amefica. No one dreams any
future will deliver our America from permanent crisis and
longer of denying that the Cuban jails hold a very large
number of political prisoners, who receive unspeakable illtreatment.5 But when Fidel paid an official visit to Mexico
in May 1979, President Lopez Portillo greeted him at the
airport as "one of the men of the century." At the same
time hypocritical and sincere, Lopez Portillo's hyperbole,
reportedly, did him enormous service with the public
opinion of his country. Over the past twenty years, four
from swinging between economically incompetent populist democratic regimes with suicidal tendencies, and
equally or more incompetent authoritarian regimes-with
exceptions like the '(Mexican system," and with eccentric
deviations like the totalitarian regime in Cuba. Almost
without exception, the most gifted and educated LatinAmerican intellectuals (almost all, since 1960, "of the left"
and admirers of Castro) carefully evade profound critical
reflection about our society, and ardently persist in the
contrary enterprise: they reinforce all about them the
paralysing idee fixe that external agencies cause all of
Latin America's problems and that The Revolution will
provide their solution-revenge. The economists of Latin
America have, for instance, made an inordinate contribu-
tion to the theory of economic dependence as a sufficient
explanation for political underdevelopment. They are not
at all bothered by the fact that countries like the United
States, first of all, but also Japan, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and Spain, have each in their different ways
come through this ordeal, and that countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are doing the same at
tliis very hour.
Not surprisingly, Fidel Castro and his revolution continue to enjoy measurelesS prestige and deep influence in
Latin America-prestige difficult for a European observer, even a Marxist sympathizer, to grasp. To such an
observer, Castro now looks like a pretty contemptible tyrant, unmasked; his revolution, like a fearfully costly set-
52
managers of the
44
Mexic'an system," quite different in
other respects (Presidents Lopez Mateos, Diaz Ordaz, Etcheverria and, now Lopez Portillo) have all sought to bolster their position and the dubious legitimacy of the only
Mexican party (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) by
showing an unchanging desire to please Fidel Castro.
That makes one think.
Translated by Hugh P. McGrath and Leo Raditsa
l. Jean Franc;:ois Revel, "L' Amerique La tine et sa culture politique,"
Commentaire, Autumn 1978, 261-266: in English translation, "The
Trouble with Latin America," Commentary, February 1979.
2. For inStance, President Carter's speech berore the Organization of
American States on Aprill4, 1977.
3. Redaccion, Buenos Aires, 73, March 1979.
4. Arthur Schlesinger, "The Alli:mce for Progress: a Retrospective," in
Latin America: The Search for a New International Role, New York 1975,
58.
5. Of epochal importance in France: Pierre Golendorf, Sept ans d Cuba,
Paris, Belfond 1978; Armando Valladares, Prisonnier de Castro, trans·
lated, annotated and edited by P. Golendorf with an afterword by
Leonid Pliouchtch, Paris, Gmsset 1979.
WINTER !981
�On the Origins of Celestial Dynamics:
Kepler and Newton
Curtis Wilson
I wish to consider two moments in the emergence of
celestial dynamics, a Keplerian moment and a Newtonian
one, seeking to explore what the development of such a
dynamics meant to its authors. Before Kepler, astronomy
was a branch of applied mathematics, employing arithmetic and geometry, but having nothing to do with
physics or forces (in Greek, dynameis). It was Kepler who
introduced forces into the heavens, and thus founded
celestial dynamics. David Gregory, a follower of Newton,
writing in 1702, spoke of the new celestial physics that
"the most sagacious Kepler had got the scent of, but the
Prince of Geometers Sir Isaac Newton brought to such a
pitch as surprizes all the world." Actually, the Keplerian
dynamics and the Newtonian dynamics differ in important respects, but Gregory's singling out of Kepler- and
Newton makes sense. Kepler introduces a dynamics into
the heavens in the sense of hypothesizing a quantifiable
influence of one celestial body on the motion of another,
and Newton's universal gravitation does the same kind of
thing. Moreover, the mathematical results Kepler arrives
at by pursuing his hypothesis nearly coincide with
Newton's results, derived from a different dynamics.
Meanwhile, in the period intervening between the
appearance of Kepler's hypothesis in 1609, and the appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687, there were various attempts at proposing what may be called mechanical
causes for the celestial motions, but none of them allowed
of mathematical formulation, or led to an astronomical .
calculus, a way of predicting positions of planets. The
egregious Thomas Hobbes imagined that, as the southern
and northern hemispheres of the Earth differ with respect
A revised version of a lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis in
May 1971. Curtis Wilson is at work on an article "Predictive Astronomy
in the Century after Kepler," to appear in Volume II of The General
History of Astronomy, Cambridge University Press.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to the proportion of dry land and ocean, therefore the
aethereal vortex or whirlpool that moves about the Sun,
having now more solid land to press against and now more
of the yielding ocean, would drive the Earth in a path
differing from a circle, perhaps approaching an ellipse.
Descartes figured out a reason why the suns or stars are
off-center in their vortices, so that in the solar vortex the
planetary paths are eccentric to the sun, but as in
Hobbes's case, the hypothesis did not lend itself to mathematization; on the contrary, because Descartes believed
the universe to be packed with vortices inclined at various
angles to one another, vortices that fill all space and interact with one another by transference of matter and motion, any simple mathematical rule for the planetary orbits
and motions becomes implausible.
In Kepler's and Newton's cases, we can ask how the
dynamical hypothesis and its quantification come about,
what they presuppose, what they mean to their authors.
The first sprouts of Kepler's celestial dynamics make
their appearance in his first venture into print, his
Cosmo~
graphic Mystery of 1596, published when he was just turning twenty-five. Since April 1594, Kepler had been holding
the position of district mathematician in Graz, with the
task of teaching mathematics to the boys in a Protestant
school, and making up an annual astrological calendar for
the province. The calendar was to show when to plant
crops, and what to expect of the weather and the Turks.
He was, let me mention, marvelously successful with his
first calendar: the cold spell he had predicted was so
grievous that herdsmen in the mountains lost their lives
or their noses from frostbite, and the invasions of the
Turks he had predicted were also grievous; the provincial
magistrates therefore added a bonus to his stipend. But
Kepler was not satisfied with this kind of astrological
hackwork. Beginning on the Sunday of Pentecost in 1595,
we find him concerned with, and indeed thinking unceasingly about, three large cosmological questions.
53
�At the start of the Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler says,
"there were three things above all of which I sought the
causes why they were thus and not otherwise: the number, size, and motions of the planetary orbs. That I dared
this was brought about by that beautiful harmony of the
quiescent things, the Sun, fixed stars, and intervening
space, with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
That is, Kepler sees the spherical layout of the cosmos,
with the Sun at the center, and the stars at the periphery,
as an image or signature of the triune God, the Creator,
His Being, Knowledge, and Love. And with this vision
in his head, he makes bold to seek the number, spacings,
and motions that the Creator gave to the mobile bodies,
the planets, occupying the intermediate space between
Sun and stars.
Obviously, Kepler is at this point a Copernican, a heliocentrist. But he does not have a thorough knowledge of
the details of Copernicus's planetary theory. As he begins
his speculations, he has not read and does not even possess
Copernicus's book; he does not even know Rheticus's
Narratio prima, the book in which, in 1540, three years
before the appearance of the De revolutionibus, Rheticus
had communicated to the world the major outlines of
Copernicus's theory and given an account of its superi~
ority over the Ptolemaic theory. Kepler says that he had
learned partly from his teacher Maestlin at Tubingen, and
partly from his own thinking, the mathematical advantages
that Copernicus has over Ptolemy. The Copernican
arrangement, simply by its layout, accounts for certain
phenomena that are left unaccounted for, are left as coincidences, in the Ptolemaic arrangement. Why do the
Sun and the Moon not retrograde, while the other planets
do? Why do Mercury and Venus always keep relatively
close to the Sun, while the other planets can be at any
angular distance? Why are the superior planets always
lowest in their epicycles, when in opposition to the Sun?
For these questions and a few more, the Copernican
arrangement provides an answer; the Ptolemaic does not.
By the time he had finished his Cosmographic Mystery,
Kepler had apparently read the famous tenth chapter of
Book I of the De revolutionibus, where Copernicus says,
in his brief commendation of the heliocentric arrangement, Hwe find in this arrangement a marvelous symmetry
of the world and a harmony in the relationship of the
motion and size of the orbits, such as one cannot find
elsewhere." But even before, Kepler was asking not
merely in what the symmetry and harmony consist, but
also: On what are they founded? How does man come
to recognize them? And already at the start, Kepler has
answers to which he will always adhere: The world carries in itself the features of the omnipotent creator and is
his copy, his signature. To man, God gave a rational soul,
thereby stamping him in His own image. It is with that
soul that man can recognize the symmetry and harmony
of the Copernican world. Seeing that spherical Copernican world in terms of an idea of Nicholas Cusanus, as a
54
kind of quantitative representation of the indissoluble
triune essence of God, Kepler is encouraged to raise and
pursue his bold, naive questions.
One of the questions was not new. If you were a
Copernican, there were six circumsolar planets, not seven
planets as with Ptolemy, since Copernicus leaves the
Moon as a satellite of the Earth. Rheticus in his Narratio
prima had explained this sixfold number by the sacredness
and perfection of the number six: six is the first perfect
number, i.e., equal to the sum of its factors, l, 2, and 3.
A little later in the sixteenth century, Zarlino will be
using this same idea to explain the role of the first six
numbers in musical consonances; he will be the first musical theorist to include thirds and sixths among the consonances, as they needed to be included for polyphony's
sake. Kepler will be the second such musical theorist, but
here as in the case of the number of the planets he will
reject the notion of particular numbers as causes. He rejects number-mysticism in that sense. Numbers for him
are only abstractions from the created things, and hence
posterior to Creation; they could not therefore be used
by God as archetypal forms for cosmopoiesis, the making
of the world. Not satisfied with Rheticus's answer, Kepler
has to face the question afresh: why are there just six
planets, no more and no less?
The second and third of Kepler's questions were new.
They had to do with the causes for the relation of the
Sun-planet distances to one another, and for the ratios
of the planetary periods. In August of 1595 Kepler wrote
to Maestlin, his former teacher at Tubingen, telling of his
investigations, and asking whether he had ever heard or
read of anyone who went into the reason of the disposition
of the planets, and the proportions of their motions. In
the margin, Maestlin wrote in answer: "No."
Let me remark here that no analogous questions are
likely to arise in what can be called, and indeed came to
be called, the Ptolemaic system, which was what Kepler
had been officially taught at the university. By this term
I mean not the set of planetary theories in Ptolemy's
Almagest, but rather the world picture, current in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, according to which the
planetary spheres are nested to fill exactly without remainder the space between the highest sublunary element,
fire, and the fixed stars. There is no trace of this picture
in the Almagest, but in 1967 it was discovered that it is
given in Ptolemy's Hypotheses of the Planets, the relevant
passage having been omitted from Heiberg's standard
edition of Ptolemy, apparently from some confusion
among the translators; most of the work, including this
passage, exists only in Arabic MSS, of which Heiberg
gives only a German translation.* What I now say is based
on this recovered portion of the Hypotheses.
*The discoverer was Bernard R. Goldstein; see his "The Arabic Version of Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses", Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society vol. 57, Part 4 (1967).
WINTER 1981
�be made to fit in such a sequence of nested spheres, using
the Ptolemaic numbers. In further justification Ptolemy
adds that "this arrangement is most plausible, for it is not
conceivable that there be in Nature a vacuum, or any
meaningless and useless thing."
!
'
/
F'i'gure 1
The Ptolemaic system, Ptolemy freely admits, involves
conjecture, but he also insists on its plausibility, as did his
followers through the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Tycho Brahe was still accepting it in the 1570s. The piau·
sibility is as follows. Ptolemy ·gives certain arguments in
the Almagest, and again in amplified form in the Hypoth·
eses, for a certain order of the planets, beginning Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, and going on to the superior
planets;) won't repeat the arguments here. (The Sun,
note, is the central one of the seven planets or wandering
stars.) He had a very good value for the maximum dis·
tance of the Moon from the Earth, determined from
observations, namely 64 Earth radii. Assume now that
the maximum distance of one planet from the Earth is
equal to the minimum distance of the planet next above
it; take from the Almagest the ratios of nearest approach
to farthest distance for each planet, and start constructing
outward, using the Ptolemaic order. After the Moon
comes Mercury and then Venus. The maximum distance
of Venus turns out to be 1,079 Earth-radii, and the Sun
is to come next. But there was an independent method
for determining the relative distances of the Sun and the
Moon, a way invented by Hipparchus, described in the
Almagest, using eclipses. The method is unreliable, but it
did not come to be distrusted till the seventeenth century.
The result of that method, reported in the Almagest, was
that at its closest approach to the Earth, the Sun was
1,160 Earth-radii distant, 81 Earth-radii beyond the high·
est point ofVenus's orb. Is this a big gap? Ptolemy shows
in the Hypotheses, that by a very slight change in the data
of this determination, a change within the limits of obser·
vational error, the Sun at nearest approach will be found
to use up the extra 81 Earth-radii, and everything fits.
Moreover, this is the only order in which the planets can
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
This Ptolemaic system was very well known during the
sixteenth century, owing to the description of it in
Peurbach's Theoricae planetarum, which went through
many editions. I suspect it was widely accepted as filling
out the heavens, and allowing for the strange motions of
these divine beings~motions which, according to
Ptolemy, follow from the essence of the planet and are
like the will and understanding in man. Copernicus, and
also Kepler in the Cosmographic Mystery, explicitly reject
this system, but I do not think any really forceful argu·
ment was made till Kepler showed, some years later, that
the Hipparchic method for the Sun's distance, based on
observation of lunar eclipses, and in particular of the
width of the Earth's shadow, was practically useless, a
small error in the observations leading to an enormous
error in the final result.
The question of the reason of the spacing of the plane·
tary orbs does not, then, arise in the Ptolemaic system,
because all the available space has been used up in the
placing of the orbs. In the Copernican theory, on the con·
trary, there are unused spaces, not only a huge one beyond
Saturn, separating the solar system from the stars, but
also unused spaces between the hoop-shaped regions of
space that the individual planets pass through in their
motions (Figure 1). That is the effect of the economy of
the Copernican system, the elimination of the large
epicycles. Copernicus speaks of planetary orbs and
spheres; whether he believed them to be real or imaginary,
solid bodies or merely geometrical figures, remains a subject
of scholarly debate. Kepler thought Copernicus believed
the spheres to be real and solid, but in the Cosmographic
Mystery he is already pointing out some of the difficulties
with this conception. By what chains or struts is the Earth
with its atmosphere held within the solid spherical shell to
which it belongs? We are already in the heavens, and they
aren't solid. But in either case, whether the spheres are
real or not, there have come to be apparently functionless
spaces, and the question can be raised as to the reason of
the spacing of the planetary orbs.
Copernicus does not raise this question. He is apparently
seeking to redo not the cosmography of Ptolemy's
Hypotheses of the Planets, an exercise in geometrical
arrangement or layout, but the mathematical, predictive
astronomy of Ptolemy's Almagest, and he wishes to do
this job in a manner consistent with the first principles
of the astronomical art. A primary principle is that there
must be only uniform circular motion; this is required if
there is to be strict periodicity, if the motions are not
sometimes to fail, owing to their dependence on a changing
and thus changeable motor virtue. The intellect abhors
such an idea, Copernicus says.
55
�The Copernican insistence on uniformity of circular
motion will be taken up by later astronomers-Tycho,
Longomontanus, Bullialdus, and others-and echoed for
a hundred years and more by both heliocentrists and nonheliocentrists. Not only had Ptolemy failed to keep to the
principle but new phenomena, discovered since Ptolemy's
time, showed that there was an inequality in the precession of the equinoxes that Ptolemy had not suspected.
This was called the trepidation, supposedly proved by
observations of the Arabs collated with those of Ptolemy
and Hipparchus. According to one scholar (). E. Ravetz),
it was this supposed phenomenon that pushed Copernicus
into setting the Earth in motion. For, argued Ravetz, if
the precession of the equinoxes is due to the motion of
the stars, if this motion is non-uniform, and if the standard of time by which equality is judged is provided by
the diurnal rotation of those very same stars, then the
standard of time has been vitiated, and the entire system
has become logically incoherent.
The Copernican revolution, Ravetz wanted to argue,
was a logical necessity, forced on Copernicus if he was to
avoid logical incoherence in the measurement of time.
But this is wrong. The truth is that the uniformity of the
diurnal rotation would be vitiated slightly whether one
assigned the trepidation to the Earth or to the stars; in
either case, one would have to calculate one's way back
to a uniform measure of time-something astronomers
had long been doing with respect to the apparent diurnal
motions of the Sun. Fortunately, the trepidation is unreal.
Sometime after 1588 Tycho Brahe convinced himself
that it is merely the effect of the large errors in the times
of the equinoxes that Ptolemy reports in Book III of the
Almagest; and this is the conclusion of modern astronomy.
As for Copernicus, it was not the supposed inequality
56
in the precession, or the problem of measuring time, that
led him to cast the Earth into motion.
No, Copernicus's original motive appears to have been
opposition to the Ptolemaic equant-that point, not the
center of the circle, about which Ptolemy assumes the
motion on the deferent circle to be uniform. This violated
the first principle of the astronomical art, the assumption
of only uniform circular motions. With this idea primarily
in mind, Copernicus redoes the Almagest. Year after year,
from the time he first sketched out his idea until his death,
he labored over the revision of numerical constants, trying
to obtain an astronomy that would be accurately predictive, fitting all the available, recorded observations.
One recent biographer (Arthur Koestler) has judged him
to be timorous and myopic. What is more certain is that
in his efforts he met with discouragement: he could not
get the numbers to come right. And in any case, he is not
primarily looking at the emergent system with the eye of
a cosmologist; and he is not, like the young enthusiast
Kepler in 1595 and 1596, asking for the archetypal, a priori
reasons in the mind of God that will account for the layout of the heliocentric world.
Between Copernicus's death in 1543 and 1596, the
date of Kepler's Cosmographic Mystery, there were very
few Copernicans who spoke. out. The ill-fated Bruno; a
poet or two in the entourage of Henry III of France; Benedetti, Galilee's precursor in mechanics; a mystically minded
Englishman named Thomas Digges-they were few.
An overwhelming chorus of denunciation opposed
them. Melanchton (1497-1560), Luther's lieutenant and a
professor at Wittenberg, referring in 1541 to the Copernican doctrine, said, Hreally, wise governments ought to repress impudence of mind." Maurolycus, a very competent
and indeed innovative mathematician of Messina, said
that Copernicus "deserves a whip or a scourge rather
than a refutation" (Opera Mathematica, Venice, 1575).
Pyrrhonist skeptics like Montaigne and his followers were
fond of citing Copernicus and Paracelsus to show that
there can be found people to deny even the most universally accepted principles. In these references they desired
to show that we are so ignorant that it is even excessive
to assert that we know that we know nothing. And Tycho
Brahe wrote: "What need is there without any justification to imagine the Earth, a dark, dense and inert mass,
to be a heavenly body undergoing even more numerous
revolutions than the others, that is to say, subject to a
triple motion, in violation not only of all physical truth
but also of the authority of Holy Scripture, which ought
to be paramount" (Progymnasmata, 1602). And the list of
denunciations could be greatly extended.
Kepler turns out to be one of the early Copernicans,
one of a handful, to speak out; he does so before Galileo
does, and before his own teacher Maestlin. Maestlin
praises Kepler for his first book, saying, " ... at last a learned
man has been found who dared to speak out in defense of
Copernicus, against the general chorus of obloquy." And
WINTER 1981
�Kepler's defense has a unique character, starting as it does
from the notion of the spherical, Sun-centered world as
symbol of God, a geometrical reflection of His triune
essence, a signature of the Creator in the created world.
It is this symbol, Kepler explicitly states, that encourages
him to seek the reasons of the number, spacings, and
ratio of motions of the planetary orbs. This symbol of God
remains central in Kepler's thought; every one of his
major undertakings and achievements can be related to it.
Let me mention in passing that, just as Kepler's question about the spacings is inappropriate to the Ptolemaic
system, so it is unlikely to arise for a follower of Tycho's
system, which resembles the Copernican except that the
Earth remains stationary, and the Sun with the remaining
planets moves about the Earth (Figure 2). In letters written
in the late 1580s, Tycho says that he was induced to give
up the Ptolemaic system by the discovery, from measurements of the parallax of Mars when it is in opposition to
the Sun, that it is closer to the Earth than the Sun is. This
is possible in the Copernican system, but not in the Ptolemaic; the Tychonic system accommodates the fact by preserving the Copernican spacings (see Figure 2). Actually,
Kepler found later that Tycho could not have determined,
from his observations, the parallax of Mars; it was too
small for observational discrimination by the means at his
disposal. And poring over Tycho's MSS, Kepler concluded
that some assistant of Tycho had misunderstood instructions and computed the parallax, not. from observation,
but from the numerical parameters of Copernicus's system. In any case, if you do accept the Tychonic system,
then the path of Mars cuts across the path of the Sunnot impossible, because Tycho knows by now from his
study of comets that there are no solid orbs, but still
inelegant. And the entire set-up lacks the centered symmetry that provoked the Keplerian inquiry.
The answer Kepler finds to the first two of his questions, concerning the number and spacing of the planets,
is well known (Figure 3); the discovery comes after he has
tried many different schemes, and it comes, he tells
Maestlin, accompanied by a flood of tears. It is based on
the five regular solids or polyhedra. That there are just
five polyhedra, with all faces consisting of equal, regular
polygons and with all solid angles convex and equal, was
one of the discoveries of Theaetetus, and the proof of it
forms the culmination of Euclid's Elements. A beautiful
paradigm, this, of completeness of understanding: we can
prove that there are these five, and we can see why there
are no more.
Kepler's answer as to why there are just six planets is
a structure in which the regular polyhedra are encased in
one another like Chinese boxes, but with spheres in between, and with a sphere circumscribing the largest polyhedron and another sphere inscribing the smallest
polyhedron, so that there are six spheres in all (Figure 4).
His arrangement is: sphere of Saturn-cube-sphere of
jupiter-tetrahedron-sphere of Mars-dodecahedronTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 3
'
I', ___ r'lcosct.\..e.d,..0l'L - --------G.a.or+\,
------------
Vt..Y\\1.!)
Figure 4
sphere of Earth-icosahedron-sphere of Venus-octahedron- sphere of Mercury. Each solid is inscribed in a
sphere which passes through all its vertices, and at the
same time has inscribed within it a sphere which touches
the centers of all its faces. The structure is not built outward from the Sun: it is built inward and outward from
the Earth's sphere, which divides the five regular solids into
two groups. The cube, tetrahedron, and dodecahedron
Kepler calls primary; each has vertices formed by three
edges, each has its own special kind of face-square,
triangle, or pentagon. The other solids, called secondary
because built out of the primary, are the octahedron and
icosahedron; these have their vertices formed by four and
57
�five edges, respectively, and have triangular faces. The oc·
tahedron is formed from the cube by replacing square
faces by the points at their centers; the icosahedron is
similarly formed from the dodecahedron. A similar transformation performed on the tetrahedron yields only
another tetrahedron.
Kepler therefore speaks of the secondary bodies, octahedron and icosahedron, as offspring of the cube and
dodecahedron, respectively; and he calls the latter bodies
their fathers, as the chief determiners of their forms. But
he also calls the tetrahedron their mother, as the one from
whom they receive their triangular faces. The tetrahedron,
meanwhile, is hermaphroditic in its production of tetrahedra. Of the primary solids, the cube has to come first,
because, Kepler says, it is "the thing itself," meaning, I
believe, that it presents to us the very idea of corporification, the creation of body by the regular filling-out of space
in the three dimensions. The transformation of cube into
tetrahedron is carried out by subtraction, replacing each
square face by one of its diagonals; the transformation of
cube into dodecahedron is carried out by addition, roofing
over the cube, turning each edge into the diagonal of a
pentagon.
Out of the 120 possible orders of the five bodies,
Kepler can say that he has chosen the one that singles
out, as a starting point, the very notion of corporification
or the creation of body, that singles out the Earth's sphere
as the very special place it is, the home of the image of
God, and that, given these conditions, has the most complete symmetry. And it shows at once why the number of
the planets must be just six; there are only five regular
solids, as Euclid proves, hence only six circumscribing
and inscribing spheres; the number has been deduced from
the very idea of the creation of body, of the world, by
an ever geometrizing, and let me add, echoing Kepler,
a playful God. And man was meant to understand these
things. Kepler says:
As the eye was created for color, the ear for tone, so was the
intellect of humans created for the understanding not of just
any thing whatsoever but of quantities . .. It is the nature of
our intellect to bring to the study of divine matters concepts
which are built upon the category of quantity; if it is deprived
of these concepts, then it can define only by pure negations.
Thus the five regular solids, the being of which depends
on quantitative ratios, form the basis of the layout of the
world; and man, the contemplative creature, was meant to
see and appreciate this beautiful structure.
But is it true? To know that, we must know that the distances in the construction jibe with the distances determined by the astronomers, and moreover, jibe rather
exactly. Kepler at different times ~xpresses the thought
that the imposed forms might not fit the world quite
exactly, but in that case he hopes to find reasons even for
the deviations.
58
F
Figure 5: The squares in the ·octahedron are ABCD, BDEF, and AECF.
The problem Kepler faces in testing his hypothesis is,
first of all, to know which distances to take from the
Copernican theory. The sphere of each planet must be of
such a thickness as to accommodate the planet's approaches
to and recessions from the Sun; but should one, for instance, allow space for Copernicus's equatorial epicycle,
which sticks out beyond the planet's path at aphelion?
And can one trust Copernicus's theories for Venus and
Mercury, which involve some peculiar hypocyclic and
epicyclic motions that keep time with the Earth's motion?
Moreover, Kepler thinks it incongruous that Copernicus
computes the planetary distances from the center of the
Earth's orbit rather than from the Sun itself. It is with
such considerations that Kepler begins his critique of the
details of the Copernican theories. But in disallowing the
equatorial epicycles, and in shifting to the real Sun as
reference point, Kepler is able to make a preliminary comparison of distances. The ratios for the intervals between
Mars and Jupiter and between Venus and the Earth come
out with zero percent error; for the Earth-Mars interval
the error is 5 percent, for the Jupiter-Saturn interval about
9 percent For the Mercury-Venus interval, with Copernicus's numbers, the error is unfortunately 20 percent
Kepler persuades himself-on the ground of Mercury's
very unusual situation and motion-that for Mercury the
sphere to be used is that inscribed, not in the octahedron
itself, but in the three squares formed by the twelve edges
of the octahedron-the octahedron is the only regular
solid that can be sliced through along its edges in such a
WINTER 1981
�way as to yield regular polygons (Figure 5). With this
concession, the Mercury-Venus error is reduced to 2
percent; the largest error remains that for Saturn, whose
distance is the greatest and therefore most difficult to
measure; the next largest error involves the Earth, and
a
Figure 6
c
Kepler has reason to believe that Copernicus's theory of
the Earth is in need of a major revision; and the average
error for all the intervals is but 3.3 percent. Seeing how
closely the numbers derived from observation and those
derived from his model agree, Kepler has his initial moment of elation; later on, as he calculates, there are doubts,
and then again moments of elation. He writes to Maestlin
that he suspects a tremendous miracle of God. Older,
more cautious, Maestlin, widely known as a competent
astronomer, comes to agree with him, comes to suppose
that it will be possible to obtain the distances of the planets
a priori, from Kepler's model. He assists extensively in the
preparation and publication of the book, in which Kepler
calls upon all astronomers to help in working out the details of the hypothesis. Among the readers were those who,
like Johann Praetorius of Altdorf, said that even if the
numbers came out exactly, it would not mean a thing:
astronomy should go back to its practical business of predicting the planetary positions on the basis of observations.
Tycho's reaction was less hostile: of course there are harmonies, he said, but one must work out the planetary
theories on the basis of exact observations first, before
investigating the harmonies. Tycho understands here
that the theories must employ uniform circular motion,
in accordance with the Copernican insistence on that
principle; and in contrast to Kepler he assumes that the
Earth is at rest.
This brings me to another theory that is contained in
Kepler's book, one which Tycho will object to, and which
even Maestlin finds, he says, too subtle. From the very
beginning, Kepler had had a third question: he had wanted
to account not only for the number and spacing of the
planets, but for the proportion of their motions. From the
very beginning, he had noted that the periods of the planets increase more rapidly than the distances, so that the
period of the planet twice as far from the Sun is more than
twice as great. This observation had been one of Kepler's
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
encouragements in the investigation of the reason of the
distances, because, he says, if God adapted the motions to
the orbs according to some law of distances, then surely
He also accommodated the distances to some rule.
The first mathematical rule Kepler proposes for the
periods is given in a diagram (Figure 6). Note that the diagram is pretty. Sis the Sun, ACB the sphere of fixed stars.
AEC and BFC are quadrants of circles with radius equal
to the radius of the stellar sphere, SC. To a given distance
of a planet from the Sun, SP, Kepler imagines that there
would correspond a "vigor of motion" or speed, proportional to the line EF. In the Sun would be the moving
soul, and an infinite force of motion; at the periphery
are the motionless stars, providing by their distance the
space for the planetary motions, and by the non-unifonnity
of their distribution, a background against which the contemplative creature, man, can locate the planets.
The difficulty with the scheme is that Kepler has no
clue as to the radius of the cosmos, SC, and without a
value for that radius, there is no possibility of calculating
the consequences of the hypothesis, and so subjecting it
to empirical test. This hypothesis, for Kepler at this point,
has a status similar to that of the other one about the five
regular solids, in the sense that it arises from the same
thought, of the world as symbol of God. The five-regularsolid theory had the assumed fact of spacings to work
with; this hypothesis has the assumed fact of some kind
of inverse relation between distance and speed.
Kepler tries another hypothesis for the motions which
is more testable, and in a rough way correct, although it is
not the right one (the right one is the third law that he will
discover only in !618). I shall not describe it, but will only
remark that here again Kepler is looking for a pure mathematical form, graspable by the mind because mathematical. He is looking for a form which will somehow make
the action of the Sun on the planets a symbol of the creating and radiative activity of the Godhead. He will therefore speak of the decrease in motive vigor with increasing
distance from the Sun as suitable; it was fitting that God
should have arranged matters thus.
Kepler also begins to compare the spreading-out of the
motive virtue to the spreading out of light from a center;
light, as he will say later, is a kind of mediating thing, intermediate between bodies and souls. Kepler is the first to
quantify light's intensity, to say that it varies inversely as
the square of the distance. It is by a similar quantification
of the Sun's motive virtue that he will arrive at his celestial
dynamics. He is already onto an important clue to it, in
eliminating Copernicus's equatorial epicycle, which was
totally incompatible with the five-regular-solid theory, and
in thinking about the individual planet as slowing up at
aphelion, in some proportion that he is not sure of.
Between the time of completing the Cosmographic
Mystery in 1596, and going to Prague to work with Tycho
Brahe in 1600, Kepler became involved in the study of
musical harmony, and a word must be said about this
59
�investigation as it relates to his study of the planets. Kepler
loved polyphonic music, which he regarded as one of the
dence between the soul and the bodily, as for instance,
when the interval of a sixth following on certain disso-
most important discoveries of modern times, ranking with
nances triggers a particular perception of sweetness; but
the compass and printing. In his Harmonic of the World,
published in 1619, he will write:
the bodily, in Kepler's view, does not account for the
psychic in the sense of constituting its intelligible cause.
Kepler's explanation for the correspondence between
soul and body takes us back to the sphere, image of the
triune God. By creative radiation from the center, one
gets the straight line, the element of bodily form, the beginning from which all body comes to be. A straight line,
rotated about one of its points, describes a plane, representing in this image the bodily. When the sphere is cut
by the plane, the result is a circle, the true image of the
created mind, which is assigned to govern the body. As
the circle lies both on the sphere and in the plane, so is
the mind at the same time in the body, which it instructs,
and in God as a radiation which, so to speak, flows from
It is no longer a marvel that at last this way of singing in several
parts, unknown to the ancients, should have been invented by
Man, the Ape of his Creator; that, namely, he should, by the
artificial symphony of several voices, play out, in a brief portion of an hour, the perpetuity of the whole duration of the
world, and should to some degree taste of God the Creator's
satisfaction in His own works, with a most intensely sweet
pleasure gained from this Music that imitates God.
Kepler refers here to the potentially infinite structure of
the polyphonic music he was familiar with; the Missa
Papae Marcelli, for instance, like a rope of many intertwined strands, might be imagined as going on indefinitely;
nothing in the internal structure requires that it come to
an end at this point or that.
Now for the production of polyphony, one needs to be
aiming at thirds and sixths as consonances; and these
intervals involve the ratios 4:5, 5:6, 3:5, and 5:8. The ancient derivation of the consonances, as for instance in
Plato's Timaeus, does not treat these ratios as consonances.
The trouble with Plato and the rest, Kepler says, is that
they didn't listen carefully enough, before setting out to
make their theory. Kepler sets out to make a new theory,
without invoking the causal efficacy of numbers, or the
perfection of the number six (Zarlino, we recall, had
claimed to derive the consonances from just this perfection of the number six). Kepler's solution involves the regular polygons constructible with straight-edge and compass,
which divide the circumference of the circle into equal
parts. If one imagines the circle stretched out into a
straight line, and transformed into a monochord, one has
the divisions giving the consonances required for polyphony, including thirds and sixths, fundamentally because of the constructibility of the pentagon.
The pentagon depends for its construction on the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio, the golden section. If you are familiar with that division, and know how
it can be indefinitely reproduced by subtracting the
smaller from the greater segment, or by adding the greater
to the whole, you may understand why Kepler views this
division as imaging sexual generation, and you will thus
gain an explanation of the tender feelings that accompany
thirds and sixths in polyphonic music. Kepler did not
suppose, and I do not believe that any theorist before
him supposed, that the inquiry into the physical conditions for the production of certain intervals would account
for the shades of feeling that those intervals arouse in
consciousness. On the one side we have instruments like
the monochord, from which we can get numbers; on the
other, we have subtle perceptions of harmony, dissonance,
restoration of consonance. There is a strange correspon-
60
God's countenance. Since now Kepler conceives the cir-
cle as the bearer of pure harmonies, and believes these
harmonies to be based in the nature of the soul, he comes
to speak of the soul as a circle, supplied with the marks of
the constructible divisions, the divisions that can be concluded with ruler and compass. It is an infinitely small
circle, a point equipped with directions, a qualitative
point. This is no doubt a metaphor or symbol, but it is by
such means alone that we can understand (insofar as that
is possible) how body, soul, and God are related.
The harmonic divisions of the circle apply, of course, in
the heavens, as well as in music; it is from these divisions
that Kepler develops his astrological doctrine, and also
his harmonic theory for the planetary eccentricities. I cannot take time to describe these here. Kepler comes to see
the five-regular-solid theory as inexact, an archetypal form
used to determine the number of planets, but not thereafter used in its exact quantitative relations by the
Creator, but slightly modified in order to jibe with the harmonic theory of the eccentricities. A playful God, ruled
by the necessities of geometry, may be forced to such expedients.
All these parts of Kepler's work are omitted, to say the
least, from the corpus of scientific knowledge recognized
today. Meanwhile, his great achievement in remaking
planetary theory, accomplished first for Mars in the years
1600 to 1605, is praised, sometimes on the mistaken
grounds that it is purely empirical. It is not. It involves
assumptions that are rejected today. Alternative paths to
the so-called Keplerian laws are conceivable, but neither
could they have been purely empirical. The empirical
evidence is too inexact; some reasoned guesses are required.
Kepler's study first of optics and then of the motions of
Mars in the years 1600 to 1605 leads to the development
of a possibility already. present in his thought. He is the
first to quantify the intensity of light, in accordance with
the inverse square of the distance from the source. (This
is a purely a priori derivation, involving no experimentaWINTER !981
�tion.) He does not regard light as material or corpuscular;
that would have meant Epicurean philosophy, which
like most good Christians of the time he abhorred. Rather,
he says, light is quantified according to surface, not according to corporeality. It is one of a group of immaterial
emanations, whereby bodies, which are isolated from
each other by their bounding surfaces, are enabled to be
in communication with one another. The motive virtue
issuing from the Sun, Kepler finds, must be another such
emanation, distinct from light, for as Kepler discovers in
about 1602, its intensity varies inversely as the distance
from the Sun, not as the square of the distance. The empirical support consists in what is known as the bisection
of the eccentricity, which he had been able to verify from
Tycho's observations in the case of Mars and the Earth.
A further step is taken in 1605 when he discovers that
that component of the planet's motion whereby it approaches and recedes from the Sun, can be regarded as
simply a libration, or what we would today call a simple
harmonic motion: this, he says, smells of the balance, not
of mind. By this he means that it is a pattern not chosen
for its aesthetic or mathematical beauty but determined
by the law of the lever and the nature of matter. Here is
introduced something that one can perhaps call mechanism: matter turns out to have inertia in the sense of
being sluggish, and it turns out to be pushed by an immaterial something in an incomprehensible way. As
Kepler clearly realizes, the mechanism or quasi-mechanism
could not, in principle, account for everything. It accounts for the actions but it does not account for the
initial conditions, the sizes of the orbits and their eccentricities. These must be works of mind, harmonically determined.
Kepler's Harmonies of the World (Harmonice mundi) of
1619 will remain his final testament. And indeed it is
through the spherical symbol, ultimate source of the harmonies that he calls archetypal, that Kepler was first
enabled to accept Copernicanism, and then, developing
the emanative aspect of the symbol, to banish from the
sky the celestial intelligences, the planetary movers of
Aristotle and Ptolemy, ultimate relics of paganism (as he
calls them), and to regard the planets as material, subject
to quantifiable forces that man from his moving platform
can measure.
Kepler wanted to dedicate his Harmonice mundi to
James I of England. For years, very naively from a political
point of view, he had looked to this monarch as the hope
of Europe, the one who could bring a religious peace out
of the strife of Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
The relevance of the Harmonice mundi to this end was
that it was a work of the liberal arts, the arts of peace as
Kepler called them, setting forth the principles of the harmonies with which the world had been adorned by its
Creator. Kepler thought that, could these things but be
seen, men would be raised above the level of doctrinal
dispute. But it is doubtful that James I read far into the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
book. And indeed, no one in the seventeenth century
that I know of accepted either Kepler's dynamics as a
whole (Leibniz undertook to revamp it), or his harmonic
even in part. And as the book first appeared for sale in
the market stalls, the Thirty Years War had already begun
its terrible course.
Turning to Newton, we will probably not expect to find
effusions about the celestial harmonies in his writings.
True enough, in the second edition of the Principia, explaining his rules of reasoning in philosophy, Newton says
that Nature is ever consonant with itself; and so we might
imagine it as emitting some single, deep organ tone. But
this is from the second edition, 1713, and the first edition,
1687, does not contain the rules of reasoning, at least in
their final form, and such as it contains, it labels "hypotheses". We are thus led to suspect that Newton's understanding of his great discovery when he was in the midst
of making it, was rather different from the understanding
he later came to have of it, when he was defending it before the world.
Shortly after the publication of the first edition, Newton
began a series of revisions, pertaining particularly to the
early part of Book III. He wrote a series of scholia to accompany those propositions, 4-9, which lead to the establishment of universal gravitation. I wish to quote to you
from the proposed scholium to Proposition 8.
By what proportion gravity decreases in receding from the
Planets the ancients have not sufficiently explained. Yet they
appear to have adumbrated it by the harmony of the celestial
spheres, designating the Sun and the remaining six planets ...
by means of Apollo with the Lyre of seven strings, and measuring the intervals of the spheres by the intervals of the tones.
Thus they alleged that seven tones are brought into being ...
and that the Sun strikes the strings. Hence Macrobius says,
"Apollo's Lyre of seven strings provides understanding of the
motions of all the celestial spheres over which nature has set
the Sun as moderator." And Proclus (commenting) on Plato's
Timaeus, "The number seven they have dedicated to Apollo
as to him who embraces all symphonies whatsoever, and therefore they used to call him ... the Prince of the number seven."
Likewise in Eusebius' Preparation of the Gospel, the Sun is
called, by the oracle of Apollo, the king of the seven-sounding
harmony. But by this symbol they indicated that the Sun by
his own force acts upon the planets in that harmonic ratio of
distances by which the force of tension acts upon strings of
different lengths ...
The same tension upon a string half as long acts four times as
powerfully, for it generates the Octave, and the Octave is produced by a force four times as great. For if a string of given
length stretched by a given weight produced a given tone, the
same tension upon a string thrice as short acts nine times as
much. For it produces the twelfth [i.e. an octave plus a fifth],
and a string which stretched by a given weight produces a given
tone needs to be stretched by nine times as much weight so as
to produce the twelfth ...
Let me briefly review the mathematical relation here (Figure 7). Imagine a series of six strings with length propor-
61
�But he taught that the sounds were emitted by the motion and
attrition of the solid spheres, as though a great sphere emitted
a heavier tone as happens when iron hammers are smitten.
And from this, it seems, was born the Ptolemaic System of
orbs, when meanwhile Pythagoras beneath parables of this
sort was hiding his own system and the true harmony of the
heavens.
Figure 7
tiona! to the distances from the Sun to the six planets;
let equal weights be hung on the strings; we thus obtain
six different tones-very dissonant with one another, let
me add, but Newton does not mention the fact. These
tones betoken different forces, which can be measured by
taking strings of equal lengths and hanging on them different weights, so as to give the same tones. Any two of the
weights will be inversely as the squares of the corresponding
lengths. Newton continues:
Now this argument is subtle, yet became known to the ancients,
for Pythagoras, as Macrobius avows, stretched the intestine of
sheep or the sinews of oxen by attaching various weights, and
from this learned the ratio of the celestial harmony. Therefore,
by means of such experiments he ascertained that the weights
by which all tones on equal strings [were produced] ... were
reciprocally as the squares of the lengths of the strings by
which the musical instrument emits the same tones. But the
proportion discovered by these experiments, on the evidence
of Macrobius, he applied to the heavens and consequently by
comparing those weights with the weights of the Planets and
the lengths of the strings with the distances of the Planets,
he understood by means of the harmony of the heavens that
the weights of the Planets towards the Sun were reciprocally
as the squares of their distances from the Sun. But the Philos~
ophers loved so to mitigate their mystical discourses that in
the presence of the vulgar they foolishly propounded vulgar
matters for the sake of ridicule, and hid the truth beneath
discourses of this kind. In this sense Pythagoras numbered his
musical tones from the Earth, as though from here to the
Moon were a tone, and thence to Mercury a semitone, and
from thence to the rest of the planets other musical intervals.
62
I have to say: Newton's interpretation of the ancient
texts is not a little dubious. Contrary to what all seventeenth-century Copernicans believed, the early Pythagoreans were not heliocentrists; Philolaus, a contemporary
of Socrates and the first Pythagorean to write down doctrine (for which he is supposed to have been appropriately
punished), did not in fact know the Earth to be round,
and his Central Fire was not the Sun. Again, so far as
anyone knows today, the law relating weights and stringlengths for different musical intervals was first discovered
not by Pythagoras but in the late 1580s by Vincenzo
Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei. Indeed, the discovery
of this law, which can be verified very precisely if one has
a good ear (and Vincenzo was a musician)-this discovery
may have been what set Galileo on his course of experimentation, seeking exact numerical ratios in nature; he
started with pendulums (again, weights hung on strings),
and proceeded to motion down inclined planes, in order
perhaps to analyze the motion of the pendulum.
But the incorrectness of Newton's interpretations is not
my concern here. The sheer volume of the manuscripts,
the many variants and revisions, in all of which Newton is
seeking to show that the ancient philosophers before
Aristotle understood the Newtonian system of the world,
demonstrates that these views were important to Newton.
Can we make that fact intelligible to ourselves or must we
conclude simply that it is one of the queernesses of genius?
I want to speak briefly about the discovery of universal
gravitation. I have recently changed my mind on this matter. My previous argument (which I unfortunately published) was that before !684 Newton did not have his
"proof' of universal gravitation, therefore was uncertain
about the universality. I now suspect that before !684
a good deal more was missing than just the "proof'; I
suspect that the idea itself, as a clear and cogent proposal,
was not yet present to his mind.
The idea of universal gravitation can seem more paradoxical than we perhaps realize. For a long time, since the
1720s, it was generally thought that Newton already in
1666 had all his principal ideas, and was held up from producing his masterpiece by the lack of a good value for the
Earth's radius, or according to a nineteenth-century suggestion, by the lack of a certain mathematical theorem.
That interpretation is supported by no solid evidence
whatsoever; there is no sign that Newton entertained the
idea of universal gravitation before 1684. And up to !679,
all of Newton's statements about planetary motion imply
either Descartes' theory of vortices, and/or an aethereal
theory to keep the planets from receding from the Sun.
WINTER 1981
�Newton uses Descartes 1 term1 conatus recedendi a centro 1
the term which Huygens in 1673 replaces by the term
centrifugal force. Newton's thought about planetary motion during these years, like that of Huygens, remains confined to Descartes' analogy of the stone in the sling.
There is no evidence that, before 1679, Newton ever conceptualizes the orbital process as the falling of the planet
out of the rectilinear path it would follow if left to itself,
a falling towards a central attracting body.
Now this does not mean that during these years Newton altogether rejected the possibility of attractions and
repulsions as possible physical causes. He was not a Cartesian; he did not believe space to be identical with matter, and all transfer of motion to be by contact. He was
familiar with Gassendi 1 s counter-argument1 according
to which not everything that is, is substance or accident;
thus time and space need not be the accidents of anything,
but may independently subsist, and so space need not be
the space of something (namely body). This argument
may not have satisfied Newton, but given Torricelli's experiment with the barometer, he was willing to grant the
vacuum. While this discovery does not in itself lead to the
granting of real attractions and repulsions, it opens up
the possibility and even the desirability of hypothesizing
them. If there are spaces free of matter between the smallest parts of bodies, or the corpuscles of which ordinary
bodies are composed, then in order that the parts of these
ordinary bodies should cohere and various substances
should have the various chemical and physical properties
they exhibit, we may well be led to postulate "intermolecular" forces. No doubt, to hypothesize such forces was to
depart from the accepted norm of natural philosophy
established by Descartes. But Robert Hooke was doing
it, and Newton began doing it, speaking of the sociability
and unsociability of bodies in chemical reactions and cohesions. The forces he considered seem to have been
forces acting over very small distances; his alchemical
experiments were probably meant to find out about them.
In 1679 comes the famous exchange of letters between
Hooke and Newton, a polite fencing between bitter enemies. Here Hooke explicitly proposes that Newton work
out the path of a body under an inverse-square attraction that pulls the body away from its rectilinear trajectory. So far as the evidence goes, this is the first time that
Newton faced the planetary problem in such a form. And
under this provocation, he makes the great discovery that
a force of attraction, directed toward a fixed center, implies the equable description of areas, Kepler's so-called
second law. He applies this law, which allows him to use
area to represent time, to the ellipse with center of attraction in the focus, and finds that the force follows an
inverse-square law.
At one point I thought that it was Hooke who first placed
in front of Newton the idea of universal gravitation, so
that if Newton had not grasped it before, he did so now,
and proceeded to look for a way to test it. But the fact is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that Hooke himself did not believe gravitation to be universal, that is, applicable to absolutely all matter. He had
generalized gravitation more than any previous author.
Earlier authors like Kepler had regarded attraction as belonging to cognate bodies, that is, closely related bodies
like jupiter and its satellites, or the Earth and its moon.
Thus Roberval could talk of a lunar gravity, a terrestrial
gravity1 a solar gravity 1 a jovial gravity 1 and so on.
Let me quote Hooke's view in 1678; he is here explaining
an hypothesis about comets:
I suppose the gravitating power of the Sun in the center of this
part of the Heaven in which we are, hath an attractive power
upon all the bodies of the Planets, and of the Earth that move
about it, and that each of those again have a respect answerable, whereby they may be said to attract the Sun in the same
manner as the Load-stone hath to Iron, and the Iron hath to
the Load-stone. I conceive also that this attractive virtue may
act likewise upon several bodies that come within the center
of its sphere of activity 1 though 'tis not improbable also but
that as on some bodies it may haVe no effect at all, no more
than the Load-stone which acts on Iron, hath upon a bar of
Tin, Lead, Glass, Wood, etc., so on other bodies, it may have
a clean contrary effect, that is of protrusion, thrusting off,
driving away ... ; whence it is, I conceive, that the parts of the
body of this Comet (being confounded or jumbled, as 'twere
together, and so the gravitating principle destroyed) become of
other natures than they were before, and so the body may
cease to maintain its place in the Universe, where it was first
placed.
Now Hooke is an inductivist of a sort, but induction is not
here leading to universal gravitation. That is, Hooke is not
concluding that every particle of matter attracts every
other in exactly the same way. In his correspondence with
Newton in the following year, Hooke suggests that Newton
may be able to think of a cause of the gravitating principle: now in Hooke's understanding-and I think in Newton's, too-to say that was to imply that gravitation is not
universal, for the material cause of gravitation could not
itself be subject to gravitation.
In view of the passages cited and others I shall refer to
later, I suspect that the idea of a truly universal gravitation became effectively present to Newton only after he
had discovered the "proof." Why propose a theory which,
by its very nature, precludes any mechanical explanation,
which seems to preclude being tested, and which, moreover, as Newton actually suggests once he has begun to
entertain it, would seem to put the calculation of a planetary orbit beyond the power of any human mind?
There is the problem, also, of explaining Newton's
delay for five more years after 1679. The best explanation,
I believe, is that Newton does not yet think he has discovered anything very important, and sees no direction in
which to pursue his discovery. Then Halley appears, probably in August of 1684, and persuades him that his discovery of the logical relation between the inverse-square
law and the Sun-focused elliptical orbit is important, and
63
�that he should publish it, to secure the invention to himself. Newton sets to work, and we have a series of MSS
which can be arranged in temporal order on the basis of
internal evidence.
In the first MS, there is no sign of the notion of universal
gravitation. Newton speaks of gravity as one species of
centripetal force-the term "centripetal force" making its
first appearance here (it is Newton's invention). There is
no hint of the problems of perturbation, the disturbance
of the orbit and motion of one planet by the attraction of
another planet. The inverse-square law is derived from
Kepler's third law as applied to the planets and to the
satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, that is, from the fact that,
for both the satellites and the circumsolar planets, the
squares of the periods are as the cubes of the mean distances from the central body. Newton shows that the revolving bodies must be subject to a centripetal force toward
the central body which varies inversely as the square of
the distance. The orbits are simply said to be elliptical.
The entire development, I believe, is up in the air, in the
sense that Newton does not know the cause of the attraction, does not know how exact Kepler's third law may be
(he had questioned its exactitude at an earlier date), and
is merely proceeding mathematically without knowing
what may underlie his derivation of the inverse square law;
it could be something that might lead to the results needing to be qualified.
To mention just one possible explanation, one that
Newton had thought up in the 1660s and proposed to the
Royal Society in 1675: the action of the Sun on the planets
might be due to the inrushing of a subtle aether, which
would serve as fuel for the Sun's burning. A similar but
different aether might be rushing into the Earth to produce terrestrial gravity; this aether might be transformed
chemically within the Earth, then issue forth as our atmosphere. The satellite systems of Jupiter and Saturn
might be sustained by similar circulations of aether.
These several centripetal forces would be explicable
mechanically, that is by impacts; gravitation would not
be universal, for the in-rushing aether would not itself
be subject to the forces it caused in other bodies.
In the second MS the notion of perturbation appears.
Newton is now assuming that all the bodies of the solar
system attract one another, just as Hooke had before.
Can the planetary orbits still be said to be elliptical? Hardly,
if the ellipses are drawn badly out of shape by the perturbations, the attractions of the different planets toward
one another. What must be done is to evaluate the relative magnitude of these perturbations. How is that going
to be possible?
Newton does it by considering the accelerations of the
satellites of Jupiter towards Jupiter, of the Moon towards
the Earth, of Venus towards the Sun_ Each satellite is
being accelerated towards the body round which it goes,
and that acceleration depends on the power of the central
body to attract, and so may be able to serve as a measure
64
of that power. Of course, to be comparable measures, all
three satellites ought to be at the same distance from
their central body, and they aren't. But we can shift them
in thought to the same distance, by using the inversesquare law. What we get, then, are the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, the Sun. That of the
Sun is overwhelmingly larger than the others.
But do we really have attractions here or not? Thus far
there has been no evidence that Newton's aethereal theory
for the planets is wrong. What then happens, I think, is
that Newton realizes a consequence of something he has
been assuming. In his derivation of the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, etc., he has been assuming that the quantity of matter of the satellite or test body
didn't (if you will forgive a pun) matter; it didn't matter
what mass it had, it was accelerated to the same degree
anyhow, the differences between the masses of the test
bodies could be ignored. Is that right?
Is it so on the Earth? Did Newton know the downward
acceleration of all bodies on the Earth, at a given place,
to be the same? Not at this moment. Earlier we know he
had assumed the rates to be slightly different for different
bodies, depending on their micro-structure, and the way
the downflowing aether affected them. Now, in the third
MS, Newton sets out to test the constancy, and this is
the most precise experiment reported in the Principia.
He takes equal weights of nine different materials; encloses each of them-gold, salt, wool, wood, and so onin boxes of equal size and shape, to make the air resistance
the same; and uses these boxes as the bobs for nine different pendulums, with very long but equal suspensions.
The pendulums, he says, played exactly together for a
very long time. The accelerations of these different materials, he concludes, cannot differ from one another by
more than one part in a thousand. Essentially the same
experiment, the EotvOs experiment, has been performed
in this century with a precision of one part in one billion.
Another way of stating the result, you may know, is that
inertial mass is proportional to weight.
At this point in the manuscript series, there appears
for the first time in history, so far as I know, a statement
of Newton's third law of motion, the equality of action
and reaction. Let me now put these two results together-Newton's Eotvos experiment, and his third law,
as they are put together in the Principia. The first implies
that bodies on the Earth are accelerated downward by a
force that is strictly proportional to what Newton now
calls their mass, by which he means their resistance to
being accelerated. (If the proportionality had not been
exact, the pendulums would not have played together,
would not have had the same periods.) If the same thing
holds with respect to Jupiter, with respect to Saturn, and
with respect to the Sun, then one can compare the
attracting powers of these different bodies in the way we
have already seen: by taking a test body, it doesn't matter
of what mass, placing it at a fixed distance from the attracWINTER 1981
�ting body, and seeing how much it is accelerated. Newton
couldn't do this physically, as we've said, but assummg
the inverse-square Jaw he could find from the actual acceleration of a body at one distance what the acceleration
would be if the satellite were placed at any stipulated
distance.
Now comes the final step. Since the mass of the test
body can be ignored, in the comparison of the attracting
forces of two bodies, one can use each as a test body for
the other. Then
A's power of attraction
B's power of attraction
acceleration of B
acceleration of A
By the third law of motion, these accelerations are inversely as the inertial masses:
acceleration of B
acceleration of A
mass of A
mass ofB
Putting the two results together,
A's power of attraction
B's power of attraction
mass of A
mass of B
All right, that's it. The gravitational force is proportional
to both the mass of the attracting and the mass of the
attracted body. Inertial mass belongs to bodies merely
because they are bodies. Therefore gravitational force
goes with all bodies; all bodies attract gravitationally.
Gravitational attraction is therefore inexplicable by any
mechanical model of matter in motion. The mechanical
philosophy, Newton concludes in the 1680s and 1690s,
is dead; he has rediscovered the ancient mystic Pythagorean truth of the harmony of the spheres. Gravitation,
he concludes, is the result simply of the immediate action
of God.
There was a tradition in seventeenth-century England,
pursued particularly by the so-called Cambridge Platonists
Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, having to do with the
prisci theologi or ancient theologians-Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, and so on-whose
pagan wisdom, it was claimed, was really derivative from
that of the Hebrew prophets, especially Moses. More
and Cudworth· developed their interpretation of these
ancient doctrines into a justification for a new and revolu-
tionary natural philosophy, that is, for modern science
as it was coming to be in the works of Galileo and
Descartes. Newton, influenced by these men in earlier
years, now believes he has found the right interpretation
of the ancient wisdom precisely because he has found the
right natural philosophy. And so he writes:
Since all matter duly formed is attended with signs of life
and all things are framed with perfect art and wisdom and
nature does nothing in vain; if there be an universal life and
all space be the sensorium of a thinking being who by immediate presence perceives all things in it, as that which thinks
in us, perceives their pictures in the brain; those laws of motion
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
arising from life or will may be of universal extent. To some
such laws the ancient philosophers seem to have alluded when
they called God Harmony and signified his actuating matter
harmonically by the God Pan's playing upon a Pipe . .. To the
mystical philosophers Pan was the supreme divinity inspiring
this world with harmonic ratio like a musical instrument and
handling it with modulation according to that saying of
Orpheus "striking the harmony of the world in playful song".
But they said that the Planets move in their circuits by force
of their own souls, that is, by force of the gravity which takes
its origin from the action of the soul. From this, it seems, arose
the opinion of the peripatetics concerning Intelligences moving solid globes. But the souls of the sun and of all the planets
the more ancient Philosophers held for one and the same
divinity exercising its powers in al1 bodies whatsoever ... All
[their gods] are one thing, though there be many names.
And so Newton goes on to argue, using passages from
Plato and Lucretius and many other ancient writings, that
the philosophers of antiquity-Thales, Anaximander,
Pythagoras, Democritus, and so on-were really agreed
upon the atomicity of matter, the inverse-square law of
gravitation, the universality of gravitation, and further,
true mystics that they were, held the true cause of gravity
to be the direct action of God. The unity of physical,
moral, and theological wisdom is thus shown to have been
present in the beginnings of the world, transmitted from
Adam and Eve. That unity and that wisdom were gradually
lost, after the corruptions of the sons of Noah; but now
they have been recovered and restored by Newton, who
thus takes his place among the prisci theologi, the ancient
theologians. Newton is even able to find in the biblical
book of Daniel the prophecy of his, Newton's, rediscovery
of the truth.
So the first beginnings of a mathematized celestial
dynamics came, with Kepler, out of a trinitarian symbol,
the three-foldness of the Sun, spherical shell of stars and
intervening space in a Sun-centered world; Kepler had
his main idea from the beginning. With Newton it was
different, and the crucial justifying discovery came late,
with a precise experiment to test the exactness of the
constancy of the acceleration of gravity, and a new realization of the meaning of that constancy. And in a world that
has now lost its geometrical center, Newton accepts this.
discovery as a revelation of a mysterious, omnipresent,
unitarian God, to discourse of whom from the appearances,
as he will tell us in the General Scholium to the second
edition of the Principia, does certainly belong to Natural
Philosophy. But the most famous statement of the General Scholium, presented there as the outcome of inductivist caution, "f do not contrive hypotheses" (hypotheses,
that is, as to the cause of gravitation)-this statement
disguised rather than expressed the deeper ground of
Newton's original and I suspect persisting view, that gravi-
tation was indeed universal, and the result of the direct
action of God, so that no hypotheses for it could be successfully contrived.
65
�Recent Events In the West*
Er will mein Leben und mein Glueck; und fuehlt nicht,
dass der schon tot ist, der um seiner Sicherhett willen lebt.
Leo Raditsa
Introduction
After five years of evasion there is now something like
the beginning of awareness that in 1975 Soviet actions
changed fundamentally. In 1975 the Soviet Union began
to separate Europe from America by taking over countries, openly and through proxies, that border on trade
routes and have natural resources without which neither
Europe and the United States can survive. At the same
time the propaganda war, now carried on largely by countries of the so-called Third World, and the attack on international traditions (seizure of embassies, murder of
nations, murder of refugees, murder of political exiles,
and terrorism) intensified. The object of this apparently
chaotic and "spontaneous" second war is not only to distract attention from the strategic significance of recent
Soviet advances but also to destroy international public
opinion by making it complicit with murder-the public
opinion that Solzhenitsyn says has been destroyed in Russia and has left people helpless against themselves and
others. The Soviets aim to win control of Europe without
actually fighting a total war by exploiting the Free World's
fear of nuclear disaster and its present reluctance to fight
small wars-and even to defend itself by openly stating
the truth. But their success, if it can be called that, would
probably bring only bitterer wars.
'
.
This article is first in a series dealing with the United States in the
world-a series, in part, provoked by Raymond Aron's recent remark:
"Le peuple america in s'est toujours plus preoccupe de lui-m~me que du
monde exterieur." I write here in my own name, not as editor. My views
do not represent the editorial policy of The St. fohn's Review. L R.
66
In the United States and Europe the sense of crisis appears now widespread but mixed with resignation and bafflement. Both the bafflement and the resignation come,
probably, most of all from unacknowledged fear, but they
also come from lack of policy. The simple return to the
"containment" of the late forties and fifties does not
make sense, even if it were possible, for containment, especially the passivity and rigidity it tended to foster, has
had a lot to do with bringing us into the present danger.
Also, more importantly, containment focuses too much
on the future at the expense of the present struggle which
will decide the future. Policy must be more active, more
daring, more courageous, and what amounts to the same
thing, more modest. Above all, the government must not
be afraid to speak the truth.
In its further reaches the crisis we are now living started
in 1914. The struggle against totalitarianism is always in
part a struggle against ourselves, for totalitarianism sprang
from our thought and the distortions of our traditions. It
is not alien to us. We know it all too well-and until recently it has won widespread allegiance in the Free World.
What passes for totalitarianism's strength (actually, nothing more than force) comes from our weakness. Because
totalitarian regimes exist off our weakness, they are not
enemies which countries and in.dividuals can respect. As a
result, war with them is unceasing when it is not total and
self-destructive. Because we fear ourselves to some extent
in them, struggle with totalitarianism tends to undo reLeo Raditsa recently published Some Sense About Wilhelm Reich (Philosophical Library 1978). He writes frequently on current events in the
world for Midstream and other publications.
WINTER 1981
�spect for virtues otherwise selfevident, such as courage.
But it is from those who have lived under these regimes
and remained true to themselves that courage can be relearned. "Pygmies in power-the Mussolinis, Stalins, and
Hitlers-seem like giants; mediocrities like men of genius;
men of genius like madmen" (Lev Kopelev).
l. The Recent Background
Since 1975 seven countries have succumbed to commu~
nist aggression. In all instances the Soviets were involved.
Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan. (The situation in Mozambique is not
clear.) In Angola and Afghanistan resistance, mostly ignored, continues. Until recently only Solzhenitsyn dared
keep count. The end of 1975 made it plain that defeat in
Vietnam was not an isolated instance but a general route,
especially a psychological route that involved the whole
free world, profoundly.
Abandoned to a three-sided civil war in the collapse of
Portuguese self-confidence, Angola was invaded in 1975
by Cuban troops with East German and Soviet advisorsa clear violation of the self-determination of nations, open
aggression. Kissinger resorted to covert aid to the Angolans fighting the Cubans, but at the same time forbade
Moynihan to bring the aggression against Angola before
the UN. Once exposed, Kissinger's secretiveness pro~
voked a congressional prohibition against aid to Angola.
Had the opposition to the Vietnam War been rational, disinterested and forthright, against one specific, miscon~
ceived war, it would have been able to distinguish
between Indochina and Angola, and it would have known
the danger to the free world, especially to its raw materials
and trade routes, in the attack on Angola and on the Horn
of Africa.
But behind 1975 and the fall of Saigon lies 1973, and
1968 and 1967. These mark even more fundamental turning points whose importance begins to be perceived, dimly,
only now.
In 1967 Israel won a war and it conquered territory. It
struck first (because its survival depended on it) when it
became clear that Nasser was about to attack. But victory
and, worse still, inadvertent conquest as a result of the
readiness to fight for one's life (a "right" whose assurance
in article 51 of the UN Charter only serves to hamper its
exercise) violates all contemporary sensibilities, which exist on their denial of the most obvious experience of the
past.
Nobody knew what to do with this victory and this
strength. Above all it embarrassed us, especially our government. Like our own victory in the Second World War
we could not cope with it, especially in its contrast to our
incapacity to face either victory or defeat in Indochina.
Our government (for instance in 1969), in accordance
with the unmistakably expressed desire of people and the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Congress, helped Israel with economic and military aid;
but on condition that it show "flexibility" and assume
something like sole responsibility for the war-that it appear to deny itself. That there was a place for courage and
heroism in our world, and that it could be effective, was
more than we could bear: At the same time we could not
deny it outright, for that would be too obvious a self-betrayal. As a result of this victory of 1967, even the UN in
resolution 242 had to acknowledge, grudgingly, Israel's
"right" to survival. The ambiguity, really the ambivalence,
that shows itself in this resolution's refusal to accept the
victory it had to acknowledge, provided the basis for the
continuance of the war of 1967.
Inspired by the PLO's example, the terrorism which
started in a big way after Israel's victory in the 1967 war
represents a continuation and extension of that war
throughout much of the free world in order to undo its
victory and prevent negotiations for peace. 1 The terrorists
sensed they could win in the great cities of the free world
and in the UN the victory the Arabs had been denied on
the battlefield. This violence has worked. People who
before 1967 had never heard of the "Palestinians" or the
PLO now speak dimly of their "right" to "self-determination".' This capacity to carry on a war throughout the
world in random violence-a war that has been lost in
open battle-tells something of the character of the war
we are involved in throughout the world. Our world allows courage on the battlefield to be undone by cowardly
murder.
Without Soviet support and training this war would not
have been carried out in such a highly professional and organized manner. To my knowledge no government in the
free world has spoken out openly about Soviet involvement in terrorism. Yet it has been known in the West at
least since 1973 that since 1967 the Soviet Union has
been training foreign terrorists in Moscow. President Carter in his State of the Union message after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan never mentioned it.
With some exceptions (Israel, Italy since the murder of
Mora, Germany at least once, Britain lately) Western governments have negotiated with terrorists. Because of their
unwillingness to make public the Soviet Union's involvement in terroriSm, these governments have acted as if
each nation's terrorism was its own "personal" problem
that had no relation to the common danger they feared to
identify. In fact the terrorists are often native sons. This
capacity to make nations turn in on themselves (as if they
were alone in the world), in the illusion of looking out for
themselves, has been one of the worst effects of terrorism.
With its demonstration of the West's weakness and lack of
cohesion, the effectiveness of terrorism has probably surprised the Soviet Union. Events since 1967 have shown
that we, at least our governments, will put up with international wars as long as those that fight them (for instance, the terrorists) do not show undeniable courage.
1968 brought the open Soviet crushing of Czechoslovakia, which, unlike Hungary in 1956, had neither defied the
67
�Soviet Union in the name of democracy nor taken to
arms. An event that hardly affected Europe's and the
United States' relations with the Soviet Union: 1969 was
the beginning of so-called detente in Europe. By their
readiness to negotiate with the Soviet Union as if nothing
had happened, the governments of Europe and, three
years later, the United States, showed the Soviet regime
that despite their mild protestations they were indifferent
to the breaking of Czechoslovakia.
1969 also brought johnson's refusal ·to run for reelection. Within six months of Nixon's accession to office at
the beginnng of 1969 the first troops were withdrawn
from Vietnam-a change in policy which despite Nixon's
and Kissinger's intentions to the contrary eventually led
to the abandonment of South Vietnam-the necessary
consequence, in Hanoi's view, of Nixon's and Kissinger's
desire to lessen American commitment.
The 1973 war in the Middle East, which began with a
surprise attack on Israel on all fronts, and which Israel
barely survived, by luck and extraordinary courage, marks
another turning point. Its consequences were obvious,
though they were denied even by a publication of the
courage and the intelligence of The Economist.
Perceived accurately as a renewed outbreak of the continuing war in the Middle East, the War of 1973 also intensified and extended the war that had continued almost
unnoticed outside of Israel since 1967. Its chief feature
was the Arab oil-producing nations' and Persia's extortion-
ary resort to the oil embargo and the formation of an oil
cartel that included Venezuela and Indonesia.
Such a cartel represented a direct attack on the Atlantic
Charter, which had laid the basis of the prosperity of the
world since 1945 by insisting on the freedom of trade between nations, including specifically trade in natural re-
sources. The oil embargo threatened the world free trade
had made, in which the fiercest competition exists between nations rather than within them. Suddenly, states
which had nationalized their oil industries, or at any rate
controlled them, resorted to monopoly and artificial price
fixng, with not a murmur of protest from the Western industrialized nations.
Because it undermined Western leadership by attacking its guarantee of free and unrestricted trade between
nations, this extortionary action helped the Soviets more
than they could help themselves. The Arabs, some of
whom said they hated communism, were in fact undermining "capitalism". Consciously or not, they acted in
accordance with Stalin's understanding that held that
"revolution" could be brought about not only within nations but between them, by putting the poor and undeveloped nations against the industrial nations.
By allowing the Arab nations and Persia (which was primarily responsible for the second doubling of prices in
1973) to get away with this extortion, the United States
and its allies were not only undoing themselves but help1
ing the oil producing countries to undo themselves. Barely
five years later, the collapse of Persia showed this self-de-
68
structiveness to a world baffled because it had too long
told itself its paralysis would have no consequence. The
collusion of the blackmailed with the blackmailers blinded
them both to obvious facts. Neither the Shah nor the government of the United States, even after they had been
warned by what was left of the CIA and by Israeli intelligence, faced the opposition to the Shah within Persia.
The passive acquiescence. to oil extortion also immedi-
ately allowed the gap between America and Europe to
widen. It encouraged Europe to make her own arrangements. With the exception of Portugal-which allowed
American planes flying to the aid of Israel to refuel-and
the Netherlands, Europe indulged in a display of cravenness. Italy, which had been deeply moved by Israel's courage in 1967 and strongly supported it, held its silence in
1973. Its once leading newspaper, the Carriere della Sera,
shifted to a pro-Arab line.
The Arab resort to the use of oil as a weapon intensified
the extension of the Middle East War, which the terrorists
had begun after 1967, to every individual in the free
world. Within less than two years the extortion succeeded
in winning the acceptance of the PLO, with observer
status and in some sessions with the attributes of full sovereignty, at the UN.
Nor did the United States help Europe, which is dependent on the Middle East for about seventy percent of its
oil and, therefore, for its riches. (A one percent increase in
production brings with it something like one percent increase in oil consumption.) Acting as if its relation to Eu-
rope was of little importance, it has increased the pressure
on Europe by allowing its oil imports to increase staggeringly-by about forty percent in the period of 1973-1978.
The evasiveness of the United States and Europe toward oil extortion has also weakened their relations with
their own citizens, for they dared not bring home the grim
realities of their citizens. By 1978 on the average only
twenty-two percent of the real rise of the price in oil had
shown up in the price of gas and heating fueJ.l The rise in
inflation in almost every major country in Europe to levels
not easily controlled comes in part from this evasion.
The evasiveness about oil brought with it an evasiveness about the Soviets. Few in office spoke openly of
growth in Soviet conventional and nuclear armaments.
Only Margaret Thatcher has spoken with anything approaching forthrightness and conviction about the danger
facing the West, both the economic danger and the threat
from the Soviet Union.
In these years (after 1969) of great and obvious danger
in which we acted as if there was no danger, Kissinger
managed to persuade us that the time had come to negotiate with the Soviets. He even managed to persuade us to
think that they would help us out of our difficulties in
Indochina, that they could be made to cooperate at a time
of our obvious weakness. This willingness, initiated by the
government, to think the Soviet regime would behave
"more reasonably", that "super-power" relations could
WINTER 1981
�improve in the midst of obvious Western weakness, is the
most striking feature of the period.
The last decade shows that the Soviet Union and its satellites, for instance, Hanoi, will play upon our fear of nu·
clear destruction, which we call our yearning for peace,
until we are weak enough to be overrun. By abolishing
conscription, our government appears no longer willing to
risk our lives in our defense.
In the instance of Europe this subjection may not re·
quire direct Soviet conquest but simply neutralization.
Giscard d'Estaing's and Schmidt's readiness to meet with
the Soviet leaders as if nothing had happened, a few
months after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan, show this
process to have started already. Strangely, the economi·
cally weaker of the larger nations of NATO, Italy and
Britain, have shown themselves our bravest allies. The
governments of France and Germany are rich enough to
risk betraying their countries-and the rest of Europe.
American confusion allows them such indulgence. Would
Giscard and Schmidt have dealt with the Soviet regime if
Muskie had not preceded them with his meeting with
Gromyko in Vienna?
2. 1979
Afghanistan in 1980 showed Soviet brutality unmistakably to men who had mistaken their forgetfulness of the
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 for the illusions of
detente. 1979 had already told something of what the fu·
lure could hold. It was in 1979 that we began to understand the actual consequences of the war in Indochina in
the four years after the fall of Saigon.
For immediately after the fall of Saigon, Cambodia,
Laos, and Vietnam slipped off the map. First there was a
deadly silence, then dim suspicions of murder in Cam·
bodia, confirmed in hearings before a Congressional com-
mittee (July, 1977) and by Cambodian refugees in France.
The information was received numbly-there was nothing like a public outcry. It took Carter, as Paul Seabury
noticed, more than a year in office before he even mentioned, and then only meekly, the murder there.
The last we had seen was the bloody conquest of
Phnomph Penh in which patients were left to die on the
operating table. The New York Times reporter confessed
to a seizure of
~'double
vision": the butchery of conquest
and a whole population driven out into the countryside
was not at all what he had meant by "revolution". Faced
with slaughter before his eyes, he could tell the difference
between his aspirations and fantasies and murder: but he
had to see the slaughter. Knowledge, the experience of
the past, had not been enough. It must be this that drives
Solzhenitsyn to say that the West will not wake up until it
too has been through the camps.
The silence in the four years since the fall of Saigon
tells something about freedom and what free countries do
to the world. Without their presence there is no informaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tion. You only find out when it is too late and at the risk of
the lives of those who dare bear witness.
And the murder of those who bear witness goes on right
now. In Persia, a young woman of thirty dared speak in
her own name, in the spring of 1980, of the murders of socalled government troops in Kurdistan and call for French
intervention. She was murdered almost immediately after
publication of her testimony in L'Express-murdered by
those readers of the international press, the "holy revolutionaries" of Teheran.
In 1979, with the boat people in flight from the North
Vietnamese regime and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians trying to cross into Thailand, the murder of the
previous four years broke before our eyes. 1979 started,
really, at Christmas of 1978, with the Vietnamese attack
on Cambodia. Numbering an estimated six hundred thousand men, the Vietnamese army is one of the largest in
the world, battle-hardened and arrogant in a victory won
not on the battlefield but in the newspapers, radio, and
television of Europe and the United States. Vietnam's
attack on Cambodia occurred in the days of President
Carter's recognition of the regime in mainland China (an-
nounced December 16, 1978, for January I, 1979). On
February 17, a few days after the visit of the Chinese
Vice-Premier to Washington, China attacked Vietnam.
The American government's apparent surprise showed
the good faith that informed the new relationship.
Since notlii"ng much worse than Pol Pot could be imagined, the first reaction to_ the Vietnamese invasion of
Cambodia was bafflement, even involuntary relief. At last
somebody had done something about Cambodia-had
made it possible to speak, even perhaps to think of it
again. Even McGovern had advocated intervention the
summer before (August 21, 1978).
But after baffled involuntary relief came doubt. The
North Vietnamese attempt to conquer Cambodia not only
substituted one totalitarian regime for another but, as
Prince Sihanouk' s voice suddenly clear from Peking reminded, threatened the extinction of Cambodia forever.
In its self-righteous support of the invasion, the Soviet
regime implied that opposition to the Vietnamese con·
quest amounted to support for Pol Pot. They did not even
have to remind us that Pol Pot had murdered for three
and a half years without even a word of protest from
Western governments. Or from the people. Nothing-no
demonstrations, those fabled demonstrations that just a
few years before had been taken for the most important,
even the only exercise of genuine freedom.
The State Department expressed its displeasure at the
Vietnamese and at the same time attempted to keep its
distance from Pol Pot. He was, after all, supported by the
Chinese regime which we recognized. The so-called
movement of the non-aligned (despite Castro's maneuvers later in 1979) did not recognize the Vietnamese regime in Cambodia, thereby implying Pol Pot had some
claim to 14 legitimacy."
With the Chinese attack on Hanoi about six weeks later
69
�It was in the Red Army, from the lips of General Korotayev,
that I first heard the stupefying thought, not entirely alien to
me: when Communism is victorious the world over, then
wars will be fought with the ultimate bitterness. Hadn't I had
similar thoughts that night after our disaster on the Sutjeska
River? Hadn't I reflected that forces stronger than ideology
and interests had thrown us and the Germans into a death
struggle amid those wild ravines? And now a Russian who was
also a Communist, Korotayev, was entertaining the thought
that wars would be especially bitter under Communismthough under Communism, theoretically, there would be no
classes and no wars. What horrors gave rise to these thoughts
in Korotayev and myself? And how was it that he had the
boldness so late at night, after supper and a cordial conversation, to express his thoughts, and I to listen in mute remembrance of horrors and reflections of my own?4
we again faced a war in which it was impossible to take
sides. The Chinese regime had at least responded to
Hanoi"s attack, which meant they took it seriously when
the West ignored it. But the Chinese were not combatting
aggression for the sake of the self-determination of Cambodia. Conquerors first of all of themselves (and of Tibet),
they were simply contesting Soviet and Vietnamese domination of the area (a Soviet-Vietnamese "friendship" treaty
had brought Vietnam nearly to the status of an "East-European" satellite barely a month [December 3, 1978]
before the Vietnamese attack). Mainland China was quite
comfortable with Pol Pot and supported him. Like the
Soviet regime, it takes murder to be the stuff of history
when it is merely the stuff of civil wars, or "revolutions".
Milovan Djilas, associate and victim ofTito, asked himself
recently when reliving his wartime: "Killing is a function
of war and revolution. Or could it be the other way around?"
The State Department sought a quick end to hostilities
in which the Chinese regime appears not to have done
well, but did nothing about the continuing Vietnamese
conquest of Cambodia.
We did not count. We were effectively shut out. For
four years we and the world we lead had meekly put up
Against this background of wars in which the United
States could take neither side but only intervene against
both, the President recognized mainland China. The expected recognition came unexpectedly and without pub-
with not knowing what was going on in those nations, and
lic discussion. Congress was not in session, and only the
now that they did not hide their actions, we did nothing.
Another fact came clear. The war for Indochina would
continue; it had continued. Since the United States had
been assumed to be the cause of the fighting, people
imagined that with its withdrawal, the violence would
cease. There would be no freedom, no peace, but fighting,
at least, would cease. Instead the fighting continued with
briefest notice (something like twenty-four hours) was
given to the Republic of China (Taiwan). In evading the
Senate's criticism, Carter deprived himself of its moderating support, which might have told in his dealings with
China. The Senate might have given him the strength to
recognize China without breaking relations with Taiwan
and without suspending, unilaterally, the treaty of alliance
with a year's notice-legally correct but certainly not
within the spirit of alliance, which is not made of paper.
After a few weeks the Senate passed a motion that expressed its support of Taiwan without explicit mention of
the readiness to defend it. In response, mainland China
made it as dear as it makes anything, that it limited its
greater furor and brutality, with plain murderousness, be-
fore the whole world, a war now of conquest between
communists where free men could discern nothing at
stake except destruction for destruction's sake. And it
spread. It threatens Thailand. It intensified, almost unnoticed in its international dimension, in Europe, in terrorist
attacks in Italy, in Turkey, in Ireland, in Spain where
every step towards a constitution and freedom encountered terrorist violence. But men did not connect the increasing domestic violence in the countries of Europe
with their incapacity to bring the destruction of Indochina to an end.
When Djilas visited the front lines on a visit to Moscow
in 1944, a Soviet general shocked him with his remark
that the worst and most destructive wars would come
with the triumph of "socialism" throughout the world.
Then the murder would start in earnest. The murder in
Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, the conquest of South
Vietnam by the regime in the North, the attempted conquest of Cambodia by North Vietnam, as well as China's
attack on Hanoi, all show the beginnings of that world of
bitter wars with no discernible object. The defense of
freedom in the world, which the totalitarian regimes call
unforgivabie aggression, gives the world its only stability.
Such a stability is not to be maintained without facing
danger frequently.
70
3. The Recognition of Mainland China
((commitment" not to attack Taiwan to a few years.
By repudiating Taiwan in shameless fashion at the moment he recognized China, Carter made it dear that the
United States took recognition of the regime in mainland
China for something like an affirmation of its "legitimacy."
Recognizing the regime in China a generation after it
seized power in civil war made sense, since it was about
time we looked that reality in the face; but making recognition amount to something like approval meant appearing to disown our previous thinking-our friends and
ourselves.
Our policy towards mainland China runs the risk of repeating all the mistakes of our war-time association with
Stalin and the Soviet Union-a policy that came from the
weakness of the democracies and has put us since 1945 in
a situation of fighting, and not knowing we are fighting, a
war, in Brian Crozier's phrase, called ({peace."
In their recent insistent coupling of the United States
and China, and their significant omission of Europe in
their propaganda about Afghanistan, the Soviets betray
WINTER 1981
�full awareness that association with China can compromise the United States and separate it from Europe and
NATO. They may not be as afraid of China as they
pretend-and we assume.
The worst part of the China policy is its motive. According to well-founded rumors it comes from a desire of
some high officials in the government to exploit this assumed Soviet fear of China. Instead of deluding ourselves
that we could exploit Soviet fear of China, we ought to
fear that such actions might provoke the Soviet Union to
irrational acts.
Any thought of using the Chinese to make up for our
government's lack of courage and forthrightness shows little common sense. The men in power (not office) in the
Soviet Union are accustomed to murder and imprisoning
without compunction. It is self-destructive to expect that
Western statesmen could manipulate these men. Especially American men in office, with their professors as advisors, who in most instances in the last fifteen years have
been incapable of addressing their own citizens effectively (and, therefore, of distinguishing their citizens'
capacity to think from the "public opinion" of the newspapers, television, and the polls).
Because in contrast to Hitler (who wanted to get back to
his drawing), the Communists in Russia and China are
not in such a hurry and appear, as an aide to Schmidt put
it (before Afghanistan), "predictable", there is a tendency
to assume they are not self-destructive, not at any rate as
self-destructive as the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in
Italy. But events in Indochina especially since the fall of
Saigon in April 1975 have shown again that Communists
when left to themselves cannot control their self-destructiveness.
... The twentieth century has also shown us that evil has an
enormous urge to self-destruction. It inevitably ends in total
folly and suicide. Unfortunately, as we now understand, in
destroying itself, evil may destroy all life on earth as well.
However much we shout about these elementary truths, they
will only be heeded by people who themselves want no more
of evil. None of this, after all, is new: everything is always
repeated, though on an ever greater scale. Luckily, I shall not
see what the future holds in store.S
Nobody can tell whether the Communists in China and
Russia will continue to turn against each other or again
join together against the countries that manage to enjoy
the consent of the governed. An eventual rapprochement
between the Communists in China and in Russia may
well be more likely than continued name-calling-and in
any case rapprochement is compatible with some namecalling. In his interview in Time at the beginning of 1979,
Brezhnev winked more than once at the Communists in
China. 6 There are talks, probably insignificant, now going
on. Totalitarian regimes can neither distinguish between
friends and enemies nor between war and peace.
The worst of it has been the kind of euphoria that has
greeted opening relations with China. From hearing travTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ellers return you hardly dare remember that China is a totalitarian country that has criticized the Soviet Union for
the slight distance it has supposedly taken from Stalin and
for not using nuclear weapons.
There is hardly any real information coming out of
China. There are np real voices like those now speaking
for Russia throughout the whole length and breadth of
the world, and those coming out of what has come to be
called "Eastern Europe". We know little; and we should
never act and think as if we know much.
One of the two books I know of on the Chinese camps
(Prisoner of Mao) shows them to be more terrifying than
the Soviet camps, for unlike the Soviet camps they are intent on destroying the power to think.'
He (Pasqualini, one of the writers of Prisoner of Mao) confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came, if
not exactly to love the system which was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the
patience and care with which the Authorities were trying to
re-educate worthless vermin like himself. 8
Instead of deluding ourselves that we could effectively
exploit Soviet fears of China, we ought to take the Soviet
regime's fears of China seriously: they may know what
they are talking about. And they are not only the fears of
the Soviet regime, but of Russians, of men who can teach
us a thing or two about freedom. In 1974 Vladimir Bukovsky in Vladimir Prison, met a Chinaman, Ma Hun, who
had fled death in China in 1968 during the so-called "cultural revolution". He had been arrested by the KGB.
They took him for a spy after their failure to turn him into
one, because they could not conceive of anybody fleeing
to the Soviet Union for refuge:
... The boys used to ask him:
"Well now, Ma Hun, how do you like it here?"
"Velly good," he would say. "Velly, velly good."
"What do you mean, good? This is prison, starvation."
"What starvation?" Ma Hun looked astonished and pointed
at the flies flying about the cell. As if to say, if there had been
real starvation, this wildlife would long since have disappeared. The boys got a fit of the shivers-what do the poor
sods call starvation back in China?
In time Ma Hun was able to tell us about the starvation in
China, when they ate all the leaves off the trees and all the
grass. For fifty miles around you couldn't find even a dung
beetle .
. . . The more he told us about China, the more it reminded
us of our own 1920s and 30s, under so-called "Stalinism". But
if anything, it was worse in China: more cruelty, cynicism,
and hypocrisy. They didn't need any concentration camps
there, they simply killed off their undesirables. For instance,
all the Chinese volunteers who had been captured in Korea
and returned by the Americans were simply wiped out, to the
last man. But they were far from being the only ones. There
were the "class aliens," the "wreckers" and the "opportunists." And above all, of course, the intelligentsia. The rest
were herded into stafe farms and communes to be reeducated by work.
71
�... Soviet life still seemed like paradise to him: you were
paid money for your work, which you could use to buy food
and clothing without restriction. Not like in China, where
you got nine yards of cloth per person per year. As for hypocrisy, he was used to it. Soviet hypocrisy struck him as child's
play compared with the Chinese variety. 9
Because our policy does not come of sliength it cannot
support such individuals who live in China, who understand and love government by law and democracy and
speak out. The new regime has arrested some of these
men, after a few months in which they spoke their mind;
there has been no notice, as far as I know, from the governments of the West. 10
4. The Murder of Peoples
You now have to go to the refugee camps in Thailand
or in Malaysia, among the dying or those about to be returned to their death, if you want to hear the words of
john F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address of 1961 ("Let every
nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall
pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and
the success of liberty") said with a straight face:
We got to know that the Thai govt have sent thousands of
refugees back to Cambodia. We feel very sorry and disappointed about the news.
We have tried all our best to escape from Communist Cambodia to look for freedom.
Dear sir (President Carter), your Anierican people have
fighted for liberty with tears and blood. You realize very well
about the worth and happiness of freedom. We will rather die
in a freedom country than being sent back to unhuman Communist Cambodia. . . 11
In june 1979 in Vienna when Carter brought up the
"problem" of the refugees of Indochina, he met Brezhnev's icy silence. That silence means: these people will die
like flies and you will do nothing about it; words do not
mean much and you can talk all you like-we know you
do not mean it. 12
Who got the governments of the West finally to pay a
semblance of attention to the refugees? Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore. How did they do it? By blackmail, by
declaring they would let the refugees perish, by threatening the United States and Europe with their own
ideals-by actually driving something like forty thousand
refugees back from Thailand into western Cambodia to almost certain death-before everybody's eyes. The once
great nations of Europe and the United States called an
international conference in july 1979 in Geneva. What
happened at this conference? They asked Vietnam to
stop the flow of refugees sent to death on the South
China Sea. They thus accorded the regime in Vietnam,
72
not recognized by the United States, a kind of recognition. Cambodia was not even represented, because the
"nations" could not agree on its representation. At the
conference only the Chinese spoke open words-the
Chinese, who had backed and still back the murderous regime of Pol Pot. From them we took lessons in interna·
tionallaw! The Soviet Union kept silence except when it
accused China of driving men into the sea and blaming
Hanoi for it. 13
In effect the large nations of the West indicated to Hanoi that it could do what it wanted with those it wished
away as long as it did not involve the West in their extermination by putting them on the seas. (In june 1979 the
immigration minister of Australia estimated that two hundred thousand Vietnamese had died at sea in the previous
four years. In Hong Kong offici;Jls estimated Hanoi might
finally extort several billion dollars in gold from the Chinese and Vietnamese whom it allowed to take to the uncertain mercies of the seas.jl"' And the flow of refugees
stopped-for a time. The newspapers could turn to easier
subjects.
When the freespoken President of Italy, Pertini, sent
three Italian ships, which together could hold one thousand refugees, to the South China Sea in july, 1979, Hanoi savagely accused Italy of aggression. In answer the
Italian commander spoke in what sounded like embarrass·
ment of "humanitarian" considerations. Ships of the
United States were also active at this time pulling men,
women, and children out of the South China Sea. In an
unaccountable callous misreading of British public opin·
ion, Margaret Thatcher, by declaring she would not honor
the custom of first refuge, encouraged British merchant
men, at considerable expense, to avoid waters where men
were drowning.
The United States took on about half the cost of caring
for the refugees who had survived, but the United States
did not speak out in defense of the traditions of refuge
that reach back at least to the Odyssey and the earliest
books of the Bible. This catastrophe is as serious, and will
haunt us deeply, as the murder of twelve million individuals by the Nazis. This time nobody will be able to say he
did not know.
Solzhenitsyn, especially in the third volume of Gulag
Archipelago, and Bruno Bettelheim, in a remarkable essay
on Linda Wertmuller's Seven Beauties printed several
years ago in The New Yorker, show over and over again
that the readiness to do anything to survive in concentration camps-which is called "appeasement" in international relations-invites murder because it makes individuals helpless 1 5 The war now waged on an international
scale not only in Southeast Asia but in much of Europe
through terrrorism, in the Middle East, in South America
and, especially at this moment, Central America, may well
instill this camp attitude everywhere, both in government
and individuals.
Meanwhile, the Afghans fight the Soviet army with almost their bare hands.
WINTER 1981
�5. The Recognition of Terrorists
In 1979 the terrorist war against the West which had in·
tensified since 1967 began to culminate in the world-wide
effort of the fedayeen to achieve diplomatic recognition
as the representative of the Arabs of Palestine, and in the
success of Persia in forcing the world to take its collapse
for a ('revolution". Khomeini showed the connection
between the two events immediately upon his arrival in
Teheran when he embraced Arafat for all the world to
see, put the PLO in the Israeli embassy in Teheran, and
stopped all oil shipments to South Africa and Israel,
thereby increasing Israel's isolation and dependence on
the United States.
The "official" recognition of terrorism now threatens
to become the subject of international negotiations both
in the instance of the PLO and of Persia. Terrorists are
acting as if they were governments.
Ordinary terrorists are trained in Libya, Algeria, Syria,
Czechoslovakia, Moscow, and God knows where else (often by Cuban and East German as well as Soviet instruc·
tors). The terrorists in Teheran, in contrast, besides taking
lessons from the fedayeen are in some sense self·
taught-on American campuses.
In its most recent phase this use of "revolution" to at·
tack nations from without by undoing international law
started with the subjection of the UN to PLO propaganda
and "Third World" ways of not-thinking. Here the guilt·
riddling superstition that the hard-working countries were
responsible for the poverty of the poor countries would,
but for the courage of Moynihan's intelligence, have gone
unnoticed.
Inconceivable without the resort to the sale of oil as a
political weapon, which touches all important nations,
this "revolutionary" attack on international traditions accompanies inflation, which, especially in Europe, comes
from the forced rise in oil prices. Lenin knew that the
quickest way to destroy societies that obey their laws is to
undermine their currency. Inflation makes men feel their
work does not count enough even to make for a fair exchange. This kind of inflation too is an attack from without.
Supplied and supported by the Soviet Union, the PLO
and the so-called radical states like Libya have attacked internationally, especially in Europe. They have realized
they could better get at the United States through Europe
than through Egypt and attacking IsraeL For the United
States, as Joseph Churba manfully stresses, provides the
link between the Arabs of Palestine, which the PLO
claims to represent, and the peace treaty between Egypt
and IsraeL 16 Not mentioned in the treaty itself, the Arabs
of Palestine (called "Palestinians") appear in the appended agreement which Carter negotiated at Camp
David.
The attempt to win diplomatic recognition for the PLO
is an attack not only on Israel but on all legitimate governments. For Israel has a government which enjoys the deep
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
consent of those it governs. It is also one of the few
governments in the world whose policy toward terrorists
has been unambiguous from the start, and fearless.
The fedayeen's recent successes are not to be taken
lightly. Their representatives have been received in Portugal, in Spain (by the King in the fond illusion, almost immediately undone, that the PLO would restrain its
murder). In defiance of the best opinions of his countrymen who wanted him to support the peace between
Egypt and Israel, Giscard d'Estaing on a trip to the Middle
East called for the independence of the Arabs of Palestine, and found something like support from the government of Germany. The Council of Foreign Ministers of
the Common Market, in a Europe which rarely speaks in
unison on foreign affairs, especially in regard to the Soviet
Union, has issued repeated declarations favouring the
fedayeen: In Turkey the PLO, through the violence of
another fedayeen terrorist organization, won something
approaching diplomatic recognition. In Brazil in the summer of 1979 the Vice President of Kuwait demanded recognition of the PLO under the threat of cutting off the oil
on which Brazil depends for all but ten percent of its
needs. In his threatening speeches in Brazil, the Vice
President called openly for the destruction of Israel and
praised Nazism. This praise appalled his audience, for the
war still counts in Brazil, the only country in South America whose soldiers fought and died with the Allies in the
war for freedom. Arafat, too, received in July 1979 in an
official manner and in public buildings in Vienna by
Kreitsky and Brandt-although he was a guest, not of the
government of Austria, but of the Socialist International-openly declared the readiness of the PLO to use
the "oil weapon". Throughout these attempts to win diplomatic recognition on the basis of its past violence, the
PLO has never repudiated its desire, openly stated in its
"charter", to destroy Israel.
All this fury of activity comes because the peace between Israel and Egypt of March 1979 threatens the PLO.
The peace has made things more dangerous, for it can
make things better or much worse.
A real peace would threaten all regimes that do not
obey their own laws. (The move towards peace has in fact
encouraged Sadat to undo some of the authoritarian character of the Egyptian regime-and the tensions that will
come to the surface in Egypt if the peace takes hold may
undo him.)
Peace in the Middle East would represent a major triumph over the totalitarian powers, who after all have
made peace impossible in Europe. The tendency, however, to put pressure on Israel rather than on Egypt and
the other more accessible Arab states runs the clear risk of
turning the peace into a more effective means of undoing
Israel than war. Unequivocal American support for
Israel's distinction between self-rule for the Arabs actually
living in the West Bank and Gaza and an independent
fedayeen state might have strengthened Sadat, by helping
him face down the rest of Arab "opinion." Such policy
73
�might bring some of the Arabs to the recognition that in
attacking Israel they are attacking themselves, for without
Israel they would be helpless before the Soviets. 17 Without
Arab support the fedayeen could not make such an impression on the West fearful for its oil. The turning point
will probably come when Israel gives up the irreplaceable
Sinai air bases in 1982.
6. "Revolution" in Persia
In its capacity to involve the world in its troubles, Khomeini's Persia outdoes even the fedayeen. Without the
participation and the extorted approval of "international
opinion," the collapse of authority in Persia might not
have occurred-and it certainly would not have been able
to pass itself off as a "revolution."
This capacity of Persia to involve the whole world in its
collapse comes not because events in Persia had anything
to say to the world, but because of the West's servility in
its dependence on oil and because of Persia's geographical
an accurate assessment, attention would have necessarily
turned also on the Communist Party and the Soviet
Union who are "professionals" in using the fantasy of
"revolution" to seize power.
Nor did it impress people that Khomeini immediately
took Soviet positions in foreign policy; that he attacked
the "imperialism" of the United States; that he showed an
unseeing world he thought like a Marxist, not like a Mohammedan, when he released the blacks and the women
among the American hostages-since when have Mohammedans shown sensitivity to blacks and to women; that he
took weeks to criticize the attempted Soviet conquest of
Afghanistan, and then attacked both the United States
and the Soviet Union as equally "evil."
Writing in L'Express about eight months after Khomeini's alightment in Teheran, jean Fran<;:ois Revel
showed that almost all of the points of the program of the
Communist Party of Persia, announced six months be-
fore, had found fulfillment: nationalization of the banks,
removal of "undesirable elements" from the police, the
judiciary, and the army. All except the formation of an
position.
open coalition regime including the Communists.
Except for the West's servility in its dependence on it,
the facts that count about Persis are old. The sights that
the precipitous oil riches brought recalled Herodotus, es-
The seizure of Americans in the United States embassy
in Teheran represents another development in the open
effort to destroy international opinion. The "leaders" of
pecially his sense of grandeur's violation of proportion
Persia, some of whom had studied at American universi-
and, therefore, of rationality. Two thousand trucks rusting on the side of a road because of the lack of trained
drivers who finally had to come from abroad, from Korea
and Taiwan; harbours with their approaches clogged by
six months of ships because Persian stevedores would not
work (again men came from Korea and Taiwan), soldiers
kissing the Shah's feet in an embarrassing misunderstand-
ties, sensed the American administration would put up
with any violence short of murder. With his frequent
boasts that no American in his time in the White House
had died in battle, Carter invited violence short of murder. Upon Cyrus Vance's resignation after the failure of
the long-delayed attempt to rescue the captives, the news-
ing of ancient Persian custom.
Invested on january 6, 1979, by the Shah, the Bakhtiar
government tested the illusion that there was an impulse
to liberty in ancient Persia, strong, and thereby rational
enough in the midst of chaos to find viable expression in a
constitution. A veteran of the French Resistance and of
the Shah's arrests, Bakhtiar made the mistake of getting
the Shah to leave the country on january 16, 1979. This
was the moment to make the transition to a constitutional
autocracy (not a constitutional monarchy, for the Shah
was no king in any European sense). It was also the moment for the United States to back openly the Shah and
his new Prime Minister-who faced crowds, sometimes
papers repeated his associates' characterizations of the
Secretary of State as a man who never said an angry word,
who never gave way to his actual feelings. Soon after the
seizure of the captives, an editorial writer for the Wall
Street Journal described the men in the White House as
worrying most about the reaction of the American people
as if the mob were not in Teheran, but here.
The seizure of the Americans in Teheran meant to
show the whole world that there was no difference between diplomats and anybody else; that there was no such
thing as a government capable of protecting its own officials and, therefore, its citizens; that nobody, whether rich
or poor, was safe; that passports were pieces of paper. The
attack on diplomatic custom, by '~students", unprece-
nary unwillingness of newspapers, radio, and television to
dented except as deliberate act of war, was taken as a
novelty.
But the attack is deadly serious. It undermines the
world's recognition that something underlies both war
and peace which allows nations to distinguish between
them and negotiate with each other even when at war. In
his second inaugural address (in the importantly different
pay attention to the Communist Party of Persia and So-
circumstances of civil war), Lincoln referred to this com-
viet involvement, even in the face of fairly reliable reports
mon underlying recognition of something fundamental
that transcends war and peace when he spoke of both
Northerners and Southerners reading the same Bible.
manipulated, everywhere and strikes in the oil-fields skillfully timed by the Communists, to undermine the new
government. 18 The United States did nothing. It did not
support Bakhtiar by opposing the return of Khomeini.
The readiness to accept "revolution" as a label for
events in Persia found its telling match in the extraordi-
of KGB involvement with the "students" who had seized
the American Embassy. For had "revolution" represented
74
WINTER 1981
�The attack had immediate consequences. The Soviets
showed the increase of their influence in Persia: they
warned the United States not to attempt rescue. American paralysis in Persia in the face of outrage probably also
encouraged Soviet effrontery in attacking Afghanistan a
few weeks after the seizure of the hostages.
In the third volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitzyn tells of local populations refusing succour to fugitives, in fear of reprisals. He remarks that the Soviet regime
had not only destroyed public opinion in Russia but also
undermined customs-the unwritten Jaws.
These people have everything-they have food and they have
water. Why don't we just knock on the door like beggars:
"Brothers! GOod people! Help us! We are convicts, escaped
prisoners!" Just like it Used to be in the nineteenth centurywhen people put pots of porridge, clothing, copper coins by
the paths through the taiga.
I had bread from the wives of the village
And the lads saw me right for makhorka.
Like hell we will! Times have changed. Nowadays they turn
you in. Either to salve their consciences, or to save their skins.
Because for aiding and abetting you can have a quarter slapped
on you. The nineteenth century failed to realize that a gift of
bread and water could be a political crime. 19
7. Nicaragua, Central America-and
the Americas
Unlike Persia, where collapse with much murder came
from crowds supported by world-wide opinion in their
hatred of the Shah, Nicaragua suffered full-scale civil war.
Announced several years before it occurred, civil war
came as if on schedule-with regular announcements
from guerrillas, otherwise in hiding, to the major newspapers.
Faced with a long-awaited civil war that afforded no
meaningful alternative in Nicaragua, and therefore required outside arbitration and intervention (like Henry L.
Stimson's arbitration upon request of the warring factions
in 1927 in Nicaragua), Brzezinski remarked to jean Franyois Revel, at the moment of the victory of the Sandinistas
in july, 1979, that nobody yet had found out how to
fashion democracies. 20
The truth, however, comes a little closer to home. In
announcing the "Alliance for Progress" on March 13,
1961, meant to face the threat of Castro's seizure of
power in Cuba to the rest of South America, Kennedy
connected economic aid to democracy and the rule of law.
Such an emphasis led to the public appreciation of democratic statesmen like Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela
and Alberto Lleras Camargo of Columbia 21 After a few
years the connection grew forgotten. A general neglect of
South America followed. Some years later Kissinger, without any embarrassment, disparaged its strategic "geopolitical" significance, even though Castro's destruction of the
Monroe doctrine had brought all of South America closer
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to the civil war raging in the minds of men-and in many
places, not only in their minds.
In the absence of a forthright persistent American policy to support the constructive forces in South America,
confusion deepened the polarization Castro incited in
South America. Hatred of the United States drove much
of South America (with the important exception of Brazil)
to take itself, incredibly, for part of the "Third World".
The polarization that this hatred encouraged helped destroy freedom in Chile and Uruguay and further undermine Argentina, the Canada of South America at the
beginning of the century. In its turn the destruction of
freedom in Chile (which Kissinger had ignored along with
the rest of South America until a few months before
Allende won a plurality in September 1970) became a test
of conscience throughout the world second only to the
war in Indochina. It brought South America further into
the struggle for Europe which rages throughout the world
-while Europe (with the exception of France in Africa)
tends to local riches, and the United States yields to the
distraction of the "big" problems like mainland China and
negotiations to limit arms and the danger of "nuclear
holocaust".
Civil war broke out in Nicaragua after the passage of
the Panama Canal treaty. Despite the provisions of the
treaty that allow the United States control of the canalunti1 the end of the century, an increase in instability in the
entire Caribbean followed its approvaL
Panama, which benefited most from the treaty, made a
show of its efforts to train and supply fighters for Nicaragua. (In Costa Rica there was training also, but only because the government could not prevent what it would
not openly endorse: individuals of vacillating allegiance,
probably within the government, warned the training
camps when the police sought to move against them.)
Panama, in its open encouragement of civil war in Nicaragua, which violated South American traditions of not
taking sides in the civil wars of neighbors, took the place
of Cuba, which denied involvement-until victory 22 As in
Persia, the amateurs at "revolution" took the place in public of the professionals in the seizure of power.
The war for Nicaragua began the civil war for Central
America, the only region in South America where the
United States has intervened directly (and repeatedly) to
insure freedom of the seas in the access to the canal. Reporters told of youths, or teenagers, sometimes posing as
Nicaraguans, coming to Nicaragua from all over South
and Central America-most of all from Chile, Uruguay,
Colombia and Panama. They came because they wanted
to bring a war like the war for Nicaragua home.
Propaganda crosses frontiers more quickly in South
America than anywhere else in the West. So does fear.
For men there, especially capable and important people,
often do not harbour loyalty to the lands of their birthand they keep much of their money abroad. In January
1979, people in Guatemala, where property is more evenly
distributed than in Nicaragua, said nothing like Nicaragua
75
�could happen to them for fifteen or twenty years. By De·
cember 1979 they estimated two, at the outside, five
years. El Salvador is deeply at war. In 1980 there was violence from all sides in Guatemala-more or less unreported and ignored abroad. In the immediate region, the
prize is Costa Rica, the other democracy, besides Venezuela, left in South America. Law abiding and courageous,
for instance in its votes at the UN, it is a country that
astonishes sensitive travellers in its contrast with the rest
of the region.
Other prizes are of even more consequence than Costa
Rica. Totalitarian self-conquest (for totalitarianism spreads
with the, in appearance, uncontrollable self-destruction of
states) of Central America in civil war would isolate South
America from the United States even more than the
countries of South America and the United States have
isolated themselves from each other. Self-conquest of
Central America would also mean pressure on the canal,
on the surrounding waters-an freedom of the seas, hardpressed elsewhere: by means of the willful extension of
territorial waters, by the increasing presence of the Soviet
fleet on the oceans, by Kadafi's designs on Malta (for instance, his recent attempt to keep an Italian company
from exploring for oil off its coast). An inheritance from
the eighteenth century, freedom of the seas means not
only trade and the riches it brings, but the movement of
individuals and words. Like OPEC's attack on trade, the
threat to the freedom of the seas endangers freedom
within nations, for there cannot be much freedom within
at least some nations without free movement between
them.
As his situation worsened Somoza suddenly grew, like
the Shah, unbearable to people who had hardly thought
of him before. Nobody defended him (only a few men in
Congress, who still clung to the old phrase, "He's a son-ofa-bitch, but our son-of-a-bitch"). Nobody remembered
Somoza's loyalty at the UN: Nicaragua had voted in defense of Israel, when the Shah had not. The murder of the
courageous newspaper editor, Chamorro, was connected
with Somoza. When informed of the murder, Somoza, according to people close to events, expressed astonishment genuine in appearance. The murder may have been
the work of his henchmen who killed without his knowledge as danger increased.
Unlike the Shah, Somoza and his army fought in total
disregard of international opinion, and in spite of the
United States government's refusal to supply him with
arms and spare parts after the beginning of 1979 (February 8). He was a tyrant with a tyrant's courage, mixed in
with brutality and cowardice. Unlike his successors, however, he had set a date for elections in the near future.
In some sense the extent of Somoza's dominance over
Nicaragua brought the civil war, for it made it impossible
for another caudillo to replace him with a coup in the
fashion usual in much of South America. His predominance also helped turn opinion outside Nicaragua against
him. At a time when visitors to Nicaragua itself reported
76
numbing terror in which all who did not flee were compelled to choose sides, people elsewhere hoped destruction would bring democracy. The devastation in Nicaragua with forty thousand dead still has not left its imprint
on the world's senses.
There is no way in such a situation for the United
States not to influence events. The refusal of the American government to supply arms and spare parts to Somoza
and the later refusal to intervene without the support of
the OAS (June 21-23, 1979) helped bring Somoza down
and discouraged negotiations to stop the civil war. Refugees from Nicaragua received little attention except from
newspapers in Spain and Central and South America.
With Soviet backing, the victors called for the "extradition" of Somoza after he fled; as if he, like the Shah, were
an ordinary criminal. As in Persia, there were to be no visible exiles, for exiles mean there is another side. A civil war
in which no side was entirely right came to be taken for a
"revolution." And men abroad hoped for democracy and
the rule of law.
Within Nicaragua too, hopes for democracy sprang
from terror. Towards the end almost everybody who
would say anything was against Somoza-but not, in most
instances, for the Sandinistas. Trained and armed abroad,
the Sandinistas, however, did the fighting-until towards
the end when they were joined by volunteers, many of
them adolescents. The people who tried to tell themselves
the fall of Somoza would occasion democracy were not
doing the fighting. Those who fought did not want democracy. This division between those who fought and
those who did not persisted after the cessation of open
hostilities, for the victors did not disarm themselves.
Many young people in Sandinista uniforms (which are not
distinguishable from those of the police) are said to be on
the streets of Managua and, presumably, other cities in
Nicaragua. Rebelo, a non-Sandinista member of the
Junta, remarked upon his resignation in April 1979, "How
can you have genuine pluralism under a gun?"
The coalition (the Junta) of the guerrillas and the democratically-minded individuals amounts to a truce which
allows those who fought to hold something like the acquiescence of those who did not. The guerrillas need this
truce because their aim-the self-conquest of all of Central America-can only be achieved if the rest of Central
America and the world persuade themselves that their seizure of power is actually a "revolution for democracy".
The truce also helps win credits-which are coming from
Germany (Federal Republic).
At the formation of the coalition, the armed guerrillas
also went about the country organizing the same kind of
capillary neighbourhood and local organizations that
help'ed the Communists take over in East Germany. The
recent campaign against illiteracy probably reinforced this
local control. In the spring of 1980 the guerrillas increased
their representation in the Council of State. There are indications that they, not the coalition, have come to an
understanding with the Soviets. There have been execuWINTER 1981
�tions without trial and murders and disappearances; at
least sixty-five hundred men are in prison without due
process. Although reported, these facts receive little
attention.
Civil war in Central America intensifies not only because of Western, especially American, paralysis in Persia
and Afghanistan but also because of the instability in
Cuba. Within hours after the inadvertent removal of
Cuban guards from the Peruvian embassy in the spring of
1980, something like ten thousand men sought asylum.
The misery in Cuba was plain for the whole word, including South America, to see. Costa Rica with her usual cour·
age declared her readiness to receive them, until the other
South American nations agreed about who would take
how many. The refugees would have been living witnesses
to Castro's Cuba in South America, where, in contrast to
the United States, Castro still fascinates people in spite of
themselves. Desperate to keep the refugees in the Peruvian compound out of South America, Castro allowed
thousands of others to leave for the United States to distract attention from them. He managed to make it look,
not as if they were fleeing, but as if he were "dumping"
them on the United States. To discredit them he flung
among them in unabashed spite common criminals, undesirables, and the sick unto death.
In a few weeks something like a hundred and twentyfive thousand reached the United States. Castro had
turned a responsibility that touched each of the Americas
into an embarrassment in appearance forced upon the
United States. A fitting nemesis for a President who had
announced himself a patron of ''human rights" -and who
had withdrawn his support from Somoza in their namebut had discovered he did not have the guts for it. In this
at least Kissinger recognized his limitations-without,
however, acknowledging them.
War of subversion and self-conquest abroad-in this instance, in Central America-to face down instability at
home-in this instance, in Cuba-is that the future? In
the next ten and twenty years, Soviet-supported self-conquest through chaos abroad, especially outside of Europe,
could be matched by rational struggle for liberty in "Eastern Europe". For the courage of resistance and the love of
liberty in Russia and the other countries to the east can
only be publicly ignored-as it has been in Poland in recent days by the governments of the West-at the expense of Western self-knowledge and self· respect. "Inside
the country (Russia), these are times of ever greater
repression. '' 23
8. Europe-and Us
I have said little of Europe. Our-and Great Britain'sincapacity to bring the Second World War to an end in a
real peace with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Europe has made the history of Europe our history.
But Europe, the Europe of the West, acts as if it does
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
not know that the war throughout the world is for Europe. Even when terrorists attack her innards, in Spain,
Turkey, Italy, Ireland, and Germany, her governments,
for fear of offending the Soviets and because of guilt at
previous weakness before violence, act not as if Europe is
under attack, but as if terrorism is their own domestic affair. Even a man of the intelligence and courage of Raymond Aron says that Soviet nuclear predominance is
"only" important because of its "political effects." As if
"political effects," in this instance the disintegration of
daily life and the death-like yielding up of the courage to
live, were not what is at stake in the struggle! Surrender
threatens to take place without struggle and, therefore, is
more likely to lead to self-destructive violence and the resignation which leads to total war.
Not recognizing the war now going on means expecting
that a brutal civil war, in which communist trained and
supplied forces brought down the tyrant, will bring de·
mocracy to Central America. It means taking it for
granted that totalitarian regimes can interfere in civil
wars, but not free governments.
The European civil war (for with no apparent limited
objectives the war that started in 1914 has turned into a
civil war-into a war to undo governments and even to
change "human" character) that came to a halt but not to
an end in 1945 has continued outside of Europe, first of
all in 1950 with the Soviet-supported attack on Korea. But
somehow because it was only Europe that really counted,
Europe that center of so much to love and so much to
hate, so obviously destroyed and wrecked, we and especially Europe, Western Europe, did not realize that the
European civil war, the World War in the twentieth century, continued-because it continued outside of Europe.
The war continued also in Eastern Europe with the Soviet slaughter of six hundred workers in Berlin in 1953 and
of unnumbered Hungarians in 1956 and with the tanks in
Prague in 1968. Yet Western Europe, at least its governments, forgot these events.
Without any reference to the rest of the world, NATO
centered on the defense of this Europe of the West, and
the United States' commitment to it. In the beginning
there was some pretence that NATO was directed against
Germany-the treaty names no enemy, for fear of offend·
ing the Soviet regime. In those very years the Soviet
Union sent many of its veterans from the Second World
war to the camps because Stalin feared the courage they
had learned in battle. He thus showed that he could not
bring the war to an end abroad, because he feared to end
it at home.
No matter what the Uriifed States did, Europe could no
longer hold its sway abroad. More than any country Britain showed the extent war had undone Europe. Had undone victors as well as defeated-the unmistakable mark
of a civil war-for, although she had stood alone and victorious, she suffered a loss of confidence similar to the defeated and conquered. With the intelligence that comes
of courage, she helped Greece save herself from herself
77
�until the beginnings of civil war, in the latter half of 1946.
Then she astonished Marshall, Acheson, and Truman at
the end of February 1947 with the announcement that
she would withdraw from Turkey as well as Greece in six
weeks. She no longer looked outward upon the world. She
turned herself on herself. Her political life threatened to
turn into an ideological struggle. This struggle eroded the
consensus that makes possible law-abiding opposition, in
which sides respect each other enough to criticize each
other. As in many countries in the rest of Europe, parties
in Britain threatened to turn into factions. They spoke
words incomprehensible to each other, and acted as if
only domestic strife counted, as if there were no world
elsewhere. This was especially true after Parliament's inability to get the truth out of the government after the
failure in the Suez 1956.
The withdrawal of Europe, encouraged by the United
States, freed the rest of the world to imitate the worst of
Europe, in the name of ridding itself of Europe, to continue the civil war and slaughter that had brought Europe
to exhausted dependence on the United States. The more
much of the rest of the world denied Europe, the more it
imitated Europe servilely. As everybody knows, huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin hang in the main
square of Peking. The world knows neither how to get
along with Europe or without it. Except for the United
States.
The United States showed an answer to the questions
that had been tearing Europe apart-a way of recovery
from the civil war that the French Revolution had
brought to Europe. This capacity to cope with Europe
because they could distinguish themselves meaningfully
from it drew Tocqueville. His book on Democracy in
America tells as much about Europe as about America.
Mindful of the security two oceans gave the Federation, Tocqueville wondered whether its open way of life
would withstand conflict with other nations once its success drew it into the world-into Europe. With a constitution centered on preserving men from themselves, could
it cope with others, especially with wars, which are the
stuff of history?
Tocqueville called the United States a democracy, not a
republic, at a time when egalitarian aspirations had not
yet overcome experience of Republican sobriety. This
emphasis on the egalitarian temptation in the American
way of living that Tocqueville took to be irresistible told of
his experience of Europe's levelling and the reaction
against it which appeared to force a choice between
equally outrageous alternatives. At the same time that he
saw the future in the United States, Tocqueville wondered whether they could remain free of the struggles
that were at Europe.' Egalitarianism and thirst for direct
participation might undo representative institutions
based on the recognition of differences in ability and character; The Federalist's distinction between ancient, direct
democracy and a federated, representative republic might
give way to the pressure of men's aspirations and words.
78
To some extent, especially in recent years, his doubts
have shown themselves in our life. But we remain a Republic in some sense in spite of ourselves.
The Europeanization of the politics of the United
States occurred, to an astonishing extent, during the Indochina war, which produced a kind of extremization, "politicization," and polarization of attitudes. There were
fearful analogies to the polarization that in many European countries prolongs the European Civil War brought
to a truce in Europe in 1945.
In some sense it was difficult to tell whether the United
States was being Europeanized or Europe Americanized.
In the United States there was the collapse of many in the
groups taken for the "Establishment" in the face of the
threat of disapproval of crowds (made up to some extent
of their sons and daughters and their friends) in the years
1968-69. A collapse Kissinger powerfully describes in his
memmrs.
The declarations against the war in Indochina often
took exaggeration for conviction. They often rang hollow,
because they served to deny, rather than to admit, individual responsibility and error. A few years later, in 1978, the
international show "trial" and murder of Aldo Mora with
his ambiguous forced confessions further emphasized the
relation of these testimonials to totalitarian self-accusations. Above all the "times" required you to bear witness
against yourself by attacking yourself in others.
... Special attention must be paid . .. to clandestine activities
since a person is inclined to forget something if it is not waved
in front of his eyes. The West and developing countries are
filled with citizens who by reason of their positions are able to
promote Soviet influence and expansionist goals.
Some of them are motivated by ideas that at least merit discussion. After all, in the Soviet Union, the ideological epicenter, and in China as well, Communist ideology is not a
complete fraud, not a total delusion. It arose from a striving
for truth and justice, like other religious, ethical and philosophical systems ...
There are others among such people who conduct themselves in a "progressive" manner because they consider it
profitable, prestigious or fashionable.
A third category consists of naive, poorly informed or indifferent people who close their eyes and ears to the bitter truth
and eagerly swallow any sweet lie.
Finally there is the fourth group-people who have been
"bought" in the most direct sense of the word, riot always
with money. These include some political figures, businessmen, a great many writers and journalists, government advisers, and heads of the press and television. Over all, they
make up quite a group of influential people. 24
Recently, one of the most courageous journalists of
Europe, Indro Montanelli, founder of the important
newspaper, II Giornale Nuovo, took the measure of the
confusion of American and European ''public" opinion
that passed itself off as agreement. In the midst of criticizing Carter for vacillatioll, hypocrisy, and weakness, he
suddenly asked himself: Whose president is this, anyhow?
WINTER 1981
�This is our president, he answered himself. We made him
with our demonstrations and protests against the war in
Vietnam. What did we have in Italy to do with that war?
Nobody asked us to fight and die in it.
Montanelfi' s observation helps us understand why the
confusion of America and Europe occurred. It came of
the United States' evasiveness towards its allies as well as
towards its own citizens. For who has ever heard of a socalled "imperial" power undertaking a war without the
help, without even the strong public support of almost all
its major allies? Kissinger writes in his memoirs of the em-
barrassed desire of European leaders to avoid Vietnam,
even in private conversation.
The present dangerous ambiguity in Europe is connected with the crisis in American leadership, that is, in
American self-knowledge and capacity to remember and
to distinguish its responsibilities from those of others. To
my knowledge some of the Israeli leaders are the only men
in office who can reason coherently in public with reference to what actually happened in the past, with a living
grasp of international law and the distinction between war
and peace. Kissinger in his memoirs attributes occasional
examples of admirable lucidity to Nixon, but they are always private words-not even words for his cabinet.
Since 1945 it has become clear that it takes much
longer than a generation for countries and governments
destroyed in war, to rebuild confidence, good sense, and
readiness to take responsibility for themselves and their
defense. Expectations in 1945-1948 overestimated the
difficulties of economic recovery and underestimated the
difficulties of political recovery. Individuals were too
stunned by the slaughter and destruction to take in its
political consequences.
There was even a tendency to take economic recoverywhich has turned out to be much more than recoveryfor political recovery instead of as the necessary but not
the sufficient condition for political recovery. In fact
Europe's prosperity has made Europe's lack of political
self-confidence and fear of self all the more brutally apparent. This contrast between well-being and lack of confidence in government and politics had much to do with
the crisis in Europe in the seventies. A similar terror of
self took hold in the United States.
There are dramatic signs that things are changing deeply
in Europe-or could change-if leaders in the United
States woke up and exercised leadership (like the leadership General Haig exercised at the risk of his life when he
led NATO). Europe in the last years appears to have admitted to itself that its grasp of events at home and abroad
is weak. This is most obvious in France (which still counts
in matters of intellectual leadership) but it appears to be
happening also in Italy and elsewhere. We see a readiness
to drop Marxist ideology and to admit that it has served
largely as an evasion of reality and of hard study for something like a generation. We see also a refusal, after the
euphoria of the past, to entertain illusions about the Communist parties in the West. This readiness to drop pretenTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sions means there is less shouting, and a good deal of
emptiness. But it is an emptiness in which fundamental
facts stand out in their isolation.
It is time to return to the less pretentious authors;
Cavour, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, The
Federalist, Mirabeau:_and the road to them, oddly, leads
through the Russian writers. For we have had to learn
common sense in blood, other people's blood.
In Italy individuals in their late teens appear more lithe
and resilient than people of the same age twenty years
ago. About ten years ago teenage couples openly holding
hands appeared on the streets of Rome. These young people seem more pragmatic, much less, if at all, given to the
self-immolation in ideology which characterized many of
those fifteen and twenty years older. But they need to
hear common sense. The man and woman in their early
twenties who wrote the remarkable pornographic novel
that is also a love story, Porci con le Ali (Pigs with Wings),
show more clearheaded understanding of life in Italy in
the last fifteen years than most of the men now in their
late thirties or early forties who are coming into the center
of Italian politics. The generation that went through the
war and the destruction of freedom in the twenties and
thirties, which had in some sense neither fathers nor sons,
also appears finally on the verge of coming to terms with
itself. Those in most trouble are those in between, those
in their late thirties and forties who wish to belong to the
new world but refuse to admit they are caught in the
breakdown of the old.
France has awakened to the realization that she has become a serious contemporary nation, ready to work and
compete in international markets. In the face of an organized attempt to destroy her government in terrorism,
Italy shows remarkable courage and unanimity. Many of
her public men and her journalists do not flinch before
death or disablement in the streets. This war has cleared
heads: the Socialists have distinguished themselves to
some extent from the Communists, and the Christian
Democrats, in response to the electorate and with continuing internal struggle, are facing the Communists instead
of entertaining coalition with them.
The debate in the fall and winter of 1979 about receiving Pershing and Cruise missiles was fierce throughout
Europe, even in France which, with its forces not directly
under NATO command, had nothing to decide. In Italy,
Cossiga's government openly braved Communist opposition to win acceptance of the missiles in a debate comparable in intensity to the decision to join NATO and the
West in 1949. During the debate, Gromyko visited Bonn,
and Ponomarev, in charge of subversion abroad, appeared
before an Italian Parliamentary committee. Such interferences in "internal affairs" were unthinkable ten years ago.
The first direct elections to the Parliament of Europe in
June 1979 showed something like sixty percent participation (thirty percent in England). Despite the presentation
of issues, in many countries, in terms of domestic politics,
people knew the vote was for Europe. It was not clear,
79
�however, whether Europe meant also Europe to the east.
By his visit to Poland at the time of the election, Pope
John Paul II reminded western Europe of Europe's larger
disaster-especially in his distinction between nation and
regime.
There is also a darker possibility. Under threat of Soviet
SS 20 missiles, already pointed at every major city in Eu·
rope, and new installations every week, Europe, despite
its denials, threatens to take its distance from the United
States. It is an open secret that relations between the
United States and Germany have been troubled.
In the face of the courage and responsibility of Poland,
western governments did little. Perhaps necessarily, but
not wisely, for weakness does not amount to the prudence
of restraint. And Poland's renewed struggle is only in its
beginnings. Taken more or less for granted, Soviet domi·
nance of Poland violates both the Yalta agreements,
which centered on Poland, and the more recent Helsinki
agreements. The response of the governments of Europe,
with the exception of Britain, to the Soviet attack on
Afghanistan was weak. It did not lead to economic sane·
lions to match those of the United States. (Australian, Argentinian, Canadian, and Western European surpluses
largely undid the American refusal to sell seventeen million tons of grain to the Soviet Union). It did not even lead
to a boycott of the Olympics-with the exception of Ger·
many and Japan. (The governments of Great Britain and
Italy could not persuade their Olympic committees to
withdraw.) There was more resistance to Persia's under-
mining of international custom. The readiness of the governments of Europe to let things drift in indecision shows
itself in their slowness in admitting Spain and Portugal
into the common market and Spain into NATO (while
the Soviet Union hints that Basque terrorism will cease if
Spain stays out of NATO).
The drift of some of the governments of Europe towards unacknowledged accommodation undermines the
confidence of their best citizens. Except for the Commu·
nists the whole French press criticized Giscard's readiness
to meet Brezhnev in Warsaw soon after the Soviet attack
on Afghanistan.
At a moment when there are indications of the political
recovery of Europe from the devastation of the World
War, Europe is most threatened. Its life defies Soviet policy, which since 1945 has assumed that the political recovery of Europe could not take place. With the brutality that
he took for realism Stalin said at Yalta that after such a
war there had to be an intermission for something like
fifty years. He did not think the destruction could be done
away with, that there could be a real settlement; only a
pause before the next round. Such a Soviet attitude as·
sumes that the West, especially the United States, is not
in earnest about freedom but needs to talk of it for the
purpose of its vanity. It also assumes that the defeat, dev·
astation and humiliation of Europe divide it irrevocably
frojil the United States, despite the disguise of a genera·
tioil of enterprise, hard work, and riches. The constant re-
80
call in Soviet propaganda of the destruction of the World
War, which makes visitors to Moscow think time has
stood still, testifies to the grim, but in some ways realistic
assumption, that Europe and the United States-but es·
pecially Europe-cannot recover politically from its selfdevastation.
Such an attitude amounts to holding that there is no
way of avoiding the consequences of "history" or stopping its drift, that the destruction of one generation continues after it. Just such an attitude informs Soviet refusal
to do anything about the murder in Indochina, its determination to "let it work". Sakharov writes:
A nation that has suffered the horrible losses, cruelties and
destruction of war, yearns above all for peace. This is a broad,
profound, powerful, and honest feeling. Today, the leaders of
the country do not, and cannot, go against this dominant desire of the people. I want to believe that in this regard, the Soviet leaders are sincere, that when peace is involved they are
transformed from robots into people.
But even the people's deep wish for peace is exploited, and
this is perhaps the cruelest deception of alL The deep yearning for peace is used to justify all the most negative features in
our country~economic disorder, excessive militarization,
purportedly "defensive" foreign policy measures (whether in
Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan) and lack of freedom in our
closed society ... 25
But a little later:
... The dogmatic bureaucrats and the new people replacing
them-anonymous and shrewd cynics, moving in the many
"corridors of power" of the departments of the Central Committee, the K.G.B., the ministries, and the provincial and regional party committees-are pushing the country toward
what they consider to be the safest path but that is in reality a
path to suicide.
Everything is as is was under the system of power and economy created by Stalin. The leaders carry on the arms race,
concealing it behind talk of their love of peace. 26
And elsewhere:
But the world is facing very difficult times and cruel cataclysms if the West and the developing countries trying to find
their place in the world do not now show the required firmness, unity, and consistency in resisting the totalitarian challenge.
. Europe must fight shoulder to shoulder with the transoceanic democracy, which is Europe's creation and Europe's
main hope. A certain lack of unity, of course, is the reverse
side of the coin of democratic pluralism, the West's major
strength. But this disunity is also caused by the systematic Soviet policy of driving "wedges", a policy that the West has not
resisted adequately because of carelessness and blindness ...
Western unity is one of the main conditions for international security, unity that will promote resistance and ultimately lead to rapprochement and the convergence of world
systems, averting thermonuclear catastrophe. 27
More serious than any crisis since the thirties, the present crisis comes not only because of Europe's weakness
WINTER 1981
�but also because Europe threatens to grow stronger. It
comes also because the United States has for something
like ten years been unable to exercise effective leadership.
Europe's strength still depends on our leadership.
also betrays remarkable grasp of the functioning of democracies, for instance, for the significance of Nixon's resignation in 1974 and of De
Gaulle's withdrawal in 1969.
II. From a letter addressed to President Carter from one of 40,000
Cambodians forced back into Cambodia at gunpoint after they had
sought asylum in Thailand. Henry Kamm, Internl1tional Herald Tribune,
june 16-17, 1979.
12. Neue Zuercher Zeitung, June 18, 19, 1979. At this meeting Brezhnev
said:
l. For the connection of the rise in terrori~m with an international dimension throughout the West with the 1967 war, Paul Wilkinson, "Terrorism: International Dimensions", Conflict Studies, 113, November
1979. For Soviet and East European involvement in terrorism since
1967, Brian Crozier, Strategy of Survival, London 1978. Between 1968
and 1977 more than two hundred American diplomats and more than
five hundred simple citizens and businessmen suffered at the hands of
terrorists. Fifty were murdered. Israeli intelligence found three maps of
an East German training camp with one of the terrorist's names written
on the back after a PLO attack near Tel Aviv on March II, 1978 in
which thirty four Israelis were murdered. In October 1971 Dutch authorities at Schipol airport seized four tons of Czech anns destined for
the Provisional IRA.
See now Robert Moss, "Terrorism," The New York Times Magazine,
Sunday, November 2, 1980. Claire Sterling's book on terrorism in its international dimension will appear in the spring (Holt Rinehart &
Winston). International Terrorism-the Communist Connection, Washington, 1978. See also, Stefan T. Possony and L. Francis Bouchey.
2. The Security Resolution (242, November 22, 1967) does not mention the fedayeen but speaks simply of "achieving a just settlement of
the refugee problem."
3. The Economist, December 22-28, 1979, 7-8 and 49-50. In 1979 imports of foreign oil were thirty percent above 1973.
4. Milovan Djilas, Wartime, New York 1977, 384-385.
5. Nadezha Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, New York 1970, 289.
6. Time, January 22, 1979.
7. Baa Ruo-Wang (Jean Pasqualini) and Rudolph Chelminski, Prisoner
of Mao, New York 1973 (Penguin Books 1979); see also Lai Ying, The
Thirty-Sixth Way, New York 1969.
8. This is Simon Ley's {"Human Rights in China", National Review,
December 8, 1978, 1537-1545 and 1559) characterization of Prisoner of
Mao.
9. Vladimir Bukovsky, TO Build A Castle-My Life as a Dissenter, New
York 1979,414-416.
10. See the statement of Wei Jingsheng, introduced by Simon Ley, "La
lutte pour Ia liberte en Chine", Commentaire 7, 353-360. Imprisoned
recently, Wei Jingsheng shows similarities between Teng Hsiao-p'ing's
way of dealing with the past and Mao Zedong's way of operating. He
The Soviet Union opposes any interference in the internal
affairs of any other country. We are persuaded of the principle that every people has a right to determine its own destiny.
What is the point of the attempts to make the Soviet Union
responsible for the objective course of history and to use
them as pretexts for worsening relations?
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
13. NZZ, july 24, 1979.
14. NZZ, June 19, 1979; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 19,1979.
For the Vietnamese among the boat people, NZZ July 25, 1979, 3.
15. Bruno Bettelheim, "Reflections", The New Yorker 52, August 2,
1976, 31-36.
16. Joseph Churba, The Politics of Defeat, America's Decline in the Middle East, New York 1977.
17. Sec Paul Eidelberg, "Can Israel Save the U.S.?", Midstream, December, 1978, 3-9.
18. See Robert Moss, "The Campaign to Destabilise Iran," Conflict
Studies 101, November 1978. In the summer of 1978, Navid, a weekly
published in Persia with the covert sponsorship of the KGB, called for
an "anti-dictatorial broad front" with the mullahs playing an important
role:
We are ready to put at the disposal of our friends from other
political groups all our political, propaganda and technical resources for the campaign against the Shah.
19. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gult1g Archipelago 1918-1956, 3,
New York 1978, 161.
20. Henry L. Stimson, American Policy in Nicaragua, New York 1927.
21. See President Kennedy's Message to Congress of March 22, 1961.
Also Carlos Rangel, The Latin Americans, New York 1977, 55-57.
22. For the Cuban and Nicaraguan admission of Cuba's role in Nicaragua, NZZ july 28, 1979, 3.
23. Andrei D. Sakharov, "A Letter from Exile", The New Yorl< Times
Magazine, June 8, 1980.
24. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
25. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
26. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
27. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
81
�The Streets on Which
Hertnan Melville Was Born and Died
Meyer Liben
Suddenly a file card showed up among my papers, and
on it was written:
Herman Melville
Born-6 Pearl St., NYC
Died-104 East 26th St., NYC
I live midway between these two streets, each is within
walking distance, and it struck me as proper (walk or no) to
visit both these locations.
Very few of our classic American authors were born in
New York City, and Melville is the only one I can think of
who was born and died in New York City, on Manhattan
Island (which I unfairly equate with New York City).
Henry James was born in New York City and died in
London.
I know that Pearl Street is close to the Battery, and I
had no particular difficulty in finding it. Walking east on
the street, the numbers were growing (!) higher, so I
turned around, walked west, and found 6 Pearl Street. It is
on the south side of the street, Pearl Street lying between
State Street on the west and Whitehall Street on the east.
Six Pearl Street is now a rather handsome modern building, the Seaman's Church Institute of New York, which is
located at 15 State Street but swings around the corner
onto Pearl. On the side of the Institute building, next to a
garage entrance (one leading down) is a plaque with the
following inscription:
Meyer Liben (1911-1975) was a New York writer much of whose work
remains unpublished. (See "From Our Readers")
82
"Heritage of New York"
A house on this site was the birthplace
of the novelist and poet
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
"Moby Dick," among his numerous sea-tales
attained enduring recognition
in American literature
Plaque erected 1968 by the New York Community Trust
Two things struck me particularly. One was the transposition of his birth and death dates (first wrote birth and
life dates), and I wondered what were the statistical possibilities for such a transposition, and whether among the
Pythagoreans or the Kabbalists, whose emphasis on numbers is so well known, such a transposition has a special
meaning. It is a kind of reverse symmetry, adds an eccen-
tric or mysterious dimension to the fixity, the unalterableness, of the dates of birth and death.
The other thing that struck me was the emphasis on
Melville as a teller of sea-tales. Although so much of his
writing is about the sea (Pierre and Bartleby are two notable exceptions that come to mind) I don't think of him as a
writer about the sea, because, I guess, of the power of his
psychological and· metaphysical ruminations, or maybe
because so many of his great works are not exactly "sea
yarns," though a deep and intricate narrative pulses
through them.
The place of Melville's birth is now surrounded by skyscrapers. A huge office building takes up all of the other,
WINTER 1981
�the northern side of the street. It is I Battery Park Plaza,
as well as 24 State Street.
Next door to the birthplace is a fairly new restaurant
building with some offices in it, and then a huge office
skyscraper, almost completed, extends to Whitehall, and
goes back to State, kind of surrounding the Church
Institute.
Pearl Street is fairly narrow. It is just off Battery Park, a
few blocks away from the Battery itself. One can see the
Bay (if that's what it is at this point) and smell the sea.
To get the feel of the street (on which Melville lived for
the first five years of his life and which, according to
William Earl Dodge, in a speech delivered on April 27,
1880, entitled "A Great Merchant's Recollections of Old
New York," and reprinted in Valentine's Manual, 1921,
was the wholesale dry goods center of the city in 1818
when he, Dodge, worked there as a boy, at a time when
the city's population was less than 120,000, and the
Battery a favorite promenade), I walked east, past the U.S.
Army building on Whitehall Street (now the city's main
induction center, and the scene of many disturbances
against the Vietnam War). A short distance from
Whitehall is Moore Street. There are a number of old
buildings on the north side of Pearl, though it is difficult
to guess their age, and I saw none dated. One of the old
row of buildings is:
E. Bergendahl Co.
Ship Chandlers
Down to Broad Street the buildings are quite modern.
On the corner of Broad and Pearl is the Fraunces Tavern,
scene of Washington's Farewell to his officers (is this another famous farewell address?).
Still heading east on Pearl Street, there is a row of quite
old buildings between Broad and Coenties Slip, which
buildings seem to be coming down, and on the corner of
Pearl and Coenties Slip is
Carroll's Bar & Grill
Est. 1856
the bar closed and padlocked.
(Melville mentions Coenties Slip in Redburn:
"Coenties Slip must be somewheres near ranges of
grimlooking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled
on the walk. Old-fashioned coffee houses, also, much
abound in that neighborhood, with sun-burnt sea captains
going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about
Havana, London, and Calcutta."
Curious in the above paragraph is Melville's change
from umust," as though he were writing about a place he
had heard about, to an actual description of the neighborhood in which he was born.)
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Continuing east, close to Hanover Square (that's a
name you'd think would have been changed during the
Revolution), at 93 Pearl, is an old building with the sign
The Hamilton Press, then a street unnamed, going north
(the car traffic, that is) which a passerby told me was Wall
Street, then Pine, Maiden Lane, John, mostly full of huge
office buildings ....
I walked back on the north side of Pearl, but saw nothing new from this perspective, and sat down on a bench in
Battery Park.
So this was Melville's block as a kid. The stones tell you
nothing. Why should they? They're not even his stones.
And if they were his stones? Knocking your head against a
stone street.
I wondered if Hawthorne's choice of the name Pearl for
the ethereal illegitimate girl in The Scarlet Letter had anything to do with the name of the street on which his
friend was born.
So much social and physical change in this century and
a half, but Pearl Street probably winds as ever, with the
s.rme contours.
I heard the cries of boys playing ball in the park, glad-some cries winning me away from this search for spirit in
stone.
(Still wondering what the neighborhood was like then, I
later looked into the New York City Guide-seeking spirit
in paper-put out in 1939 by the Federal Writers Project.
There is no mention of Melville being born on Pearl
Street. The origin of the street name is given thus: " ... so
named because of the sea shells found there in the days
when the East River almost reached this street."
So Pearl Street goes right across Manhattan Island.
The Guide notes that Melville is buried in the
Woodlawn Cemetery, 233rd Street and Webster Avenue,
in the Bronx. But there are hardly any cemeteries in
Manhattan.)
104 East 26th Street is between Park Avenue South
(4th Avenue) and Lexington Avenue. I often pass the
street on my way to the Belmore Cafeteria, a few blocks
away on 4th Avenue, a favorite haunt of taxicab drivers.
104 is at the end of the Armory which fronts on Lexington
Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets and then swings
around toward 4th Avenue. The site of the house in
which Melville died is about the same distance from the
corner of 4th Avenue as the house on Pearl Street in
which he was born is from State Street.
I walked the block, whose buildings are mostly fairly
new, except for the Elton Hotel, at 101 East 26th Street,
right across the street from 104, and this hotel could easily
have been there when Melville was alive. It looks kind of
run-down now. The street is a stony one, a block of unrelieved stone. Spirit is buried in stone, the way spirit and
heart are buried in a body. I looked at the stones on East
26th Street, as though for a sign from the household gods.
Shall these stones live?
83
�Walking back toward 4th Avenue and the Belmore Cafeteria (after looking at the front of the Armory), I noticed,
next to the number 104 on the Armory wall, that someone
had scrawled, in black crayon on a whitewashed section of
the wall:
Herman Melville lived here
which Melville was born had come down. Stones come
down, cities of stone come down, countries disappear
'from sight (the way Atlantis sank to the bottom of the
sea), books and papers turn to dust, we have memories
and die with them. Such was the conventional nature of
the melancholia, gloom, which passed over and through
me at thought of the dissolution of our human-made objects by the combined presence and labor of time, air, water, fire, and man.
not
Herman Melville died here
What will outlast stone, paper, and the memory of
man? Spirit, we hope, and the spirit, for one, of Herman
Melville Lives!
Had I a black crayon in my pocket, I could have scrawled
that on the wall, knowing full well that it would have been
rubbed off one day, sooner or later, or might conceivably
last as long as the building (for why would anyone want to
erase from an armory wall the. notation that Herman
Melville lived here, that he lives?), disappear when these
stones came down, the way the stones of the building in
84
Melville, whose books, the paper on which they are written and printed, will surely dissolve, the memory of
Melville and his works maybe disappear, but the word (we
hope) which was in the beginning, lives through to the
end (of some new beginning), maybe (I imagine) in some
flaming scroll that neither time nor the elements can destroy, and so back to the imagination and memory of man.
But who knows where or if it is, and it is not our business
to seek (doesn't seem to be here on 26th Street between
4th and Lexington Avenues), likely not even to think
about it (much).
WINTER 1981
�De Gaulle's Le fil de /'epee (1932)
Will Morrisey
N !927, optimism pervaded the world. The international
Left admired Stalin; the Right applauded Mussolini;
centrists remembered Wilson fondly and put their faith
in the League of Nations. Non-ideologues could afford to
ignore the political enthusiasts, for there was money to be
made and Lindbergh's exploits to celebrate.
The French shared the fashionable sentiment of the
day, but contrived a unique expression of it: the Maginot
Line, a series of fortifications built along the German
border in hope of suppressing whatever ambitions their
former enemies might still harbor. The French government, including its military leaders, believed that a defensive strategy was more prudent than one of counter-attack; in the Great War they had learned (too well) that the
strategy of attack-at-any-cost brought exhaustion and
stalemate. Thus pacifism, another aspect of optimism,
provided buttressing for this sentiment, a place for humanitarian worship.
But the country was not free of heretics. Marshall
Henri Petain dissented, albeit with discretion; he was fortunate to have a less cautious protege who could be sent
out for the riskier acts of sacrilege. Major Charles de
Gaulle, at Petain's insistence, was allowed to read three
lectures to higher-ups at the Ecole Superieure. Being
higher-ups, they doubtless found the young officer's subject provocative:
I
The more he spoke, the more uncomfortable and angry the
professors in the front row became. For de Gaulle's theme was
the vital role of leadership, and the picture he painted of the
leader was at once a criticism of his superiors, a justification of
himself and a veiled but unmistakable tribute to the Marshall. I
A freelance political writer, Will Morrisey is an associate editor of
Interpretation-A Journal of Political Philosophy. This article comes
from om unpublished book, De Gaulle/Malraux: Reflections.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Petain, who introduced each lecture, must have enjoyed
himself. De Gaulle's career was not advanced, however,
and a repeat performance at the Sorbonne later that year
did not even cause resentment-only indifference. The
lectures were, to use Nietzsche's word, untimely.
Later, de Gaulle revised them, added a 1925 article on
military doctrine and a new essay on the relationship of
the military to politics, and published them in 1932 under
the title Le fil de I'epee. At the time, few cared to read this
apologia of an obscure man. But twelve years later the
man was no longer obscure, and the second edition sold
well. The book had turned out to be not only an apologia
but, as Stanley Hoffman has written, "a self-portrait in anticipation."' De Gaulle would become the leader he had
imagined.
*
*
*
HE FORWARD'S EPIGRAPH IS: "Etre grand, c'est soutenif
une grand querelle," *a line taken from Hamlet. But
the epigraph omits the second half of Hamlet's original sentence:
T
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honor's at the stake.
For de Gaulle, the object of contention-France-is not
at all trivial, but honor is indeed at the stake, along with
survival.
He begins:
*All quotations from Le fil de !'epee (Paris 1944), "Le Livre de Poche"
edition (Paris 1973). All translations are the author's.
85
�Incertitude marks our epoch [as it marks Hamlet]. So many
denials ["dementis"; also "disappointments" or "contradictions"] of conventions, -previsiOns, doctrines, so many trials,
losses, deceptions, so many scandals, shocks, surprises have
shaken the established order.
The military, being part of that order, suffers from
"melancholy"; de Gaulle notes that this is usual after a
period of effort. But this usualness consoles no one;
everything in "the ambiance of the times appears to trouble the conscience of the professionals". The masses, having endured the cruelties of force, "react with passion"
against it. A "mystique" arises, which not only causes men
to curse war but "inclines [them] to believe it out-of-date
[perimee: also, "no longer valid"], to such a degree as they
wish that it were." Men try to exorcise this "evil genie";
"to inspire the horror of sin, a thousand painters apply
themselves to representing [war's] ravages." They evoke
"only the blood, the tears, tombs, not the glory with
which people consoled their sorrows." They deface "History's" traits "under the pretext of effacing war," thus attacking the military order "at its root." In his first book, La
discorde chez l' ennemi, de Gaulle showed how immoderation and imbalance undermined the legitimacy of the
German rulers during the Great War. In Le fil de ['epee he
warns that immoderate fear of war threatens the
legitimacy of the French military and, ultimately, that of
the state.
De Gaulle finds this ambiance "only too easily explicable"; it is
... the instinct of preservation of enfeebled Europe, which
senses the risks of a new conflict. The spectacle of a sick man
who shakes his fist at death can leave no person unfeeling.
He also discerns a rhetorical strategy. Those who would
establish an "international order"-obviously, he refers to
the League of Nations and its publicists-in the name of
the people (who are, de Gaulle remarks tartly, "temporarily
made wiser"), need "a vast collective emotion" to do it.
"Now one does not rouse crowds other than by elementary sentiments, violent images, brutal invocations."
Clearly de Gaulle does not lack rhetorical skill either; here
he accuses the internationalists of the same sort of
rhetoric that they decry. He also reminds them of other
sentiments:
Without disavowing any hope, where do we see that the
passions and the interests that cause armed conflict silence
their demands? that anyone renounces willingly what he has
and what he desires? that men, finally, cease to be men?
Given human nature, internationalists cannot depend on
voluntary consent when building a peaceful world order.
If such an order appears, it will appear because it was imposed. And one cannot impose anything so ambitious
without the aid of the very military force that internationalists decry. "Whatever direction the world takes, it will
not dispense with arms."
86
Indeed, de Gaulle goes beyond the negative, force-asnecessary-evil argument: "Without force, in fact, can one
conceive of life?" Only in an "immobile world." Force is
the "resource of thought, instrument of action, condition
of movement."
Shield of masters, bulwark of thrones, battering-ram of
revolutions, one owes to it, turn by turn, order and liberty.
Cradle of cities, scepter of empires, gravedigger of decadences, force gives the law to the people and regulates their
destiny.
Like Nietzsche, de Gaulle sees force as that which,
through its role in causation, pervades and unifies the
world. He may not see it as the only such entity. Force
underlies both order and liberty, for example, because it
can serve masters and revolutionaries alike. But, obviously, order and liberty are distinguishable states; they imply certain ends, not merely means. De Gaulle does not
present force as an end. It is a resource, shield, and battering-ram; it enables and regulates-but does not prescribe.
What does, then?
In truth, the military spirit, the art of soldiers, their virtues
are an integral part of the capital of humans. One sees them
incorporated in all phases of History .... For finally, can one
understand Greece without Salamis, Rome without the
legions, Christianity without the sword, Islam without the
scimitar, the Revolution without Valmy, the League of Nations without the victory of France? And then, this abnegation of individuals to the profit of the ensemble, this glorified
suffering-the mental stuff of which one makes soldierscorresponds par excellence to our esthetic and moral concepts:
the highest philosophical and religious doctrines have not
chosen another ideal.
Actually, some have-as de Gaulle knows very well. Of
the two religions mentioned here (coincidentally, he places
them in the middle of the list,- paired as if equivalent),
Christianity does not teach self-abnegation for the glory
of the ensemble, so much as it does self-abnegation for the
glory of God-and force is not the way one goes about it.
But de Gaulle will come back to this point later.
Returning to the contemporary world, de Gaulle contends that if French military strength declines, that decline would imperil/a patrie and "the general harmony" as
well. Whether it is thought to be good or bad, if military
and political power "escapes the wise, what fools will seize
it, or what madmen?" In the end, responsibility involves
power. "It is time that the military retake the consciousness of its preeminent role, that it concentrate on its object, which is, simply, war." To do this, "to restore the
edge to the sword," it must "restore the philosophy proper
to its state"; for de Gaulle, a "philosophy" both energizes
and provides the ends which energy, force, and power
serve.
Le fil de !'epee, then, contains a military philosophy, not
a "philosophy of life" -although the one implies the
WINTER 1981
�other. The book has five chapters, of two, three, three,
three, and four sections, respectively; fifteen in all.
•
•
HE FIRST CHAPTER'S TITLE- "The
T
*
Action of War" -de·
picts war as a thing one engages in, and suggests de
Gaulle's thesis that war is essentially active, not sus·
ceptible to what he calls "a priori" planning. Consonant
with this, he uses a Faustian epigraph: "In the beginning
was the Word? No! In the beginning was the Action."
Faust, like Machiavelli and Bacon, aspired to the domina·
tion of things, and this chapter studies the opposition be·
tween the autonomous flow of events, and those men
who would dominate that flow-Heraclitus versus Machi·
avelli, if you will.
"The action of war essentially comes to the character of
contingency": the enemy's strength and intentions, the
terrain, events, the direction, speed, and manner of one's
strike, men and materiel, atmospheric conditions. "In war
as in life one can apply the ["everything flows"] of the
Greek philosopher; what has taken place will no longer
take place, ever, and the action, whatever it may be, might
well not have been or been different." He quotes Bergson
(a friend of de Gaulle's family), who revived and metamorphosed Heraclitean metaphysics twenty years earlier, on
the intelligence's discomfort when it attempts to grasp
what is not constant, fixed, and definite, but is instead
mobile, unstable, and diverse. Logic doesn't work there; it
is, de Gaulle writes, like trying to catch water in a fishnet.
Intelligence does have its function: "elaborating in advance the givens of the conception, it clarifies them,
makes them precise, and reduces the chance of error". It
defines the problem, and formulates hypotheses on how
to deal with it. But the faculty that gives us "a direct con·
tact" with Hthe realities" is intuition, "the faculty which
links us most closely to nature." Intuition gives us not only
"profound perception" but the "creative impulse"; for
life (inconceivable without force) produces, and the intui·
tion, by linking us to life, enables us to be productive.
We participate in what it is possible to find there of obscure
harmony. It is by instinct [de Gaulle uses "instinct" and "intu-
ition" interchangeably] that man perceives the realitY of
conditions which surround him and that he experiences the
corresponding impulsion.
Military inspiration is analogous to that of the artist; in
either case, as de Gaulle quotes Bacon, "It is man adding
to nature." De Gaulle apparently means that man adds to
external nature by linking himself with it. He then draws
upon its productive force, which expresses an obscure in-
herent harmony; this force, filtered through man, re·
emerges in the world in order to master it. Alexander's
"hope," Caesar's "fortune," and Napoleon's "star" were
"simply the certitude of a particular gift putting them in a
strict enough relation to realities to dominate them
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
always." One might recall Bacon's observation that to
master nature one must know and use nature's laws. But
de Gaulle, unlike Bacon, promises no utopias brought by
the advancement of learning. Human nature has limits,
and de Gaulle recognizes that fact more clearly than
Bacon does. The most J:!e asserts is that such great men
give others "the impression of a natural force which will
command events"; they possess, as Flaubert said of Han-
nibal (in Salammb6), "the indefinable splendor of those
destined for great enterprises." (Nevertheless, despite his
assertion that such men can dominate realities, the ex-
amples he chooses are of men who could not dominate
them "always," as he surely realizes.)
· The intelligence takes what instinct gives it and makes
those "givens" coherent, definite.* This enables the
military leader to set goals and priorities, decide timing,
and placement, coordinate the various operations and
their phases-in a word, to synthesize.
It is why all the great men of action have been meditative.
All possessed to the highest degree the faculty to retreat into
themselves, to deliberate inwardly.
Some critics exalt instinct, claiming that there is no true
art of war because chance alone determines battles. De
Gaulle cites Socrates, who, he claims, told Nichomachides
that the popular assembly's choice of a leader was unim·
portant because a dishonest and incapable citizen would
lead the army no worse than a skillful and conscientious
general. But that is not what Socrates says in the pass~ge
de Gaulle alludes to. In Xenophon's Memorabilia, Book
III, chapter 4, Nichomachides complains that the assembly elected Antisthenes, a man without Nichomachides'
military experience to be a general. What Socrates con·
tends is not that the choice of commanders doesn't matter, but that military experience doesn't matter. He claims
instead that what matters is the ability to rule. Antisthenes
had managed a chorus well, even though he had no musi·
cal skill, because he found the best masters to do his work
for him.
Xenophon's words could not be innocently misread as
de Gaulle misreads them. A slip of memory is just as
unlikely, for de Gaulle's memory, which he trained since
childhood, was nearly infallible when he wanted it to be.
As if to prove it, de Gaulle next correctly recalls Socrates'
remarks to Pericles (son of the famous Pericles), which oc·
cur in the following chapter of the Memorabilia. "It is
true," .de Gaulle writes, "that the same Socrates, inter-
rogated by Pericles on the cause of the indiscipline of the
Athenian troops, held responsible their leaders, who were
incapable of commanding them." De Gaulle has good
reason to be "forgetful" concerning the Socratic defense
*Although de Gaulle writes that the iritelligence attributes form to the
"givens" instinct provides, it's important to recall that the givens are not
inchoate, but possess "an obscure harmony" of their own. To what extent that harmony must match the form attributed to the givens by intelligence is not clear; obviously, there must be some relationship, or the
battle-plan wouldn't work.
87
�of amateurism in war; as we've seen, de Gaulle wants
France to have a professional army. De Gaulle prizes
military experience. His book is an attack on the notion
that anyone who can rule well can also rule an army. The
last chapter, "Politics and the Soldier," gives a more subtle view of the relationship between politicians and
soldiers than Xenophon's teaching. Perhaps de Gaulle
cites Xenophon falsely-as Bacon, in his Essays, cites the
execution of Socrates under the oligarchy-to seem
authoritative to the ignorant and to stimulate those who
are not ignorant.
De Gaulle's mention of Socrates' teaching to Pericles'
son also has a point for those who know that passage. In
their conversation, Socrates and young Pericles consider
how one may lead the Athenians so as to enhance the city's
fame and to defeat its enemies. Notable among these ene·
mies are the Boeotians, "who formerly did not dare, even
on their own soil, to meet the Athenians in the field
without the aid of the Spartans and the other Peloponnesians"; the Boeotians now "threaten to invade Attica
single-handed."' They can do so because Athenian
military affairs are commanded by "men who are greatly
deficient in knowledge." To counter this threat, Socrates
suggests that the Athenians, "if equipped with light
arms," could "do great mischief to our enemies, and form
a strong bulwark for the inhabitants of our country" by oc·
cupying the mountains on the frontiers of Attica,
especially those bordering on Boeotia.
The parallel between democratic France, threatened
(according to de Gaulle and Petain) by Germany, and ancient democratic Athens, threatened by Boeotia, is suggestive. France, it is true, has no mountains on the German
border; but in a 1928 essay called "The Historical Role of
French Places," de Gaulle described the military uses that
French terrain had and could be put to. He praised the
use of fortifications, but also insisted on the need for
mobility-precisely the combination of a strong defensive
bulwark and a maneuverable attack force that Socrates
recommends to Pericles.
De Gaulle ends this "epistemological" essay by noting
that military men sometimes neglect the cultivation of intelligence, especially when afflicted by the "depression of
spirits" which follows a "great victorious effort." But
more frequently they make the opposite error, longing to
''deduce the conception of known constants in advance"
-what de Gaulle calls "a priorism" -an activity which
''exercises a singular attraction over the French mind."
The "speculative and absolute character" of such dogmas
"render them seductive and perilous."
In section ii de Gaulle turns to the non-intellectual
faculties of the leader. Petain, he tells us, said that giving
orders calls for the greatest effort of any part of an action.
"In fact," de Gaulle continues, "the intervention of the
human will in the chain of events has something ir·
revocable about it"; from this derives the military leader's
responsibility, one of "such weight that few men are
capable of supporting it entirely."
88
It is why the highest qualities of mind do not suffice.
Without doubt, the intelligence aids, without doubt, instinct
pushes, but, in the last resort, the decision is of the moral
order.
An officer must act, and not conceal his incapacity by
claiming that he has no specific orders, or by looking after
details only, as certain French generals did during the
Franco-Prussian War. The other extreme, the exaggeration of initiative "to the point of violating discipline and
smashing the convergence of efforts," was exemplified by
the German general, Alexander von Kluck, during the
Battle of the Marne; such indiscipline usually occurs in
"the absence or the softness of the decisions of the
superior echelon." (De Gaulle studies the von Kluck inci·
dent in his 1924 book, La discorde chez l'ennemi and later
discusses the Franco-Prussian war in La France et son
armee, published in 1938.)
The mean between these two extremes is "the spirit of
enterprise," necessary if the leader will "win over the
others." He must do so, for he needs not only to know
what he wants to do and to order it done, but to have the
authority that ensures his men's obedience. Army discipline helps-it is a sort of contract wherein subordinates
pledge their obedience-"but it does not suffice for the
leader to bind the executants by an impersonal
obedience.''
It is in their souls that he must imprint his living mark. To
move their wills, to seize, to animate them to turn themselves
toward the purpose that he has assigned them; to make grow
and to multiply the effects of discipline by a moral suggestion
which surpasses reasoning; to crystallize around himself all
that there is in their souls of faith, of hope, of latent devotion
(but not, apparently, of charily)-such is [the nature of] his
domination.
Training of leaders is part of the preparation for war;
such preparation can occur during a war or during
peacetime. But peacetime is a poor time to prepare for
war (although obviously, one should not wait until the
enemy attacks), because it produces second-rate leaders.
Good leaders are hard to recruit in peacetime: "the pro·
found motive of the activity of the best and the strongest
is the desire to acquire power," and the peacetime army
offers ambitious men no place to command, and slow advancement. De Gaulle, again echoing Nietzsche, defines
"power" broadly. After 1815, when the French saw many
years of peace ahead of them, those men desirous of
power-Thiers, Lamennais, Comte, Pasteur-went into
politics, law, speculation, and the arts. They did not go into
the army. A Pasteur does not desire power in the vulgar
sense; he desires power in that he wishes to accomplish
something worthwhile. If power is what the best men
want, it would seem that they are inspired by that
"Bergsonian" intuition mentioned earlier, which 1inks
them with the forces of life. They have what Bergson called
''l'energie spirituelle.''
WINTER 1981
�Today, it is toward affairs that ambitions turn; money is, for
the moment, the apparent sign of power and the French
nourish willingly the conviction that international laws and
ententes will succeed in preventing war.
De Gaulle does not camouflage his skepticism about this
"conviction," and the desire for money that underlies it.
Not only do ambitious men shun the peacetime
military, but peacetime military leaders tend to promote
the least-gifted men in their ranks. They select their successors by observing field exercises, which test superficial
cleverness, the ability to grasp the immediate features of a
circumstance, and flexibility of mind-rather than real ap·
titude, the power of seeing the essentials of a circumstance, ahd genuine understanding.
Finally, "powerful personalities" often lack "that superficial seductiveness which pleases in the course of ordinary life." The mass may admit their superiority, but
does not love them, and they are not chosen for advancement at times when no danger seems near. Of all the
young major's statements, this may have angered his
superiors most. Not only was de Gaulle just such a "personality," criticized for his supposed arrogance, but he
dared to suggest that his superiors are of the mass, men
who recognize his excellence but will not reward it.
De Gaulle's conclusion: "Our times are little propitious
to the formation and selection of military leaders"
because the intensity of the Great War led to "a relaxation
of wills, a depression of character," which led to "moral
lassitude." War and soldiers are held in little esteem.
*
C
*
*
"Of Character," concerns Gaullist
ethics. De Gaulle's epigraph-"The smell of the
world has changed" -comes from Georges Du-
HAPTER TWO.
hamel; to choose a sentence from one of the era's best-
known pacifists probably amused de Gaulle, especially in
writing on the "spirit of his age."
The French army has had "powerful life only by the effect of an ideal, issuing from the dominant sentiments of
the epoch and drawing from that harmony its virtue and
radiance." Ethics, it would seem, derive from sentiment,
not reason-and fashionable sentiment, at that.
As de Gaulle rehearses his examples, this "spirit of the
age" explanation of ethics seems accurate. In the seventeenth century, Louvois's reforms unified the military so
as to serve the interests of the sovereign, who was en-
gaged in unifying the country. The Republican army of
Hache was possessed of a "rather ostentatious contempt
for honors and rewards," an affectation that "went well
with glory."
When de Gaulle comes to the contemporary state of
things, we detect a tone of irony, for de Gaulle has already
noted that today's ambiance is anti-militaristic. Presumably, the army most consonant with "the times" would be
the army the French have now: torpid, defensive, hard for
de Gaulle to get promoted in. There have been improveTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ments in institutions, equipment, and, he admits, in
military thinking, but these aren't sufficient. To achieve
"efficacity" the French army needs "a moral renaissance."
The "rejuvenating ideal" of this epoch is "character,"
"the virtue of difficult times." The second chapter studies
the opposition between the ambiance of the times as seen
by most people and the ambiance de Gaulle presents,
which excludes those aspects of fashionable thought and
sentiment which tend to undermine the security and the
grandeur of France.
"The man of character," the Gaullist leader, has recourse
~'to
himself." "His impulse is to impose on action
his mark ... to make it his affair." "He has the passion to
will, he is jealous to decide." Uninterested in profit, this
"gambler. .. searches less for gain than to succeed, and
pays his debts in his own money." If he loses he reacts not
with sorrow bUt with "some bitter satisfaction." The man
of character "confers nobility to action; without him [action would be] the dismal blemish of the slave, thanks to
him, [it is] the divine sport of heroes."
He doesn't act alone. Subordinates assist him; their virtues are self-sacrifice and obedience. Counsellors and
theorists help him plan. But his "character" is "the supreme element, the creative part, the divine point." We
recall that intuition perceives the creative and forceful
realities; character, too, links a man to that in life which is
creative and forceful~ more, it is itself creative and force-
ful. On the level of ethics, of human action, it corresponds
to the "obscure harmony" of nature.
This property of vivifying the enterprise implies the energy
to assume the consequences [he may be thinking of Bergson's
"energie spirituelle"]. Difficulty attracts the man of character,
for it is in gripping [the difficulty] that he realizes himself.
But whether or not he vanquishes, it is an affair between it
and him. Jealous lover, he never shares what it gives him, or
what it costs him.
What it gives him is "the austere [or harsh: apre] joy of being responsible." This paradoxical phrase epitomizes the
Gaullist balancing of opposites in the domain of ethics.
De Gaulle is now far from Machiavellian success-philosophy; the telos of Machiavellian virtu has little to do with
true austerity. De Gaulle combines the individualism of
such
~·moderns"
as Machiavelli and Bacon with the au-
sterity of the "ancients." Self-realization in struggle and
the austere joy of being responsible: one thinks of Nietzsche, or, perhaps, of Aristotle's great-souled man.
In peacetime the man of character has detractors, "but
in action, enough of criticism!" And in a passage reminis-
cent of Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chapter 3), de Gaulle writes:
Reciprocally, the confidence of the small exalts the man of
character. He feels himself obliged by this humble justice rendered to him. His firmness increases in measure, but also his
benevolence, for he was born a protector. If the affair sue-
89
�ceeds, he distributes advantage generously, and, in the case of
a reverse, he does not allow reproach to descend on any but
himself.
Esteem and loyalty exchanged for security: to "ancient"
and "modern" themes, de Gaulle adds a "medieval" one:
the ideal relationship of the vassal and his lord. With intuition, de Gaulle wrote, one "participates" in reality's ere~
ative force; with character, he might have added, one
participates in the reality of other men, calling up their
creative force, as well as one's own.
In ordinary times, the man of character's superiors
often dislike him, calling him "arrogant and undisciplined." De Gaulle writes from experience. "But when
events become grave" he receives justice; "a sort of
ground swell pushes to the first level the man of character." He "does not abuse" his moment, scarcely tasting
"the savor of revenge, for the action absorbs everything."
Not quite Aristotelian magnanimity-which eschews revenge because revenge is small and it is large, rather than
because action preoccupies it-but de Gaulle's man of
character comes nearer to achieving it than do most of the
men of his time.
De Gaulle shows that "character" is not an exclusively
military virtue, any more than intuition is. He finds it in
Alexander, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, and Clemen<;eau, but also in Galilee, Columbus, Boileau, and Lesseps.
He fails to list a religious leader (unless one would so
characterize Cardinal Richelieu).
. . . the success of great men implies multiple faculties.
Character, if accompanied by nothing, only gives daredevils
and stubborn personalities. But inversely, the highest qualities
of mind (alone) cannot suffice.
Sieycs and Talleyrand were notable for their qualities of
mind, de Gaulle contends, but they were not great men.
De Gaulle writes more against the ambiance of his
"time" than with it. In the third section of this chapter he
"reconciles" this ambiance with his notion of "character."
The pre-1914 world, he observes, was an era of stability,
economy, and prudence. It is gone. "Competition, aided
by technique," comprise the "allegorical group which
symbolizes the new age." The postwar generation, adventurous and money-conscious, take initiative and self
reliance as their virtues. The army should "reflect" these
virtues, but obviously de Gaulle would have it "reflect" a
judiciously modified version of them; he does not advocate money-consciousness in soldiers and, as he has
already written, these are bad times for the military. The
"dominant sentiments" of an epoch, in de Gaulle's view,
are really those among the popular sentiments which the
man who would dominate his epoch selects-because
they most nearly resemble his own virtues. There are
epochs in which such a man cannot advance, and undominating men predominate. De Gaulle waits, writing books.
While the army waits, it will be paralyzed if its leaders
smother initiative, along with "the taste to be responsible and
90
the courage to speak plainly." De Gaulle wants "character" respected. Each individual should have responsibility
on his own level. (This idea anticipates the "participation"
that de Gaulle advocated in 1969, wherein capital, labor,
and technocrats would share power on the governing
boards of industry, and whereby local governments would
have more responsibility.) If "character" is respected, the
army will have fewer regulations, get better results. Better
men will adopt the military career, and continue in it, because the army will allow them to exercise"their capacity
to act," which is what such men want.
' '0
*
*
*
the central chapter of Le fil de
l'epee, consists of de Gaulle's final diagnosis
F PRESTIGE;·
of, and prescription for, the epoch's disease.
Prestige is usually a matter of appearance only, but de Gaulle
chooses as this chapter's epigraph a phrase from Villiers de
L'Isle Adam-"In his breast, to carry his own glory" -a phrase
which links prestige to character.
Authority has decayed in the postwar era. Men are either
reticent and unsure, or overconfident and obsessed with
forms.
This decadence follows the decline of the moral, social, political order which, for centuries, held sway in our old nations.
By conviction and by calculation, one has for a long time at·
tributed to power an origin, to the elite rights which justify
hierarchies. The edifice of these conventions has collapsed .
Deference fades; perhaps this is the other, negative, side
of the taste for initiative de Gaulle cited before.
But the crisis can't last.
Men cannot, fundamentally, do without being directed.
These political animals have need of organization, that is to
say of order and of leaders.
Ancient sources of authority no longer exist, but "the
natural equilibrium of things will bring others, sooner or
later, better or less good, proper in all cases to the establishment of a new discipline." Even as he dismisses the
old, de Gaulle affirms something ancient: the idea, discarded by Machiavelli and Hobbes, that man is a political
animal, by nature and not by convention. The "new discipline," of course, will be in large part conventional; still, it
responds to a natural requirement, and will be "better or
less good" than its predecessors-not merely "historically
relative."
De Gaulle sees the beginnings of the new discipline in
"the individual value and ascendence" of certain "new
men." Once, the mass accorded credit to a man's function
in society, or to his birthright. Now it respects "those here
who know [how] to impose themselves"-dictators, technicians, athletes-men who owe success to their own efforts. In the army today, rank has some importance, but
upersonal prestige" has more.
WINTER 1981
�In section ii, the central section of the central chapter,
de Gaulle writes frankly of prestige. Prestige is "a sort of
sympathy inspired in others," comprised of affection, sug·
One can observe, in fact, that the leaders of men-politicians, prophets, soldier-who obtain the most from others,
identify themselves with high ideas . ...
gestion, and impression, which depends on ((an elemen-
tary gift, a natural aptitude that escapes analysis." Not
dependent on intelligence, it is undefinable, although one
can isolate "some constant and necessary elements" of it.
Mystery is one of them; "one reverses little what one
knows well." Mystery doesn't come from isolation~the
most isolated man is unknown, not mysterious-but from
reserve, which contributes to the sense that the man
The prophets' centrality on the lisi suggests that they do
not differ from secular leaders, at least in their self-identification with "high ideas." In view of the assertion that
this is a selfidentification, one may wonder if such men
are models of evangelical perfection, but at the least we
can say that all of them embody ideas rather than argue
possesses a "secret," or a "surprise" with which he can in-
for they are "renowned less for utility than for the extent
of their work" ~sentiment glorifies them. Useful men appeal to our rationality, but great men do not strive for
tervene at any time. "The latent faith of the masses does
the rest."
for them. "Whereas, sometimes, reason blames
them"~
Prestige also involves an outer reserve, one of words
and of gestures-"appearances, perhaps, but according to
usefulness.
which the multitude establishes its opinion." Great sol-
even so, he shows an ethical seriousness, an elevation,
diers have always taken care to appear in a certain way; de
that Machiavelli lacks. De Gaulle's exemplary leader does
not "enjoy himself." Indeed, the suffering that comes of
his solitude-among-men partly explains why some leaders
"suddenly reject the burden." Years later Andre Malraux
·would remember this passage as he considered de Gaulle's
final retirement. De Gaulle completes this section with an
anecdote: Bonaparte (he usually calls him Napoleon, but
Gaulle reminds us of Hamilcar in Flaubert's Salammb6,
Caesar in his Commentaries, Napoleon. "Nothing enhances authority more than silence"; for action demands
concentration, and speech dissipates strength. There is a
necessary correspondence between "silence and order,"
and de Gaulle quotes the Roman phrase, Imperatoria brevitas. Aristotle's human animals are political due to their
capacity of reasoned speech or logos. De Gaulle, with his
intuitionism (a distrust of verbal depictions of reality), apparently does not believe that the natural order, including
human nature and the politics it necessitates, can be comprehended through the use of language. Politics becomes
as much the art of silence as the art of speaking, and Gaullist rhetoric emphasizes brevity and symbolism instead of
elaboration and argument.
There is liberated from such personages a magnetism of
confidence and even illusion. For those who follow them, they
personify purpose, incarnate aspiration.
This is de Gaulle's most Machiavellian chapter. But
here, in a personal moment, his given name seems more
appropriate), regarding "an ancient and noble monu-
ment," agreed with a companion who thought it
sad~
"comme la grandeur!" he added.
The third section of "Of Prestige" is the eighth of the
book's fifteen sections, the central one. It extends the previous treatment of individual authority to the army. The
ambiance of the time damages corporate as well as individual authority. "For recovering (prestige), the army has
little need of laws, demands for money, prayers, only a
vast internal effort." "The military spirit" needs distance
and reserve, as does the great man; such partial isolation
contributes to prestige, because military rigor and cohesion have always impressed men.
To become such a personification or incarnation, the
leader responds to "the obscure wish of men" who are imperfect, who therefore "accept collective action with a
view that it tends toward something great." Whereas the
great man realizes himself by participating in a difficult
action, lesser men complete themselves by participating
in a collective action, under the direction of a great man.
The leader needs "the character of elevation," but leader·
ship
... is no affair of virtue, and evangelical perfection does not
conduct the empire. The man of action scarcely conceives of
himself without a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, ruse.
This chapter thus examines the opposition between
means and ends. In de Gaulle's view, it is ends, results,
that count; if the leader uses the means of realpolitik for
"realizing great things," those means will be forgotten because he satisfies "the secret desires of all."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Some current trends favor the development of military
spirit. "Individualism is in the wrong" today: trades unionize, political parties and sports are mass-oriented, as well;
Ia machinisme has increased and the division of labor intensifies, leading to less eclecticism and fantasy; labor and
leisure are equalized; standardization exists in education,
housing, and fashions. (Earlier, de Gaulle wrote that individual initiatives were fashionable; but the contradiction
is less de Gaulle's than that of his "time." Again, we notice de Gaulle's selectiveness.)
As important as these current trends may be, the army's
self-esteem matters more. The military must not only appear firm; it must feel "confidence in itself and in its des·
tiny." "The day when the French nobility consecrated its
ardor to defending its privileges rather than to conducting
the State, the victory of the Third Estate was already certain." The military should therefore avoid reacting to the
public's anti-militarism by a selfish defense of its privileges. This won't happen if the military reminds itself, and
91
�the public, that anti-militarism is understandable, even
good-(for men should not want to destroy each other)but nevertheless inadequate. Foreigners envy French
prosperity, and France's geography renders her vulnerable to invasion; therefore the French need a shield. The
military serves the French, not only itself.
And war is not purely evil. "The desires of conquerors"
have brought riches, advances in science and art, "marvel~
lous sources of wisdom and inspiration." "With what vir-
tues [arms] have enriched the moral capital of men!"
Courage, devotion and "greatness of soul" are among
them. Armies have transported ideas, reforms and religions; Hthere would have been no Hellenism, no Roman
order, Christianity [the central item on the list], Rights of
Man, modern civilization but for their bloody effort."
Pacifists and bellecists are both right:
the age of Descartes' Discours de Ia. Methode, Bossuet's
Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle, Richelieu's "realistic
politique," the "practical administration" of Colbert, and
the "objective strategy" of Turenne. The French mind
then "constrained itself by the rule of mesure and of the
concrete." At his best Napoleon shared this sense of
mesure and the ability to adapt strategy to circumstances;
but more often in French history-especially in the eighteenth century and in the generation that fought Germany in 1870- "a priorism" dominated. And failed.
Although military strategy and ethics are not the same,
de Gaulle sees a relationship between them. "A priorism"
in strategy habituates leaders to disregard circumstance;
this makes them intellectually and ethically weak, for "a
doctrine constructed in the abstract" has often "rendered
blind and passive a leader who, in other times, had made
proof of experience and audacity."
Arms have tortured but also fashioned the world. They
have accomplished the best and the worst, begetting infamy
as well as the most great, by turns groveling in horror or radia ting in glory. Shameful and glorious, their history is the history
of men.
The central section in "Of Doctrine" is an analysis of
the doctrine employed by French leaders in the Great
War.
Military thought turned toward the offensive. This orientation was salutary . ... But the strategy went too far.
The history of men is not a tale of evangelical perfection.
And de Gaulle repeats: if an international order comes, a
military force will "establish and assure it."
It is not merely a "pragmatic" argument. The army's
greatness, like that of individuals, depends on virtue-if
not evangelical virtue. This military virtue can be described with a paradox: the army's pride would be worthless were it not accompanied by self-sacrifice. There is "a
French strategists propounded "an absolute metaphysic
of action" modeled on Prussia's offensive drives in 1870.
That strategy worked against an inactive opponent; but
the Great War demonstrated that a mobile and resolute
opponent can resist such an attack-strategy.
Colonel Petain had objected to this doctrine of attack,
curious relationship, but incontestable, between the re-
arguing for the importance of circumstances and the need
nunciation of individuals and the splendor of all."
Most Frenchmen give their energies to profit-making,
and it's difficult to find soldiers who don't imitate civil-
for maximum obtainable fire support at the time and
ians. Here also, however, balance will assert itself; "in a
fracas of bankruptcies, scandals and judicial prosecutions"
the forgotten "moral values" will return to "the great daylight of public respect." With this return, and a natural
pulling-back from extreme corruption, the army's prestige
will return also. For its prestige rests on such virtues.
' 'I
*
*
*
N WAR, there are principles, but they are few,"
wrote Bugeaud, the unsuccessful defender of
Paris in 1848. De Gaulle uses this remark as the
epigraph for "Of Doctrine," the simplest, if not the shortest,
chapter of Le {il de I'epee. De Gaulle here outlines a stra-
tegic doctrine, not an ethical one, because war is not ex-
clusively a problem of ethics. Battle plans count, too.
Once more, de Gau1le insists on the importance of circumstances. A statesman will fail, despite will, hardness,
national resources and alliances, if he "does not discern
the character of his times." The French military tends to
ignore war's empirical character, he claims. But in the sev-
enteenth century it did not; that was, de Gaulle observes,
92
place of attack ("concentration of means" forms Hthe
basis of execution"). He proved the validity of his thesis in
the Battle of the Marne. But his superiors persisted in advocating, and practicing, an attack-strategy; only after the
failure of their "systematic audacity" during the April
1917 offensive did they relent. As we know, de Gaulle
thinks the present French military stance is too defensive.
He has praised a military strategy of action and leadership.
Nevertheless, he is careful to warn against any "a priorism "-of attack, or of defense.
De Gaulle turns to the defense-strategy in the third section. The new doctrine may end in "abstract deductions
and foreclosing conclusions." Obviously an extension of
Petain's teaching on firepower, it involves the concentra-
tion of firepower, coupled with the siting of offensives
only in those places where the terrain is best suited. Unfortunately, this strategy neglects other variables-most
notably, the enemy, who may not decide to occupy the
sites that French guns can most easily fire upon. "May
French military thinking resist the age-old attraction of
the a priori, of the absolute, and of dogmatism!" It should
instead "fix itself in the classical order," the "taste for the
concrete," the "gift of mesure" and the "sense of realities."
*
*
*
WINTER 1981
�studies the opposition expressed in
its title, "Politics and the Soldier" ~specifically, the
tension between politicians and soldiers. Like the
fourth chapter, it addresses the practical question: What
should leaders think and do?
Politicians and soldiers may, as the epigraph from Musset claims, "go two by two/Until the world ends, step by
step, side by side." But they'll rarely go amicably. In
peacetime the politician has the dominant role; in wartime he shares it with the military leader, and interdependence is not conducive to friendship. Politicians and
soldiers are different men, and not especially compatible
T
HE FIFTH CHAPTER
ones.
The politician attempts to udominate opinion"-
whether it be that of the monarch, the council or the people (the one, the few, or the many)~because he can do
nothing except insofar as he acts in the name of the sovereign. Pleasing and promising, not opposing and arguing,
lead to advancement; "to become the master he poses as
servant. ... " After acquiring power he must defend it~
convincing prince or parliament, flattering passions, aid~
ing special interests. It is a precarious career in an unstable world.
Unlike that of the soldier, whose world is built on hierarchy, discipline, and regulations, he advances slowly, but
with slight worry of demotion. As de Gaulle knew only too
well, the off-battlefield danger for a military man is stagnation, being "posted" to nowhere and forgotten.
The two men act differently. The politician reaches his
goals by governing himself; the soldier is direct. The politician's eyes are far-sighted (and beclouded) because for
him reality is complex, mastered only by calculation and
ruse. The soldier short-sighted (but also clear-sighted) because for him reality is simple, controlled by resoluteness.
The politician asks, "What will people say?" The soldier
asks, "What are the principles?" That such men find one
another distasteful seems predictable.
Nor is it entirely bad. Soldiers who make laws alarm
1
neighboring countries, and politicians who intrude into
the army corrupt it with partisan doctrines and passions.
The public interest is best served by their collaboration in
defense of the country from external dangers~and their
separation in defense of the country from internal
dangers.
Before elaborating on that suggestion, de Gaulle devotes two sections to the difficulties of enacting it. In
peacetime the two "sides" bicker (especially in those
regimes where public opinion has influence). Arms are expensive, and are therefore unpopular except among soldiers, who are "only too ready" to believe war will come,
because wartime brings their chance for glory and advancement. Civilians, who have no reason to want war,
who fear it, refuse to believe that another war approaches.
When war comes, soldiers and politicians unite, ini-
tially. Later, if the war lingers on, the civil government
feels its own impotence, becomes frustrated. The public
also becomes irritable. Reverses of fortune excite recrimiTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
nations. Soldiers and politicians are men who want power,
and do not want to share it. If one group succeeds in subordinating the other, the destruction of the balance may
ruin the country~as it did in 1793 and 1870, when the
French politicians dominated the military and caused battlefield defeats, and in 1917 when the military undermined
civilian authority in Germany.
A country avoids that predicament, not by hiring pleasant fellows to run the government and the army, but by
finding leaders who are not pliable or docile. "It is
necessary that les maitres have the souls of maitres, and it
is a very bad calculation that excludes from power
characters accused on the pretext that they are difficult."
Nor can the two groups of men separate entirely. As
always, circumstances differ, sometimes from day to
day~personalities, the phase of the war, and so forth. No
a priori compartmentalization works. But their purposes
are separable. "The most just glory" that a statesman can
win comes from his success in maintaining the "national
will" during war. Soldiers, however, should deal with the
fighting.
In the fourth and last section de Gaulle explains the
ethical and institutional bases for the balance and partial
separation of power between civil and military authorities. Although fluid, changing with circumstance, the relationship between the two does not depend on "chance"
to "inspire" leaders. It depends on the institution of a
system that educates men of character to lead well.
"Other epochs assured [this] by a social and political
regime which mingled in the families and in the councils
all the sorts of servants of the State": Roman patricians
and Prussian nobles held both civilian and military posts;
French nobles served in one branch or the other, but understood the problems of both. Too, the sovereign "personified all the powers, symbolizing their harmony."
"Resulting from this perpetual osmosis was a reciprocal
understanding between toga and arms which is no longer
in the spirit of the times" ~although de Gaulle would like
to revive it. De Gaulle implies that parliamentarism lacks
the unifying sovereign who would compel politicians and
soldiers to think of shared ends, if only by symbolizing the
harmony of all state powers.
Nonetheless, today's military leaders retain "the secret
esteem of the strong for the strong." The "man of character" wants things his way and remains alone among subor-
dinates. But as he protects helpful inferiors and attacks
his enemies, he also esteems others of his kind; he may
conceal this esteem, but he acts in accordance with it.
Relations between great-souled equals are productively,
not injuriously, tense. With classical moderation, unmen-
tioned in this section but presumed by it, the secret
esteem of the strong for the strong prevents the selfdefeat brought on by petty squabbling that de Gaulle
found in the German leaders during the Great War, as
described in La discorde chez l' ennemi.
De Gaulle now proposes an institutional basis for this
concordia discors. He does not as yet propose a political
93
�revision for France, although he has hinted that one may
be needed. He suggests an educational reform:
One could conceive, it is true, of a providential State
wishing to prepare a political, administrative, and military
elite, by studies done in common, to direct, if such should be
the case, the wartime effort of a nation.
De Gaulle's civic education would increase the accord
between the two domains in wartime and clarify discussions and laws concerning military power in peacetime. It
would not "solve" the problem because the problem isn't
susceptible to rules. But it would help.
Intuition and character aren't teachable assets. "One
does nothing great without great men," the "ambitieux of
the first rank ... who want nothing in life but to imprint
their mark on events and who, on the shore where they
spend their ordinary days, dream only of the surge of
History!" These are men who know that an illustrious
military career must serve "a vast policy," that a states~
man "of great glory" defends his country.
*
*
•
of his time's "incertitude" and the
"melancholy" of the army, de Gaulle attempts to
restore the mental balance of his contemporaries by a
defense of power. Many writers who lament the disappearance of authority in the modern West prefer to avoid
discussing power. Not de Gaulle.
In the first three chapters he begins with epistemology,
and therefore metaphysics, moves to ethics, then to
politics. In the fourth and fifth chapters he discusses more
immediate concerns: military doctrine and educational
reform. One may say that he moves from the theoretical
and timeless to the practical and immediate.
Gaullist epistemology reconciles, without blending, the
"flow of events" -and the need to adjust to them-with
the attempt to dominate events. The leader intuitively
perceives the nature of things (which is creative, forceful
and possesses an "obscure harmony"), using his "intelligence" to translate these perceptions into effective actions. This intellectual process complements the ethical,
decision-making faculty, the "spirit of enterprise" which
balances the extremes of passivity and rashness.
I
N THE FACE
Gaullist ethics reconciles, without blending, the "spirit
of the age" with "character," under the aegis of the will to
power (broadly defined), which animates the best men. In
94
selecting, ordering, and directing certain aspects of "the
ambiance of the times," the leader realizes himself, feeling "the austere joy of being responsible" -the joy of the
great-souled or magnanimous man. Intuition and intelligence, plus character, yield grandeur.
Gaullist politics reconciles, without blending, the
means and the end. Authority's present disrepute can't
persist for long, because men are by nature political
animals, by which de Gaulle means that they need leaders
and an ordered life. Prestige is that which enables the
leader to lead. De Gaulle associates it with the use of
words, with actions, and with the personification of
aspirations and purposes. The end of politics is grandeur,
and the means are not those of evangelical perfection.
Such means are forgiven, however, because they serve
"the secret desires of all." War, which is not politics but
shares some of its characteristics, embodies the tension of
means and ends in the extreme, having both tortured and
fashioned the world. As with all products of human
nature, perhaps as with human nature itself, it is both
shameful and glorious.
Gaullist military strategy depends on balance, mesure. It
is anti-dogmatic because dogmatism encourages leaders to
be passive, complacent, and blind to circumstances.
Gaullist civic education reconciles, without blending, the
politician and the soldier. Though the two are by nature
different-the one speaks in order to gain power, the
other acts in order to gain power-their mutual will to
power and consequent attempts to achieve it cause
discord. But their natural similarity can make possible the
concordia discors that is Gaullist reconciliation. That similarity is the secret esteem of the strong for the strong.
Both serve the country, realizing themselves by selfsacrificing patriotism. If its members participate in common studies, this elite will suffer less discord.
De Gaulle concerns himself, on each "level" of human
life, with the problem of establishing a concordia discors
which does not sacrifice, but rather enhances, the integrity of the participating elements. He thus avoids the extremes of totalitarianism and egalitarianism and provides
a basis for republicanism, in a century wherein republicanism has declined.
l. Aidan Crawley, De Gaulle, Indianapolis and New York 1969, 53.
2. Stanley Hoffman, Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s, New
York 1974, 217.
3. Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book 3, Chapter 5.
WINTER 1981
�FIRST READINGS
Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and
Middle Dialogues, by Terence Irwin, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977.
Terence Irwin's book is an attempt at a
critical exposition of the moral theory in
Plato's early and middle dialogues. It is intended to show that Plato's questions concerning morality are "legitimate moral
questions" (285; cf. 266), and that his
"questions and answers, right and wrong,
are not of purely historical interest. ...
that they raise issues which justify the effort to decide for or against his views" (4).
Some readers might regard the continuing
significance of Plato's moral thought as being so obvious as to need no discussion.
But anyone familiar with the neglect of the
ancients among contemporary academic
philosophers must welcome Professor Irwin's efforts. Moreover, Plato's admirers
and followers themselves might profit from
a careful, yet critical, discussion of his
moral teachings. Indeed, even the legiti~
macy of Plato's questions, let alone the
truth of his answers, is not so obvious as it
may seem. It is not self-evidently legitimate
to ask-as Irwin rightly emphasizes that
Plato does ask- "whether it is worthwhile
to do what morality is normally supposed
to require", e.g. to benefit other people
(251, italics mine; cf. 249-50 and 265-66).
According to Professor Irwin, Plato's
moral thought centers around three Socratic questions: What is morality (i.e., virtue)? What sort of morality is worthwhile
for a rational man? What is the right
method for reaching knowledge about
morality? Socrates and Plato both assume,
acCording to Irwin, that a genuinely moral
man will be able to understand his own
morality, to defend it against criticism, and
in particular to justify it as being ultimately
worthwhile for him. Because of these demands, Socrates and Plato agree that any
genuine virtue must be in the virtuous
man's self-interest, and must be understood by him to be so (5). Socrates and
Plato disagree, however, in their further
thoughts about the character of virtue and
about the correct method of justifying it.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Irwin distinguishes between Socrates and
Plato on the basis of the difference between those dialogues thought to have
been written first and those thought to
have come later. He accepts the conventional scholarly opinion that we can trace a
development from Plato's early dialogues,
which present the thought of Socrates, to
the middle (and late) ones, in which Socrates becomes a spokesman for Plato himself.
What is most noteworthy about Irwin's
argument, and what has aroused most controversy, is his interpretation of Socrates.
According to Irwin, Socrates held that vir~
tue is a kind of knowledge, a knowledge
that is first glimpsed as the result of crossquestioning, but which is also a teachable
expertise or craft (159). Irwin's boldness
shows itself above all in the latter claim,
namely that Socrates thought of virtue as a
teachable craft.
As for cross-questioning, or the Socratic
elenchus, Irwin gives an illuminating outline of its typical features. Socrates tests
some rule of conventional virtue in terms
of our beliefs about examples (i.e. whether
this or that kind of action would be virtuous), and especially in terms of our general
assumptions that virtue is always admirable, and worthwhile for the virtuous man.
"The elenchus," says Irwin, "adjusts our
conceptions of the virtues to our view of
what is worthwhile over all" (6, cf. 39, 47).
Thus, the method of cross-questioning is
not merely negative or critical, but is intended to yield positive results.
As Irwin points out, however, there are
shortcomings in this elenctic approach to
moral knowledge, Although the elenchus
yields valuable positive insights (40), it
must rely on the interlocutor's own convictions about disputable moral questions. Is
it clear, for instance, that admirable or noble action is always good, in the sense of being worthwhile for the agent (49, 117)? The
elenchus, with its demand that we try to
justify our moral beliefs, helps bring our
deepest moral beliefs to light (40, 70; Compare Kant, Critique of Practical Reason,
Part One, Book Two-especially Chapter
Two, Section Five, "On the Existence of
God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason"). But a clearer awareness of our deepest moral beliefs is not yet knowledge that
they are true. And there are radical critics,
like Thrasymachus, who seem to reject all
morality, or at least all recognized morality,
on the grounds of its not being worthwhile
for the moral man himself. "Socrates
notices that moral questions raise disputes
with no acknowledged arbitrator, and may
cause skepticism about whether there is an
authoritative answer to be found" (75).
And the method of cross~questioning does
not go far enough to remove such skepticism.
According to Irwin, Socrates tries to
answer this skepticism by pointing to the
contrast between our many differences
over moral questions and our universal
agreement about the arts and crafts. "If
Socrates could show that virtue is a craft,
these doubts [about the possibility of moral
knowledge] would be silenced" (75). Now a
craft, as Irwin understands it, is knowledge
of the means to produce some product-a
product distinguishable from the productive activity itself, and for which we have a
previously recognized desire. There is little
controversy among craftsmen, or between
craftsmen and other men, since the craftsmen accept the ends of their craft as previously given, as goods that the non-craftsmen
already desire. Accordingly, if virtue, or
true morality, were merely a knowledge of
the means to produce some further good
that everyone already desires, it would no
longer be a matter of irresolvable dispute.
(There need be no dispute, at any rate,
about what it is.) In particular, if true
morality were a knowledge of the means to
produce some definite kind of happinessdistinct from moral action itself-that all
men necessarily desire, then even the radically nonmoral man could be taught to become moral. He could be taught to choose
true morality as the most efficient means
to achieve the same nonmoral good he had
previously been pursuing without it (84).
And as a consequence, the skeptic, if he is
to be distinguished from the nonmoral
man, would be compelled to acknowledge
95
�that moral questions admit of rational solutions.
Irwin elaborates at length the implications of treating virtue as a craft-above
all, the implication that virtue {i.e., moral
knowledge) is of merely instrumental
value. Though Socrates never says so explicitly, Irwin offers indirect textual evidence, and he argues at length that the
need for consistency with the craft-analogy
must have led Socrates to accept this implication. And yet the overwhelming impression one gains from Socrates' life, and
especially from his death, seems to oppose
Professor Irwin's suggestion. This evidence
suggests instead that Socrates must have
regarded virtuous activity as its own (highest) reward. Irwin himself points to Socrates' emphatic assertion that one should
always prefer justice to injustice, no matter
what the future consequences (58; cf. 240).
And Socrates even contends, according to
Irwin, that virtue is in itself sufficient to
ensure happiness for the virtuous man
(100; Compare Ap. Soc. 4lc8-d2, and cf.
Chapter VII, Note ll, page 326). Now it
may be logically possible for a merely instrumental good to be of such boundless
worth. Yet how could a man in his senses
have absolute confidence in the goodness
of any state of soul that wasn't somehow
good in itself? (cf. M. F. Burnyeat's review,
in the New York Review of Books, September 27, 1979) Irwin himself draws attention
to this great difficulty (!00-01, 26!, 28182), and he later speaks of the identifica·
tion of morality with some craft-knowledge
as being "intolerably over-simplified" (17576). Why then, without the compulsion of
unambiguous evidence (cf. Chapter VI,
Note 63, page 323), does he claim that Soc·
rates made this identification?
According to Irwin, Socrates identified
virtue with craft-knowledge in order to provide "objective" justification for his moral
doctrine (73-75). Now it is true that Soc·
rates often contrasts his interlocutor's inability to teach his "virtue", or even to
show its worth, with the craftsman's ability
to teach an obviously useful trade. Moreover, Irwin quite rightly insists that Socrates is serious about the superiority of
craft-knowledge, as knowledge, to our socalled knowledge of what virtue is. But it
does not follow that Socrates believed that
"real virtue-not fully embodied in anyone
96
at the moment-will be a craft" (75).
Socrates had no illusions that moral controversy could ever be laid to rest by an authoritative craftsman, or with the discovery
of some new craft (see ·especially Crito
49cl0-d5). To be sure, he sometimes pretended otherwise (Charmides 165c4-e2;
Laches !84c4-!85d2). But Socrates' inten·
tion, in pretending to seek a teachable
craft-knowledge of virtue, was to awaken
some of his listeners to genuine awareness
of their own ignorance. Here, as elsewhere
(notably in Chapter IV on the l'rotagoras),
Irwin fails to appreciate Socratic irony.
This failure may stem in part from his belief that the non-moral man, or the radical
critic of conventional morality, raises legitimate questions, and makes demands that
Socrates must have hoped to satisfy (35-36,
73, 175). But Irwin's disregard of Socratic
irony stems also from his failure to see the
need for it, to see the serious obstacles that
hinder any attempt to share one's knowledge of ignorance with others (cf. Ap. Soc.
2lc7-e2 and Republic 492a5-c2. Consider
also Irwin's apparently unquestioned claim
to know that "the common [unplatonic]
conception of justice", or at least one of its
key elements, is truly "justice", or the "virtue" that is "real justice" [246-47, 2!!-12;
cf. 67-68, 98, !63, 253).) According to lr·
win's interpretation, Socrates' moral theory contains a deep conflict-between the
very great good he expected a virtue to be,
on the one hand, and his attempt to transform his moral beliefs into knowledge, on
the other. But what Irwin calls a conflict
within Socrates' moral theory is instead
Socrates' way of raising a fundamental
question about morality, or the moral
world-view, itself.
According to Irwin, it was Plato (i.e. the
Socrates of the "middle" dialogues) who fi·
nally concluded that the attempt to treat
virtue as a craft could not succeed. Instead
of regarding morality as a merely instrumental good, he saw that it must be viewed
as a good in itself, and as a necessary component, if not the whole, of human happiness. But how could he justify morality, so
understood, against its radical critics? Plato
seems to have decided-and rightly, according to Irwin (175-76; cf. I)-that the
demand for a defense of morality in terms
of some nonmoral final good "cannot plausibly be met" (Compare Aristotle, Eudemian
Ethics l248b9-!249al7). As an alternate
justification, Plato developed his own most
characteristic, and paradoxical, doctrines.
His Theory of Forms, his Theory of Recollection, and his teaching about the ascent
of "rational desires" are all intended, in
part, to explain how we can acquire knowledge of the highest moral good as being
good.
Irwin's interpretation of the middle
dialogues contains quite a few valuable
insights. He is right to emphasize the continuing relevance of Socrates' moral questions in the later dialogues, even in some of
their seemingly most metaphysical passages. And he discusses clearly and cogently some important difficulties {e.g.
about the separation of the Forms from the
particulars, and about the Republic's seemingly equivocal use of the term "justice")
that enthusiastic Platonists tend to ignore
or else slough over. But his horizon is severely limited by inadequate attention to
the drama of the dialogues, to what happens as distinct from what is said {3). And
partly because of this, Irwin is far too ready
to assume that Plato failed to see certain
major, and rather obvious, problems in his
own arguments (cf. 3-4, !0, 155, 163-64,
233, 242, 258). He thus never considers
that Plato might have chosen, or felt compelled, to leave these problems as questions
for his readers. As a result, he fails to recognize some of the most important questions
that Plato intended his readers to ask.
To illustrate this claim, I limit myself to
what Irwin says about philosophy and the
philosopher-king. Irwin contends that Plato
was mistaken, even in terms of his own argument, to suggest that "the philosopher
in the Republic will want to stay contemplating the Forms and will not voluntarily
undertake public service" (242). Now the
philosopher in the Republic is indeed a
public servant, but not because he wants to
be one, but rather because he is compelled
to, out of necessity. And yet Plato's overall
argument, as Irwin interprets it, requires
instead that the contemplative philosopher
also value virtuous action, including public
service, as a good in itself (243). According
to Irwin, Plato was inconsistent on this key
point, and he never faced the problems
that his attraction to a "solipsist [i.e.,
selfish] contemplative ideal" creates for
the rest of his moral theory (257-58; cf.
WINTER 1981
�255). This criticism presupposes, of course,
training
that Irwin has correctly understood Plato's
moral theory as a whole. But Plato's moral
theory, as Irwin presents it, culminates in a
vague and obscure teaching-about the
virtuous man's "rational desires"- that Irwin himself seems to regard as just barely
defensible (246-48; Compare 278-79 and
285-86). And there is no reason to think
that Plato could ever have been satisfied
with this theory that Irwin attributes to
him. Perhaps, then, Plato was not being
inconsistent when he acknowledged the
power of the "contemplative ideal".
Wouldn't it have been better for Irwin, instead of dismissing that ideal as an aberration, to admit that he couldn't yet make
sense of the whole of Plato's thought?
According to Irwin, Plato's conception
of the philosopher also contains a more
serious flaw than the mere one-sidedness
with which it stresses his contemplative
nature. This other flaw, which Irwin regards as part of the deepest weakness in
Plato's moral theory, is the "bizarre" conclusion that only philosophers-indeed
only those wise men who have beheld the
Forms (Republic 517b7-519a)-possess genuine virtue (283-84). As Irwin sees it, Phito
was led to this conclusion in the following
manner. Plato agrees with Socrates' "basic
demand" that a genuinely virtuous man
must be able to justify his way of life with
good reasons, and not merely with the "sec·
ond-hand support" of "custom, authority,
training, and the rest" (284). And he "rightly
insists", as Irwin interprets him, "that it is
worthwhile in itself, and can fairly be expected of a virtuous man, to try to defend
and justify moral beliefs rationally" (284).
But he then makes what Irwin calls the
"mistake" of thinking that "this kind of justification [sic] requires the capacities and
Republic" (284).
(284, italics mine) is not necessarily "worth-
Irwin argues as follows to try to show
that Plato was mistaken in limiting genuine
virtue to successful philosophers. He
claims that "the most plausible defense" of
Plato's basic demand [for justification of
one's moral beliefs] presupposes a respect
for persons as "autonomous agents" (274).
It requires us to regard "an individual's efforts to find a rational justification for his
own beliefs" as being intrinsically worthwhile. Accordingly, a man's attempt "to ex·
amine, understand, and justify his beliefs
as far as he can" -even though he may
possibly find "the wrong an~wers" and
have "the wrong beliefs" -is sufficient to
make him "more virtuous" and even "virtuous" (284-85). Plato "does not notice",
however, that his demand for knowledge,
or at least "the most plausible defense" of
its legitimacy (284-85), requires such great
respect for the very attempt to understand.
Instead, he mistakenly limits true virtue to
successful philosophers, or to the wise.
In fact, however, Plato's conclusion
about true virtue is not a result of any such
oversight (cf. also 164). Plato could never
have remained satisfied with Irwin's "de·
fense" of the "demand for knowledge and
justification," or with Irwin's implicit assumption that virtue requires little more
than the loss of innocence. Plato was well
aware that he was saying something surprising when he limited genuine virtue to
the wise. But once a man has asked, with
Glaucon and Socrates, why virtue (or justice) is worthwhile or good for him, it is no
longer so easy to dismiss Plato's conclusions about it. Plato's strict teaching about
virtue follows from his awareness that a
man's attempt to justify his moral beliefs
might indeed not be good. Merely "to try to
while in itself', nor even useful. Attempts
that fail to lead to insight, or at least to
right opinion, could easily be worse and
less worthy of esteem than the morality
that relies on the "second-hand support"
of "custom, authority, training, and the
rest".
We can be grateful for Irwin's straightforward attempt to distinguish the true
from the false in Plato's moral thought. Irwin's posture toward Plato's thought is
more fruitful than either the patronizing
"veneration", or the open contempt, of
those who treat it merely as a part of theirrevocable past. And Irwin clearly brings a
superior intelligence to his work. But his efforts to be open to Plato's thought are
thwarted from the beginning by his own
patronizing, for instance by his thoughtless
belief that Plato is "more concerned to present and recommend his views ... than to
argue for them or explore their consequences in any detail" (3). Because he accepts this caricature of Plato as primarilyat least in his writings-a mere spokesman
for certain opinions, Irwin fails even to
glimpse the full beauty of Plato's writing or
the full range of his thinking. The failure of
Irwin's interpretation stems from his inability to accept the guidance that the dialogues can offer if one begins by looking up
to them, as to a possibly competent
teacher.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of the
philosopher in
the
defend and justify moral beliefs rationally''
David Bolotin
David Bolotin recently published Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: an Interpretation of the
''Lysis'' (Cornell University Press 1979)
97
�AT
HOME AND
ABROAD
Letter from Nicaragua and Guatemala
At the airport, customs and immigration
officials wear green fatigues and shiny
black boots. Guards in the same uniform
carry rifles. A sign on the wall reads "Welcome to Free Nicaragua." The capital,
Managua, bears traces of the war alongside
other older ruins. Empty and barren except
for tall grass and a few inhabited ruins,
central Managua still shows the devastation
of the 1972 earthquake. Despite all the
reconstruction money from abroad, Somoza
appeared not to rebuild, to the anger of
many before his fall. Instead, Managua
spread out with new construction on the
perimeter of this area.
Everywhere there are reminders of the
war: damaged buildings, cars with bullet
holes and broken windows, shelled-out
factories. Each neighborhood tells its own
story. In the poorer areas younger residents
recount battles in graphic details that
sound a bit exaggerated. People speak of
Nicaragua's sufferings under Somoza, the
"inhuman tyrant": he bombed the poorer
neighborhoods of Managua, killing many
more civilians than Sandinistas; he ordered
doctors in city hospitals not to let wounded
Sandinistas survive.
But the victory of the Sandinistas in
July 1979 now overshadows the memory of
the war's suffering. The names of streets,
schools, hospitals-entire neighborhoodshave been changed to commemorate
victory: the A. C. Sandino Airport, the
Lenin-Fonseca Hospital, the Highway of
the Resistance, and more. Monuments to
Somoza or his family have been destroyed
or defaced. New ones have been erected
to commemorate the Sandinista war heroes
and civilians who gave their lives. The red
and black flag of the FSLN (Sandinista
Front of National Liberation) is everywhere.
People praise the Sandinistas for "making
the revolution possible" and for "giving
the victory to the people." They mean not
just victory, a year ago, but all that has
happened since. When an American-type
grocery re-opened, selling basic foodstuffs
98
instead of luxury goods, housewives praised
the "revolution" and the Sandinistas for
making it possible for everyone, not just
the rich, to shop there. This praise was
typical; hardly anyone I met had any criticism of the Sandinistas after their first year
in power. Most Nicaraguans I met seemed
to be in a kind of euphoria which came
of surviving a brutal war in which so many
died for the "liberation" of their country.
They appeared willing to work hard to
reconstruct their country and "continue
the revolution."
The remains of July's anniversary celebration of victory were still in evidence on
the streets of Managua in early August.
Banners proclaimed that "In NicaragUa, it
will always be the 19th of July." Billboards
and posters all over the city repeated a few
key slogans: "Sandino yesterday, Sandino
today, Sandino forever"; "An armed people
is the guarantee of victory"; "People,
Army, ... unity guarantees the Peace";
"Cuba yesterday, Nicaragua today, El
Salvador tomorrow." Others advertise new
government programs. The faces of Cesar
Agosto Sandino, the legendary rebel hero
of the 1920's and 30's (from whom the
FSLN took its name) and of the late Carlos
Amador Fonseca, Cuban-trained guerrilla
and founder of the FSLN, appear in all
shapes and sizes. The most dramatic are
their portraits in lights on Managua's two
tallest buildings, the Bank of America and
the Intercontinental Hotel.
Many songs that are popular now grew
out of the war; they are also heard in other
Central American countries, though only
in homes, not on the radio. For Nicaraguans, they are now for entertainment, but
perhaps for other Central Americans, they
serve a more serious purpose. Many are
about guns and other weapons. "The
Garand", for instance, is about how to
load, aim, shoot, and disarm the Garand
M-1 rifle; it lists its specifications and praises
its accuracy. There are also hand grenade
songs and homemade bomb songs. Other
songs tell of the heroic deeds and sometimes tragic ends of Sandinista guerrillas.
With catchy slogans, the songs are sometimes moving in their revelation of the
passion and hope of the Sandinistas' long
struggle. A song commemorating Carlos
Fonseca begins "When we were in jail, a
member of the National Guard. full of joy,
came and told us that Carlos Fonseca had
died. And we replied, 'Carlos Fonesca is of
the dead that never die!' ... "
Carlos Fonseca had promised that when
the Sandinistas took power, all Nicaraguans
would have the opportunity to learn to
read and write. The Sandinistas claimed
that there were 669,000 illiterate adults
(forty percent of the population), of whom
ten percent were considered "unteachable."
So, the Sandinistas formed the "Popular
Army of Literacy" (EPA). According to the
newspapers, 50,000 young people from all
over the country left their homes and
families to teach their "comrades" to read
and write. Members of the Sandino Army,
students, even some volunteers from
abroad made up many of the literacy
"brigades"; all the "brigadistas" that I met
were under thirty. In exchange for their
services, they received room and board.
Classes were held in homes, factories,
farms, whenever the students had time. By
August, newspapers claimed that 464,500
people had learned to read and write, 70%
of their goal.
The crusade received an enormous
amount of publicity. In the official Sandinista newspaper, headlines declared towns
and districts "liberated" and "victorious
over ignorance" as more and more areas
reached their goal. A billboard-sized chart
set up in front of the Palace of the Revolution showed the progress of each region.
The media called the brigadistas "sons of
Sandino''. They claimed service in the
EPA amounted to fighting for the FSLN in
the war, because the EPA was "fighting"
the "next phase of the revolution." They
published simple handwritten letters from
WINTER 1981
�the newly literate that thanked the brigadistas and praised the Sandinistas and
the "revolution" for bringing them "out of
the darkness and ignorance." The two
television stations (now controlled by the
"Sandinista System of Television") showed
people who had just learned to read and
write, reading newspapers and talking
about how it felt to be able to read. When
only a little short of their goal, the government planned a "victory" celebration in
Managua, in honor of EPA's workers.
Independent and openly critical of the
Somoza regime, La Prensa for decades
stood for political life in Nicaragua. The
murder in 1978 of editor Pedro Chamorro,
allegedly on Somoza's orders, set off the
public protest and wide-spread strikes that
led to full scale civil war. Fifteen months
later, Somoza had La Prensa-which had
kept printing after Chamorro's murderbombed and burned. A month later, shortly
after the Sandinista victory, La Prensa, using another newspaper's facilities in nearby
Leon, was back on the streets. Chamorro's
widow was named to the five-member ruling junta (resigning less than a year later to
go back to La Prensa). Left in the hands of
another family member, Xavier Chamorro,
the newspaper all but lost its independence. Editorial comments suggesting that
reporters distorted facts in the service of
"imperialism" prefaced articles critical of
the Sandinistas or communist countries. In
the end, under pressure from the board of
directors, Xavier resigned-to start his own
newspaper with workers who had struck to
preserve La Prensa's pro-Sandinista line.
Members of the Chamorro family now
run all three major newspapers in Nicaragua: La Prensa is run by Jaime Chamorro,
El Nuevo Diario by Xavier, and the official
FSLN paper, La Barricada by Carlos
Chamorro. La Barricada, named for the
way battles were fought behind barricades
in the streets, features Sandinista propaganda above all. Much of the content of
El Nuevo Diario, while not strictly propaganda, is nevertheless pro-Sandinista and
against the U. S. Only La Prensa-which
prints much of the same news as the
others-also prints letters from readers
which question Sandinistas about friends
or family members who have disappeared
from jail or from the streets. The other
newspapers refer to La Prensa as the
"bourgeois" paper. All three comment on
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
each other's "inaccuracies" and "misrepresentations". When an article head·
lined, "Elections? The People have not
asked for them!" appeared in La Barricada,
La Prensa responded the next day with the
results of its own poll that showed that
roughly eighty percent of the people questioned wanted elections. Most of the criticism now centers on La Prensa for its
articles mildly critical of the Sandinista
regime.
All three newspapers print the regime's
column, "Our New Trench-Lecture for
the Literate". Printed in extra large type
with only a few lines to an installment, it
tells the story of A. C. Sandino and the
beginnings of the rebel movement in a
simple kindergarten style especially tailored
to the reading ability of the newly literate.
This column claims that the peasants were
Sandinistas too because they served as the
"ears" of Sandino and his men. According
to the column, even the children helped
the "revolution". With their noise, they
prompted the "traitor" (Somoza's father)
and the "invaders' (the U. S. Marines) to
overestimate the number of rebels.
The victory of the Sandinistas is told
everywhere in Central America. In tiny,
overpopulated El Salvador, the violence
has become unpredictable; some call it
open civil war. I found the situation too
dangerous and continued north to Guatemala. Guatemala, too, has seen a great
increase in political violence in the last
year, but the situation is not yet as bad as
in El Salvador. Still, when I think of Guate·
mala, I am afraid-afraid of what is
happening now and what is likely to
happen soon. As one U.S. congressman
put it, Guatemala is a bloodbath waiting to
happen.
In Guatemala, what there is of a middle
ground, a moderate side, is shrinking
rapidly. There are many factors involved in
the situation, but it is the extremist violence
from all sides that polarizes the country.
While the government may in fact be on
the middle ground, opposition groups feel
that it arid any groups that support it also
support-or at least condone-extremist
violence. Although the government at least
outwardly condemns violence, some of
their methods~i.e. killing Indians suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas-tend to have fhe opposite effect. The
Indians, alienated from the government by
these acts, turn to the guerrillas. The government seems to be doing itself in. Conservative groups, on the other hand, see
the opposition-i.e. any group that does
not support the government-as supporting the Marxist guerrillas and therefore opposed to peaceful means of reform or
change. The extreme conservatives take
matters into their own hands, as they hold
the government to be ineffective. There is
an all-pervasive attitude of being anti-anticommunist, anti-fascist, anti-government.
Although the terms "left" and "right" are
used by the different groups to label their
opposition, it is not that simple, since
different groups on the same "sides" have
different ideologies.
Extremist violence takes standard forms:
assassination, murder, and kidnappingsometimes for ransom, but more usually
the victims' bodies are discovered days
later. There are many groups, each with its
own targets. Some, particularly the Marxist
guerrilla organizations, claim public responsibility for their acts-especially kid·
napping, since the guerrillas usually ask for
ransom. Most terrorism, however, is face·
less, with perpetrators identified in the
newspapers as "unknown men". These
"unknown men" murder labor leaders and
organizers, student leaders and professors,
opposition party officials, journalists, and
priests-anyone suspected of "leftist"
sympathies. That these "unknown men"
operate as groups is apparent from their
methods; that they are radically "rightwing" is clear from their choice of victims.
It is widely believed that they are govern·
ment supported. The arguments for this
are compelling, though not conclusive.
First, in the late sixties-another peak in
guerrilla activity in Guatemala-the Army
and other government security forces
openly killed and terrorized the same
people in the same way. Many believe that
the government now operates underground
to protect itself from being accused of
resorting to terrorism. In several incidents
some connection with the government has
been established. In June, an unsuccessful
murder attempt took place on the national
university campus, which has seen much
terrorism. Two snipers shot at a student,
wounding him seriously. The two men did
not have time to make their getaway, however, and other students saw them and
chased them down. The students burned
99
�one alive and then lynched them both.
The wounded student was rushed to a
government hospital, but his family, fearing
for his safety, removed him to a private one.
Within 24 hours, more "unknown men"
tried unsuccessfully to gain entrance to
the hospital, shooting up windows and
doors with machine guns. As soon as his
health permitted, the student sought asylum in Costa Rica. The two snipers were
said by the newspapers to have been "confidential agents" of the Army. The Army
acknowledged this but denied any connection with their actions. In other
incidents, vehicles used have been traced
to branches of the government, such as the
judicial department. That some members
of these groups have been members of
government security forces does not prove
that they were acting on orders from the
government. The government, however,
raises suspicions, because it appears to do
little to prevent or investigate these incidents. The vice president, Villagran
Kramer, protested the continuing violence
by threatening to resign, but was reportedly
silenced by threats on his life. Eventually,
however, he did resign and went to the
u.s.
There are four main Marxist guerril1a
organizations now operating in the country.
Mainly involved in shoot-outs with the
Army in the mountains and in urban
terrorism, they say they aim at total ''revolution". These groups are underground:
your next door neighbor could be a member
and you'd never know. I was taken into the
confidence of some people who claimed
membership in one of these organizations.
Cautious and not ready to answer many of
my questions, they did, however, tell me
a great deal. Comparatively successful in
their everyday working lives, these people
still lived in the poor neighborhoods they
grew up in. They say they want someday
to "liberate" the people of Guatemala, the
poor and the Indians, from the "oppression" of the government. And when they
say this, their dedication to- the cause
becomes apparent. They are willing to die
for it like heroes, knowing that it may be
without glory, in anonymity.
The guerrilla group of the men I talked
to is separated into two main divisions. The
larger is the guerrilla army-in-training hiding
in the mountains. These men claim that
Indians make up thirty percent of the army.
100
(Even a few Indian enlistments would
terrify conservative Guatemalans, who
have up to now taken Indian passivity for
granted.) Smaller, and up until recently,
more active, the second division is made
up of independent units, each with a
specific mission: procuring arms, making
explosives, trailing prospective targets,
gathering information, stealing vehicles,
etc. Their arms and money come from
ransoms and bank robberies-and other
less easily identifiable sources. Guns and
ammunition are stolen from Army depots
and outposts. They receive, they told me,
arms, money, and training from Nicaragua-one of them received instruction
in the use of new weapons at a Sandinista
training session in southern El Salvador a
few months ago. (Aid from Cuba and from
the P.L.O. is also suspected. See Robert
Moss, "Terror: A Soviet Export," New York
Times Magazine, 8 November 1980.) They
have an overall plan which is known by all
members, but its specifics are revealed only
little by little. Unlike the Sandinistas, the
leaders of the organizations have not yet
made themselves known publicly. Members
of units, I suspect, know only their immediate superiors. Although they call themselves Marxists, they are much better at
saying what's wrong with the current
government and what it stands for than at
explaining their own political ideas and
their plans. What is important to them now
is "bringing the revolution," without imposing their ideology. They believe that, as
in Nicaragua, those who do the fighting
will end up in power.
To prevent further polarization of the
country, the government has launched an
expensive advertising campaign. There are
radio, newspaper, and television ads with
the theme "Let us maintain the peace in
Guatemala." One ad tells Guatemalans
that their brothers, the soldiers of the
Army, protect them from "foreigners" and
"traitorous" Guatemalans who want to
steal their land. Another ca11s upon "citizens" to stand up against terrorism for the
sake of their and their children's future.
Another shows Cubans upon their arrival
in the U. S. speaking of the hardships of
life under communism. To my surprise,
many Guatemalans doubted that the
Mariel boatlift brought more than a few
hundred refugees to the U. S. They dismissed accurate reports in the newspapers
of more than 100,000 refugees as propaganda of the government and the rich.
There is also a big campaign to promote
the government of General Lucas Garcia
as "progressive" and humanitarian. Ads
show hospitals, roads, and public housing,
some already built, and some under construction, other planned-but too few, too
late, in the opinion of many Guatemalans.
In August, the guerrillas succeeded in
sharply cutting down public attendance at
an important rally in support of the government and against terrorism. A few days
before the rally, bombs exploded all over
Guatemala city. The biggest one, which
killed eight persons and wounded many
others, went off in the park in front of the
National Palace, where the rally was to
take place. Guerrilla groups publicly
claimed responsibility for the bombs, and
the turnout (forty thousand in a country
where twice the number is not unusual)
was not nearly what had been expected.
The country's wealthy elite seem determined to fight the "communist threat,"
in the government's phrase. These people
do not believe that the "leftist movement",
as they can it, is popular and spontaneous.
They claim rather that it is directed and
financed by outside parties, namely Cuba
and Nicaragua. A rancher on the Caribbean
coast explained that he let the Army maintain and train several hundred soldiers on
his property in order that they might guard
the coast. He claims that boats carrying
arms from Cuba have been intercepted.
People like this rancher feel that they've
got their backs against the wall, and that
they must-and will-fight to preserve
what they feel is theirs.
In the face of such violent conditions,
life goes on, but there is more and more an
atmosphere of fear, and a feeling of
impending disaster. Killings by extremists
leave no one untouched. While each side
has its own targets, innocent people who
are in the wrong place at the wrong time
lose their lives. People who have reason
to believe that they are on somebody's
"list" try to insure their safety. Dealing
with these threats alters everday life-as
Salvadoreans who have fled to Guatemala
because of death threats can attest. In some
instances, it means having bodyguards,
although this is not always very effective.
For most, it means never keeping a regular
schedule. It means never taking the same
WINTER 1981
�route to work, using different cars, coming
and going at irregular hours. It means not
always spending the night at home but
going to the homes of friends and family
to keep from establishing a predictable
pattern. For many, many Guatemalans, it
means carrying a gun-especially at night.
A woman who fears for her husband, an
economics professor at the university, says
he's being watched and followed. She says
she knows what happens to professors
suspected of "leftist sympathies"-if they
do not flee to Mexico, or "join the guerrillas in the mountains," they are murdered
or they disappear.
When I left Guatemala in August, friends
on all sides felt that the situation would
wait for the outcome of the U. S. elections
in November. Even large business deals
were pending the results of the elections.
More conservative Guatemalans have
been infuriated with the Carter administration and its human rights policy. They
feel that the State Department and the
administration have supported the "leftist
movement", if only by not unequivocally
supporting the current government. From
the way they talked about the U.S. election,
one would think they could vote. The
guerrillas I spoke with hinted that if Carter
were reelected they could take their time,
but if Reagan won, they might have to
speed up the implementation of their plan.
The elections are sure to be front page
news, just as the conventions were, reflecting their importance in Guatemala's
affairs. Among the conservatives, although
there is an anti-Carter attitude, they are
not anti-American. Some people even believe that if anything drastic happens, the
U. S. will step in. The only strong antiAmerican attitudes I encountered were
among students and guerrillas. On the
whole, Guatemalans are still fairly friendly
to the U.S. This may change in the future.
In Nicaragua before the war, there was not
nearly the widespread anti-Americanism
that one encounters there now. For while
Washington and the Sandinistas deal with
each other, the Nicaraguans do not forget
the verse of the FSLN hymn that replaced
their national anthem: "The sons of
Sandino/Not to be sold nor surrendered~
Ever!/We fight against the Yankee/Enemy
of humanity."
HONOR BULKLEY
A student at St. John's College, Annapolis,
Honor Bulkley has made three extended visits
to Central America in the last three years, most
recently for three months in the summer of 1980.
FRoM OuR READERS
To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing the marvelous
"Three by Meyer Liben" in the July The
College/The St. John's Review.
In your note on the stories, you quote
George Dennison's description (1976) to
the effect that he [Liben] was "an unknown
first-rate writer." In my book, The Ordeal
of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and
the Jewish Struggle with Modernity (Basic
Books 1974) on page 208, you will find an
attempt to appraise the greatness.
july 18, 1980
jOHN M. CUDDIHY
The passage Mr. Cuddihy refers to reads:
All these considerations come to mind
when we reflect on Malamud's most
recent novel, The Tenants (1971). Why
the vogue for Malamud's stories, rather
than those incomparably better stories
of Meyer Liben, for example? Liben's
characters are precisely observed; they
resist, with the stubbornness of stones,
being blown up into Malamudian emblems. They are thus culturally unavailable; obviously, this is "minor fiction."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
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The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter 1981
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1981-01
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Sisson, Barbara J.
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Wilson, Curtis A.
Thompson, Homer A.
Lund, Nelson
Collins, Arthur
Dennison, George
Rangel, Carlos
Radista, Leo
Liben, Meyer
Morrisey, Will
Bolotin, David
Bulkley, Honor
Brann, Eva T. H.
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Volume XXXII, Number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter 1981.
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St. John's Review
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